Grandmother Adams' bushfire story: a miracle in the bush

The cover of Patsy Adam-Smith’s childhood memoir

Patsy Adam-Smith is one of my favourite Australian writers. She has a simple, clean style and she wrote about places and people that I love: the bush, the sea, timber workers, pioneer settlers and railwaymen.  Only the other day I re-read Hear the Train Blow for about the fifth time and relished it all over again. This is the story of her childhood, growing up in the 1920s and 30s as the daughter of a fettler in the heyday of the Victorian railways. This was also a favourite book of my father who spent a lot of time on long railway journeys or at lonely country railway stations in his schooldays.

I love the pride and affection with which Adam-Smith wrote about her family, but I especially like her retelling of the stories of her grandmothers, both pioneer settlers in Victoria, one Granny Smith and the other Grandmother Adams.

Her relationship with Grandmother Adams was not particularly happy (for reasons that long puzzled Patsy, but which became clear near the end of the book), but they had one thing in common:

We [both] admired the pioneering spirit. She would tell me stories by the hour of the pioneering days, and I would listen for as long as she would talk. She and my Grandfather had pioneered the hills of Gippsland [in the years before the first World War].

As a young married woman, Grandmother Adams had lived in a slab hut with an earth floor, deep in the heavy forests of Gippsland. They started with nothing, just the land and the forest, the only clearing in the latter being the gap in the trees where the hut stood. To help finance the clearing and to buy stock, her husband took work where he could find it. The mother and children were left to look after themselves, often for weeks at a time, while he was away shearing, fencing or sleeper cutting.

Patsy Adam-Smith remembers: “Grandmother Adams was burnt out by bushfires twice in the Gippsland hills. Once she narrowly escaped with her life. My grandfather was away.”

Re-telling the story of this occasion, Grandmother Adams recounted to Patsy how:

“I sent your aunt Anastasia to neighbours to tell them we needed help; the fire was surrounding us. Not long after she left the wind changed. I looked at the track she had taken and now flames criss-crossed it, and as I watched a blazing tree fell right across it. She was a wonderful horsewoman, you know, and I knew she would get to the neighbours, but I thought she would never get back. The bigger children helped me pull my sewing machine outside and I covered it with wet bags and I gathered up what we could carry. As we left the house I looked across to the only gap that was clear of flames and there was your aunt, sailing over a fallen log, her horse bringing her home at a gallop.

               “How did you find that gap?” I asked her.

               “I followed the two men,” she said.

               “What men? There are no men here,”

               “Oh yes, they jumped the log ahead of me. When the wind changed I didn’t know which way to go, and these men rode out ahead and beckoned me to follow them.”

At this stage in her story, Adam-Smith writes, her grandmother always blessed herself, before going on:

               There had been no men. It was God Himself that led the girl home.

But men did come riding through that gap and Grandmother Adams and her children (and her sewing machine) were rescued.

Sir John Longstaff's painting of A Bush Fire at night, in Gippland in 1898

There are several things I like about Grandmother Adams' story, not the least being the importance placed on saving the sewing machine. This is a telling reminder of the importance of these machines (the first, and only ‘labour-saving device’ in the lives of many early bush wives and mothers), and also of their value as a hard-won investment.

A digression: sewing machines.

Forgive me for wandering off-topic, but I love sewing machines and have been thinking about them lately.

In the first place, how easy it is these days to take them for granted, yet they are truly a miracle of rare design. I watch Ellen sewing with her machine and I still cannot fathom the beauty of execution as it makes the stitches, enabling the easy creation of something out of nothing, and with such rapidity and exactitude. Every stitch is the outcome of mechanical genius.

An early treadle sewing machine [See Endnote 1]

How their first machine must have revolutionised the work of the woman in the home, the “settler’s wife” as she was often called, who was perforce a seamstress along with her other manifold roles and responsibilities.

While musing on this I came across a chapter on sewing machines in the lovely book Generations – grandmothers, mothers and daughters by Diane Bell and Ponch Hawkes. They write lovingly of the days when the first sewing machines came into women’s lives and homes, not just helping to relieve them of meticulous and sometimes tedious work but often providing an independent income … and also of the way the well-loved machines were handed down over the generations, along with the skills involved in their use.

Ah, Singer sewing machines (write Bell and Hawkes), the old treadles. Everyone seems to have had one. They have very predictable histories, which can be read like the flyleaves in family bibles. As women’s property, rarely out of sight, frequently locked, they pass from one woman to another. They trace ties of blood and affection; they mark out significant relationships between women. Although the treadle may have been bought first of all by a husband or father, its care was a woman’s responsibility; it was under her control, and any money earned, like the egg money, was hers. No need to give account.

They were a miraculous invention, those early sewing machines. The trick of making stitches was almost mystical, and their working required a partnership of the mechanical genius of the machine with the virtuosity of its human operator. The inanimate machine was brought to life by the operator’s feet and directed to perform its wonders by her brain, eyes and hands.

Despite the complexity of its inner mechanisms, women all over the world soon learned to service their machines and keep them in working order. A 1915 Instruction Manual explains:

To ensure easy and quiet working of the machine it is necessary that all moving parts in contact with each other be covered with a film of oil and not allowed to become dry.

The little tin of Singer Sewing Machine Oil became a ubiquitous object in every home. We still have one.

Women also discovered:

… that they were capable not only of maintenance but even repair. You just followed the instruction manual and used the tool kit that came with the machine. The list of possible malfunctions, and the remedies for each, was comprehensive and could be followed by anyone capable of reading and working the machine. Our grandmothers never had to call a serviceman, even had one been available in remote parts of the bush, although they would have denied that they were mechanical. 

Operating a treadle sewing machine required dexterity, but this could be learned.

There was a trick to the foot-hand co-ordination and, unless the rhythm was right, the thread would be snapped, requiring the lengthy process of re-threading. The tension had to be maintained just right so as the work of the seamstress and the workings of the machine meshed together perfectly. So, with the head down, at first with the drive belt disconnected and a heklper turning the wheel, daughters and granddaughters learned the art,  concentrating on guiding the material through while keeping the power up. When at last the coordination was mastered, the jerky stitches of the beginner were left behind. Smooth, even stitching was a matter of pride, an accomplishment. These were initiation rites, through which daughter and granddaughters must pass.

In their book, Bell and Hawkes trace and piece together many stories about the old treadle sewing machines. They came to think of them as a shrine at which generations of Australian women worshipped, a centerpiece in their lives.

The tradition of women making their own clothes and those of their family on their own sewing machine survived into the 1970s (Ellen made all of our children’s clothes when they were little and also many of her own dresses) but it seems to have largely died out. Few young women sew these days. Moreover, the machines are now electric and lack the romance of the old treadles. Nevertheless, memories persist. I came across this letter the other day:

 “… I have an 89-year-old Singer treadle sewing machine in my bedroom which is still in perfect working condition. [It] belonged to my Grandfather’s sister, who gave it to my Grandmother. My Grandmother gave it to my sister and me to use. It still has all the original cases and accessories in perfect condition.

The original serial number plate is still firmly attached to the machine along with a gold piece (which I think is tin) inscribed with the words “The Singer Manufacturing Company”. There is also a picture of a needle and a spool of thread on the plate. The silver plate that covers the bobbin has several numbers on it [including] April 7^th 1889 which is when the machine was made. The only pieces that have been changed from the original machine are the needles and the belt … the machine has never been restored, just well looked-after …” [Endnote 2]

This is Ellen’s 1889 Singer machine, identical to one described above

Ellen’s treadle sewing machine.

Ellen's maternal grandmother (also a Granny Smith) was a pioneer settler in the big timber country in Western Australia. Not long after she moved into their first “Groupie” cottage in the mid-1920s, she acquired a Singer sewing machine, and it was her pride and joy. She inherited the machine from her own mother. In 1925 it was already 36 years old. Like all of the sewing machines in pre-electricity days, it was powered by a foot treadle, connected to the works by a leather belt drive.

This machine was passed down by Granny Smith to her daughter Jessie, who in turn passed it on to her daughter Ellen (my wife). We have it still today. We keep it clean and oiled, and (aged 130 years) it still works (but needs a new drive belt). Both my wife and her mother learned to sew on it, as is another generation way down the track:

Our granddaughter Poppy Underwood with her Great, Great, Great Grandmother’s treadle driven sewing machine, pictured in August 2013

We not only still have the machine, but the original box of tools and spare parts that came with it. The box, made I think of American oak, is just like its parent machine – a thing of ingenuity and wonder.  It fits into your hand, but concertinas open to reveal a glittering array of tiny spanner-like tools and bits and pieces I cannot begin to name or see where they go:

The original tool box that came with our 1889 Singer sewing machine:

The toolkit and spare parts inside the box when it is folded open:

A final thought on those old treadle machines. When not in use, with the “works” folded down into the cabinet, it made an attractive and interesting little “occasional table”. Ours stands in a corner at the top of the stairs and is always adorned with a little embroidered cloth and a vase of flowers.

Given its versatility, the excellence of the engineering, and the resilience of these wonderful machines, it is little wonder that it was one of the first things she attempted to save when Grandmother Adam was threatened by that memorable bushfire.

Getting back to the miracles of the bush

Along with the drama of her escape, I also like the spiritual side of Grandmother Adams’ bushfire story, and I am happy to accept her explanation of divine intervention in enabling Aunt Anastasia to gallop safely through the flames.  I find stories about the mysteries and miracles of the bush irresistible.

As it happens, I have had two mysterious experiences in the bush myself.  Both times it was night, at a bushfire, and I was tired and anxious.  On the first occasion I was walking along a fireline, checking where one of our fire crews had been mopping up the edge of a bushfire. It was windy and dark but fitfully lit by the remnants of the fire. Suddenly I sensed danger and at the same instant felt the palpable grip of an unseen hand on my shoulder, drawing me to a halt. An instant later an enormous karri tree fell across the track a metre or so in front of me, the trunk burying itself in the gravel. I did not see or hear it coming. Had I not halted I would have certainly been under it. I was momently paralysed by shock, but when I turned to thank my savior, there was nobody there.

Years later, by myself and in the gloom of a smoky dusk, I stopped my car and got out to look at something and walked a few paces down the track. At that moment, I clearly heard voices, people calling me by name. They were urging me to get out of the bush and away from the fire front. There was nobody there. Puzzled and shaken, I nevertheless got back smartly into my car and left the scene … although I never did discover the threat about which I had seemingly been warned.

The bush has many mysteries and, as Hamlet tells us “There are more things in heaven and earth” than can be dreamt of in our philosophies.  For another example I have never been able to explain how one night, when camped alone in the bush in a grove of whispering sheoaks, and perfectly safe, I had a sudden attack of the heebie-jeebies. I was assailed by a nameless dread and overcame it only by stoking up the campfire and taking a slug from the whisky bottle that, at one time, was a standard part of my camping gear. But what was going on? Was it simply my mind playing tricks on me, or was there some passing supernatural force at work?

Mind you, I had a Scottish grandmother who had the second sight and who, like Patsy Adam-Smith’s Grandmother Adams, firmly believed that God takes a hand in our day-to-day affairs. If this is the case, I like to think I may have been a recipient on two occasions of his kindly intervention, and on a third to have been sent a message that I was not imaginative enough to comprehend. On the other hand, when I told our son Tim that I talked to my trees, he said that he would only start worrying when the trees answered back, which eventually they did.  I think he was trying to tell me to forget about mysteries and miracles, but to face up to the fact that it was time for me to be put away.

But I still prefer for mysteries and miracles to remain unexplained. The palpable but invisible warning hand on the shoulder, the spirit voices in the bush and the conversations with my salmon gums can be seen in the same light as the inner working of the treadle sewing machine – they are incomprehensible but consequently all the more memorable.

Back to Patsy

Patsy Adam-Smith’s childhood story ends in 1940 when we see her in her nurse’s uniform, on a troop train, pulling out of Spencer Street Station in Melbourne, off to the war. Later books pick up the story of her many adventures, and her wonderful collections of memories and anecdotes from ANZAC diggers, seamen, railwaymen, shearers, timber workers and the pioneering women of the bush are now part of the Australian canon.

She left a wonderful legacy: not just the stories from her own life and times, and those of her pioneering grandmothers, but her chronicles of the authentic voices of the Australian bush.

Endnotes

1.      If you want to understand the mystery of the “lockstitch” and the engineering genius of the machine that makes it, try this superb video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQYuyHNLPTQ

2.      The letter was written by Miss Shirley Cook of Northam, Western Australia, and was published in a 1985 edition of the now defunct magazine Australasian Post. The cutting survived in one of the drawers of Ellen’s machine until resurrected last week. If it is still extant, Shirley’s Singer would be 136 years-old.