There is no doubting the role of women in war.
‘The fine health of the English people in circumstances that might reasonably be expected to lower their vitality is largely due to its women,’ Edith wrote.
Edith’s patriotism is revealed through a profound love of landscape. She demanded no sacrifices, no blood on the sand. Her writing tugged at homesick heartstrings.
‘Sunny Australia!’ she wrote. ‘There may be some who would challenge the title but they are not those who have seen our land in wattle time. To others who missed the golden pageant we say, “Come back in wattle-time,” when the yellow fire of spring lights up our bush, and wattle-fringed water-courses vein the land in gold; when hill and valley and plain have been gilded by spring’s magic brush, and hundreds of acres of arid lands are ablaze – waves of gold as far as the eye can reach; when our waysides are symphonies in yellow and grey; when brown roads go winding through veritable forests of gold – gold of the sun, the despair alike of poet and painter.’
It is hard to imagine how much Melbourne, like so many other cities, had transformed in the first 30 years of the twentieth century. The open horse paddocks and orchards, which once divided the inner suburbs, filled in with houses and businesses. It amused me, as I waited for the bus next to a department store’s underground carpark, to remember my grandfather telling me how he used to watch the teams of horses laden with goods turning down this same underground loading bay. Motor vehicles drove this revolutionary change, but war left an even greater mark.
World War I had moved women out of their homes and into the workforce. In the Depression between the wars, the underpaid labour of women deprived men of jobs they’d once believed to be their right. Immigration from southern Europe and Asia added the virtues of cultural diversity and the ugliness of xenophobic racism. British immigration also increased after the war, particularly of women and widows, in search of better opportunities.
Women got paid for work, cut their hair and changed their clothes. Some even dared to adorn themselves in a ‘dashing suit of Lido pyjamas’ worn around Portsea ‘with remarkable confidence’. Even more adventurous, perhaps, was the girl who ‘disported herself in absolutely backless pale green bathers, the back of her torso from the shoulders to just below the normal waistline being of a pale brown colour’. How quickly the striped neck-to-knee bathing suits of the early 1900s were discarded.
The rumblings of World War II began well before its declaration in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. To Australia’s north, the Japanese Empire had already begun its plan for Asian domination by waging war on China. It was Japan that would bring war to Australia’s shores, but it was Britain that took Australia into the battlefields of Europe. Within hours of the British prime minister announcing a deadline for the German withdrawal of troops from Poland, Australian prime minister Robert Menzies declared that ‘as a result, Australia is also at war’.
World War II brought rationing of food, clothing and petrol. Everyone worried about family and friends in the fighting overseas. For Edith, the war was also a significant impediment to her scientific work. Petrol rationing greatly limited her mobility and overseas correspondence was blocked.
Dorothy and James set up a weaving station in the garage to make camouflage nets. Edith focused her efforts on fundraising for the Red Cross through seed and herb sales. One of her most successful enterprises was the production of candied angelica. In 1941, she’d written an article on the uses of angelica which was published in The Age. To everyone’s great surprise, the office was inundated with letters requesting further advice and seeds: 30, 40, 50 letters daily. Edith provided an additional article for the gardening column and offered a supply of seeds, with proceeds to the Red Cross Fund.
‘Mrs. Coleman had been lamenting her inability to help very much with Red Cross Work,’ related Kate Baker, ‘and “there you go see how things have turned out”. The Red Cross Fund profits materially by the Garden at Walsham.’
I’m not really sure why angelica was so popular. I’ve grown angelica, but could find hardly any use for it other than candied as a decoration for cakes, which seemed barely worth the effort. Candied angelica was once a popular sweet but my children turned up their noses. Perhaps the interest was medicinal – for soothing stomach complaints or cramps. During the war it seems to have been used mainly as a substitute for ginger in jams and sweets, perhaps even replacing tea and tobacco.
Another letter came from Preston’s Distillery.
‘Greatly interested and would like to purchase seeds and plants,’ Edith recalled them writing. ‘Might they send their representative out to see me and get my advice re cultivation next Sunday? I replied I regretted that my week-end was very much taken up. I could not spare time to meet their representative, further I had not seed for commercial purposes.’
Edith thought no more about the request and when a young man appeared on Sunday with a newspaper cutting from The Age in hand, asking for seed, she was happy to oblige – how much did he want?
‘Oh, as much as you can let me have,’ he replied.
Edith measured out fifteen packets and ‘one for luck’, charging 10 shillings. Feeling rather pleased with herself at this fine coup, she invited him to see the plants in the garden.
‘So in pouring rain . . . out we marched and he bought three roots (one of which I dug up with a solid chunk of good Blackburn soil) for 2/6d. Then came payment. A whole £1 was offered, 7/6d to be his donation.’
Edith was shocked. She called Dorothy. ‘He wants me to take 7/6d for the Fund. I can’t, can I?’
‘Well, it’s for a good cause, isn’t it?’ Dorothy replied.
Edith took the money and hastily found a
