Blog posts for Figments of Eliza
The First Night Out
Life all at sea
Restoring my faith
Petrified moments
Weep no more
Hungering/Hankering
The taste of something sweet
Ungainly ghosts
My naked self
What is most precious?
A woman’s work
Cold to the core
An answer to my prayers
Bargains with knights and knaves
Walkabout to where?
The finale?
Swept away
My ebenezer
Background to this project
The land on which I live was once dairy farming land. Before that it would have been covered in forest, and it would have belonged to traditional custodians from the Gubbi Gubbi people.
This journey began with questions about how non-Indigenous people first entered this terrain and this region. Signage and monuments in our local town recall the first industry of the region as the timber indutry. Timber-getters came in search of the Red Cedar and Kauri Pine, felling the towering giants to feed the growing settlements in Moreton Bay and Sydney, and then Gympie and other Queensland locations.
But why here, how did they find out about the timber in the first place. It is generally acknowledged that Tom Petrie’s father Andrew travelled to the region in 1842 in search of the grave of Captain James Fraser and locations for possible settlement. Fraser had died on Fraser Island (then known as K’gari) after the wreck of his ship the Stirling Castle. Petrie didn’t find the grave, but he did report back on the rich timber resources of the region. This, in part, lead to the establishment of Maryborough and an emergent timber industry and later a Gold Rush at Gympie (1867).
So Captain Fraser, the shipwreck and the events that followed helped activate interest and white habitation of the region… the tale of what happened to Fraser’s wife, Eliza, was also to have long-lasting ramifications. This was particularly so for the original inhabitants of the region. Her tales of hardship and humiliation during the weeks she lived with Aboriginal groups in the Fraser/Coolooa region were to influence attitudes towards Aboriginal people for decades to come. So that brings me to Eliza …
She would have lived a somewhat interesting but none too remarkable life, if it hadn’t been for the events following a shipwreck one windy eve in May. What followed has grown into a story of mythological proportions, and she most certainly lived through the most tragic and cataclysmic of experiences. A tragic heroine in so many ways… but with a fatal flaw. Her flaw – perhaps greed, perhaps being open to manipulation by others, perhaps it was madness. Nobody knows for certain but we are left with fragments and figments. Contradictory tales, exaggerated accounts, popular fiction, academic arguments and creative works by some significant Australian artists.
I’m more than a little interested in exploring her tale and her journey… both unpacking it but also perhaps creating a few more figments and fragments… so my journey begins! I’m interested in finding a possible voice for telling her story, as I research the different versions of the tale. If you wish to use this material or interact through the blog please contact me (Sue Davis) through a comment on the blog .
(c) 2010 Figments of Eliza & blog postings
Leave a comment