The Brooks Family of Balbinia

(This is an excerpt from East of 121: Five Minute Histories from Esperance, and is one of my favourite stories from the Esperance region. This story first appeared in the Esperance Tide, and one of the episodes of the Esperance Historic Homesteads Documentary Series also features Balbinia and the Brooks family.)

In 1850, a young Irish couple, Emily and Henry Ferby Brooks sailed from England to Australia on a ship called the Harpley. They had with them their two-year-old son John Paul, and their baby daughter, Sarah, who had been born on the ship in the Plymouth Harbour. Emily’s unmarried sister, Mary Jane Donovan, was also on board. After arriving in Australia, the Brooks family settled in Geelong. Henry intended to establish himself as a farmer, but sadly, he contracted typhoid, and in April 1851, he died, less than three months after arriving in Australia. Emily was left a widow in her new home, with two very young children, at the age of 18. In 1854, Mary Donovan married Thomas Edols, an established pastoralist, and she moved to his property Edolstone at Cowies Creek, near Geelong. Emily Brooks supported herself financially by opening a small private school, which she ran from at least 1855 to 1863.[1]

When John Paul left school, he worked for his wealthy uncle, Thomas Edols. After Emily had a falling out with Thomas, John Paul decided to branch out on his own. In 1873, he rented a property called Yarra Grange, near Lilydale, east of Melbourne. With little income and high expenses, the dairy farm only lasted for a year. As Sarah later stated, ‘Towards the close of the year 1873 a series of articles appeared in The Argus (Victoria) setting out particulars of very liberal land acts in Western Australia, then a Crown Colony. It was stated that settlers “would receive a free lease of 100,000 acres for five years, with one year free of charges to travel” to any blocks they may select’.[2] These generous terms attracted the Brooks family, and they began to make plans to emigrate to Western Australia.

The Brooks family arrived by ship in Albany in 1874 and began to prepare for a long overland journey. At the time, Albany was a bustling settlement. According to the Western Australian Colonial Census, there were a total of 1,585 people living in Albany in 1870.[3] The little family applied for a lease of 100,000 acres in the Esperance area, but they would later change their plans and head further east, where there were few settlers. While they were still in Albany, they met with Campbell Taylor, who had recently established a pastoral station at Thomas River. Campbell told them that the area around Thomas River had good grazing land. According to John Paul: ‘I met Mr Campbell Taylor in Albany, who described the sandplains about the Thomas River as resembling the plains about Horsham on the Wimmera which induced us to come here.’[4]

With all of their goods loaded onto a horse-drawn cart, including two pigs and a cockatoo in a cage, the Brooks family set out for their new home on foot. Sarah and Emily Brooks carried white cotton parasols with them, ‘lined with pink and green calico and elaborately vandyked around the edges’. This detail comes from an ‘unknown correspondent’, who wrote a piece for the Fremantle Herald about the Brooks family leaving on their journey:

A DANGEROUS TRIP – A correspondent writing from Albany says, ‘A somewhat extraordinary exploring expedition left here lately, with the intention of making the overland journey to Esperance Bay. The party consists of a man named Brooks, with his mother and sister …. Should they be so fortunate as to reach Esperance Bay, it will be at the cost of much suffering and privation, but it is quite within the bounds of probability, they will perish.’[5]

Despite the fears of the Herald’s Albany correspondent, the family made it to Esperance, where they were received warmly at the Dempster Homestead. Willie Dempster recorded their arrival in Esperance and stated that they were ‘gentle folk and totally unfitted for such a venture in that harsh, waterless country’.[6] From there, they continued on to Campbell Taylor’s station called Lynburn at Thomas River.

The family intended to continue east as far as Eucla, but as Emily had taken ill, it was decided that John Paul would make the journey while Sarah and Emily stayed at Lynburn Station. John Paul took a stockman called Lennox with him, as well as an Aboriginal man called Jackie, who had been working for Taylor. He also took two other men, Jim Davis and Fred Main, at Campbell’s request. Both men wanted to travel to Adelaide. Two weeks after the men left on the journey to Eucla, Sarah and Emily were shocked when two policemen arrived searching for Davis and Main. They found out that Main was actually Bernard Stein, and both were ticket of leave men attempting to leave the colony illegally. (A ‘ticket of leave’ was a document of parole, issued to convicts who were released before the end of their sentence so they could get employment, but they were not allowed to leave their specified district.) On the first day of the journey, John Paul discovered that Davis and Main had very few rations with them. He began to fear that the men planned to kill him and Lennox and take their supplies.[7]

The men took 39 days to reach Eucla. Their greatest problem was a lack of water, and two of the horses almost died of dehydration. Their lives were saved on at least one occasion by the Mirning people that they met along the way, who showed them where to find water. At Eucla, John Paul discovered that there were already two groups of settlers there, who had taken the best pastoral land. Neither of the groups had any rations to spare. From Eucla, Davis and Stein carried on towards South Australia. They had convinced Jackie to go along with them, as his bush skills would be vital if they were to survive the journey. John Paul made them sign a statement that they would send Jackie back by boat, but it is unknown if he ever made it back to Western Australia.

According to Sarah’s account, Davis eventually reached Adelaide and escaped to New Zealand, and then to America. [8] Stein was recaptured and given an additional sentence for absconding. Later, after he served his sentence, Stein married and opened a bookshop in Hay Street in Perth.[9]

On the return journey, John Paul and Lennox had even less food, as Jackie had been the best hunter of the group. They only survived the return journey thanks to the Mirning people, who once again came to their aid.[10] With Lennox unable to go on, John Paul left him with the cart three days’ ride from their camp near Lynburn, and went on ahead. When he returned with rations several days later, he found that Lennox had been ‘reduced to eating his saddle-cloth (sheepskin).’[11] The Brooks family put in an application for a 100,000 acre lease near Eucla, but they did not stock this lease and gave it up in 1878.[12]

John Paul applied for 10,000 acres of land at Israelite Bay, stretching along the coastline from Point Dempster to Point Malcolm. This leasehold was approved in May 1875, and John Paul later extended the holding by 4,000 acres to cover the Marlburnup Rock Hole to the west. The family built a house at Marlburnup Rock Holes and stocked it with sheep that they had purchased from Campbell Taylor. John Paul continued to look for better land inland.

The family managed to scrape out a living from the harsh land, eventually moving to a new, two-room stone house called Waratah, at Israelite Bay. After the telegraph line was built through the area in 1876, John Paul became the first linesman at the Telegraph Station at Israelite Bay. The presence of the telegraph station meant that a small community grew in the area, with linesmen, telegraphists, and the station master, along with their families, moving in. John Paul worked for the telegraph line for seven years, during which time the family’s sheep were looked after by the Ponton brothers, in exchange for half of the profits. Sarah, who was an accomplished pianist, painted well, and could speak several languages, had her piano shipped to Israelite Bay from Melbourne, where, according to local legend, it stayed on the beach for two weeks before they were able to get it to their house. [13]

In 1883, the government botanist of Victoria, Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, wrote to The West Australian newspaper, asking that it ‘appeal to our settlers in outlying districts to aid him in his botanical researches’[14] by collecting and sending to him botanical specimens of various plants so that he could catalogue and classify them. Sarah Brooks started sending him samples of the plants that grew around the Israelite Bay area. Over her years of collecting, Sarah sent hundreds of botanical samples to von Mueller, and von Mueller recognised her efforts by naming two different plants after Sarah, Scaevola brooksiana and Hakea brooksiana. Sarah and John Paul also both wrote articles for journals and letters to newspapers describing the landscape, geology, and fauna of the Esperance region.

In 1883, John Paul took up a lease of 20,000 acres 100 kilometres inland from Israelite Bay, which he called Balbinia (sometimes spelt Balbinya). Alexander Forrest had camped at that location in 1871 on one of his exploratory journeys and had built a stone cairn there on the rocks near a natural soak, which is still present today. John Paul moved to the new lease the following year, quitting his job as a linesman in order to return to his pastoral work. Sarah stayed on at Waratah on her own, and Emily moved to Balbinia with John Paul. The family built a one room stone cottage at Balbinia, and later a stone storage shed, which had a living space for John Paul attached.

In 1898, Waratah was destroyed by a fire. Some of the people from the Telegraph Station helped Sarah to get her possessions out of the house, and so all of her furniture, including the piano, was saved.[15] After this, Sarah moved into the small house at Balbina, and lived there with her mother. Despite the isolation of Balbina, the family were friends with the Dimer family, who lived nearby, and some other families who lived in the area. Theresa Sullivan, who lived at Israelite Bay in the 1920s, described Sarah as ‘the perfect lady, very cultured, and beautifully spoken.’[16]

In 1907, Emily fell from a horse and broke her hip. She was 77 years old. From that time onwards, she was bedridden on a sofa at Balbinia, with Sarah acting as her nurse. On the 27th of May, 1911, Emily died from bronchitis, three days short of her 79th birthday. John Paul and Sarah buried Emily near the orchard at Balbinia.

In 1927, Sarah travelled to Perth at the age of 77 with two of Henry Dimer’s children, Bertha and Barney. During the time she was there, she was interviewed by The Sunday Times for a newspaper article. Sarah was quoted in the article as saying, ‘Coming back to civilisation after 50 years, I was frequently asked what struck me most, and I always replied, the beauty of the flowers.’ She also stated that, ‘the chief thing that surprised me was the noise in Perth.’[17] While in Perth, Sarah had some new experiences that included getting her hair permed, getting a studio photo taken, visiting the cinema, and riding on a tram.

In 1928, the Dimers found Sarah semi paralysed after she had suffered a stroke at Balbinia. They took her to Norseman in their 2-seater Buick, but Sarah died there in the hospital and is buried in the Norseman cemetery. After Sarah’s death, John Paul continued to live at Balbinia alone. By this time, his flock of sheep had dwindled significantly, partly due to dingos and rabbits. He often travelled long distances, sometimes riding his bicycle to Balladonia, a distance of nearly 100 kilometers, to collect the mail. In 1930, the same neighbours, the Dimers, found John Paul lying injured in a paddock. He died later that day and is buried with his mother at Balbinia.

One of the Brooks’s contemporaries, Mrs Crocker of Balladonia, wrote of the Brooks family that ‘theirs was a sad chapter … Miss Brooks came to the district as a charming and accomplished young woman of twenty and truly wasted her sweetness on the desert air.’[18] This may have been so, but the Brooks also proved themselves to be resilient and determined, and Sarah’s efforts certainly helped to identify and catalogue many of the plants of the area. In 1993, the cottage and stone shed at Balbina were restored by volunteers with the LEAP (Landcare and Environment Action Program) program, under the guidance of stonemason Roger Robertson. By this time, Emily’s cottage had collapsed entirely, but Roger was able to rebuild it with much of the original stone, to the specifications of the original cottage. It remains an icon of Esperance’s history.

[1] Much of the information for this 5 Minute History comes from the article by Ray Oldham, ‘The Brooks Family of Israelite Bay and Balbinia Station’ Early Days Journal, Vol 7 Part 7, Royal Western Australian Historical Society, 1974

[2] ‘A Wonder Woman of the West, Miss Brooks of Balbenia’, Sunday Times, 29 April 1928

[3] Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Historical and Colonial Census Data Archive (HCCDA)’, Australian Data Archive, ADA Dataverse, V6, 2019, https://dataverse.ada.edu.au/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.26193/MP6WRS

[4] ‘Mr J.P. Brooks of Balbinia’, Sunday Times, 27 Nov 1927

[5] ‘A Dangerous Trip’, The Herald, 11 April 1874

[6] Rica Erickson, The Dempsters, Perth, 1978, pp. 148-9, John Simpson, Born to Command – Not to Take Orders, Perth, 2017, p. 23

[7] Sarah Brooks, ‘Journal of a Trip to Eucla’, 1884, Esperance Museum Archives, HS 852

[8] Sarah Brooks, ‘Journal of a Trip to Eucla’, 1884, Esperance Museum Archives, HS 852

[9] Rica Erickson (Ed.), The Brand on his Coat, Perth, 1983, p. 247

[10] Sarah Brooks, ‘Journal of a Trip to Eucla’, 1884, Esperance Museum Archives, HS 852

[11] Oldham, Ray, ‘The Brooks Family of Balbinia Station Part 2’ Early Days, Vol 7, Part 7, p. 31

[12] Oldham, Ray, ‘The Brooks Family of Balbinia Station Part 2’ Early Days, Vol 7, Part 7, pp. 29-31

[13] John Bridges, Challenge in Isolation, 2004, p. 72

[14] The West Australian, 24 July 1883

[15] ‘Fire at Israelite Bay’, The West Australian, 22 March 1897

[16] John Simpson, Born to Command – Not to Take Orders, Perth, 2017, p. 88

[17] ‘A Wonder Woman of the West, Miss Brooks of Balbinia’, Sunday Times, 29 April 1928

[18] Amy Crocker, letter to Mrs Thelma Daniell, 9 June 1971, Esperance Museum Archives