Through a glass darkly

The story of this portrait of an unidentified little girl is connected with the death of Mickey Burke the bushranger. Burke was a member of Ben Hall’s gang and he first came to police notice for his part in the theft of two horses from squatter Thomas Icely’s property Coombing Park near Carcoar, in the central west of New South Wales. He was 20 when he was shot dead three months later, on 24 October 1863, at Dunns Plains, near Rockley, during a police raid on the home of Gold Commissioner Henry McCrummin Keightley. This small ambrotype, just 9 x 5.5 cm in size, is said to have been “in a little red bag, tied around the neck of Burke when he was shot by Keightley”. It found its way into the possession of Thomas Rothery Icely (1832-1918), son of the squatter, and from Icely it went to Mrs Anne Athol Hughes (nee Stewart), a family friend with a particular interest in Australian colonial history.

Eleanor Wingate (1813-1898) was the seventh child of Richard Rouse (1774-1852, early Hawkesbury settler and colonial government employee, and his wife Elizabeth Adams (1772-1849). Eleanor’s earliest years were spent at Parramatta where her father was an auctioneer and Superintendent of Government Works but her young womanhood was spent at Rouse Hill, a house her father began building in 1813. This house became the centre of the Rouse family estates. Eleanor married twice, first in 1831 to John Terry (1806-1842) of Box Hill, step-son of Samuel Terry, an emancipist merchant landowner known in his day as the 'Botany Bay Rothschild'. Her second marriage, in 1856, was to Major Thomas Wingate (1807-1869), a retired English army officer who arrived in Sydney from India around 1850. In 1854 he was commissioned as Major commanding the 1st New South Wales Rifle Volunteers. The Wingates lived in a mansion called Percy Lodge in Potts Point, Sydney, a house owned by Eleanor which served as a city rendezvous for Eleanor’s children and the extended Terry and Rouse families. In this photograph Eleanor is wearing a mourning brooch containing a portrait miniature of her mother Elizabeth.

This hand-coloured ambrotype is the master image of the bushranger Ben Hall (1837-1865), taken at the height of his brief, inglorious, career. Although the photograph’s collodion emulsion has been damaged, perhaps deliberately defaced, the picture still conveys something of the rakish good looks and air of defiance that, along with Hall’s reputation for reckless daring and courtesy to women, won him an admiring regard among small settlers and bush workers in the western district of New South Wales. He is dressed as a flash young squatter, wearing moleskin trousers tucked into riding boots, with a fringed cravat tied under his collar and a cabbage tree hat to hand. In the NSW Police Gazette of 18 November 1863 he is described as being of ‘respectable appearance’ with light brown wavy hair, soft grey eyes, handsome nose and ’pleasing expression of countenance’. Ben Hall’s bushranging career began in April 1862. A reward was posted for his apprehension in October 1863 and he was about to be declared an outlaw in May 1865 when he was ambushed and shot dead by police near Goobang Creek on the Lachlan River plain. The ambrotype came into police possession at that time.

Emma Rouse (1843-1928), was the second child of Edwin Rouse (1806-1862) and his wife Hannah Hipkins (1819-1907) and was a granddaughter of Richard and Elizabeth Rouse of Rouse Hill in the Parramatta district of New South Wales. She was born at the Rouse family property Guntawang near Mudgee but by the time this photograph was taken, probably in late 1855, Edwin and Hannah Rouse and their children had come to live at Rouse Hill, Edwin having taken responsibility for the property following his father's death. In 1871 Emma married Lieutenant Dudley Batty, an English army officer, in London. They had met on board the sailing ship Sobraon in 1869, when Emma and her mother, brother Edwin and sister Lizzie were returning from a European trip and Dudley Batty was making a sea voyage for the sake of his health. Dudley Batty died in 1878 and Emma never returned to Australia.

Hannah Terry Rouse, nee Hipkins (1819-1907) was born in Tipton, Staffordshire, England, daughter of Stephen and Nancy Hipkins, She came to New South Wales in 1837 with her aunt and namesake Hannah Terry, widow of John Swan Terry and sister-in-law of well-known Sydney wealthy emancipist Samuel Terry. Hannah Hipkins met her future husband Edwin Rouse, third son of Richard and Elizabeth Rouse of Rouse Hill, at the Terry family property Box Hill, near Windsor, the home of Edwin’s sister Eleanor Terry. They married in 1840 and lived for the first fifteen years of their marriage on the Rouse family property Guntawang near Mudgee. By the time this photograph was taken, probably in late 1855, Edwin and Hannah Rouse and their children had come to live at Rouse Hill, Edwin having taken responsibility for the estate following his father's death. In her long life Hannah travelled to Australia and back to England four times, spending more and more time in England. She died at Brighton, Sussex, in 1907.

Kenneth McKenzie (c1835-1922) was born around 1835 in the Parish of Loch Broom, Ross Shire, on the north-west coast of Scotland, the youngest child of Thomas and Mary McKenzie. He came to Australia as a young child, with his siblings and parents, arriving in Sydney in February 1839 on an emigrant ship called the James Moran. The family settled in the Shoalhaven district on the south coast of New South Wales, first near Jamberoo, then at Terara and finally at Cambewarra near Nowra. As a young man in the 1860s Kenneth worked on the goldfields at Mitchell's Creek near Bathurst, returning to the family home in Cambewarra around 1871 where he set up as a builder and was listed as such in the New South Wales Post Office directory for 1872. In 1886 he was responsible for the design and building of Meroogal in Nowra for his widowed older sister Jessie Catherine Thorburn (1824-1916). Kenneth was an active member of the Presbyterian church, a foundation member of the Nowra Choral Society, and ‘keen on all manly sports’. He was also a keen naturalist and bushman and a talented amateur woodworker.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Rouse (1845-1931) was the third child of Edwin Rouse and his wife Hannah Hipkins and was a granddaughter of Richard and Elizabeth Rouse of Rouse Hill. She was born at the Rouse family property Guntawang near Mudgee but by the time this photograph was taken, probably in late 1855, Edwin and Hannah Rouse and their children had come to live at Rouse Hill, Edwin having taken responsibility for the property following his father's death. This daguerreotype portrait is one of a suite of studio portraits of Edwin and Hannah’s three daughters taken at a single session. The girls were described by a family friend as ‘Blooming Emma’, ‘Laughing Lizzie’, and ‘Phoebe like a fawn’¹ – although Lizzie is sombre, not laughing, in this photograph. As a young woman Lizzie travelled back and forth between Australia and England with her mother and siblings. In 1884 she married Scottish-born Major Frederic Buckley Campbell of the Connaught Rangers in London and remained in England for the rest of her life.

This is a studio portrait of Jessie Catherine Thorburn, nee McKenzie, (1824-1916) with her daughter Mary Susan Thorburn (1850-1927). Jessie McKenzie, aged 15, arrived in Australia from Scotland with her parents and five siblings in 1839. She married a Scottish-born farmer named Robert Thorburn in 1846. They began married life at Numbaa , on the Berry estate in the Shoalhaven district of New South Wales, part of an extended Scottish Presbyterian community. Jessie was widowed in 1869 and in 1886 relocated with her unmarried daughters from the family farm at Barr Hill, near Jaspers Brush, to live in a newly built house called Meroogal in Nowra, financed by her eldest son Robert Taylor Thorburn. Mary Susan was her eldest daughter. She married schoolmaster Roderick McGregor in 1868. They lived with their family of eight children at Torrisdale at the foot of Mt Cambewarra, not far from Nowra. This ambrotype is a pair to a portrait of Robert Taylor Thorburn and his sister Belle, the second of Jessie’s daughters. Both pictures are housed in ornate moulded thermoplastic cases manufactured by John Smith of Birmingham.

Jane Kennerley, nee Rouse, was the second daughter of Richard Rouse (1774-1852), early Hawkesbury settler and colonial government employee, and his wife Elizabeth Adams (1772-1849). Her earliest years were spent at Parramatta where her father was an auctioneer and Superintendent of Government Works but she grew up at Rouse Hill, a house her father began building in 1813. This house became the centre of the Rouse family estates. In February 1834 Jane married Alfred Kennerley, a recently-arrived English settler who had bought a property called ‘The Retreat Farm’ at Bringelly, near Camden. Kennerley owned The Retreat Farm (later called Kelvin) for more than twenty years but he and Jane spent some of that time in England and when they returned to Australia in 1857 they settled in Hobart, Tasmania. Kennerley became a magistrate, was elected to the city council and served as Mayor of Hobart. He was elected to the Tasmanian Legislative Council in 1865 and served as Premier from 1873 to 1876. Jane maintained frequent contact with her family at Rouse Hill and members of the extended Rouse family sometimes holidayed in Hobart. Jane Kennerley died in Hobart in May 1877.

Mary Phoebe Rouse (1847-1931), known as Phoebe, was the fourth child of Edwin Rouse and his wife Hannah Hipkins and was a granddaughter of Richard and Elizabeth Rouse of Rouse Hill. She was born at the Rouse family property Guntawang near Mudgee but by the time this photograph was taken, probably in late 1855, Edwin and Hannah Rouse and their children had come to live at Rouse Hill, Edwin having taken responsibility for the property following his father's death. This daguerreotype portrait is one of a suite of studio portraits of Edwin and Hannah’s three daughters taken at a single session. The girls were described by a family friend as ‘Blooming Emma’, ‘Laughing Lizzie’, and ‘Phoebe like a fawn’. In September 1866 Phoebe married Albert Augustus (Abby) Dangar at St Matthew's Church, Windsor. He was the fourth son of the surveyor and pastoralist Henry Dangar and was himself a prosperous pastoralist. After their marriage Abby and Phoebe Dangar sailed for Europe on their honeymoon. On their return they settled at Baroona, a pastoral property near Singleton in the Hunter Valley, and raised a large family.

This is a portrait of a handsome young man with an optimistic but perhaps slightly uncertain eye on the future. He was Richard Rouse Terry, the third son of John Terry and his wife Eleanor, née Rouse, and was born in 1838 at the Terry family property Box Hill near Windsor, New South Wales. The Terrys were a wealthy family and Richard received a gentleman’s education, first at W. T. Cape’s celebrated Elfred House Private School in Glenmore Road, Paddington and later at the Reverend W.H. Savigny’s Collegiate School, Newcastle. He completed his education at the University of Sydney and then travelled to England and Europe on an extended tour. He was living in Clapham Park, Surrey, when he married Jane Emma Peters in March 1864. Richard had inherited the Hoxton Park estate from his father and his wife also brought substantial property to the marriage. When they returned to Sydney they lived first at Darling Point before building a mansion called Denistone House at Ryde. Richard was a liberal supporter of charitable causes, esteemed at the time of his death as a most philanthropic gentleman.

Robert Hunt (1830-1892) came to New South Wales in October 1854, as one of the officers of the newly established Sydney Branch of the Royal Mint. He was one of the first graduates of London's Government School of Mines and Science Applied to the Arts (later called the Royal School of Mines) where he had studied chemistry, metallurgy and assaying. He was transferred to the newly established Melbourne Branch Mint in 1870 and held a senior position there until 1877 when he returned to Sydney to take up the position of Deputy Mint Master. He was appointed as a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George in 1888 and died in office in 1892. Hunt was also a member of the Royal Society of New South Wales, serving in several capacities on the committees of the Society. This ambrotype was possibly taken on the occasion of Robert Hunt's marriage in November 1860 to Mary Paul, the hand-colouring points up his physical resemblance to his famous great-uncle, English poet, critic and man of letters Leigh Hunt (1784-1859).

Roderick McGregor (also spelled Macgregor) was a Shoalhaven schoolmaster. He was born around 1842 in the parish of Gairloch, Ross Shire, on the north-west coast of Scotland and left home at the age of 18, arriving in Sydney as an assisted immigrant on the Lady McDonald in 1860. He settled in the Shoalhaven district on the south coast of New South Wales where there was a well -established community of Scottish Presbyterians centred on Alexander Berry’s Coolangatta estate, near the township of Berry. The township was originally established as a private town named Broughton Creek and Roderick Macgregor became the teacher at Broughton Creek Public School in 1864. Ten years later he was appointed to Cambewarra Public School where he was Head Teacher until his retirement in 1886. He had married Mary Susan Thorburn at Jaspers Mount, Shoalhaven, in 1868 and together Roderick and Mary Susan had a family of 8 children. They lived on a farm called Torrisdale in the foothills of Cambewarra Mountain, a location well-suited for Roderick to follow his personal interest in astronomical observation.

This photograph shows Robert Taylor Thorburn (1847-1934) as a young man, barely twenty, and a younger girl, his adolescent sister Annabella Jane Thorburn (1852-1930). Robert was the eldest son of Scottish-born immigrants Robert Thorburn and Jessie Catherine McKenzie. He had a younger brother, Tom, and six younger sisters. Annabella, always known as Belle, was the second eldest of the sisters. The youngest, Kennina Fanny McKenzie Thorburn, known as Tot or Tottie, was born in 1865. She was four when their father died in 1869 and big brother Robert took over the running of Barr Hill, the family dairy farm at Jaspers Brush in the Shoalhaven district of New South Wales. In 1885 Robert bought a town block of land on the corner of West and Worrigee Streets, Nowra, and then financed the building of a house called Meroogal as a home for his mother and his four unmarried sisters, of whom Belle was the eldest. But in this photograph the future is unknown. We see a young girl in a fine checked dress with white collar and cuffs, the collar fastened with a delicate gold brooch. She holds a lace-trimmed black straw hat.

Thomas McKenzie was born around 1794 in the parish of Lochbroom, Ross Shire, on the north-west coast of Scotland. Like many of his fellow Highlanders, Thomas was making a difficult living as a shepherd & farm labourer in the aftermath of decades of Highland clearances when he decided to emigrate to Australia in 1839 with his wife Mary and six children. The family settled in the Shoalhaven district on the south coast of New South Wales where Thomas became a dairy farmer. He served as an elder of the local Presbyterian church for more than forty years and as a native Gaelic speaker he was an especially welcome visitor to the homes of the many Gaelic-speaking members of the Shoalhaven congregation. When, in 1987, Thomas McKenzie’s great-great-great granddaughter June Wallace looked at this ambrotype picture of her forebear (holding a snuff box) she observed that 'he was a craggy old Highlander', but the mourners at his funeral in Cambewarra in 1892 remembered that he was also a genial man, 'remarkably liberal and unselfish in every direction.'