We have an extract from MY FATHER AND MY FATHER’S FRIENDS by HUGH MCCRAE. It adds another image of Melinda and her life.
Henry Clarence Kendall and his twin-brother Edward Basil were born on 18 April 1841(actually 1839) in the Ulladulla district of New South Wales.
Ulladulla is a native name meaning SAFE HARBOUR. It was a convict settlement, populated by timber-getters, old lags, bullock-drivers, aboriginals and so forth. A place to be remembered for its noise of whips and axes.
The Boys’ grandfather ( an ex-missionary, engaged in the cedar trade) was continually grasping for land;but as well as land he came by water,for he was drowned when his ship was lost at sea.
Basil,his sixth son, the father of Henry,had been a Man-of-war’s man, who saw service under Lord Cochrane in South America. He returned to Australia in 1840 (not likely) met Miss McNally at a party one night and married her next morning.
He is said to have had a good head for books but a bad one where wine was concerned. In any case he signed away his share of the paternal estate and thereafter was compelled to work like a horse, merely to be able to live. At the end of six years, he descended into a bush grave, his harness still weighing upon him.
The poet’s mother seems to have been typically happy-go lucky; fond of reading the same literature as her husband, rather untidy and of not much use in the house. Indeed she was of such an irresponsible nature that her twin sons surprised her by bringing her to labour before she had even thought to make provision for a cradle.
So, an acquaintance , Jim Burkinshaw, became the hero of the day by chopping down a tree and without any wizard’s wand,turning it into a cot, instanter, … a cot with spacce for Henry at the top end and for Edward at the other.
It is pleasant to imagine to imagine the careless, easygoing Mrs Kendall, seated in bed, surrounded by gossiping neighbours,quite contented to have Mr Burkinshaw share in the congratulations which were the order of the day.
Henry was his mother’s favourite.
When the time came she taught him to write ” The Dog Runs”, “The Cat has a Long Tail”; using the dusty road for his copy-book and a gum-tree twig for his pen.
From singing him to sleep at night ,she went on , as he grew older. to repetitions of poetry by day – poetry a boy might understand and be expected to like. She even wrote verses herself and by and by the miracle occurred; Henry did the same.
In 1846, Doctor Dobie,R.N., retired Government Health Officer, engaged basil Kendall and his wife to be caretakers of his property Gordon Brook and of two flocks of sheep at the wages amounting to 30 pounds a year.
As Kendall had lost his share in the Ulladulla estate he was glad of the opportunity to have a roof above his head. The couple contracted for twelve months only. At the end of that period, they removed to a bigger station called Bushy Park, ten miles out from South Grafton. The owner of Bushy Park was James Aitken, a short-set muscular man,once a schoolmaster, who wore habitually over his working-clothes , a magenta blouse or shirt, which reached down to his knees. On this account he came to be called the red Squatter. He ALSO wrote poetry. So perhaps in his case the magenta blouse may have been justified.
From Bush Park the Kendalls graduated to Rose Valley, another of Aitken’s sheep runs; and from Rose Valley the father passed on – alone – into that other Valley … of the Shadow of Death. Mrs Kendall brought her five children ( three girls and two boys ) to live with “gran’fer” McNally, formerly a footslogger in the British Army, but now a farmer near Wollongong on the road to Bulli.
McNally took them in – except the little girls, who were adopted separately into homes in the neighbouring district. A different ‘gran’fer’ this one from ‘ gran’fer’ Kendall. Gran’fer Kendall had been an active unimaginative man. Gran’fer McNally dreamed his hours away. “the terrible one for fairies” ; he would take off his cabbage-tree hat to a cloud of dust scurrying through Tarrawanna from Brooker’s Peak and exclaim ” God speed you , gintlemin!” as if he really saw the good people in green clothes and res shoes, mounted on the air.
While he minded cattle with ‘th’ childra, he told stories about the Peninsular War – so often they became bored – particularly of how he had made one of the burial party at the obsequies of Sir John Moore.
“By th’ struggling moonbeamth mithy light” lisped Henry.
“Ph’woi thin ” said the ‘gran’fer’, ” There wasn’t th’ tashte av a moon! Only the brahd sun; on as foine a day as ivir shtipped out av th’ shkoy.”
Henry became a shop-boy and messenger in a store in Wollongong kept by a man called Bates. For two years he was daily taking down shutters and putting them up again.; for two years he slept underneath the counter, writing a bit of poetry whenever he got the chance; but always aware of the Pacific thudding on the shore outside. He busied himself with coffee and sugar and dreamed of the Barbary Coast. He carried a keg of oil and pictured enormous whales spouting their way through the sea. he even thought about a brig, working and creaking towards the South; and this brig he thought about was his Uncle Joe’s PLUMSTEAD, a whaling- vessel that voyaged so far down as the Antarctic;so far up as Yokohama;past many an island asleep in the sun.
He saw then, in imagination, what he was to see afterwards in actuality … white bears swimming to feed on the waste carcasses of huge fish, with sea-gulls flying over them.
Yet he was a conscientious lad and worked well; so well that, one day his master, taking an account sheet, roughly altered the superscription from plain BATES to BATES AND KENDALL. While he did this he said nothing to henry, but allowed him to look – with results entirely unexpected. The apprentice suddenly “knew he was naked”; was aware of the grocership and longed to be free.
Kendall wrote secretly to his Uncle Joe, the only one of his father’s relations who had been kind to him. Then later on , for conscience’ sake, he confessed to his mother that he had asked for the position of cabin-boy aboard the PLUMSTEAD. A letter came telling him to set out immediately.
This happened in 1855. He was fourteen years old – and already tired of the butter-and-eggs business.
MELINDA KENDALL : HER LIFE AND WRITINGS 