Frontier Faith

​Women alone in the Bush,
Mothers and wives,
Keeping your guard in the weird night-hush
Over sleeping lives;
In woe or weal,
Staunch and fond,
True as steel
To the marriage bond…
Hearts of Gold, O Hearts of Gold!
                                                          (Will Oglivie 1896)          
 
Scots stockman/poet, Will Ogilvie, witnessed first-hand the heroic fortitude of the women who braved the punishing conditions of the lonely West. He admired the exceptional resourcefulness it took survive without schools, shops, churches, hospitals and post offices.
 
Scotswoman Henrietta Foott arrived near the site of Fort Bourke on the banks of the Darling in October 1860. The record of her ten-year stint in the Outback is a remarkable story of a girl raised in a comfortable home in Aberdeen, transforming into a frontier woman capable of keeping her family in a rough camp 800 km from civilisation. Without question, her sturdy faith was the backbone of the family.

James Foott was the flamboyant son of a noble Irish family who had spent his inheritance and was making an effort to redeem himself as a settler in the Australian Outback. Henrietta was the well-educated daughter of a distinguished Scots family. Their epic six-month pilgrimage, with four of their children, matched those told of the fabled American West.
 
The family had made a taxing overland trip west from Melbourne to the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers and then turned North East up the length of the Darling – an 1800 km journey, four times the length of Henrietta’s native Scotland. In fact, the 38-year-old mother of five, had barely landed back in Australia after sailing a 26,000 dangerous kilometres round trip to Scotland, before she made an optimistic departure from Melbourne.
 
The girl from the bonny hills of Aberdeen named, but never complained of the hardships of the long inland trek. She adjusted to the eerie howl of dingoes, the cackling of kookaburras at dawn, baking bread in the ashes of a campfire and turning the ducks, cockatoos and galahs the men hunted into reasonable meals.
 
A natural teacher, she trained her daughter to recognise native botanical species as they rode. She remarked wryly that the water they salvaged did not bear close inspection, but camping by a lake at the end of a long day, the bush began to work its magic on her. She wrote, “…a fairer sight than that still sheet of water, with the bright Australian moonlight reflecting the grand old trees on its surface, has seldom been my lot to witness.”
 
A steep gully shattered a wheel on their heavily loaded wagon. A station owner loaned them a dray and for the next 500 km, Henrietta rode scout for the party on horseback. She logged that on October 14th 1860 they arrived at their selection “…truly thankful to the Almighty.’” On the advice of local Aboriginals, they chose a place for their homestead on a bank of the Darling, above known flood level.
 
Henrietta’s optimism never seemed to flag. She was grateful for her canvas roof and for her sons making walls from sheets of bark under instruction from an aboriginal craftsman. She boasted they had a fireplace “so large and roomy that it formed a little kitchen, warm and cozy in winter and many a pleasant hour we spent around that social fireside.” Bags became a respectable carpet and wagon seats with cushions a comfortable sofa.
 
She waxed lyrical about their camp, “…we really felt at home in the lonely bush and it was surprising how quickly our little comforts seemed to grow about us.”  She took great pride in her washing tubs hollowed out of gum by an Aboriginal man where, with assistance from a native girl she turned out clothes that “…seemed to me as white and clean as any coming out of the Royal laundry.”
 
The furnace heat of an Outback summer - day and night temperatures over 38 degrees Celsius - tested the mettle of a girl raised where summer peaked at a mild 16 degrees Celsius. She confessed she often dreamed of the pure fresh air blowing off Scottish hills, covered in fragrant heather and bluebells.
 
But her robust faith strengthened her determination to love this wild, strange land. “…enjoy without a murmur the sunshine and shower your Heavenly Father sends you…and although the land of my fathers must ever hold first place in my heart, Australia is very dear to me and ought to be to everyone who has made it their adopted home.”
 
The family suffered blinding agony from the scourge of ophthalmia or ‘Sandy Blight’ - caused by a stinging fly. Henrietta invented an eyewash– warm water with sugar of lead and a few drops of laudanum or opium and became something of an angel on the track. “I gave this simple cure to many shepherds and travellers who were almost blind and it invariably proved efficacious.”
 
When poet Henry Lawson carried his swag as one of these men searching for work around the Bourke district, he painted a picture of spiritual barrenness.
 
No church-bell rings them from the Track,
No pulpit lights their blindness –
‘Tis hardship, drought and homelessness
That teach those Bushmen kindness
(‘The Shearer’, 1901)
 
Henrietta challenged this by making her home a pulpit. “… many a family meet together in their log hut to worship God, and although there is no church bell heard, no clergyman seen for years among them, they cannot forget the gracious assurance, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the' midst of them.’ Prayer can be uttered as well under the shade of a gum tree, with no other eye but our Heavenly Father’s looking down upon us, as in the crowded cathedral.”
 
The Foott’s homestead became a welcome shelter for the English, Scottish, French, German, Irish or Chinese swagmen heading up-river. Like Lawson, Henrietta studied the faces of these men as they passed. “Many were hale and hearty, others bowed down with the cares of this world; some had seen better days, but were now obliged to leave home and friends and look for their bread in the Australian bush.”
 
The big-hearted Scotswoman furnished her own ‘communion table’ for weary travellers. “It was a great tax on us, for in giving we had to practise self-denial. Our store was scanty and when gone, very difficult to replenish from the great distance to any town…but while we had it, we must give, and I’m sure our Heavenly Father blessed what we had; our simple fare always seemed far better when we had bestowed a portion of it on our suffering fellow-creature and we partook of it with greater relish than many a sumptuous banquet is by those gathered round the festive board.”
 
The day supplies arrived from 400km away, her joy was understandable. “When our eldest son arrived from Dubbo with the dray…bringing us flour and other necessaries, thankless, indeed, would we have been, had not our hearts been raised in gratitude to God, from whom all blessings flow.”
 
The word picture she left of her efforts to comfort a dying woman neighbour, rival Lawson’s story ‘The Drover’s Wife’. She wrote, “…and now, when all earthly things were fading from her view, in sickness of body and soul, she could find no rest, no comfort. Her thoughts were disturbed by her anxiety about her little ones, having to leave them to the care of their father, a confirmed drunkard, who now sat cowering over the fire, stupid and sullen… Even on her death-bed she refused to forgive him for all the sorrow he had caused—forgetting how much she stood in need of forgiveness—forgetting the prayer our Lord taught us…‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.’ I looked on this sad scene until I felt my heart bursting, and not knowing how to act, for I had on former occasions endeavoured to restore peace in this wretched abode; but, alas! to no purpose.”
 
Henrietta proved herself ‘as true as steel’ working alongside her husband “…in his plans and toils whether… in the bustle and noise of the city or in the quiet and solitude of the bush.” But clouds loomed on the Eastern horizon. In 1864, a deluge on the distant Queensland border sent a torrent down the Darling that was going test Henrietta’s resolve to the maximum.
 
To be continued …