The Lady Who Curled Ostrich Feathers

My grandmother, Winifred Coombe, was born in the heart of London, about 1878. Her father was born in America and well educated in Boston, passing many of his cultural tastes on to his daughter. While I know nothing of her mother, I believe Winnie had only one surviving brother, whom even my own mother did not meet. We know he came to WA around the time of my mother’s birth in 1921 and again about twenty-five years later.

Winnie’s first husband, Sydney Farrell, was a dealer in durable goods and evidently a man of steady life and foresight. Three children were born in Scotland: Leslie, Ernest and Elsie, but Leslie died of what was called “croup” but was more likely diphtheria, before they arrived. Having been allotted some land near what became Yarding, on the railway line, Syd and Winnie Farrell emigrated to the “colonies” and landed at Fremantle at the end of 1908.

In less than four months, Syd contracted typhoid and died, leaving a pretty, little blue-eyed golden haired widow and two fatherless children – Ernest being aged about six and Elsie three years younger. Happily, the lady who conducted the lodging house in which the family had stayed befriended Winnie. It is quite probable that here she met my grandfather – James (Jim) Beaton, down from the Murchison area. His family was involved in stations and mining; Jim had decided to go into sheep and wheat farming and it proved that the allotted properties of these two, Jim and Winnie, adjoined so they welded their lives and properties together.

Before she married Syd, Winnie found employment in a London hat factory, curling ostrich feathers for fashionable hats for society ladies. This was as much of a ‘job’ as her parents would allow. It was one of her later pleasures to show her daughters (including my mother) how to do this exquisite task, with some of the ostrich feathers she brought from the home country. Winnie came to Australia with a piano and the finest in cutlery, crockery and linens. Now, this tiny person, fresh out from the British Isles and good society had to help in heavy farm work: to garden and grow vegetables; to learn to make bread; to cut up a side of mutton; to set eggs; to live in tents and then a hessian (or bag) house until they became settled farmers.

Not everything went well for them. Bankruptcy after 1925; the depression of 1929 meant that for a time Winnie and her younger children lived in a house built for them by her eldest son, Ernest, on a farm near Southern Cross while Jim went on the road. In 1931, they took up 240 acres 12 miles from Nannup in the South West. This was heavy country, from which the Kauri Timber Company had already taken most of the good trees. Now, it had to be cleared for mixed farming. So, Winnie found herself dumped down in the middle of the forest – where the only shelter was abandoned mill worker’s huts. One hut had a good big stove and some beds. With a few other furnishings of her own,

Winnie set up house for her family. A Government payment of Two Pounds a week (for six people or more) was a living allowance and a stock station gelding called “Digger” had to perform all the duties of a farm horse. There were no wheels for a cart; Jim and Stuart (his son aged 16) worked to clear the land with hand tools and to build a house for the family. They were given some undressed timber for flooring and roofing joists and corrugated roofing iron, and nails, and with these supplies and their own efforts of taking timber from the bush, built a home for them all.

Winnie schooled her children at home, with some very infrequent correspondence lessons. By the late 1930’s, Winnie had a beautiful garden full of English flowers in front of the small house that Jim and Stuart had built. Down the slope were rows of vegetables, passion fruit, herbs and a few fruit trees. Winnie sewed sheets; tea towels; mattress covers and towels and made dresses for herself and her three daughters at home. From Nannup, my mother’s older sister Marion was married, in 1935, and her oldest sister, Connie was already married. In all this time, Winnie never complained nor did she hark back to her earlier, easier days in London society.

All this effort ended with the outbreak of World War II, when her only son, Stuart, joined the services. In time, Winnie found herself living rough again after the war and caring for a grandchild (Elizabeth, whose father, Ken, was killed in the war), until a colonial type house was built in Welshpool on Stuart’s ten-acre block. This was her last home, where she suffered a short illness and then passed to her rest.

Winnie was just a few weeks short of her 75th birthday when she died in 1953, still with a lovely garden that I remember to this day – forty five years later.

Regardless of what happened in her own life, Winnie’s personal integrity and sense of dignity were uncompromised. Her commitment to her family and marriage has rippled through many lives – sometimes sternly; sometimes as soft as the touch as an ostrich feather.