‘I hear you’ve been having bad earthquakes again in South Australia. You just ought to hear the thunder in this place. It’s terrific. Fairly shakes the earth and we get it at an average five days a week. The other two are given up to dust storms. I’ve put by my calico garments and taken to brown holland. Our washing bills would frighten you but they’re all sent on to the Government so we don’t trouble. Government’s as good as a father to the people out here. The Boers are being sent back to their farms, provided with stock, food etc. If they wish to leave their families in town, Gov. keeps them. Wonder how long it will last. The British people are complaining bitterly.’1
AT THE END of the Anglo-Boer War in 1902, Margaret McInnes went to South Africa to teach children in the notorious concentration camps set up by the British for Boer women and children who had been forcibly removed from their farms. When Margaret left her home in Adelaide, South Australia, it was with thoughts of returning to her homeland in the not too distant future. Her teaching engagement had, after all, been secured for a period of twelve months only. But life often has a way of leading us along paths never imagined, and little did Margaret know that she would spend almost sixty years on African soil, and that she would eventually find her final resting place on the African continent.
Margaret Morison McInnes was born in Naracoorte, South Australia, on 8 October 1872.2 The sixth of eight children – five boys and three girls – Margaret was the youngest daughter. Her father, Lachlan McInnes, was a Scot from Argyll who had immigrated to Australia in 1858 during the gold rush to seek his fortune. During the voyage to Australia, Lachlan met Eliza Morison from Perthshire, and married her in 1864. He worked as a bullock-wagon driver for several years, travelling all across the country to service pastoral settlements far from regional transport hubs and urban centres. Bullock drivers were, typically, tough men who faced extreme difficulties, colourful characters often noted for their strong language. Margaret clearly inherited her strong character from her father. Eventually, Lachlan had enough money to establish his own farm, and over the years he substantially increased the size of his farming operations on land that is still farmed by his descendants.
As a child, Margaret was a bookworm, and while her siblings were busy outdoors, she was dreaming of teaching. She eventually enrolled at a teachers’ training college in 1895. At the age of twenty, she began teaching at Flinders Street Public School, and later moved to Gilles Street Public School, where she was probably a founder member of the teaching staff. But the call of adventure was strong, and she resigned her post in June 1902 to join a group of Australian teachers going to South Africa; most were from New South Wales and Victoria, four were from Queensland and six, including Margaret, were from South Australia.
Among the teachers was Ida Robertson, whose brother had been killed in November 1901 while serving in South Africa with the New South Wales Mounted Infantry. In her letter of application, Ida’s referee advanced reasons of patriotism, but she herself revealed her actual motives: working twelve hours a day, she wished ‘to give this life up, as payment for teachers in the colonies is very poor and one has to work so very hard before an income of any size can be made’.3 Clearly, economic necessity seems to have been as much a factor as any other for the teachers.
The Adelaide Advertiser of 15 July 1902 reported the following in an article headed ‘Teachers for South Africa’:
The Inspector-General of Schools (Mr. L. W. Stanton) stated on Monday that six teachers have been chosen from South Australia to go to South Africa under engagement with the Imperial Government. Altogether 10 teachers will leave the Commonwealth on August 1, and they will work in the concentration camps in South Africa. The teachers selected have all resigned their positions in the Education Department, and have secured a twelve months’ engagement. They receive a return fare, their keep, medical attendance, and £100. The following have been chosen from South Australia: Misses Kassie G. Wylie (assistant, Port Adelaide, salary £108 per year), Margaret M. McInnes (assistant, Gilles-street, salary £116), Eva E. Benson (assistant, Unley, salary £110), Frances A. Williams (acting assistant, Uraidla, salary £75), and Marie T. J. Liebing (provisional teacher, Daveyston, salary £90), and Mrs. Lucy Maria Frick, who was formerly in the service, and is now the wife of the headmaster of the Beachport school. Should any of these teachers return to South Australia they will not necessarily secure reappointments, but if vacancies occur their applications will receive consideration.4
The teachers sailed from Melbourne on the steamship Medic, together with Mr Bethel, secretary of the selection committee, who would see to it that they were properly treated in South Africa. There were about 400 passengers on board, and in a letter to her mother on 18 August, Margaret described crowded cabins and rough seas. She also mentioned Church of England and Baptist church services, games such as quoits, deck billiards, cricket, ping pong and various races, as well music, with pianos, violins, banjos, flutes and tin whistles. On Coronation Day, the passengers enjoyed sports in the morning, a special dinner where everyone sang ‘God Save the King’, and a fancy dress ball in the evening.
The passengers first sighted land on the afternoon of 23 August, and went ashore in Cape Town on the morning of the 24th. They were met by a woman from the education department and driven by cart to the best hotels in town. Margaret stayed at the Mountain Villa Hotel at 29 Schoonder Street in Gardens. Her first letter from Cape Town, dated 25 August 1902, was addressed to her sister Annie. She was clearly in awe of the city: ‘Cape Town’s lovely, grand, magnificent. Words simply fail. I never thought such beauty could be … Oh, it’s wonderful; people of all shades & dresses some of them so quaint. The dark women wear brilliant coloured shawls tied round their heads; and little black children in such queer garments. The streets are so narrow, not room for cars to pass.’ Five days later she wrote home again, quite overwhelmed by her new environment:
Cape Town is just lovely. All so strange and new. Blacks everywhere in all shades of the colour & all styles of dress, mostly bright colours. The Malay women are particularly smart. The town lies at the foot of Table Mountain which towers above it. The top nearly always enveloped in a white cloud (known as the devil’s tablecloth) which is constantly changing shape … The town is laid out anyhow. No order at all. The streets wind about in the most bewildering way. There’s only one straight – Adderley Street & that’s crooked up the top end. The town is crowded with people – they are arriving daily. 1 200 landed the day after we did & there are heaps of soldiers waiting to go home.5
While in Cape Town, the teachers visited Groote Schuur, the former home of Cecil John Rhodes and where Sir Leander Starr Jameson and his friends were staying. They spent a few days in Cape Town before going on to the Transvaal or Orange Free State by special train. Miss Noble was in charge of the teachers. Margaret’s party numbered five, and included Misses Liebing, Williams, Eddie and Woring, who had all chummed up on the boat and were hoping to be stationed near one another.6 The teachers assembled at the Royal Hotel, where they were told that the five ‘chums’ would go to Pretoria, while ten would go to Mafeking and the rest to Bloemfontein.
A week after arriving, the teachers left Cape Town station on a special train. They looked forward to their five-day journey in comfortable first-class saloon cars. Summing up their satisfaction with their transport, Margaret declared: ‘I don’t care if it’s a month.’ The first morning they breakfasted at Hex River, ‘the beauty spot on this line’, and at the next station, De Doorns, also in the Hex River Valley, they caught up with a train carrying 500 Boer prisoners returning from St Helena. They had been members of General Piet Cronjé’s commandos, who had surrendered at Paardeberg in late February 1900. The general, apparently, was on a later train. ‘We chummed up with them,’ Margaret wrote. ‘Some were so nice. One gave me some pen holders & the model of a ship he had made himself while on the Island. They seem pleased that the teachers have come. “Teach them to be Australian Afrikanders, anything but not English,” they said. “We hate the English.”’7
Returning Boers aside, signs of war were evident all along the line. At 1 000-yard intervals, they saw British blockhouses where soldiers guarding the line had been stationed; there were trenches, too, and barbed-wire entanglements, and graves in some places; the train passed troops of soldiers trekking southwards, and several camps that were rapidly being dismantled.
Without mentioning it by name, Margaret describes the Great Karoo in all its harshness:
The country we are travelling through is hilly, very rugged. Some places the hills are just huge rocks, no trees, very few bushes, prickly pears, cactus & African box thorn. At intervals we see more fertile spots and some of which are the ruins of Boer farms destroyed during the war. Some are being rebuilt by the government.8
They passed through Fraserburg, and at De Aar the Mafeking party left them. A further six teachers stayed behind at Norval’s Pont. By now, the original party of thirty-nine numbered twenty-three. Two teachers were needed in Johannesburg, and the rest were to be posted at small schools outside Pretoria, two of them at Barberton further to the east. At De Aar, the carriages had been attached to the Boer train, which had overtaken them; they were now travelling on the same train as the Boer prisoners. The train stayed over in Bloemfontein for sixteen hours – enough time for the teachers to have a good look around the town.
Margaret was not very impressed with Bloemfontein:
Quite a small place. No bigger than Mt Gambier [South Australia’s largest regional city at the time]. Very dusty … Miss Firks, the Head of the Kindergarten in Bloemfontein arrived & we were all taken up to the Normal College & there entertained at luncheon by the teachers & students. There are 22 Boer girls in the college being trained for teachers. I like them awfully. They have most charming manners & such a pretty accent.9
The next morning they arrived at Kroonstad, which Margaret described as a fairly large town and the scene of several war engagements. At Rooiwal they saw graves of men who had fallen in action.10 Passing ‘heaps of African kraals, houses made of reeds’, they witnessed ‘women grinding meal with huge stones & swarms of children clad in nature’s garb alone. Some of the babies are lovely like polished bronze.’ In the afternoon, the train crossed the Vaal River, where the country seemed more fertile. At Wolwehoek – ‘an awful place’ – four members of their party left, to be taken to Heilbron in mule wagons. ‘I thanked providence I wasn’t in that lot,’ Margaret wrote, with almost audible relief.11
Once past Elandsfontein, the train sped onwards until they reached the Irene concentration camp. The following morning, they were taken through the camp by the headmaster and some of the teachers. It was the largest of all the civilian camps, but was fast being disbanded; just three months earlier, there had been 1 100 children in the school, though of these only sixteen remained, together with thirty-five teachers. At the Irene No. 2 camp there were still 400 children, and the teachers were told to remain there until the schools were ready.
There were hundreds of tents in the camp, which also housed a church and hospital. The teachers were accommodated in large canvas marquees, with four to a tent, and they took their meals in a large dining room of unburnt brick with a big kitchen next door to it. One of the Dutch teachers kept house, while five Boer girls and several black boys helped with the labour. Margaret was not very enamoured of her surroundings: ‘The wind & dust here are awful. The first night I was sure the tent couldn’t withstand it. Crawled out at midnight & put on my stockings. If it did blow up I was prepared for the worst then.’12
Once her school was ready, the day started at nine o’clock, with the first hour being devoted to religious instruction by a Dutch teacher. Thereafter, there was a strict routine. Cocoa, bread and butter were served at half past eleven and school closed at half past one. Dinner was at two, tea at half past six, and a light supper was served at half past eight.
One morning, the teachers were taken by rickshaw into the centre of Pretoria where they visited Mrs Ware, wife of the director of education. ‘Pretoria’s about as big as Gawler,’ Margaret wrote, comparing it to a town near Adelaide. ‘Beastly dirty but picturesque. The streets abound in dirt, stones, bones, rags and niggers. In the centre of the town is a space known as Church Square. In the centre is an old church in which [President Paul] Kruger stored his money, likewise ammunition during the war … Surrounding the church are the Poste Restante (as the G. post office is called), the Palace of Justice, Parliament House – all fine buildings.’13
Back at Irene camp, they were informed that their party of five had been appointed to schools in Potchefstroom, the old capital of the Transvaal.14 Margaret was pleased at the news: ‘[Potchefstroom is] a lovely place we are told. We’re the envy of the camp. The English teachers have been scrapping for the appointment for weeks.’ Neither she nor her colleagues were fond of these teachers, as she was forthright in stating: ‘We don’t love the English teachers very much. They consider themselves very superior but we won’t be sat on by anybody. The Boer girls are much nicer and have been so good to us since we came here. They hardly mention the war & never say one word against the British.’ She describes the English teachers as being ‘a bit fast but the two Scotch girls are awfully nice. They often come down and have afternoon tea with us.’ Sometime later, she again wrote of her antipathy towards the English teachers: ‘I can’t stand them. They seem to think themselves little gods because they happen to have been born in England.’15
Soon after, Margaret wrote from Potchefstroom, telling her mother that because the schools and tents were not yet ready for them, they were staying at a hotel in town. She described the sights in Johannesburg, which they’d seen on the way. There, they’d enjoyed another rickshaw ride, which offered interesting views of the burgeoning mining town: ‘Johannesburg is quite a big place – heaps of gum trees & some very fine buildings. There are splendid shops but all had the notice: “closed on account of the dust”. It’s only fine days the doors can be opened. The mines are right in the town.’16 She had a special affection for her verdant new home, however: ‘Potchefstroom is lovely, by far the prettiest town in the Transvaal. It reminds me of Mount Barker [thirty kilometres east of Adelaide]. There’s a river and the whole place looks like one great garden – a mass of pink peach blossom and pale green of the willows. The gardens are closed in with hedges of quince trees, honeysuckle & hawthorn with jasmine and roses twining amongst them.’17
Almost immediately, the teachers were put to work in the town schools, so that, for the time being, they were spared the as yet uncompleted camp schools. Margaret was posted as a relief teacher to Central School, ‘a kind of advanced school where the children pay for tuition’.18 She taught the fourth class, which had only thirteen pupils. ‘I simply don’t know how to put in the time after the crowd I’ve been used to … The children in my class are all Dutch but one and she’s the only one whose name I can say,’ Margaret remarked. But as time went by, she learnt a little Dutch, as one of the teachers gave them lessons.19
There was a large concentration camp in Potchefstroom, as well as a military camp, so the town was swarming with soldiers. One of the town’s residents was the well-known Boer general Piet Cronjé, who had returned from St Helena where he had been a prisoner of war. Margaret wrote in one of her letters that nearly all the men in the town were lame or disfigured from war wounds, and that almost everyone was in mourning.
Towards the middle of September, the teacher Margaret had been relieving returned, and Margaret was given a permanent appointment at South School, which was attended by poor children in the southern part of town.20 The headmaster was Mr De Wet, a cousin of General Christiaan de Wet, veteran of the Battle of Magersfontein. Interestingly, two of her pupils had been on commando with the Boers right to the bitter end of the war. She wrote home, telling her family that she was still staying at the hotel, a ten-minute walk from the school, but that the authorities had acquired a house for them, which they were to share with four other teachers. A Boer woman would cook for them, and Africans would do the labour. The brother of General Koos de la Rey was also staying at the house; clearly unimpressed by the famous war veteran’s brother, Margaret described him as ‘a clumsy looking animal. Not at all clever looking.’21
She found it hard, however, to contain her delight when describing Potchefstroom and its people:
Oh this is a lovely place! … The road on each side is bordered with quince and rose hedges and lovely willow trees almost meeting overhead … The people here are so easy going. No one seems to care if things are done or not. The post office closes at 4 o’clock & has half holiday Wednesday. All the shops close at five. Hotels at 8 but they are open on Sundays … The Boers, or Dutch as they like to call themselves now, are very nice to us. I fancy they think we sympathise with them. Of course we carefully avoid politics. Today we went to a meeting of ladies who have undertaken to look after the graves of the dead soldiers. We have been given charge of the Australians. There are not any I know but still they are Australians.22
After more than a month of teaching the children, Margaret still displayed much enthusiasm for the job: ‘I can’t get used to teaching 20 children especially as they only learn reading, writing & arithmetic and that lot all over at one o’clock.’23 Her Dutch lessons were progressing well and she was able to communicate better, so she was quickly settling into her new life.
Margaret and her colleagues found much to do on the social and recreational side in Potchefstroom. They did a lot of horse riding, mostly using men’s saddles as there were only two side saddles in town, which were in constant demand. Fortunately, the army horses were very tame, so this was not really a problem. After a while, Margaret also became adept at handling mules in front of a cart, even boasting to her brother, ‘You ought to see me handle the ribbons behind four mules.’24
The teachers enjoyed not only horse races, but also evening balls, ‘just like the dances they have at home & they do all the dances just the same old way’. A few months later, Margaret wrote, ‘This place is mad on dancing. They arrange about one a fortnight. I’m getting sick of them.’25 And then one evening in December, the circus came to town. With this kind of entertainment on offer, Margaret and her fellow teachers were never bored. To add to all this, two young Australian doctors attached to the army saw to it that there was a constant supply of horses, carts and even chocolates.
Although they found food expensive – ‘eggs were 12/6 a doz. a short time ago; I believe they’re down to 7/6 now. Milk 1/9 a quart’ – they did get plenty of fresh meat, as well as fresh fish from the river, and vegetables too, from time to time. During their first summer in Potchefstroom, there was an abundance of fruit – apples, figs, pears, apricots and plums, and hedges of quince along the lanes, laden with fruit ripe for the picking. Margaret was quite overcome by all this, and wrote, ‘It is so delightfully green here now. The veldt looks like a field of wheat.’26
She described the climate as ‘glorious’, explaining to people back home that because the town was situated nearly 5 000 feet above sea level, it was never very hot and the nights were cool. While there was ‘a good deal of thunder, lightning and rain … the storms were always in the night [and] the days were lovely’. As the summer progressed, however, she began to complain of the intense heat – ‘It’s getting dreadfully hot here now’ – and ‘terrific storms’, in one letter mentioning hail ‘as big as small hen eggs’. The weather was extreme, as she soon learnt, and in the middle of winter she remarked that the ‘cold is simply wicked’, mentioning three inches of ice on the furrows in the morning.27
On occasion, Margaret and her colleagues travelled beyond the town’s borders, where they saw how local African people lived. She was surprised to see, in one town just outside Potchefstroom, shops, laundries, gardens and schools quite as good as those of the whites, some even with tennis courts.
A few months after arriving, the teachers moved into rooms in a private house, as the house earmarked for them still wasn’t ready. Margaret was surprised to find that her room was ‘plentifully adorned with snakes (dead ones). One, over my bed, is 16ft in length.’28 She was obviously referring to snake skins, and the one of sixteen feet probably belonged to a python.
On the teaching front, she was having a wonderful time with her charges: ‘I still spend a short time each day at the South School with my few kiddies. They’re so full of manners they make me tired. It’s “Yes Missus & No Missus” all the time.’29 In addition to her teaching duties, she played nurse to a teacher who had fallen ill on the voyage from Australia and never fully recovered. Because the woman refused to go to hospital, they kept her in the house for as long as they could, but in the end they had no choice but to insist that she go to the hospital where she could get professional treatment.
In the meantime, the number of British soldiers in the town continued to grow, and at one stage there were over 6 000, which made Potchefstroom a lively place to be. There was a lot of activity in the town, and inevitably there were accidents. One such incident occurred at a picnic outing, when one of the army nursing sisters from Edinburgh – whom Margaret had grown very fond of – was thrown from her horse and died. She had been through the entire war, awarded the King’s medal and, furthermore, had been engaged for only a week to an Australian soldier, when tragedy struck.
Margaret kept up-to-date with news from abroad, and in a letter to her sister Annie she referred to reports of earthquakes in South Australia. In the same letter, she described the weather in Potchefstroom, the thunderstorms and the dust. ‘You just ought to hear the thunder in this place. It’s terrific. Fairly shakes the earth and we get it at an average five days a week. The other two are given up to dust storms. I’ve put by my calico garments and taken to brown holland. Our washing bills would frighten you but they’re all sent on to the Government so we don’t troublex.’ She wryly remarked on the government’s treatment of the Boer people: ‘Government’s as good as a father to the people out here. The Boers are being sent back to their farms, provided with stock, food etc. If they wish to leave their families in town, Gov. keeps them. Wonder how long it will last. The British people are complaining bitterly.’
With the arrival of summer, Margaret found herself singing the praises of the town once more. ‘This place is lovely just now – a perfect rose garden. Really the whole place is like the rose garden in our botanic back home.’30 But by December, there was serious talk of the teachers being transferred to nearby farm schools and not one of them volunteered. Three months later, Margaret mentioned the prospect of being sent to one such school ‘away in the wild of Transvaal beyond Ventersdorp. The settlers are so anxious to have their children taught that they just bow down to the teachers.’31 By then, several teachers had gone out to the farm schools, and she mentioned the arrival of fifty new teachers from England. Her own position was still unsure, however. ‘There’s a glorious uncertainty about everything in this wild land,’ she remarked, though mentioning that she had heard through the grapevine that the school inspector, Mr Bangley, meant to keep her in the town schools.32
The day before Christmas, the education department offered her the position of headmistress at her school, though she was unsure of whether or not to take up the post. ‘The pay’s not much and nearly all the teachers in school are Dutch. They’re so hard to manage. Can’t teach a bit and won’t be shown how.’33 In the end, she turned the position down and spent Christmas Day with a party of eight at Venterskroon on the Vaal River, about thirty kilometres from Potchefstroom. She described it as ‘a lovely place. Great kopjes as high as Mt. Gambier. Then the river and strange trees and plants.’34
In early January 1903, on another visit to Johannesburg, Margaret described it as a wonderful place quite as large as Adelaide and thronged with people. They attended a service at the Presbyterian church, and found Lord Baden-Powell and Lord Milner also in attendance. In a letter to her sister, Margaret complained how expensive things were; they tried on hats and dresses, with no hope of buying them, while the price of food was ‘ruinous’.35
By early February, the teachers had moved into a large six-roomed house that was freshly papered, with all new furniture; it was next door to the school, and had a large garden with ripe peaches and tomatoes. By now the concentration camp had been broken up and there was nothing left of it but the hospital and a few doctors. The town of Potchefstroom was growing, however, with many new buildings being erected and the municipality about to lay on electricity.
Margaret wrote to her mother that she had signed an agreement to stay on for a further three years, and that the salary would be not less than £215 pounds, plus accommodation. She thought it the best option in the circumstances, as teachers’ salaries had been lowered at home, with the job itself getting harder every year. By comparison, teaching in the Transvaal was ‘a mere detail’, with less work and shorter hours. In fact, Margaret needed a challenge, and it is clear from her tone how pleased she was to be given a new class in May:
Got tired of my few [pupils] and asked for more work. I’ve fifty now all ages from five to fifteen, most of them don’t know a word of English. It is funny as can be to hear my Dutch and their English. Most of them are bootless and have peculiar habits. Spit on the floor, use their coat sleeve for a handkerchief, etc.36
Education was at the time a neglected field in South Africa. Margaret observed that ‘no one ever worries you to make the kiddies learn. We’ve got no material. I’ve had to smash slates into three pieces so the kiddies would each have a bit to write on. Then they have to use a scrap of slate as a pencil. Reading books are unknown. They learn all reading from the blackboard.’ The pupils themselves were poor and suffered neglect: ‘Lots of them come minus boots even in this wicked weather, poor little mortals. They are not as dirty as we were led to believe but still they have a pious dread of water.’ Just a month before, she had told her sister Annie that she and her colleagues expected to be posted to one of the farm schools: ‘We expect to be packed off directly after the holidays. By the time you get this I shall be battling away with the youthful Boer in its natural state.’37
The transfer never materialised. Margaret continued teaching in Potchefstroom, where she eventually met her future husband, Bruce Campbell, manager of the Standard Bank in Pretoria. He was a linguist, having learnt Dutch and Zulu as a child, and so helped out with interpretation at times. The couple were married in Durban on 20 November 1905. At the time, Bruce’s parents were living in Pietermaritzburg. His father had for many years been chief of the Natal police for Umvoti County, with its high concentration of Afrikaner farmers.38 Having developed sympathy for the Afrikaners as a young man, Bruce declined to take up arms against the Boers, which did not please his father who was helping to round up rebels. When Bruce later became manager of the Standard Bank in Pretoria, he took an oath of neutrality, yet despite this, he was arrested as a spy on General Louis Botha’s orders, though he was freed the next day. He was part of the group who loaded the contents of the Standard Bank vault and State Mint onto the Kruger train, but to his dying day he insisted the train did not carry a great fortune in gold.39
Margaret and Bruce later moved east to Machadodorp, where Margaret continued teaching and where their two daughters, Freda and Joyce, were born. Both daughters followed in their mother’s footsteps, studying teaching at the University of the Witwatersrand. Although Margaret never returned to Australia, to this day there are strong ties between the Australian and South African branches of the McInnes-Campbell families. Margaret’s mother and sisters kept all her letters, eventually returning them to her. After her death in 1965, the letters became the property of her granddaughter, Ruth Fitzmaurice, who lives in Cape Town. But Margaret’s enduring legacy is the assistance and education she gave to poor Boer children after the war: in her own small way, she contributed to post-war reconstruction on a continent far from her home.