What Will Be Worn

M Y PARENTS’ MARRIAGE broke down in 1995, but it was another five years before they reached a post-separation property settlement. As so often happens in the mercantile middle classes, my father got to keep the family business, and my mother got to keep the family home. In 2001, she sold that home and moved back to Queensland. She rented a house in Bulimba, a wedge of land that abuts the Brisbane River’s southern flank, forcing its course suddenly southwards. The house was a relocated Queenslander, propped on the back half of a riverfront block, a few doors down from the old 18 Footers Clubhouse. She could see the river from her deck, and in the distance, at night, the lights of the mansions on Hamilton Hill. Like generations of McWhirters before her, she had spent the early years of her childhood over there, on the other side of the river; I doubt she’d even heard of Bulimba then – it was a rough-and-ready place, home to fishermen and dock workers and other ne’er-do-wells. Now she loved Bulimba, or Bewlimba, as she still calls it, apparently oblivious to – or dismissive of – the fact that others pronounce it with a flat u. She kept her married name, said she liked the feeling of being incognito. Though I wonder whether keeping it a secret also reinforced for her the idea that her birth name still meant something in the city Brisbane had become in her absence.

One Saturday, a year after she moved back, we went to brunch at a local cafe with Marj, the friend whose son owned the Valley rooftop bar. Egged on by Marj, who bought and sold houses with impunity, we decided to find my mother a new home. She wanted to stay in Bulimba but could not afford to buy a house there, even with the proceeds from the Sydney house, even now she had a full-time job. And so she’d taken to idly circling open-home listings each weekend but never doing anything about it. It was time to act, we told her. As I sipped my too-hot latte, I flipped through the real estate section of The Courier-Mail, circling properties in suburbs that I’d never heard of and she herself barely knew. From that we drew up a list of open homes.

We inspected three places that morning. We were all taken with one in particular, a low-set worker’s cottage in a South Brisbane cul-de-sac with latticework and moulded architraves, and a jacaranda that screened the house from the road. It had a red roof, a renovated kitchen, coffee trees and a newly established herb garden, with oregano, basil and parsley running rampant in rock-lined flowerbeds. It was a short drive away from her new workplace in Kangaroo Point. My mother was particularly thrilled by the house’s proximity to the train line. It would put other buyers off, she thought, but for her it was a bonus. Her last proper childhood home in Taringa had also been next to a train line. She would find the sounds of iron scraping and tracks bending on hot summer nights soothing. She bought the house at auction a few weeks later: at fifty-nine, for the first time in her life, she owned a house that was hers alone.

I’ve since discovered that the first McWhirter family home was in Kangaroo Point, one street away from where my mother worked. The second McWhirter home was in Highgate Hill, less than a kilometre – as the crow flies – from that house she bought in South Brisbane. The family moved there sometime in the 1880s. They named the house Abbeycraig, for the historic hill near Stirling. It was at Abbey Craig that William Wallace and his troops camped in 1297, awaiting the English army. It was there they watched the English cross Stirling Bridge, confining themselves to a narrow strip of land at the river’s bend. And it was from here that the Scots descended, armed only with spears, to defeat the ‘invincible’ English army.

The namesake home in Highgate Hill had a vantage point of its own, with views of the ever-growing city, across South Brisbane to the Victoria Bridge and all the way to Spring Hill. And even during the summer months, when the air simmered and sweltered well into the night, breezes would drift up from the river and waft over the house, through the hallways and under the beds.

In the first few days of February 1893, when the breeze stiffens and whips into a gale, Agnes is grateful for such small mercies, or tries to be. As the skies ferment and darken, the gratitude turns to fear. She has come to recognise cyclone season, when storms descend from the north and west, and while there is a calm that comes with knowing, there is so much she cannot know, cannot predict. The speed at which the rains will descend or how long they will stay. How much the river will rise, nor the havoc it will wreak.

She knows this much: flood is nigh. On Wednesday 1 February, a tropical cyclone crosses the coast at Yeppoon and tends southwards. In Brisbane, David Brown’s Short Street Wharf is submerged by the full-moon tide. By Thursday afternoon, most of Gympie and Maryborough are underwater and the wharves at Bundaberg have been engulfed by the sea. Telegrams from landholders living on the upper Brisbane River flow in to the city’s post office, and are printed verbatim in Thursday evening’s Brisbane Courier. The river is within twelve, five and then two feet of the highest recorded flood mark. And still the rain falls. And still the waters rise. A Mr H.P. Somerset of Caboonbah urges: prepare at once for flood. The Courier declares: Inundation in Brisbane Imminent.

James tries to reassure his wife. The river will rise and burst its banks, that much is a given. But the waters can not reach them here in Abbeycraig; Agnes and the children will be safe. And whatever happens, however bad it gets, the city will recover and survive. Remember, after the 1890 floods – which came so soon, not ten months, after the floods of 1889? Two floods in two years, his first years of partnership in the Sinclair & Co. drapery on Stanley Street. The cellar flooded both times, destroying hundreds of pounds’ worth of stock. His ambitious expansion – including a new two-storey Renaissance-style facade set with cupolas, a long horseshoe-shaped counter, customer fitting and waiting rooms, and an employee dining room with views of the river – suddenly seemed hasty, an ill-fated folly. But insurance covered most of the losses and normal business resumed, on both occasions, within a month. The floods were simply a reality of living – and doing business – here, in this river city.

And now Sinclair & Co. is no longer his concern. After four years in business with young John Sinclair, he’d sold his share back to the old man, Duncan Sinclair, in January. He’d hoped to form a new partnership with Tommy Beirne, who had opened a drapery in the new retail district of Fortitude Valley, but the Irishman turned him away. He was disappointed, for it was a backwards step, but he put his capital in the Bank of Queensland and went back to work for David Brown.

As the rain keeps falling and the river breaks its banks at South Brisbane, ebbing ever closer towards Stanley Street, he reflects on his decision to break with Sinclair, is now glad of it. What a stroke of Scottish luck that was! What timing! Brown will not be spared – his wharves will go under and some warehouses will be swamped. Yet the men have been shifting cargo to higher ground for days. Besides, a business of this size – one of the biggest in Queensland now – can withstand a little loss.

James and his son busy themselves, helping where they can. For Agnes and her daughters there is nothing to do but wait and watch as the waters rise. A night and a day pass, then another night and day. The Sabbath comes and goes. And still it rains, still the waters rise. The river doesn’t reach its peak until Monday night. Stanley Street is more than twenty feet underwater. Sinclair’s drapery is flooded to the eaves. At least a hundred houses have been torn from their foundations and swept into the river. The Victoria and Indooroopilly bridges – solid iron structures both – have collapsed. Water has covered hillsides and hilltops. From Abbeycraig, Brisbane looks like a sea, dotted here and there with chimney tops.

For her daughters’ sakes Agnes tries to stay cheerful, but she cannot help but curse this place that is not her home. She is an exile here and always will be. The antiques and porcelain and expensive furniture, the jewellery, the fine laces and silks that line her daughters’ clothes: none of it is enough. How could it be in the face of the sun and millions of flies, and now this incessant rain?

It’s true she has a better life here in Queensland than she ever imagined; a better life – if she is honest with herself, and with God – than she deserves. But it has not been easy. Her first daughter was conceived on her wedding night and born shortly after Hogmanay 1881. Agnes called her Lizzie – Elizabeth Dawson McWhirter – for her mother. For a few months, she gave herself over to the heat of her first Brisbane summer and to the task of suckling her dark-haired baby girl. She watched her son, now six, adapt easily to his new environment and to his father’s attentions, growing tall and strong in the sun. If what she felt in those months was not happiness, it may at least on occasion have borne a resemblance to it. She began to believe her husband when he told her that the place would grow on her as it had on him; she would always be 10,000 miles from home, but maybe she could learn to bear it?

When Lizzie was almost six months old, Agnes received news from her aunt back in Scotland: her dear ma had died. It had taken close to two months for the news to reach her. If she had been able to pay her respects, it would have taken another two months before she’d arrived. I imagine she would have observed the various rituals: that as soon as she heard the news she would have walked through each room of her house, opening and closing each of the windows, unwinding all the clocks and throwing shawls or blankets over the mirrors. She would have done so knowing there was little point to any of it. The funeral was over, her mother was in the ground. The keening had happened without her. All she could do was to be fitted for a mourning costume.

Even with the means and inclination – not to mention her husband’s blessing – it would have been impossible for Agnes to go home. No sooner had she weaned Lizzie than she was pregnant again, with another daughter, Agnes Cameron McWhirter (Nina), who would be born in October 1882. Over the next decade there was barely a moment that she wasn’t gestating, feeding or weaning. During that time she would give birth to six daughters in all: Lizzie, Nina, Alice, Ruby, Minnie and finally Jean.

In February 1893, Lizzie has just turned twelve. Jean, the youngest, is a rosy-cheeked toddler. That February – Black February, as it would be known – another cyclone hits before the first flood has fully subsided, and the river bursts its banks again. A week later, there is another cyclone, almost as devastating as the first. Even James is forced to admit that a pattern appears to be forming, plain as tartan: the river will flood, and it will flood, and it will flood again. If they sell now, Agnes urges him, and return to Scotland, he can start a business there and the girls can come to know their mother country. She has planted the seed. She barely needs to feed it; other forces at work allow it to flourish on its own.

That Easter, the Commercial Bank of Australia, one of the colonies’ largest, closes its doors, freezing £12 million of depositors’ money. A week later, the Sydney-based English, Scottish and Australian Chartered Bank, under threat from heavy withdrawals, suspends payments. Across the colonies and beyond, people panic. By mid-May, nine more commercial institutions have crashed, Queensland’s two largest banks – the Queensland National Bank and the Royal Bank of Queensland – among them. Across the eastern colonies, a financial crisis is declared. A month later, Brisbane floods for the fourth time that year – in the middle of winter, completely out of season. In August, James receives news from his sisters in Scotland: his father, William, has died. The Valley draper, Tommy Beirne, continues to fob him off. He does not need a manager, Beirne says; he can manage the business well enough on his own.

In March 1894, Abbeycraig and all its contents are listed for unreserved sale. The Italian walnut furniture, the Hermann Schroeder piano, the Brussels carpet, the marble clock, the tea service, the dessert service, the dinner service, the hatstand and the ornaments, the bookshelf and all its books – all of it first-class and practically new, will go to the highest bidder. The grey horse and its harness, saddle and bridles, the dogcart and forty fowls – these will all go too. Then, on 27 March 1894, under turgid skies that threaten rain, James senior and his nineteen-year-old son, Agnes and her six daughters, leave Brisbane on the Peregrine, bound for Sydney. From there they will take the RMS Australia to London, travelling saloon class all the way. After fourteen years in exile, Agnes is finally going home.

The departure of the Peregrine at noon yesterday was the occasion of a large gathering of the friends of Mr. and Mrs. McWhirter and family, who were leaving Queensland to take up their residence in Scotland. Prior to his partnership in the firm of Sinclair and Co., South Brisbane, Mr. McWhirter had been for many years with Messrs. D. L. Brown and Co., who in a most substantial manner evidenced their appreciation of his services, and many of whose employees met Mr. McWhirter at the wharf, where they wished him a most cordial bon voyage.

When the family arrives in London on 12 May 1894, they are greeted with the news of more economic misfortune: a months-long coal miners’ strike – 60,000 men in all, with another 50,000 in associated industries kept idle – has brought Scottish industry to a halt. British farmers are struggling, and the outlook for other industries is poor. Everywhere James goes, he hears of the dearth of opportunities, the unprecedented depression, which seems to be even worse here than it is in Queensland. In the meantime, Beirne finally relents; he can see sense, after all, in working with the Scotsman, and asks James to be his manager. Does James consult his wife, ask for her permission? Whatever the case, a decision is quickly made. James junior will stay behind and spend some time in London and Glasgow, learning the drapery trade from the masters, as his father had done. The rest of the family will depart on the return journey to Queensland on 13 July, two months after they arrived in London.

In 1898, after four years of working for Beirne in his namesake business – three of those in partnership with the Irishman, and two working alongside his son – James McWhirter senior, now fifty, sees his chance and seizes it. Michael Piggott, who owns the Brunswick Street drapery opposite Beirne’s, is moving his operation to Toowoomba. McWhirter dissolves his partnership with Beirne and takes over the lease on Piggott’s single-shopfront building, buys all his stock and changes the signage. On 22 September 1898 McWhirter & Son opens for business. Early that morning, my great-great-grandfather and his son, James McWhirter both, fling open their doors, welcoming shoppers to their Great Opening and Clearing Sale in which they promise to dispose of Piggott’s stock at prices ‘which have never hitherto been known’.

On the other side of the street, shop assistants at T.C. Beirne rearrange the window display and entreat passers-by to come into their store, to the first day of its Extraordinary Sale of Drapery. ‘Great sale today! Great sale today!’ they call. T.C. Beirne’s buyer, a Mr Walter Bryan, has just returned from London and Continental Markets with thousands of pounds’ worth of discounted goods. The warehouse is now crammed and the public will get the benefit.

Carriage after carriage will pull into Brunswick Street that day, that week, and in the years that follow, their well-dressed lady occupants alighting at the curb. Perhaps they linger for a moment, looking left then right, trying to gauge which store is offering the higher-quality stock, the better bargains. The Irish Catholics will continue to favour T.C. Beirne, as they have always done, while the Scottish Protestants will know with one look that the finery on display at McWhirter & Son is of infinite superiority.