Above: Ian Fairweather, Valley and Hills, Kulu, 1949. Gouache and ink on paper. 21.3 x 17.2 cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Gift of Trevor and Siew Lim Bail, 2016. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. © Ian Fairweather / DACS. Copyright Agency, 2019. (See letters 53, 54, 158.) Opposite: Ian Fairweather with strangler fig, Cairns, late 1940s. Meanjin Editorial Records of C. B. Christesen, University of Melbourne Archives, 2005.0004.0013. (See letter 65.)
Above: Ian Fairweather, Bridge, Huchow, 1941. Gouache, pencil, brush and ink on paper. 38.6 x 46.6 cm. National Gallery of victoria, Melbourne. Purchased 1949. © Ian Fairweather / DACS. Copyright Agency, 2019. (See letter 53.) Opposite: Ian Fairweather, Nutmeg Sifters, 1941. Pencil, watercolour, gouache on thin cream tissue. 38.4 x 24.6 cm. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Gift of Tom and Jenny Parramore, 1985. © Ian Fairweather / DACS. Copyright Agency, 2019. (See letter 53.)
Letter, Ian Fairweather to Helga Macnamara (Pippa), [late 1952], with drawing of Fairweather lying on his raft. Fairweather collection. © Ian Fairweather / DACS. Copyright Agency, 2019. Letter 76. (See letters 74, 81, 104, 105, 151, 217, 270.)
FAIRWEATHER, AGED forty-seven, began this period in Brisbane, where he lived and worked in the Beach Picture Theatre, Sandgate: ‘the most perfect studio’ he had ever had. But soon, spooked by the empty, flea-infested theatre, he moved on to Cairns, where he lived among the local Aboriginal and Islander people at Alligator Creek and later Browns Bay. Unsettled by the outbreak of a second world war in 1939 and finding Australia ‘too English’, he departed for Hong Kong, worked in the Censorship Department in Singapore and, after enlisting, served in a POW camp in Bangalore, India, before he returned to Melbourne in 1943. A week later he travelled to Queensland looking for a place where he could live and paint undisturbed. After stints in Brisbane, Cairns and Cooktown, he bought an old lifeboat, set sail from Sandgate and was blown onto Bribie Island. A staunch believer in chance and fortune, Fairweather thought the signs good – and he stayed. Of Bribie Island he later wrote, ‘I had never seen anything so lovely’.
Unnerved following the theft of his diaries, he departed for Melbourne, where he took up residence at Lina Bryans’ home, the ‘Painters’ Pub’ at Darebin (now part of Ivanhoe). There he lived reclusively for two years before returning to Queensland. In 1950 he hitchhiked to Darwin, where for a time he lived in the wreck of a ship on Dinah Beach. Forced to give up oils, to which he had become allergic, he worked in gouache and experimented with clag, casein and soap, all the while sending paintings back to London. When a roll of 130 paintings arrived there damaged he became frantic with despair and paranoia, fearful that forces were conspiring against him. Determined to leave Australia and never return, he made a raft and set sail for Portuguese Timor.
Given up for dead, he eventually made landfall on the Indonesian island of Roti, his sea sense, ingenuity and sheer good luck ensuring a near-miraculous survival. Treated as an illegal immigrant, he was imprisoned and humiliated by the Indonesian authorities. Finally, deported to Singapore and reluctant to return to Australia, he was repatriated to England. He met with publishers in London and Ireland who encouraged him to write an illustrated account of his raft journey, but the venture came to nothing and the pictures were lost. Under considerable stress and unable to imagine a life for himself in the bleakness of post-war England, he destroyed the cache of his damaged paintings. With assistance from his family, Fairweather returned to Australia in August 1953, where he settled soon after on Bribie Island, ‘glad to be back in the sun’.
42. To William Frater
c of Post Office. Sandgate. Brisbane [postmarked Sandgate, 3 October 1938]
Dear Frater. I am hoping there may be a letter from you at the P.O. when I go up town tomorrow–as you see I have now moved out to Sandgate–it is about 12 miles out on the sea coast–At this time of year it is rather deserted and the day I took the bus down to have a look at it it was pouring with rain–and I did not like it at all–in fact I thought it was awful and if the bus had gone straight back I would have gone with it without getting out–and so missed the greatest stroke of luck I have ever had–but the bus stopped for half an hour–so I had to get out–passed a house agents and for something to do went in and asked for a workshop–For once it wasn’t the ordinary house agent…at once he suggested the Cinema theatre–for 10/- a week–I could live in one of the dressing rooms–and paint in the foyer–I found it a staggering proposition I had been thinking of bicycle sheds–and when I saw the place I was still more flabergasted–it is quite the largest building in Sandgate1–The owners thought it an unheard of idea but my trusty house agent–said after all why not–the place is empty–been deserted for some time–it has been broken into–things stolen–why should I not stay there as caretaker So it was arranged–I have the grandest place to paint in I have ever had in my life–and I cant tell you what a difference it is making to my painting–I thought I had a nice place in Manila–but I see now what a difference–I suffered agonies there it was too small and the light was changing all the time–things never looked the same two days together and there wasn’t enough space to see all round a thing–everyday I had to alter what I had done the day before and just seemed to be getting nowhere–here it has been like waking up after a nightmare. I brought 14 things with me–they were so messed up–that when the Customs saw them they said they could not be classed as oil paintings at all–so I got them in tax free–I’ve only been working here 5 days and now the whole lot of them are on their legs–Such a thing never happened to me before–it is more than a whole years work in Manila There can be only one explanation the light–it is perfect–and the huge space The thing that troubles me now is–now that I have tasted the joy of having a real studio to work in I’ll never again be able to work in a rabbit hutch–and it simply is not possible that a place like this can remain empty and unused for long–So I feel more driven & desperate than ever to get as much done as possible while it lasts–for the future can only be dark and dismal after this apotheosis–For the rest I still like Brisbane quite a lot–they have one first class place–I dont know if there is an art gallery here–at least I haven’t found it yet 2–I got quite tired of going into things called Schools of Art which turn out to be just schools–they call em that up here–The largest and most imposing School of Art turns out to be a lending library which was all rather depressing3–but I did eventually find one place–it is quite small but it has quite the best and most up to date art library I have seen–and a gallery with nothing but reproductions of the most modern painting4–I went in expecting to see Queensland art–and got quite a shock I thought what to goodness sake has been happening to Australia since I’ve been away–After all these years without seeing a thing one could touch with a walking stick–to come upon these–I felt like throwing up my hat and crying out aloud–and gladly put a 1/- in the box at the door I wish it could have been more–for a place like that is really some use
I am writing this by candle light sitting down in the stalls–the light doesn’t even reach the walls of the place just dies out in the blackness all round–hey ho its a bit eerie at night–its about time for me to do my bed time scene on the stage So long
Yrs I Fairweather
P.S. There was a thunderstorm last night the floor turned into a lake–the candle blew out and I had to cower on the stage watching the lightning flashes and listening to all the water falling on the tin roof–I thought the place was coming apart–what a night
Well this morning I got your letter–there is so much I want to know that you dont tell me–I’m glad you like them–not much I see–and do any others like them?–Then about the customs what did you have to pay for them?–About mounting them I’m sorry you did that I wanted you just to hang them up and let a few friends see them to get an idea of how they went–then if there had been some prospect of sales–they could have been fixed up and framed otherwise I wanted to send them on to England–I dont think it is any use really my having an exhibition in Melbourne–I’m beginning to realise that pictures simply do not sell themselves–there must be salesmanship Even people who know quite a bit about art–cannot fairly judge a picture unframed–and without some sort of introduction–that has been my very bitter experience even among quite good artists and I should even doubt my own judgment under like circumstances–As for the buying public–there is a very definite psychological angle to take into account–it is so with everything that sells and pictures are no exception–they need a salesman–a background an introduction–and much as I grudge it–the 1/3 of the price they pocket is still worth paying–I would like to hear some more about this mysterious lady benefactress [Lina Bryans] to whom I owe so much–I am indeed very indebted to her–but I would like to get things straightened out a bit. Can she not take some of my things in payment of the money she has sent me–The prices which I think they should be put up for in London are about £30 for the larger ones and £20 for smaller–So on that basis if she would take what will cover the amount I owe her–I should feel much better about it–If you can sell any others beyond that at these prices–so much the better–but I think it is a slim chance–let me know what you think–The trouble is time–I am getting on so much better now that I feel if I can only round this corner the future will be easier in every way–I would like to send you the stuff I have here because I should like the lady (does she prefer to be anonymous), to see them–I am very pleased about them and perhaps she would feel some justification for her other purchases I hope in about 2 weeks to have 7 large things done–I could send them flat between two sheets of ply wood as rolling is not satisfactory–If you could undertake to pin them up–show them to a few people interested and then in a weeks time pack them up and send them on to England–I’d be glad to do that–But under the circumstances and as I am so pressed for time–unless you really think it would serve some useful purpose–by which I mean cash or credit–then I think it is best for me to send them direct–and if as soon as you get this letter you would decide the fate of the others you have–whether they are to remain in Australia to be sold or sent away–that would help–for the Redfern are not anxious to show things unless there are enough for a show so every one helps–for sending them away it would be best to send them up here then I can make one large package of them–it will save paying twice over–moreover I’d be glad to touch them up again before going–I had to rush to send them off in time for the boat–As for the job–yes indeed if someone would drop one into my lap–I went into the labour bureau here to enquire but all they seemed to want were milkers–and now minus a little finger I cant profess to be much good at that–no life is not long enough for both–I must just paint and hope–one cant be two things at once–So long please write soon
Yrs
I.F.
1 The Beach Picture Theatre on Flinders Parade.
2 In 1930 the Queensland National Art Gallery (later the Queensland Art Gallery) was relocated to the Exhibition Building and Concert Hall at Gregory Terrace, Bowen Hills, where it remained until 1974.
3 The School of Arts at 166 Ann Street opened in 1878 and provided a range of cultural and educational services, including a lending library.
4 The Queensland Art Fund Reference Library opened in October 1936. The Carnegie Corporation provided a collection of some 200 books, and 2,000 large colour reproductions of famous artworks from different periods.
43. William Frater
Post Office Sandgate [postmarked 27 October 1938]
Dear Frater. I’m sorry to hear you had so much trouble with the pictures–I brought some with me–that were not only rolled but squashed flat as well–but they have come all right and, are, none the worse–I dont think a few cracks do my things very much harm–but dont try any retouching that is a tricky business–I’d better do myself–I gather from your letter that Mrs Bryson [Bryans] does not want any of the ones I sent either in exchange or as security for the £50 I owe her–so they are doing no possible good in Melbourne–If she doesn’t want them as a gift no one else is going to buy them–thats certain–It is just wasting precious time–I am enclosing £1 for freight and I want you to send them up to me here as soon as possible–Please do not delay–I waited 3 weeks for your letter and there is not a day to lose–send them up at once and I will be able to patch them up and send them with these–I had a vague hope that I might be able to sell one in Melbourne–to bridge this gap but I can see it is useless–it would cause you a lot of trouble and be a waste of time–I have only large things here and they are difficult to sell at the best of times If I can scrape enough together it is just possible the London people will allow me some credit–so I’d need those things you have badly Please dont delay sending them.
Yrs I Fairweather
44. To Jim Ede
Sandgate. Post Office Brisbane Australia [Ede note: Nov. 3 1938]
Please excuse the frying pan. [note in left margin with arrow to oily stain top left]
Dear Ede– Your going to Morocco has certainly been the saddest thing for me1–If you were in London now I should be at this moment very happy indeed–I have a studio–and though it is immense it isnt empty–not by a long way cause for rejoicing–but what kind of rejoicing can one do alone–Hey Ho–well the studio is something–It is a deserted cinema theatre–very large and a splendid light–as though made on purpose–I have had to get no furniture seats are provided in hundreds–dressing rooms–water–even the old billboards make excellent easels–I get all this for 10/- a week–is it not a windfall–Of course there is a snag–it is supposed to be haunted–and I dont know at all that it isn’t–I began by sleeping on the stage–but there are the strangest noises and one night I woke up to see a bright light under one of the wings–as I watched it slowly faded–couldn’t have been a burglars flash light as I thought at first in fact cant explain it at all–that gave me doubts–and I have since retired to the projection room up behind the gallery where I can shut the door and I am ashamed to say keep the light burning all night–I only have candles and a small lamp–and in this cavernous blackness they hardly make an impression To feel some friendly walls around one is a relief–but even so I am not doing much sleeping–I see most every dawn in and welcome it with relief–If I could afford to sleep out it would be perfect–It has had a wonderful effect on my work having it in such a large place–and I’m getting a lot done–I’m sending off some to the Redfern–and I think for me it is good–but the things I sent to Melbourne they are returning as they dont like them so its hard to say but I still think these are the best I’ve sent yet–I am asking the Redfern to try and advance me some money–I wonder if you could put in a word for me It will be hard to give up and start milking cows again–but harder still to give up this studio–now when things are looking up a little–So if you think it would help any–say a word or two–and if you can spare the time write–I’m very lonely here
Solon[g]. Yrs I Fairweather.
1 Although a possible contender for the directorship of the Tate Gallery, Ede had resigned his position in October 1936 and later moved with his family to Morocco.
45. William Frater
P.O. Sandgate [8 November 1938]
Dear Frater– Your two letters and telegram arrived to day1–and I’m glad and sorry both–I think it was really swell of Mrs Bryson [Bryans] to buy so many–and I want you please to thank her for me–and I do hope she wont lose out over it–I had great hopes for these things I am doing but they have not been going so easily–I dont know what has got into me lately but I am always getting things very nearly and then getting fed up with them and altering them and so losing them–may be it is all in the game but it is hard to take–I’m sorry because I did badly want all those ten to send to London–one thing backs up another in a show and I feel I needed that support badly–however it is 3 months more to look forward to–and that is something I’m finding life in this theatre however something of a problem–I simply cant sleep–see every dawn in–weary eyed just wondering how long I can hold out The fact is its spooky–at night with only a small tin lamp in the vast blackness of the place–its eerie there’s no getting around it–I began by sleeping on the stage but one night I woke up to see a bright light under one of the wings–it went out slowly as I looked at it and try as I would I could find no reasonable explanation–That got me all goofy–and I moved up to the projection room–up in the gallery where I can close the door–but noises scrapings tappings have been so bad up there I have really thought I would have to quit–have managed to stick it so far–but never have I felt loneliness weigh so heavy–I go to the cinema–when there is one to escape an evening in the dark and it really needs an effort to go back from the cozy cinema to my empty deserted theatre–Hey ho there is always something–Well–I want to tell you I am very grateful for all you have done and very sorry for the trouble I have caused you–It hasn’t been pleasant to have to write around asking for help it is begging no less–you are lucky to be spared that part of it–it’s a very stiff price to pay–I think a stiffer one than you quite appreciate–as for the picture–If I owe one to anyone it is certainly you and I shall–I have always intended to send one but–well you know how it is just now–I’m hanging on by my eyelashes If and when I can get a little breathing space–then I will surely send one–The only hope of that I think is getting some sort of a job and I have been writing everywhere I can think–about an art teaching job–Amongst other places to New Zealand–but I would like very much to get to Singapore or India–there are government art schools there I know as I applied for them when I was in London–and I think now I should have a much better chance of getting one–after having some small success with my work at home–However its a slim hope as I dont know who to approach about it–If you hear of any kind of a thing at all–please keep me in mind and let me know–
I am sorely tempted to spend this money on a ticket to America–I dont know what it is about Americans but I never feel down amongst them they are open to new ideas–there is room one feels there for all sorts–The trouble with this place is people are too much of one sort–its a very good sort–but nature likes mixtures Look what the humble negro has given to America–a new music–a new language–a romantic South They may be a political problem but without the negro America wouldn’t be a thing in the world of art–I think this place is just dying from inbreeding–we ought to let them all come who will–provided only they leave their flags behind them–which means we’d have to do the same thing–which means it will never be done–but if it was hey ho–who knows what new song would come out of the bush–well so long–must climb up to the projection room and lie flea bitten and wide-eyed till dawn–I suppose–so long–
Yrs I Fairweather
PS. Please send some more Spectrum Red–one large tube of Viridian–and one of pruss. [Prussian] blue2
Send it C.O.D–if that is not too much trouble your end it the easiest way this end–
1 On 8 November 1938 Frater had sent a £30 money order to Fairweather by telegraph in Sandgate.
2 Earlier Fairweather had sent Frater a sample of Harrison Red made by Devoe, and mentioned Windsor & Newton’s Spectrum Red: ‘but the price is prohibitive as I use a lot of it.’
46. To Jim Ede
C of Post Office Sandgate Brisbane– [c. February 1939]
Dear Ede I was very glad to see your hand–again–I’d have written before but these last weeks have been something of a nightmare–A buyer has been around proposing to take this place for a skating rink and so I’ve been expecting to be shot out any minute–trying to finish some things first–I’ve painted most of the nights through and seen in nearly every dawn–couldn’t have slept anyway–for fleas–The rats bring them in–I have to get up and discard every stitch–three times the other night–and move my bedding from place to place–and that is reduced to a rug on the floor–its over a year now that I’ve had a mattress let alone a bed–after all there is not a war on–and I often ask myself why I should be living as though there was–Its been hard to decide to stick on here when I still had enough money to get to my brother in Canada–Things are different there–a different attitude towards work–one can work there in a logging camp–or on a farm–and no thought about it but here it is like at home–a different class of people–It isn’t the accent here there really isn’t any accent, its just English small town English–the country is big but the effect is English Village–It gets me so down The contrast to the abundant life I have just left is terrible–everybody seems old–even the children look to me like little old men and women–I’ve got so I cant read anything English now–I welcome the few American magazines I can find as though they were from home. It has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do to decide to stay on here while I still had a chance to escape–but the opportunity has slowly gone by–the last ship I could take has gone and I’ve let it go–Hey ho–it is very depressing but I cant walk out of this old theatre–In here I live back on the islands again–and I never go out if I can help it–So I’m staying for better or worse–I believe there must be something up north–the coast and islands along the Barrier Reef there must be something there–oh heck life is just empty without that something–When I’m reduced to the last fiver I’m going to take a train ticket up there–and go on the road–Yep–I cant stand old age–one has got to hope in something–and amongst the old there isn’t any hope–we are really old now as a nation–I’ve only got a vague idea how things have gone at home–but out here I’ve seen us packing up in China and moving out and the Japanese moving in–moving in everywhere–we talk of democracy as an ideal–but we wont fight for it–so we cant claim it really as an ideal–it must be something else but what it is I dont know–I only know we are leaving Asia–returning to the village green–and I cant do it–so I guess I’m for the road. I’m enclosing a cutting from an American magazine–its the truth I think–its how things are–So long.
Yrs I Fairweather–
P.S. I have just been reading another of these articles of which there are so many in American papers just now–deploring the way that people are turning to government to help them and exhorting them to help themselves–and it has just dawned on me that that is what is wrong with democracy–Personal liberty–the freedom of the individual which once meant something has now come to mean the freedom of everyone not to help everyone else–every man for himself–a cry of despair–and it is curious when I come to think of it that no American has ever said that to me–but I think every Englishman has–Even you my dear Ede–who have done me a real kindness and often–yet have you not begun with a preface that I must not expect to get money if I dont send work–Even you–you see are infected by democracy–in decay–You do not credit me with the same diffidence as yourself–no you warn me–this is a democracy and every man for himself–yes you have the virus–and I dare say–in fact I am sure I have it too–but I am beginning to realize that it is a virus–that there is another attitude abroad in the world–one of hope–one of helpfulness and its worth all the personal liberties and Bill of Rights put together Because it is doing something about it–whether right or wrong–I think it doesn’t matter because it is doing–and the other is saying and that is incredibly mean and an insult [to] anybodys intelligence So tonight I have become a Nazi So help me–I didn’t think this could ever befall
P.S. I don’t mean by Nazi pro German–the German attitude to sex makes one feel sick–it is their contribution to the American scene and it has just about spoilt it–
47. To William Frater
Sandgate–June 8 [postmarked 11 June 1939]
Dear Frater– I got your letter some time ago but have been so frantically trying to finish these things to send home that I haven’t had time to write I got some of them done the other day and two I was going to send you but when I started to take them off the wall–and pack them–they cracked and the paint started falling off–I had painted them in dry colour mixed with water glass1–It was a crazy thing to do I suppose but I simply hadn’t the money to go on using oils and this way seemed to give quicker results–It is I do believe a way of painting–but of course it is entirely unsuited for anything but wall painting–or panels these were all on paper–and now well–its over–the wolf I guess has caught up with me–I’ve bought a ticket up to Cairns–I’m leaving tomorrow I’m afraid I haven’t got a hope in the world–I’m feeling absolutely flattened out–I dont think I shall ever be able to get around to painting again–I’m sitting here to night amid the ruins of 2½ years work–and every hope I have in the world–Hell at least would be warmer for it is freezing here just now–yes I’m feeling licked–I wish I could talk to you–just to try and cheer up a bit–I’ve been walking about looking at pub doors–but I’ve lived so much as a hermit that I cant bring myself to go into them–so even that consolation is denied me–I cant imagine myself asking for work when I get to Cairns either–but I suppose hunger can make one do things–but I dont know–I’ve lived free for too long–life without some kind of a dream doesn’t seem worth having–There is just a vague–a last illusion–I still love shells–I’d like to collect them on the Barrier Reef–they are beautiful and I believe there is a market for them but I guess I wont get much further than look at it from the shore–Well its freezing I must stop–whatever happens it cant be much worse than this–at least it will be warm–I hope–
So long Yrs I Fairweather
1 A potassium-silicate or sodium-silicate solution used in mural or fresco painting to create a protective layer, it is strongly alkaline and can only be used with certain pigments. Because of its complexity and problems of instability it was never popular.
48. To William Frater
C of Post Office Cairns– [postmarked Cairns, 4 July 1939]
Dear Frater– There doesn’t seem to be any sort of a job to be got here of any sort The labour bureau offered to put me on a list and said I would have to wait several months before a smell at anything–So I gave it up–Someone told me there was a place called Malay town on Alligator Creek here1 So I went round to look see and as soon as I walked into it–I felt at home again–it is like a little bit of the islands–I got a place in an old boathouse along with another hobo–and I just had to start painting again–it was too much like old times not to and also there was nothing else I could do–So now I have done some things its too late to send them home to England–I’m much too nearly up against it–I’m not sure it isn’t too late to send them to you–but I’ve done what I can under the circumstances its all I can do–I’m sending them off with this letter–Two landscapes of the Alligator Creek here as seen more or less out of the window and one of some of the lads boxing–they come up of an evening to train in this old boathouse–and take my lamp so I took this off them–The fourth is a portrait of one of the alligators2–Well as I write my world seems to be collapsing again–Yesterday the land lords wife (who is black) had a quarrel with her daughter and walked out of her house and came here with a mattress and two children–my fellow hobo very conveniently managed to find a job and has gone–and I have been left with the old lady3–The husband is away fishing–maybe for a week–so So what is going to happen I dont know–I’ve got about £1 left I can hang on somehow I hope on that–but I feel a great temptation to just go on the road and keep on walking north I cant hang around a town–hoping for jobs to turn up–and I cant bring myself to ask for them I seem to have grown past it–and I feel a bit bitter about it all for I have worked damn hard–I often wonder if any other job in the world demands quite so much of one–Well I’ve done all I can–I will try to hang on somehow till I can hear from you–so please in any case let me know as soon as you get the paintings–dont wait till you know if they are likely to sell or not–just let me know you have got them that will do–If you could show them to a few friends as soon as you get them and if they think they are worth the risk–perhaps you could send me £5–even £2 on credit–it would be very welcome4 As for selling them I leave it to you any price at all–I’d be glad of at this moment–Well so long–at least it is warm up here–I live among fishing boats but haven’t been in one yet–no time–Still–I think that here is a chance perhaps of getting a foot on the ground–the first place I have ever been in where I thought there was a chance of that at all but its a very distant chance as yet
So long. Yrs. I Fairweather.
P.S. over–
P.S. I have made pencil marks about the middle of each side to show up to where I wanted them framed–If you should mount or frame them please do not make them any other size than marks–
1 A shanty town on the outskirts of Cairns on Alligator Creek built by Malay workers in the early 1900s and later attracting Torres Strait Islanders, migrants and outcasts.
2 Alligator Creek, Cairns (1939) and Lads Boxing (1939) were acquired by Lina Bryans.
3 Later, in Calcutta, Fairweather painted Landlady and Daughter, Cairns (1941), a portrait of Nancy Walters and her daughter Lala.
4 On 12 July Frater sent Fairweather £20 by telegraphic transfer care of the Cairns Post Office with the message: ‘Very good, keep working, Frater.’
49. To William Frater
P.O. Cairns. [postmarked 13 July? 1939]
Dear Frater. It was really a lucky day for me when I met you–I often wonder where I would be if I hadn’t found you in that morning1–Well it was a little better than Manila this time–I had 6/- left–still it was bad enough–Thanks an awful lot for sending so much–I hadn’t expected it–and also thanks for bidding me work–I was beginning to feel that if you advised me to get a job just once more I should go crazy–I have a few more things done here–(or nearly done I should say) dont know if you want them or not–If I only thought I could make a living say £100 a year here in Australia I’d be glad to let England go by me–its too far away–and I’m too near the edge of things Let me know if you want any more things–To try and have a feeling of having something between me and the rest of it all–and also because I’ve dreamed of it for years–I’ve started building a boat–it is a crazy affair of casks and kind of framework on top–but it ought to float and then one can go places for there are not many roads here and fish to help things out2–I suppose on a capital of £20 it is unwise to start building a boat–still I’ve got the urge–got the casks and most of the timber today–for a total of £1-10-0 so far–I believe I can finish it for £5–but I know these things always outrun the estimates–anyway I am having the time of my life–The old lady and family I had here have gone again I am glad to say–it made things very difficult–The only thing wrong with the place now is the sandflies–I am writing to you with gloves and bound wrists–and tied up pants and even so they get in
Well–So long bless you Yrs
I Fairweather
1 Fairweather had arrived in Melbourne in February 1934.
2 This was Fairweather’s first attempt to build a boat, following the raft he built in Canada in the 1920s.
50. To William Frater
C of Post Office Cairns– [postmarked 13 September 1939]
Dear Frater. I shall have to draw out my last pound tomorrow to get some paint so
I’ve got the wind up–The trustees have written at last but only to ask some fool questions1–cant expect it to be settled before I am broke again So I am writing to ask you to lend me £5 if possible by return–I will either send a picture to cover it or repay it soon–but I dont want to send any of these things I have here–I know they would bring £20 each in London and its not funny to have to sell them for £5–of course now the war has started it will be the end of painting anyhow–and I shall probably have to send you everything I have here–rather than have them torpedoed on the way over–As for myself I cant quite see what to do–I ought to buy a ticket home and a uniform and report at my depot 2–which will just cost me every cent I have–If I was certain they would make some use of me when I got there–but it is quite likely they will tell me I’m not wanted–and the best I can hope for is some miserable job at home–and well–I feel I’m just damn well not going to be treated that way–I might enlist when I got home–if I was a little younger but as I’m not and not in too good health the chances are I should be turned down for that too–So for the moment I am not in such a desperate hurry to get home as when I last wrote you3–I dont know how you feel about it–but somehow being on the side of law and order–along with the cops and the sops–doesn’t give me a thrill at all–I can never quite think of the Germans as being a menace–and I feel we have been stampeeded into this war by French panic–which there isn’t anything to really justify–However it has only started–when the Japs begin to get into it then that will be something else again–well so long I’ll bless you if you can send this £5–I’m sick to death of this being for ever lasting on the rocks–this ought to be the last time with any luck–So long–
Yrs I Fairweather
1 In an earlier letter Fairweather mentioned: ‘a distant cousin of a distant cousin has died in Melbourne–name of John Fairweather–I didn’t know that he existed’. A sum of ‘about £150’ had been left to another distant cousin, who, being wealthy, directed the legacy to him.
2 Australia entered the war on 3 September 1939.
3 Earlier Fairweather wrote to Frater: ‘I’m in a heck of a jam up here I am a reservist and have to join up’.
51. To William Frater
C of Post Office Cairns [postmarked 21 October 1939]1
Dear Frater– Sorry I had to send off money order without a word–I was so pressed for time–I just was able to send it and thats all–I’m much obliged for the loan of it2–though your toothache came at the most awkward time for me–and I had a pretty miserable time waiting–I hope the tooth is O.K. now–I have been turned out of my boathouse and had to move over to Browns Bay near here where there are some weekend cottages–in one of which I am camping for the time3–I’ve started to build a small house of my own but it is not easy to get materials over here–half my stuff is still lying on the wharf–cant get a boat to bring it over–However getting on slowly–Let me have your news–Yrs I Fairweather
1 The verso of the envelope is inscribed by Fairweather: ‘Sorry no time’.
2 In a following letter Fairweather wrote: ‘I sent you £5 some time back–If you got it you might let me know’.
3 Browns Bay, described in 1937 as ‘the beauty spot in Cairns harbour’, is in the Yarrabah district on the eastern side of Trinity Inlet, today known as Second Beach.
52. To Jim Ede
Dear Ede This is my last night in Bankok I have been waiting here to catch a train for Singapore–It has been good fun waiting I’ve been filling a sketch book–though heaven knows what use it will all be now This is the last stage of quite a journey. It began when the Germans got to Norway1–I packed up and said goodbye to my house in the bush the only real thing of my own fabrication–hey ho–I was quite sorry to leave it–Well I went to Hong Kong on a Japanese ship–and I’m delighted to tell you that I beat the Japanese at chess–to be quite true–it was all square–I won the last game though–it was a patriotic encounter I should have died if I had lost. What an awful thing is this patriotism Here in Bankok, the school boys are all dressed in full uniform–the Thai boys–but the town of Bankok is a Chinese town–every bit of business in it is Chinese–They are the townspeople–as they are in all this part of the world–the rest are just the hicks–though they wear the uniforms and wave the flags–Well anyway as I was saying I went to Hong Kong, and they wouldn’t have me there because I was too old–So I’m trying to get to Singapore–I wouldn’t go by ship because it is so easy for them to put one back on the ship if they dont want one–but by land its not so easy–I know all about crossing frontiers from the last war so I think I’ll have a chance to get over–Probably the damn fools will refuse me and I am quite seething with patriotism if they only knew it–I did begin with the idea that this was a question of ideologies–and I was very doubtful as to what ours was if any–but I’ve come to the conclusion it is just the old business of Tweedledum and Tweedledee and I’m all for Tweedledum 2–even if he is a bit dumb–he’s better than die fuehrer.3 So help me
Yrs I Fairweather
1 The German occupation of Norway commenced 9 April 1940 and continued until the country was liberated, 8 May 1945.
2 Characters in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871).
3 Adolf Hitler first adopted ‘der Führer’ to denote his leadership of the National Socialist Party in Germany in 1921.
53. To William Frater
Group 1 Prisoner of War Camp No 2 C/o G.P.O. Bombay1– [1941]
Dear Frater– Its nice to be able to write again after so long, so I’m writing to everyone to try and get in touch again 2–I dont know where my family are–a good number of them were in Jersey–and one in Paris3–I think they must have scattered–I haven’t had an address to send anyone since May 1940 when I left Australia–all the time since then I’ve been on the move–its been quite a journey–from Hong Kong down through Indo China across Siam and down to Singapore–Then to Calcutta and from there up to Kulu somewhere near the Thibet border–then south to Bombay and now south again to here–I cant say where here is but thank God it is in the tropics–so the climate is good–I’ve had no money most of the time–I reached Singapore with about £1–Calcutta with £2 and Bombay with less than 2 rupees–
That whole trek through India has really been ghastly–3rd class on the train for those long journeys–is a nightmare and what food one can get is almost uneatable–I’ve had colic most of the time–things have different names but they are all curry and chillies to me–In Bombay I had the worst time of all. I got thrown out by the Salvation Army–the place stank and was creeping with bugs–I didn’t like the room or the company I suppose I turned up my nose a bit They treat one like a lot of convicts there and I couldn’t stand for it–I was feeling quite low enough without that–So I found myself out on the road–and I had two weeks seeing Bombay in the small hours–tramping the streets looking for some place to rest my weary bones–no easy task in Bombay for quite half the population sleep in the streets–and though I often could hardly stand up for weariness–I couldn’t bring myself–to lie down amongst them When I did get a room–it was in the worst slum I have ever seen in my life–The Cow Gate & Canon Gate in Edinburgh were nothing to it–and the bugs–what a country for bugs this is–they are everywhere Well there is one good thing come out of it all–I had an experience in Calcutta for which I’m truly grateful–I hadn’t got a picture worth looking at before then–for years I’ve been getting a bit nearer but never really hitting the nail on the head–It happened this way–I was at the end of my money the army still found me too old–So I went to an advertising place that had already turned me down and persuaded them to take me in for a try–It was a crowded studio full of Indians I was the only white man the last place you would think to do some work–real work–but it had the opposite effect upon me–I suppose it was the irritation of having so many people round that goaded me on–I did an astonishing amount of work and the best work I have done yet–all of it was turned down by the boss as being useless which was very trying–but I kept on–when I left I went in search of somebody who knew something about art–and that is what took me up to Kulu–to see a Russian artist I had heard about up there4–But he was trying to sell his own work so couldn’t help me much–However in Bombay–I ran into an old Slade student and the editor of a paper who both liked my things quite a lot–So I’m feeling a little more mollified–I haven’t sold anything and dont want to–I’m hoping to get them home somehow–sometime–but all this knocking about is hard on them What gets me most is that now when I feel at last that I’might be making a fair living by painting–I have to give up painting all together–
I am trying to find some talent among the wops–but I think they regard me and English art with suspicion–they have been infected with the idea of decadence–its quite a disease–like measles–one just has to wait till they grow out of it–but how long how long oh Lord is all this going to last–So long–and do write.
Yrs I Fairweather
1 In Bombay in 1941 Fairweather was recommissioned Captain, 5th Mahratta Light Infantry, a regiment of the British Indian Army. He served in the British POW camp Group 1, Number 2 in Bangalore for Italian prisoners transferred there following the North African campaign.
2 Fairweather had written a similar letter to Ede.
3 The Channel Islands were occupied by Nazi Germany from 30 June 1940 until 9 May 1945, the only part of the British Isles to be invaded and occupied. George Stewart, the husband of Fairweather’s sister Ethel Stewart (1880–1972), died during the occupation. Harold Fairweather (1886–1972), the eighth child in the Fairweather family and the sibling closest to Ian in age, was in France with his wife during the German occupation.
4 Nikolai Roerich (1874–1947), Russian painter, writer, archaeologist and mystic who founded the Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute and settled in Naggar in the Kullu Valley in 1929. Earlier, Roerich had designed scenery and costumes for the Ballet Russes production of Borodin’s opera Prince Igor, which toured Australia in 1936.
54. To Sheila Barlow
Group 1. Camp 2 Bangalore. 25/1/42
Dear Sheila–Very glad to hear from you after so long and so unexpectedly–Have only heard from Benjy1–of all the family since the war started and that just once–about a month ago. My own fault as I hadn’t written to anyone–been too busy moving–I passed through Lahore–shall not forget it in a hurry–was suffering from prickly heat and colic–and no money at all–I slept the first night in the churchyard and then in the Strangers Home–hey ho–as a matter of fact I look back on the Strangers Home as one of the nicest places I’ve yet had to stay in in India 2–How often have I repented ever coming here–But the censors office in Singapore was only women–couldn’t stay–so about a year ago arrived in Calcutta with £2–Paid a visit to Kulu–to see a Russian artist Roerich–and then intended to retire into an American monastery over the border in Thibet–but found it had gone–so Lahore–so Bombay–so here
Am praying to get away–Too bad to have to be a prisoner twice over–So long best wishes–Yrs Ian.
P.S. The P.O.Ws had a magazine and they wanted me to draw a pretty lady for it–but she aint very pretty I’m afraid so I’ll have to try again–I send her just to wink at you and say how do.
Sheila Margaret Barlow (1904–85). A niece of Ian Fairweather, born in Jersey, the daughter of Winifred McCormick (née Fairweather) and Andrew McCormick.
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1 Aline (1874–1962), Fairweather’s second-eldest sister.
2 The Strangers Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders was first established in London in 1857 by a number of missionary societies.
55. To William Frater
C of Post Office. Cooktown. 5/7/43
Dear Frater– I’ve been up here four days1 and done one very small and rather bad painting so I sort of feel started–More than that at this moment I cant say. It has its points up here but it hasn’t a lot of the things I got to liking in Cairns. It seems very dry–I haven’t seen any of the rainforest I found so interesting–and the wind never stops–these are the trade winds up here I suppose–The old house I am in never stops creaking and rattling Hey-Ho! I do miss the stillness except for the waves lapping in Browns Bay–in fact I just about miss everything–but it is no use repining–the house at Browns Bay has gone–Someone came along and was taken by the little place I had cleared–the Goddamn son of a bitch–and bought it–the old fisherman took the timber to save it–He himself has been turned out of his old place as the army has settled there and it is all now a proscribed area2–There was nothing but to bid it all a sad farewell and come up here where I had the luck to find an empty house–I hardly liked to enquire about it at first as it is one of the better places of the town–but the windows were broken and part of the roof blown off, so I ventured to approach the caretaker–He seemed quite pleased that I should have it and for nothing–It belonged and I suppose still does to a German missionary–he is now interned–It is still full of furniture–everything down to crockery and mattresses–but no stove–this was taken by the army–I’m hoping my old primus will soon reach me–it was one of the few things the old fisherman kept–Till then cooking w’out and I am back on tins–cold–I think I am fortunate in my caretaker–he is an old miner but chiefly a wanderer in search of shells which he exports–the profession I have always most coveted–But the army have taken his boat away–So he like many here awaits disconsolately till the war be over–and he may start living again–I suppose Cooktown has been dying for quite a while and the war is not entirely responsible but certainly it is very dead now–almost a ghost town–But I’m not going to get the blues Yet–anyway and it’s warm–So long regards to all at Bridge House3–Yrs–
I Fairweather
1 After arriving in Melbourne he had sent Frater a lettercard (postmarked 3 June 1943): ‘Thursday. Staying at 287 William Street, Arrived off boat two days ago.’
2 Cairns was a base for many Allied Forces operations in World War II. A defence facility at False Cape was established on Trinity Inlet in late 1942 or early 1943.
3 In 1942 Lina Bryans had purchased Darebin Bridge House, where she had rented a room since 1940. Also known as the Painters’ Pub, it became home to a number of artists and a meeting place for intellectuals. Fairweather was introduced to Bryans by Frater in June 1943 when he was lodging at 287 William Street.
56. To William Frater
Dear Frater–The Clag is getting used up at an alarming rate–there is only one bottle left and what will happen when there is none will not bear thinking of–for there is only painting here and outside of that nothing at all–I have been [on] a few walks but get bored stiff and have already got to never going out of doors–and one can get nothing!–the few shops that are still open have mostly empty shelves–I couldn’t even get a broom–not that it matters but what a place–I can see it is going to be tough here1–but to get back to the Clag–will you send me some–a case of 12 bottles largest size and tell them to send the bill after this I can write to them without troubling you–and I’m sorry to bother you now but this really is wild and wooly up here If you can come across some veridian prussian blue & spectrum red–I could do with 2lbs powder of each–also please keep an eye open for–some paper in rolls at least 4ft broad–I’m very anxious to break out on a larger scale and feel very handicapped by the small size of the paper I brought with me.
Well so long–very busy–the wind has never stopped since I last wrote–What a place.
So long Yrs I Fairweather–
1 Although Cooktown was an important base during the war, by 1943 shortages there were pronounced.
57. To William Frater
C of Post Office Cooktown. 22/8/43
Dear Frater. Thank goodness your letter has arrived at last but of course not the Clag–however I feel now I can sit back and wait–evidently things do get through sometime–Also I found a carton of caseine1 and it works–It probably goes bad and stinks but not having a nose I am none the worse for that–I am writing to Brisbane to see what I can get–I have even written to find out about the Beach Theatre which I found was still empty when I passed through–There are moments when I do hunger after the flesh pots as I remember them down there–I haven’t eaten a green thing or a cooked thing or a warm thing since I came up here–and I feel something must be done about it–There is only the Chinese bakery here and the store where one can get a very few varieties of tinned stuff. I have had to abandon hope of getting my primus stove back–and about making a fire there are difficulties–no wood near by–and no stove–Up here one cannot buy a primus–without permission–perhaps you are better off–if so please buy me one a good big one–if it cant be bought perhaps one might be got secondhand–Think I must get one somehow as stomach will stand only so much–your letter I noticed with some surprise had been opened by the censor–The letter you sent was from the Independent Group who may they be 2–About the island tell me some more–I dont think I’d like it too well but one never knows these days–Cooktown is rather growing on me. I’ve walked into 8 wild pigs–many wallabies–1 iguana and have 2 possums living in the roof–So long
Yrs Ian
1 Derived from milk, casein paint is a fast-drying, water-soluble medium that was popular prior to the advent of acrylic paint.
2 A group of realist painters active in Melbourne from the late 1930s until c. 1962. Its members included Lina Bryans, Charles Bush, Louis McCubbin, Norman MacGeorge, A. M. Plante, Dora Serle, Alan Sumner, Eveline Syme, Lesbia Thorpe and Dora Wilson.
58. To Lina Bryans
C of P.O. Cooktown. [c. late September 1943]
Dear Mrs Bryans– Thanks very much for the tea–it seems to have got here quite quick–whereas that wretched Clag is still somewhere south of Townsville–If I am going to stay here–of which at the moment I am very doubtful–That might be a way of getting colour–I have just had the most depressing news from Brisbane–every colour but the umbers and red ochre is wanted for defense purposes–
We had two days rain some time back and the place is now thick with mosquitoes as bad as the wet season in Cairns–What the wet season will be like here I tremble to think–I am now happily using soap instead of Clag–formalin cant be got–a nice strong solution of soap it was quite a brain wave–It doesn’t go bad–it doesn’t crack–and it doesn’t buckle the paper–I’m sending herewith the 2 & 3rd Chapters of the Shen Chou tales1 They are awful tripe I fear but just to show you I have been using your dictionary–The first chapter is about miraculous events surrounding the birth of Sung fu–floods and dragon fights–all too too miraculous to bother with–I only laboured through these two chapters as they seemed to be keeping fairly near the ground but as you will see they finish up with an old man dropping out of the sky and a hairpin routing an army–So I’m afraid it is hopeless however I intend to labour on with them just to be doing Chinese–
So long and many thanks
Yrs I Fairweather.
Lina Bryans (née Hallenstein, 1909–2000). Born in Germany to an Australian family, she grew up in Melbourne. Later her work as a modernist painter and portraitist won critical praise. She acquired her first Fairweather painting in 1934, eventually becoming his most significant early Australian patron while also supporting him in practical ways. When Fairweather returned to Melbourne in 1945, Bryans invited him to stay with other artist residents at her house in the northern suburbs, where he worked reclusively until 1947. In 1965 Bryans lent her outstanding collection of Fairweathers to the travelling retrospective of his work curated by the Queensland Art Gallery.
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1 A handwritten manuscript titled ‘Chapter II Shen Chou tales’ and ‘Chapter III’, comprising twenty-eight pages written in pencil on both sides of each page.
59. To Lina Bryans
Dear Mrs Bryans– Your letter and parcel from Cooktown arrived some days ago. I was very glad to get the good news and the books too were most welcome. The pipe is quite providential as I sat on my last one only yesterday–they are quite hard to get now–I should have written to thank you before but delayed hoping to be able to say something about Prof Richards1–I wrote him at once–but have had no reply–so I suppose that’s that–occasionally there is an ad in the paper I feel I ought to see about–a few days ago there was one for aircraft factory workers–that might have been interesting 2–but I’m feeling lazy–I’m getting sunk in painting again–For the moment the rain has stopped–and it is quite pleasant working here more or less in the open–except that I can hang nothing up to have a look at it as the wind blows it away–It also blows out the light at night and that is an affliction as I do most of my work at night when winter comes it may be necessary to get out of here–but that is some way off yet–For the moment its as good as the next place–I wish I could get a job–life is so flat and boring–one might just as well spend it in a munitions factory–or somewhere just to pass the time–I feel I am wasting the only spare cash I am ever likely to have–I’m trying to paint things I see here in Sandgate I got so miserable trying to paint these old scenes I shall probably never see again–that I tried this switch over to the present–but its hard I cant raise any real interest–So long for the present. I am afraid I was a lot of trouble to you in Cooktown–thank Goodness here one can get things–So long.
Yrs. I Fairweather
1 Henry Caselli Richards, foundation professor of geology, University of Queensland, 1919–47, and Chairman of Trustees, Queensland Art Gallery, 1939–44.
2 Fairweather was briefly employed as a labourer in an aircraft factory, likely the Aircraft Erection Depot established by the United States Air Force at Eagle Farm.
60. To William Frater
Post Office Bribie Island–Moreton Bay. Queensland March 12/45
Dear Frater– The pilgrimage as you see has begun and for the moment ended–I think it was all for want of tobacco–About the New Year I ran out of it–and to get any would have meant begging a bit from one of the shops I decided I’d had enough of begging–and from that went on to decide I had had enough of Sandgate & everything else–So I got the boat–though it has brought me nearer to beggary than anything yet packed in all my belongings–and one day the wind being in the right quarter set sail–arrived off the next point along the coast I thought to turn in to port–but the wind by that time was half a gale–and I found to my consternation that though I could keep the nose of the boat pointed into the wind–we were actually sailing backwards out to sea–and on to a reef–There was a moment of chaos–flapping sails & pitching boat–luckily–jumping from one end to the other I didn’t quite jump into the sea–There was just a grey something on the horizon which looked like land and to which the boat would consent to sail–So we turned down wind and the something on the horizon slowly turned out to be this place–we nearly missed it at that–I had to hang on to the tiller and keep pulling her round all the time–I’ve only one sail a lug sail When we finally hit the sand–I felt I had never seen anything so lovely–I decided to stay–and I found a hut almost standing in the sea1–That was two weeks ago it was still Summer. Since then–Winter has started–with skys of lead and biting wind I hardly dare venture out in the boat now even in the channel–having had a sample of her character–I dont like to trust myself again to her caprices–Between me and civilisation about 4 miles down the coast–is a swamp with a river in the middle–as the boat is too heavy to pull against tide and wind–(it is an old life boat) I have to moor it in the river–and reach it only by wading through mud & water–sometimes up to the waist–So that every journey for supplies is just hell–I’m afraid when the Winter really comes it will be too much for me–I cant stand cold now–But I’ve gambled about the works on this chance–It is a beautiful place. The idea of the bush that haunted me in India and brought me back here against all reason–The hut almost stands in the water–a few feet away–and the sunset across the channel with the curious Tambourine peaks sticking up in it2–comes right to the door step–one feels almost in it–a part of it–it makes up for a lot else and I’m afraid there’s a lot else–the hut is only large enough for a bed–and is almost a shell from white ants–I’d put my suit case on the floor when I came–it was one mass of them and everything in it ruined–I have built a sort of hen koop outside where I put my unfinished paintings–I shall have to watch them every day–As for painting–I haven’t got around to it yet there has been so much fixing up to do–but I’ll have to do it outside under a tree–I’ve never painted outside in my life–and the winter coming on its all too much of a problem to bear thinking about–and its lonely–kangaroos come around sometimes–and there are two old horses that come for bits of old bread–Tonight an emu came quite close to the hut–the first wild one I have ever seen–I try to attract them all just for company–Heck–I think you dont know how lucky you are not to be alone with your old age–So long
Yrs Ian.
1 A beekeeper’s hut on land near Dux Creek, which flows into Pumicestone Passage, owned by a local couple, William and Phyllis Sunderland.
2 Fairweather is referring here to the Glass House Mountains, the seven hills rising abruptly from the coastal plain on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast that are visible from Bribie Island, unlike Tamborine Mountain, which is south-west of Brisbane.
61. To Lina Bryans
P.O. Bribie Island [postmarked Bribie Island, 26 April 1945]
Dear Mrs Bryans–Thanks for your letter it cheered me up a lot–Things have been moving quite fast since I last wrote–and quite changed my outlook–that–and your letter have given me an idea–To begin with the things that have changed first–I have grown a beard–(no razor blades here) This is my third–the first was in Norway the second in Canada–The next thing is that really I haven’t had one serious set back in painting since I came here–When I tell you that since 1936 I haven’t really painted one picture you will see how much that means. So I’m very glad I came to Bribie Island its given me a feeling of confidence that I should with luck be able to pay my way by painting–Then comes your letter–and lights a hope–The Shipping man you mention–I wont sell him any pictures but I’ll exchange them for a passage to India1–my passport came from there–and I am late of the Indian Army–there should be no difficulty about that part of it–And if some business reason were required perhaps he could supply that too or invent it–The thing is I left India with my tail between my legs–I didn’t feel confident that I could earn a living painting–and I was afraid of getting down again–it can be very tough–But always I have felt I must try to paint India–its a kind of heritage–the family were Anglo Indians I’ve been brought up to think of it more or less as home–and when I was there I felt it–It has never been really painted The trouble of course is to escape the British India–but I think I know how to do that now–It is sad that I have lost track of my Russian friend–he was on all fours with every body and a walk with him through the bazar became an adventure in living–who knows, I might find him again–Will you ask the Shipping man if it can be done–Pray God he is not one of those Britons who when anything is suggested to them at once begin to think of all the reasons why it cant be done For this is very important to me–in a way its a last hope–money is running out and soon I won’t be able to do it–
If he likes my work and thinks it worthwhile I could send him work from India and he could take what he wanted of it and send on the rest
So please ask him very particularly It cant be so difficult–my sister 2 has quite recently gone from S Africa to India to be with her daughters–If she can do it–why not I–
Please help me in this.
Please ask him–
and let me know soon–
Yrs I. Fairweather
1 Neil McEacharn (1884–1964), garden designer and art collector, son of the Anglo-Australian shipping magnate Malcolm McEacharn. He arrived in Australia in 1940 and departed at the end of World War II. Fairweather had proposed that a dozen paintings be exchanged for a return passage to India.
2 Winifred McCormick.
62. To Lina Bryans
Bribie Island–Aug 1 [postmarked Bribie Island, 2 August 1945]
Dear Mrs Bryans– Today I had to go in to Bribie for food–I had a distinct premonition that something bad was going to happen–I expected there would be a letter in the mail–with bad news but there wasn’t–it was a stormy day but cleared up in the evening–I went over as usual to eat in the other hut where the mice are–when I came back I noticed the easel was a bit displaced and found the door behind it had been forced–Soon I found that my watch–my last remaining luxury had been stolen–already as I think I told you the sail off my boat has been stolen–my scissors knives etc–This last is what I have feared and always carried the watch with me when I went in to B[ribie]–but tonight–I had left it while I went over to eat at the other hut–The low down animal must have been watching me–knew my habits just nipped in and got it–If that were all it would be bad enough I’ve felt for some time I cant compete away here in the wilds with a lot of sneak thieves–but he’s lower than that–he has taken my diary that for 11 years has been with me and in which I have jotted down everything–Its too much–I cant compete any more against that sort of thing Ive got to get out of here–I believe I can get a priority for railway–if I can show some evidence that I have pictures in Melbourne that I want to sell–I wonder could you write me to some such effect–that you have some paintings of mine and they are for exhibition–anything I guess will do just to show the railway people–I’ll have to come down I guess as soon as I can get things fixed up a bit This is hard to take–things were just at long last beginning to take shape–heaven knows when I can settle down again to go on where I left off–the boat I will have to leave–and probably most of the paintings–Might I count on that small room you once offered me–till I can find some place or hit the road again1–oh heck–this is terrible–one’s own people–more low down than any of the coloured people they effect to despise–I just want to get out of it all–I’m just darn well ashamed of being a white man–even my letters the beast has taken–Yes we present a strange spectacle–clamouring about God at the street corners–and spreading a grey breath of squalor and uglyness wherever we go in the world–
Gosh I’m sore all over.
So long Yrs I Fairweather
1 Fairweather arrived at Darebin Bridge House in October 1945 and stayed until October 1947.
63. To Lina Bryans
Bribie Island–Oct 15/– [postmarked Bribie Island, 16 October 1945]
Dear Mrs. This should be the last night in Bribie Island–if things go according to plan–Everything is packed and roped up–and I have just bid a sad farewell to the two old horses who have become my friends–they have had the last of the bread–I have been into Bribie to hire a rowing boat–and been all day getting it up here against the wind–an awful pull–If it holds like this, it should be all right tomorrow but the sky is black with a thunder storm coming down from the north–If its not blown out by tomorrow I may have to stay on some days for the boat is very small and will be near sinking with all the stuff I have to load on it–one bundle of oil paintings is so heavy I cant lift it–fortunately there is a wheelbarrow here–with that I hope to get it on to the beach and into the sea and tip it in the boat but its going to be a struggle–I may have to stop in Brisbane and have a packing case made for it as it may fall to bits on the train–its a pest–because not one of the things in it is finished–such a weight and all junk really–but its all I’ve got. I think never again will I get so loaded up with junk Well if all goes well I should be seeing you somewhere around the end of the month–If I get to Bribie tomorrow Ill post this so you’ll know at least I’ve started
So long Yrs I Fairweather.
64. To Jim Ede
C of Post office Cairns Queensland. [c. December 1947]
Dear Ede. I have sent some paintings to the Redfern–they should–arrive sometime January–About 130 all together–If you are in town I wish you would drop in and look them over–I feel a bit lost with no one I know to see the darn things and say whats doing–I’m afraid they are not the sort of things that will sell–but I just had to do them–there are many variations of the same subject and the subjects are not too pleasing I fear–These are the ones I came up against and couldn’t do–I felt it was no good going on painting till these ghosts were laid–I’ve finished with them–though sometimes in 10 different ways–and perhaps never satisfactorily–but I do feel that doing them has carried me quite a stage farther along the road–When cash was getting low I had to call it a day packed up everything there was and sent them off–then came up here–found an empty forge on an old cattle station–sunk in a forest of guava and lantana–the forge has no walls only a roof on posts so I live practically in the open air1 Am clearing a patch round about to get a view–The rainy season is about due–with the insect pests–but so far it has been swell–of course I’m just a hobo–the owner may not like me being here but if I can stay I am going to start a garden–then at the back is the skeleton of what once was a saw–mill–it would make a fine studio–a short way off a creek leads down to the sea–could have a boat–fish maybe a lot of possibilities–So long–Yrs
I Fairweather
1 Glen Boughton, nine kilometres east of Cairns across Trinity Inlet.
65. To Jim Ede
C of Post Office Cairns. Queensland–22 April/48
Dear Ede– I was so glad to hear from you I cant say–I am a bad mixer and make no new contacts–and here lo[st] in the bush–a letter from someone away back means a lot–Just now I am in desperation–months have passed. Nan Kivell sends no further word–My Cousin to whom I sent another lot of work has hung onto it and sends no word1
This is the studio I’ve tried to build in the bush–inside the skeleton of an old saw mill–made a roof of palm leaves–unfinished because the wet season and mosquitoes–the wood sculpture found in the bush–fast being eaten by termites–So had photos taken by friend Self with totem pole–a parasitic fig 2–the beard towel on back and mittens, all protection from mosquitoes–Its too tough here–I cant endure much more no paints–no materials–no roof Waiting and no one writes–can do no work–This is an all time low–
Yrs I Fairweather
1 Isabella (Ella) Griffith. She replied to Fairweather on 29 April, ‘I am quite in the dark as to what the Redfern Gallery is going to do’. It appears Fairweather did not declare the contents of two cases of pictures that he sent to the gallery, causing considerable delays.
2 The friend was probably Clem Christesen (1911–2003), founding editor of Meanjin. After the literary journal relocated from Brisbane to the University of Melbourne in 1945, Christesen and his wife, Nina, were among those who gathered as friends of Lina Bryans at her home.
66. To John Rothenstein
C of Post Office Cairns Queensland Aug 1/48
Dear Mr Rothenstein1–Thank you very much for your letter and for writing about me to the Council Agent in Sydney.2 I will get in touch with him–There is the problem however of how to keep [a] tag on paintings in England3 Formerly I sent my work to H. S. Ede who was on the staff of the Tate Gallery and whom I had known at the Slade–but he went to live in Tangier I could then only send direct to a gallery. Pictures have disappeared–all requests for statistics go unanswered–Why not. I’m away down under on the belly of the world–There is need of an artists union–or an agent with no axe to grind–to even things up a bit–If any such there may be I would be thankful indeed to hear of it
Yrs Sincerely
I Fairweather
John Knewstub Maurice Rothenstein (1901–92). English-born art historian and arts administrator who served as a controversial director of the Tate Gallery, 1938–64. He was the son of William Rothenstein (1872–1945), painter, printer, draughtsman and writer on art, who had studied at the Slade School and who served as a war artist in both world wars.
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1 This is the second letter that Fairweather wrote to the Tate Gallery director. Fairweather’s first, which has not been located in the Tate archive, was written to William Rothenstein, father of John Rothenstein, to whom it was forwarded, William Rothenstein having died three years previously. John Rothenstein wrote to Fairweather on 1 July and 9 August 1948. A longer, unfinished draft of this letter has recently come to light in a private collection in Brisbane.
2 A British Council office opened in Sydney in 1947.
3 In June 1946, Laurie Thomas had travelled to London en route to take up a Gowrie scholarship for ex-servicemen at King’s College, Cambridge. He took with him a box of forty-five gouaches by Fairweather, some of which had been pre-sold in Australia. Thomas showed the work to a number of galleries and an exhibition was proposed at the Leicester Gallery in Leicester Square, one of London’s leading contemporary galleries, but Fairweather refused. In October he sent 130 gouache paintings to the Redfern Gallery packed into a heavy roll; they arrived too damaged to be salvaged.
67. To Lucy Swanton
C of Post Office Cairns Queensland Sept 13/48
Dear Miss Swanton–You asked me–once upon a time–to send you some paintings1–I am sending 4 in a bundle–It has been a long time–for I wanted to send everything I could to England–and about a year ago sent all I had–But I begin to think that for all intents they might have as well been thrown in the sea for there has been no word of them since–So in the last month or so I have tried to do what I can with what materials are to hand–I wont put any price on them–I shall be glad if you can sell them at all 2–The wolf being much too near the door for anything but dead reckoning3–
Yrs very truly
I Fairweather–
(I.FAIRWEATHER)
Lucy Howell Swanton (1901–81). Melbourne-born gallery owner and art patron who studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in the 1930s. In 1938 with Treania Smith (later Bennett), she purchased Macquarie Galleries, one of Sydney’s leading commercial galleries for contemporary art. At their invitation Fairweather submitted his first paintings to Macquarie Galleries in 1948, beginning an association that would be maintained until his death. Swanton retired in 1956.
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1 William Frater had held a solo exhibition at the gallery in King Street, Sydney, in 1946. It was during preparation for that show, at Lina Bryans’ house, that Treania Smith first saw Fairweather’s paintings. Macquarie Galleries wrote to Fairweather to see if he was interested in showing with the gallery. T. Smith, interview, 15 November 1965, National Library of Australia.
2 Swanton note lower margin: £5 sent on a/c.
3 Lucy Swanton later wrote to Fairweather with news of the sale of a painting for 25 guineas: ‘I’m glad we’ve beaten the wolf this time.’
68. To Treania Smith
C of Post office Cairns Queensland [c. October 1948]
Dear Mrs or Miss? Please? Smith–
Glad to hear landscape pleases–Woman seated, stalled, not so good1–The sands run out–Your letter 8 days to get here though marked & stamped airmail–Something very screwy with the post–very very screwy–Feel I may have to come and camp in Sydney–this post business no good–Thinking of it but dont want to, of course–Still if you know of a nice barn or shed–one never knows–Mosquito Season coming on–hard to paint–trying to get some finished–Several possibles–but the going tough–used to have some horse friends on Bribie came around for bread every day–will try remember–here every evening–quite a party, 3 cats–3 bandicoots–bread & milk ‘cookery’ butcher birds–and ‘lemon stew’ doves–but no horses to speak of–
Any news, Jack Earl ketch Kathleen2–round world–? lucky dog–So long
Soon as possible– Yrs
I Fairweather
Treania Helen Lindsay Bennett (née Smith, 1901–90). Brisbane-born gallery director, artist and collector. In 1938, with Lucy Swanton, she acquired Macquarie Galleries in Sydney, where the two women went on to show the work of many of Australia’s leading artists. Their first Ian Fairweather show was in 1949. Over the years, the Macquarie directors supported and encouraged Fairweather artistically and practically. In 1962 Treania Smith married Clive Bennett, a retired P&O officer.
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1 Probably Seated Figure (1948), included in Macquarie Galleries’ ‘Christmas Exhibition’ 1949 and acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
2 Jack Earl (1908–94), South African-born maritime artist and one of the founders of the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race, first held in 1945. Earl sailed around the world in his ketch Kathleen Gillet, departing Sydney in June 1947 and returning December 1948.
69. To Lucy Swanton
C of Post Office Cairns–26/2/49
Dear Miss Swanton This is very good news and I’m much obliged–I hadn’t quite packed up–but have given up painting for the moment–taken a job bush cutting–no sinecure, in this hot mosquito weather–I was surprised to hear that my show at the Redfern was mentioned in a French paper1–as far as I know it was not advertised or mentioned in any paper in England 2–it consisted of 20 (the poorest) hung in a corridor–out of a 160–sent–it was in fact deliberately and extensively sabotaged–and I still have no information–and expect to get none–I imagine you probably know more about [that] than I ever will–To see ones best work just go by the board like that has left me with a poor stomach for painting–seems a mug’s game–Your letter gives me a little hope I’ll try and get back to it
Sorry about the paint coming off–I had used a mixture of gouache and oil–always attracts me–but it seems physically taboo3–wont do it again– Yrs–
I Fairweather
1 The French mention of the exhibition has not been located.
2 An exhibition of forty works, ‘Paintings of the East by Ian Fairweather’, was held at the Redfern Gallery, 28 October – 20 November 1948 and reviewed in the Spectator and Time and Tide.
3 Many of the paintings sent to London were painted with the unstable mixture of gouache, oil and clag, which, combined with poor packing, caused substantial damage.
70. To Lucy Swanton
C of P.O. Cairns [c. August 1949]
Dear Miss Swanton–Very sorry to have missed you a second time I live, unfortunately some way out of Cairns–across the inlet and then across some miles of mangrove swamp–its not easy to get into town and back with a load of provisions–and I make the journey as seldom as possible–However I would very much have liked to see you and would have returned on the Saturday but there is the mangrove swamp–I get to town covered in mud–looking–what I fear I am these days–a hobo So I thought it best to let it ride–you would perhaps have not been too pleased had I called–like that–at your hotel–I sent some more paintings–should have arrived by now–please let me know–and please accept my apologies–
Yrs I Fairweather
71. To Lucy Swanton
Dear Miss Swanton–Wanted to do a larger painting so left Cairns in search of room with walls and a bulb–found nothing in Bris[bane] So got a tent and am bushed again–Meant to send down some studies I have made for some larger things–but dont know how to send things from here–
Am sending here-with some more small drawings–to keep the pot boiling–I hope
Happy New Year– Yrs I Fairweather
72. To Lucy Swanton
C of P.O. Darwin–NT 2 April/50
Dear Miss Swanton– Thank you for the letter and cheque–Had I known that my drawings reached you I might have stayed on in Bribie1–but–not hearing I presumed the worst. The wolf always being at the door–and life from nose to mouth–came here walking & hitch hiking–and now have a job and a very sore back–The enclosed letter found me here–it is the answer to my last effort to have something done about my strandedpaintings in London–
I have been trying for 2½ years–to have something done about them they are my best work about 100 of them, all largish 2½ to 6 ft: But as you will gather from the letter. Rothenstein ducks out–I had asked him to say if the paintings were saleable–if anything could be done with them Nan Kivell lies when he says I requested him to dump my paintings–Is it likely when I had sent them over for exhibition It has all been like this for 2½ years–one evasion after another–and now I’m here and with a sore back–I can think of nothing more to do
What happened is that 2½ years ago I sent 150 paintings to the Redfern for exhibition–They had been most carefully packed with frames and a cardboard backing–to which they were fixed around the edge–After one year of delays–and ambiguities Mr Nan Kivell deposited a bundle of some 80 odd paintings–shorn of their frames & backings–and in a disgraceful state–with my cousin Mrs Griffith 2–to whom I had asked him to send any surplus ones not required for exhibition When I heard that, I had my cousin write him to return all my paintings unsold–For those sold he has paid me something less than 1–15 shillings a piece–As they are all larger than the ones I sent to you–and would sell for around 30 each–and as the exhibition was unadvertised in any English papers–and hung in a corridor–there is much for Mr Nan Kivell to explain––to the Judge–So it works out I am stranded here and my best work has gone to hell and all–and what remains of it–reposes on the floor of my cousins attic–and so far I have been unable to obtain any reliable statement as to what is there and what if anything can be done with it–
What I need is the opinion of a good sound judge with no axe to grind–as to the worth of the paintings as they are now–whether or not they can still be exhibited–So far every attempt to get that information has failed–Rothenstein of the Tate–was the last I could think of and as you see–he ducks–
I thought it just possible that you might know of some person in England who could be relied upon to give such an opinion–Hence this long rigmarole for which I can only offer as excuse that my back is sore–Please return enclosed letter and please do not disclose my present address to anyone in Melbourne as I feel in that G-.d-. place all this schermozzle originated–Yrs I Fairweather
1 ‘Exhibition of Drawings’, 21 September – 1 October 1949: Fairweather’s first show at Macquarie Galleries.
2 Isabella (Ella) Griffith (1887–1974). A distant cousin of Fairweather born in Scotland, daughter of William Kennedy and Isabella (née Fairweather). In 1918 she married (as his second wife) Walter Griffith (1854–1946). In 1946 the couple, who had no children, moved to 19 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, where Fairweather stayed on his visits to England.
73. To Lucy Swanton
C of P.O. Darwin 15/Aug [1950]
Dear Miss Swanton–
Very glad to get your letter. Dont get many these days–Pleased to be able to say that at last got some work done and am sending it down–Nine things–Made a box for them not very strong I fear–Hope it doesn’t collapse en route–To economise paper I had to use both sides of some–guess you wont get them mixed–Put some names on some for refs.–Just names–Taloma, Pnompenh–Bally Gung–Dicke Bertha–Bioscope–Chétif–Kalighat–Hippique–Tea Cosy1–Shall be anxious to hear if you get them all right–
Salamat Yrs I Fairweather
P.S. There may be some loose paint around when you unpack it–think nothing of it–it will be off the backs
1 ‘Gouache Paintings: Ian Fairweather’, held at Macquarie Galleries 11–23 October 1950, featured twelve works, including Kalighat, Chétif, La Loma (a suburb of Manila) and Hippique.
74. To Helga Macnamara
Dear Pippa–This is Rip Van Winkle talking the world has grown very old1–its a very sad return 2–for I haven’t grown as old as I should have done–and I’ve tried to write a book–I have left a typescript of it at Ella Griffiths–19 Cheyne Walk–I dont want you to mention to anyone that it is there [marginal note: Dont leave it lying about] but I very much want you to read it and pass it to anyone you can absolutely trust to keep it secret–It will sound to you like melodrama–and I no doubt will seem to you about as doddering as the rest of the family seem to me–but I would like someone to read it who is young enough to understand3–All this mystery is because a net has been cast to try and catch this book. I have tried to expose some angles of the propaganda machinery–which through films makes monkeys of us abroad–That is not very clear but you will see what I mean–if you can endure reading the book It will be very boring I fear–but as a favour please try to wade through it–the reason for the net is L.B. a crazy Jewess–who is rich–good looking4–and with a hold on one of the chief newspaper combines in Australia–In a mood of spite she had all the paintings I sent home mutilated I have examined what remains of them at Ellas–and it is hard to make out after all these years just what has been done to them–but my suspicions have been abundantly confirmed–they are not the paintings that left my hands–they have been altered–Ella I can see, doesnt believe it–and I dont expect any one will–It was so terribly easy for her to do and she knew no one would ever believe my story–She was safe–When I tried to escape from her net in my raft–I ran into this underground propaganda machine which she could set to work through her paper hook up. It hounded me through Indonesia–to Singapore–where it reached a climax–I got a telegram there offering 250 advance royalties on a book about the raft journey–and other episodes of my life–a minimum of 50 000 words–I didn’t think I could ever write it and was for turning the offer down–but the Times Correspondent who was there advised me to take it–Well I’ve written the book and took it to the publisher who I discovered had an office in an attic in a back street off Tottenham Court Rd and I soon found it was a completely phoney set up5–and obviously a part of the net to catch my book and kill it–so I have taken it away–and will try to contact a publisher somewhere who is not a part of the net–As the papers here had not said anything about my arrival in England6 the publisher suggested that for the sake of helping the book–a write-up about me should be arranged–and a reporter of the Sunday Express being conveniently in the next room he called him in–and a photographer came the next day–the write-up and especially the photograph which appeared today7–are just about as well calculated to kill my book as they well can be–so the net is wide spread–a Beaverbrook paper8–can reach most places–However I’m going to try to find an honest man–not because I have any hope of the book being a success If it brings in no cash at all I shant mind just so its published–I’ve been hounded and had my pictures made a mockery of–and I cant raise a peep–nobody would believe it–only through the book can I have one little hit back–and perhaps some few unprejudiced souls here and there–may believe the written word–My last word, I guess, and my testament and I’d like you to be one of them–one cant ask for belief–one can only hope–
So long So long So long
Yrs Ian.
Olive Helga Winifred (Pippa) Macnamara (1906–86). A niece of Fairweather, born in Jersey, the younger daughter of Winifred McCormick (née Fairweather) and Andrew McCormick. Known in the family as Helga but to Fairweather as Pippa, she married Playford (Pat) Macnamara in 1935. For many years she ran an orchard in Peasenhall in Norfolk.
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1 ‘Rip Van Winkle’ (1819), a short story by Washington Irving and the name of its protagonist, who drinks moonshine and wakes to find the world has changed.
2 Fairweather, who had been living in Darwin in the rear section of the patrol boat HMAS Kuru on Dinah Beach, left Australia from Darwin on 29 April 1952 on a home-made raft. The Herald and Argus published regular updates on the RAAF search for Fairweather and on 13 May an obituary by Alan McCulloch was published in the Herald. After Fairweather landed on the island of Roti in Indonesian Timor on 15 May 1952, he was taken into custody in Kupang and later Surabaya. He refused free passage back to Australia and insisted on contacting the British Consul. He was transported to Singapore on a British ship and placed in Nantina Home, the Social Welfare Department’s home for destitutes. On 24 August he travelled by ship to England with a £5 loan from the Singapore government.
3 ‘Amorales. By Himself. To: L.B. (Lucrecia Borgia)’, written after the 1952 raft journey and on board ship during Fairweather’s return to England. The account was not published. A typescript is held in the Fairweather family collection in England.
4 Lina Bryans, who had been a generous and enthusiastic patron while also providing Fairweather with a home and studio in Melbourne.
5 According to Helga Macnamara, Kegan Paul had rejected Fairweather’s manuscript.
6 The Times had reported that Fairweather was in Singapore awaiting passage to England. ‘Timor Sea Crossed on a Raft: Scottish Artist’s Feat’, 9 August 1952.
7 The Sunday Express, 26 October 1952, reported that the British government had impounded Fairweather’s passport until he paid the cost of his passage from Singapore to Britain.
8 William Aitken, Anglo-Canadian press proprietor, politician and writer who owned the British newspapers the Daily Express, Evening Standard and Sunday Express.
75. To Sheila Barlow
C-/- G. P. O. Queen St Exter. [late 1952]
Dear Sheila– I have your pullover wrapped around my neck and am blessing it and you–Sunday is always a miserable day here with no fire–So forgive me if I just say I am truly grateful and leave it at that–I could get warm if I cared to go down and sit in my landlady’s kitchen–with the cat, dogs, five or six children and two old pensioners–but like the five Indians who inhabit the room next to mine (they only have three beds between them) I keep to myself, as far as possible–I’m really as much a stranger in a strange land as they are–This Devonshire accent–half the time I cant understand what people are talking about–must stop now–go out and get a meal some place–So long–and really thank you–
Yrs Ian
76. To Helga Macnamara
Dear Pippa–You send me a picture of Christmas cheer and warmth–I send you a picture of the last sunny day I remember on the raft–The present doesn’t even bear thinking about–and this gem which I saw in the paper–
‘What a wonderful bird the frog are–
[drawing of Fairweather lying down on his raft with the sun shining]
When he stand he sit almost
When he hop he fly almost
He aint got no sense hardly
He aint got no tail hardly either
When he sit–he sit on what he aint got almost1
1 Fairweather’s remembered version of an old folk poem or song popular in the 1920s.
77. To Helga Macnamara
Dear P[ippa].
Am sitting in the British Museum amongst the Elgin Marbles–In the room of the Centaurs–Trying to pass the time until midnight when my train leaves for Liverpool. My boat–the Nelson Star leaves tomorrow–and I am the only passenger1–it promises to be a beastly journey–as it is round the Cape and the boat must be very small it has only room for 3 passengers–I left this early to get away from Cheyne Walk–and Ella–I think she is getting into her dotage–a very [nasty] and poisonous old woman What is killing her is her sense of property–she just wont realise that the age of servants is past–and without servants to do the work for one, it is crazy to go on living in a large house and trying to work it oneself her scale of values is based on property–without it she feels she would be lost–So we have been as oil and water and the last weeks she has followed me about like a dog yapping at my heels trying to create a scene that would drive me from and one has been forced into the role of appeasement which sticks in the craw–Of course there is her side of it She has been a great help to me in the past and it is sad that it should end like this–but she is not one to keep silent about her end of it–You will hear plenty about that so I needn’t mention it–Her last caper was quite unpleasantly sadistic–You know I have had to burn all the paintings she had as they were spoiled there were just 2 that for sentimental reasons I couldn’t bring myself to destroy–and was going to leave them–but she wanted to force me to destroy them She has tried in every way to humiliate me as an artist and this last was to be a great triumph–that I should destroy all my paintings–Well–they are not worth keeping I know that–but I have left them–If they are destroyed–She will have to destroy them–I cant do it–very silly but there it is–My sister Ethel will be going to see Ella I expect, shortly 2–she will no doubt hear about them–if they have been destroyed or not–If they have not been destroyed–I am wondering if you could find a home for one in one of your empty barns Although it is badly faded and gone–it might make a bit of colour in a blank place–Only thing is it is 5ft by 3ft. Need some paper and string, it is on thick cardboard–be a trouble to move I’m afraid–but there it is I cant do anything more about it–it really should be destroyed but I am not going to be the murderer–And now I hope I’m going to catch the boat without dropping my bags along the way–I’m so short of cash that I have been living on bread for the last two days and will only make it, with a few shillings to spare–The smells of the coffee shops just because I cant afford to go into one are horribly seductive–oh oh–closing time So on the steps of the dear old B.M. So long for now
1 A letter from the Blue Star Line Ltd. addressed to Fairweather’s sister in Jersey Mrs E. R. Stewart and dated 1 June 1953, acknowledged her letter and cheque for £65, being the balance of Fairweather’s passage to Sydney on the Nelson Star. Fairweather was in England from late September 1952 until he sailed for Australia on 23 June 1953; he arrived in Sydney on 13 August 1953.
2 Fairweather’s sister Ethel and Ella were close friends.
