The Crow Eaters Page 23
Despite all this, it fell to the women to find a solution for selling their butter, eggs, milk and fresh produce while the men were out (or sleeping). They would leave Hahndorf at midnight under the cover of darkness, loaded down with farm produce so it wouldn’t spoil in the heat of the day, often balancing a yoke with two baskets across their shoulders. They would walk, single file, past the Crafers Inn, past a late-night brothel, and they would tread quietly around teams of resting bullock drivers. They would carry big sticks on the way down to protect themselves from the Tiersmen, and on the return trip each woman would carry two bricks each back up the hill for the construction of the Hahndorf church, which they could also use, no doubt, to minimise the harm that might come to them. They would stop at the Rural Deanery in Bridgewater to rest their feet, drink a few ales and sing hymns on the return journey. This was a regular trip that the women of Hahndorf would complete until the early 1860s.
On a sunny Sunday morning I set out from the small town of Bridgewater in the hills to walk the Pioneer Women’s Trail down into the city. This is not about following along on a cheap re-enactment of what the pioneer women did – wearing a dress, carrying a yoke loaded with cheese and leaving at midnight – it is about understanding something of the trail, the landscape and the effort that was put in nearly 180 years ago in the village next to mine and in the hills I often drive past without giving it a second thought.
The trail meanders up the slope behind the pub, past the old mill’s waterwheel and through a railway underpass. A late Saturday night and a session with a friend who has an impressive homebrew collection means that my walking is not as speedy as it could be as I pass along by Cox Creek on this quiet Sunday. Walking groups are out in the early morning light with their puffer vests and walking poles, along with a group of young Sikh men taking pictures as they approach a tunnel on the trail. Into the Mount George Conservation Park, the trail winds through the stringybark forests, stands of candle bark and the concealed foliage of native cherry trees, which would have once sheltered the Tiersmen here until the ‘tiers’ were largely cleared in the 1940s.
The trail is pleasant; it cuts through the modern Stirling golf course and over fallen branches extending 10 metres across the trail. I scramble past upended roots the size of small cars; these are remnants of damage from the 2017 winter storms. Everything I see contextualises what this walk would have been like for the pioneer women. If a tree falls across the path now, we call the council and it is sawn up and removed. Imagine what a thousand kilo tree across a wet and muddy track, in the dark, would have done to their trek, all while they were balancing eggs and containers of butter.
The modern trail has been marked and reinvigorated by the National Trust of South Australia. It was first re-walked by the group in 1980, when they used an original 1841 map to chart their journey down into the city. There are now regular walks from Hahndorf down to Beaumont House to relive the story of the pioneer women and the walk that many ancestors of Hills residents walked in the 19th century.
The trail crosses the freeway numerous times along big, snaking bridges, before it passes many of the refurbished pubs the pioneer women would either quietly creep past in the early morning or stop in at for a for-tifying ale. The modern path also passes Stirling, Pic-cadilly and Crafers along the way. On one suburban street, nestled among the mansions and refurbished homes is the Service Women’s Memorial Reserve. The park is dank, and the memorial is a mossy rock, plonked unceremoniously in the middle of the grass with a tiny plaque dedicated to the ‘women who served this country during the wars of the nation’. I’ve never understood the meaningfulness of a rock in a park (as you see all over Australia), though considering the significance of this trail, and the role of women in military service more broadly (both officially and those keeping the fabric of these towns together during wartime), it seems more of an afterthought rather than a genuine gesture.
As the trail winds through Stirling, there is a bus-tling Sunday market going on. It’s another marker of the influence of the pioneer women. As they established routes down to the city and ensured that Hahndorf (and other towns along the way) prospered, these have now become enclaves of young families, manicured parks and markets selling local honey and scented candles.
Beyond Stirling, the trail crosses the freeway and then passes through Crafers, where the hotel now sits, full of lunchtime visitors. It was originally built in 1839 and was once the drinking hole of the feared Tiersmen. I don’t stop, but take the road leading towards Mount Lofty. The old church here now runs Brazilian jiujitsu lessons on weekends and while it may have once been an important stop on the track down to the city, it now seems to have been swallowed by the freeway. From the edge of Crafers, the trail descends into the deep bush and along the rutted, muddy trails that make this feel like a closer version of the original.
From here I glimpse the city for the first time and realise that the 10 kilometres or so that I’ve walked are a fraction of what the women would have done each trip. The trees extend across the valley and up to Mount Lofty and the three phone towers, which are the modern markers of the escarpment of the Adelaide Hills. I hear far-off sirens in the city and the drone of a plane’s engines above as the trail winds down further along the Mireen Track.
The track drops steeply, revealing views down to the smokestacks at Port Adelaide and then across the zig-zagging trail to the locality of Eagle on the Hill – now mainly used by Sunday bike riders, though this winding road was once the only way for motorists to get into the city. As I walk, I find remnants of old stone walls buttressing the path and I wonder if these date back to the era of the pioneer women.
Below the trees, the trail opens up and reveals beautiful views across the expanse of Adelaide. I find a sleeping koala in a solitary tree as mansions and big homes on the edge of the city come into view.
The modern track finishes at the grand Beaumont House, where the women would rest and wash up in the nearby stream before continuing down into the city. That’s the thing that sticks with me the most from the 15 or so kilometres of the Pioneer Women’s Trail that I follow. For me, now, it’s a worthwhile experience to understand a little more about the hills I live in, to sit in a cafe at the end of Glynburn Road and rest my feet with a sense of accomplishment. It also highlights the central place that leisure has in our lives in the 21st century. I can take a six-hour walk on a Sunday and it’s no big deal. For the women who walked this at least twice a week, it was a necessity for their families and it ensured the survival of their village, which still prospers in the hills 180 years later because of the trail they blazed.
The next stage of my exploration centres on another of the most enduring icons of Adelaide. When I first arrived here in 2014, the view of the illuminated spires of St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral at night as I was driven past in a taxi was one that stuck with me. It also confirmed, when I didn’t know any better, that Adelaide must’ve been a ‘City of Churches’ after all. The term has been used here since before 1872, when English novelist Anthony Trollope quoted it in his book Australia and New Zealand. Baptist minister Silas Mead referred to the ‘City of Churches’ in an address in 1868 and it also appeared in a letter to the editor in the SA Register complaining of the ill-fame in the ‘City of Churches’ in 1867.
As with many things, once you spend time in a place, you understand it beyond many of the assumptions and classifications given either by lazy tourism boards or people elsewhere – and while there are a lot of churches in Adelaide, the latest census data shows that Adelaide’s most popular choice is ‘no religion’, with 35.6 per cent of responses, and while things are certainly changing rapidly with religious affiliation, I do think there’s more to it than that.
As one local journalist mentioned to me, Adelaide could just as easily have been labelled the ‘city of pubs’ for the numerous drinking establishments in the city. In Adelaide’s central square mile alone, there are more than 70 hotels. While the notion of spending a chapter
going on an extended pub-crawl might be a nice idea in theory, I want to look at what exists beyond the ‘City of Churches’ in a religious sense.
I begin my exploration south of the city in what looks to be one of the most pleasant vistas in the entire state. At Sellicks Hill, one side of the road is populated with rolling green hills stretching out to the vineyards of McLaren Vale, and on the downhill slope there are fields of grazing sheep, orchards, olive groves and trees just starting to blossom as the end of winter nears. At the very bottom of the hill, a barrier of beach houses makes way for the wide expanse of the ocean and the ochre-coloured cliffs that overlap southwards all the way to the tip of Cape Jervis. I’m not passing through to admire the scenery though, I have pulled in on the side of the road to find the enormous statue of the goddess of mercy at the Nan Hai Pu Tuo Temple on the side of the hill. The gates are closed as I arrive, and gangs of workers manoeuvre two cranes and other machinery as they construct a temple, pagoda and the gardens here next to the statue. The 18 metre statue is hard to ignore and it’s part of a larger $15 million Buddhist retreat which will be here on the hill before too long.
Driving further north into the city sprawl, I pass by the gates of the ornately decorated Sri Ganesh Temple in Oaklands Park, complete with ceramic elephants and carvings of Ganesha, the monkey face of Hanuman and the spear-wielding Muruga among others.
The further into the city I go, the more diversity I see, from the domes of Russian Orthodox churches to the banners advertising evangelical Christian meetings. To understand more of the enduring religious story here beyond the ‘City of Churches’ label, though, I enlist the help of a Jewish friend.
The Jewish story of South Australia stretches back to 1836, with the first known Jew being John Levey, who arrived in September of that year. Other families followed, though it was barely more than a trickle in the first years of the colony, with fewer than 50 Jews recorded within the 1848 congregation.
The Jewish community in South Australia comes from a wide variety of origins, with many originally coming from England and others from the colonies around Australia. Many today can also trace their roots back to the Ashkenazi Jews of German and Eastern European descent.
The foundation of the first synagogue in Adelaide happened, of all places, in a tavern right in the middle of Rundle Street. It was started by Emanuel Solomon, a Jewish convict who arrived in Sydney in 1818. After completing his seven-year sentence for larceny, Emanuel married and became a merchant in Sydney. The promise of a fresh start drew him south-west though, and he left for Adelaide in 1837. He had a lot of faith in his new city and he built the short-lived Queen’s Theatre to help Adelaide’s citizens enjoy the cultural life of the city. It opened in 1841 as the first purpose-built theatre on the mainland, though unfortunately it closed in 1842 due to a lack of patronage.
As the Jewish community did not have a dedicated space to worship, the first religious services took place at Solomon’s Temple Tavern in 1848 until the Egyptianstyle synagogue was completed in 1850. They moved to a larger, adjacent synagogue in 1870 and worshipped there, off Rundle Street among the pubs, restaurants, smut and bustle until the 1980s, when they moved to Glenside and the first services commenced there in 1990.
While Emanuel Solomon established the first synagogue in Adelaide, he is more often remembered for providing refuge for Australia’s first saint, Mary MacKillop after she was excommunicated by Bishop Sheil in 1871. Solomon gave the sisters of St Joseph two properties on Flinders Street, so they could continue the work that he saw as important, without further persecution.
While at its height, the Jewish community reached approximately 3000 followers; there are now less than 1000 Jewish people in Adelaide. In order to understand something of the Jewish community in the city now, I meet up with former president of the progressive Jewish Beit Shalom community and local Jewish lady Merrilyn Ades. Along with us is a colleague of mine, Ron Hoenig, who is also a former president and a member of Beit Shalom. Merrilyn brings out plates of soft cheese, crackers and coffee as we chat about the Jewish story of the city.
‘We had a Jewish Premier for seven days’, says Ron of Vaiben Louis Solomon’s short reign in the top seat of South Australia back in 1899. Another notable Jewish citizen was Joel Morris, who arrived in Adelaide in 1853. He was drawn to the opportunities in Port Adelaide and after running various pawnshops he later founded the Port Adelaide Football Club. In the early days, the team selection committee would meet at Joel’s house on a Friday after dinner to select the team for the weekend’s game.
Merrilyn isn’t sure what the latest data says, though she’s sure that many people no longer identify as Jewish in Adelaide, even if it’s in their heritage. Merrilyn wasn’t born Jewish, she grew up on a farm in Orroroo and married into the Egyptian Jewish Ades family.
I ask if they think that the Jewish community in Adelaide will survive and neither Ron nor Merrilyn hesitate, ‘No, absolutely not. There’s no community anymore. You can’t be Jewish in isolation.’
‘No-one has taken the place of the wise leaders who had so much knowledge. It may not happen in our lifetime, but it won’t be long’, Merrilyn says, with resignation, of their community’s demise.
One thing that does appeal to both Ron and Merrilyn and their Jewish community is the strength of the interfaith relationships they have. Even though they both seem resigned to the fact that the days of the Jewish presence in Adelaide may be numbered, they regularly hold events with Christian and Islamic organisations to foster harmony in the community. In 2016 Ron worked with a group from his synagogue that helped clean up after the Elizabeth Grove Mosque was defaced by vandals.
There are now two competing Jewish synagogues in the city and Ron drives me to the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation in Glenside, the only orthodox synagogue in the city. We park out the front of the imposing gates and we’re buzzed through at the security intercom.
The peach-coloured walls of the centre look like they need a coat of paint and sheep now graze on the long grass of the property next door. This used to be the Jewish primary school, though falling numbers necessitated its closure in 2011 when only 11 students remained.
Meeting us at the door is Klee Beneviste. She bustles in and shakes my hand with purpose, leading me through the empty corridors surrounding the synagogue. Klee is a short woman with an Inspector Gadget–esque list of roles here. She is the caretaker, the treasurer, the archivist and today, at least, the tour guide of the orthodox synagogue.
Klee tells me that when the synagogue was still on Rundle Street they had many issues because of its location. ‘In 1989 the synagogue would get graffitied, a pig’s head was thrown inside once, and the police would regularly have to escort the Rabbi home’, she says of the tension at their former location.
I ask about all the security here at the new synagogue and Klee tells me that it’s because of the former school – they received a government grant for the security system, though she says that if you wander past on a Saturday the gate will be open for anyone, ‘And you’ll be accountable to me,’ she says with a smile that suggests she isn’t one to trifle with.
I see the ornate Torah binder behind a glass enclosure, two enormous rams’ horns which they blow on Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and other paraphernalia, such as yarmulkes and coverlets, stories of kosher butchers and the bris book for circumcision instruction, which for me all seems exotic and mysterious because I haven’t really encountered the Jewish way of life in my own upbringing.
Klee tells me that one aspect of the Jewish community that many people aren’t aware of is their community’s role in the two world wars. There were 73 men and three women from Adelaide’s Jewish community who answered the call in the First World War (representing 12 per cent of the entire community here) of whom eight died; and 43 men and two women who served in the Second World War.
Another aspect of the orthodox synagogue I am unaccustomed to is the kitchen. Here they adhere stri
ctly to the rules of Judaism and meat and milk cannot be mixed in the same meal. As such, I notice the two separate sinks at each end of the large kitchen, two microwaves, two ovens and two fridges with signs in English and Hebrew reminding guests of the sanctity of the kitchen. Even though the community might be diminishing, Klee introduces me to two bearded Jewish bikers visiting from interstate who are using the synagogue’s facilities while they’re on their road trip.
We wander inside the circular synagogue, past the curtained-off area for the women, to the central bima, where Klee tells me to speak. ‘Ah, hello?’ I stammer, though the natural acoustics of the room carry it up effortlessly to the upstairs gallery as if I am a motivational speaker. The windows are filled with beautiful stained glass, though I can’t help noticing how cold it is inside, a sign that they haven’t had the heating on in here for a while.
‘What a pity,’ Ron says of its slow demise. ‘This is such a beautiful place.’ Part of the tension and the falling membership of the Adelaide Jewish community can trace its roots back to 1963 when a second, more progressive congregation was formed. Beit Shalom now operates on Hackney Road as a more flexible alternative for the Jewish community.
I ask Ron what the major difference is between the two groups. ‘The major thing is the equality of men and women,’ he says. Both groups are strong supporters of Israel, though Beit Shalom does not have separate kitchen facilities for meat and milk, and they also acknowledge that people drive and use technology on the Sabbath. ‘I think we’re probably more left-leaning as well,’ Ron adds.