Minnie & Grace - the women who fed a scientific expedition

I am currently moving all my content from my Women of the North blog across to North Queensland History blog. This article was first published by Trisha Fielding on 3 July 2023.

They say an army marches on its stomach. After all, someone’s got to feed the hungry foot-soldiers, right? And this is probably true for any expeditionary group, even an expedition in the name of science. So let’s meet the Indigenous Australian women who fed the scientific Expedition to the Great Barrier Reef in 1928-1929 – Grace Dabah and Minnie Connolly. 

Cultural warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are advised that this post contains the names and images of deceased persons.

Low Island viewed from the south-west across the lagoon at low tide, 1928. Photo: National Library of Australia.

Sometimes it’s quite challenging to try and write something meaningful about the lived experiences of historical women because so many of them left no written records about themselves. This becomes an even greater challenge when the women in question were Indigenous Australian women. But tiny glimpses of women’s lives can be found, often in unexpected places. In this case, in the mundane accounts of everyday life on a tropical island - on the Greater Barrier Reef Expedition of 1928-1929.

This expedition spent 13 months at Low Isles, off the coast of far North Queensland. Here, scientific personnel from Great Britain and Australia conducted studies into the biological and geological complexities of the reef. The expedition was assisted by many Australians in support roles, including Indigenous Australian workers sourced from the Anglican mission at Yarrabah.

When the scientific personnel arrived at Low Isles on 16^th July, 1928, a diary from the expedition, held by the National Library of Australia, notes the following:

“Party landed about 6pm and met by Mr J.E. Young and all occupants of the island – three lighthouse-keepers, their wives and five children. Huts excellent. All luggage landed safely same night and brought across to huts. Cook, houseboy and two children in occupation and appear satisfactory.”

Grace Dabah

The cook, Grace Dabah, the “houseboy” (her husband Andy Dabah), in company with their two children, Edith and Cecil, had been hired (as paid workers) from the mission at Yarrabah. The Dabah family ended up spending four months at Low Isles. By modern standards, it’s very jarring to read of a grown man being referred to as a “houseboy”. Theo Roughley, a short-term visitor to Low Isles, was a little kinder in his description of Andy, whom he considered was the camp’s “general rouseabout”. Some of Andy’s duties would have been to keep the huts tidy, and to take care of sanitary arrangements, but undoubtedly he was proficient at many things, including jobs that others would have undoubtedly baulked at. Journalist and nature writer Charles Barrett nicknamed him “Handy Andy”, and described how Andy expertly scaled a coconut palm to fix the wireless aerial.

Although they were apparently paid workers, the Dabah’s, and the Connolly’s who came after them, were still considered servants at Low Isles. In a post-expedition report, group leader Maurice Yonge wrote of the “efficiency” of these families, but also acknowledged that it was the “cheapness” (of their labour) that had contributed to the expedition’s success.

But it’s from visiting zoologist, Theo Roughley, that we learn what kind of meals the expeditioners ate, and in turn, deduce just how much work was involved for Grace Dabah, who was known in camp by the name “Mrs Handy”. Breakfast began with oatmeal, followed by eggs, boiled, fried, or scrambled (presumably cooked to order as each person preferred) and bacon, or sometimes corned beef. Roughley wrote:

“Mrs (H)Andy (she fully merits the “H”) cooks in the best English style, and her daughter, Edith, waits on the table. And this is no mean task, for there is a family of 18 to wait on.”

Cooking three meals a day for 18 people, with set meal times at 8am, 1pm and 6pm, would have kept Grace very busy indeed. Her daughter's help with serving meals and clearing the table once the meal was over was probably a necessity. It's also likely that a fire would have had to be maintained (perhaps by Andy) in order to do the cooking, which would have made it hot work for Grace and Edith.

Minnie and Claude Connolly and family. Photo: National Library of Australia.

All fresh food and drinking water had to be brought to Low Isles from the mainland by a motor launch. Charles Barrett wrote that the weekly provisions landed at Low Island included fresh meat, vegetables, fruit, and four dozen loaves of bread! A store contained tinned foods and other emergency rations, in case of bad weather. Zoologist, Sidnie Manton, wrote of occasionally catching fish in a fish trap, and that the “boys” – probably Paul or Harry (boat hands, also from Yarrabah) – sometimes speared coral reef fish; so fish must have been on the menu at least some of the time.

Minnie Connolly

At the end of October, the Dabah family returned to Yarrabah and the Connolly family succeeded them as domestic support for Low Isles. Minnie Connolly (probably then aged around 47) was cook, and her husband Claude Connolly was general camp hand. Two of their children, Teresa (10) and Stanley (5), accompanied them to Low Isles. Apart from a short holiday back at Yarrabah at Christmas, the Connolly's spent eight months at Low Isles. Three meals a day... prepared for anywhere between 12 and 20 people... every day for eight months. Minnie obviously had stamina.

Mattie Yonge, wife of Maurice Yonge, was the camp's official “housekeeper” and as such would have overseen the work of Grace and later Minnie. The modern usage of the word housekeeper tends to denote someone paid to do all the household cleaning, but in 1928 it meant that Mattie’s role entailed being in charge of any workers with menial roles, or, to use the terminology of the day – the servants. One of the responsibilities of being housekeeper was to order provisions and maintain stores, and dole out items that needed to be rationed, for example, tobacco. What this means is that both Minnie and Grace – as cooks – probably had little say over what meals they prepared. 

But it would have taken skill to prepare meals with limited fresh food and only basic pantry rations and Maurice Yonge wrote that “Minnie was a good cook… [and] was a good worker, and took on practically the entire expedition’s washing – a formidable undertaking.”

There must have been time to make a few luxuries though, and pudding often followed the evening meal, and cakes were made for special occasions. On 4 May, 1929, Sidnie Manton wrote in her diary:

"Had two birthday cakes, one made on the sly by Minnie, Sheina and Mrs Wills and another by Minnie after the arrival of eggs - a great surprise. The one without eggs was rather like fruit and toffee, but very good."

To celebrate Mattie Yonge's birthday later that month, the group enjoyed a "feast for tea", consisting of a meal without any reliance on tinned food, plus an iced cake with fruit salad, followed by some Edinburgh shortbread and chocolates.

These two Indigenous women - Grace Dabah and Minnie Connolly - both deserve to have their names remembered for their contribution to the success of the Great Barrier Reef Expedition 1928-1929.

Low Island, far North Queensland, 2022. Photo: Trisha Fielding.

You can read my eBook Expedition to the Great Barrier Reef: the story of a ground-breaking scientific mission to Low Isles, Queensland in 1928-1929, and an overview of its legacies, published by James Cook University Library, 2023, at https://jcu.pressbooks.pub/yonge/ 

Selected sources:

• Manton, Sidnie Milana. Sidnie Manton: Letters and Diaries: Expedition to The Great Barrier Reef 1928-1929. Independently Published, 2020.
• Sir Maurice Yonge papers. National Library of Australia.
• Yarrabah Baptisms 1891-1927, Register of Baptisms, Yarrabah Bellenden Kerr Aboriginal Mission, http://www.cifhs.com/qldrecords/locyarrabah.html
• Yonge, Charles Maurice. “The Great Barrier Reef Expedition, 1928 – 1929.” Reports of the Great Barrier Reef Committee 3, (1931): 1-25.
• Yonge, Charles Maurice. “Report by C. M. Yonge.” Papers of Sir Maurice Yonge, National Library of Australia.
• Yonge, Charles Maurice. A Year on the Great Barrier Reef. London: Putnam, 1930.

Original banner from Women of the North blog, by Ashley Fielding, BNewMediaArts (JCU)

The Hospital Under the Hill

In early 1942, news of the movements of Japanese Imperial forces caused considerable alarm for the people of North Queensland and northern Australia. On 19 February, the Australian mainland was directly threatened for the first time in the war. In a surprise attack on Darwin, 200 Japanese aircraft swept across the coast dropping bombs over the harbour and wharf; and then over the city itself, leaving a trail of death and destruction behind them.

Smoke billows from oil tanks, bombed during air raids on Darwin, 1942.
Photo: National Archives of Australia.

In Mount Isa, local authorities felt extremely vulnerable to an attack from Japan, and were certain that it was only a matter of time before a raid occurred there. The Mount Isa Hospital Board began formulating a plan to safeguard the patients and staff of the hospital in the event of an attack on Mount Isa. The Hospital’s Dr Ned Ryan approached Mount Isa Mines to garner support to construct an air raid shelter under the hill at the back of the hospital; with a view to fitting out the resultant tunnels as a functioning hospital.

Interior views of the restored Underground Hospital, 2022.
Photos: Trisha Fielding.

Mine management agreed to supply drills, compressors, tools, timber and explosives, though the Hospital Board would be required to pay for the explosives. (The Company was generous, but times were still tight — Mount Isa Mine had only just returned its first profit a few years earlier, in 1937). In addition to this support, the Company also promised that they would release Mine Foreman, Wally Onton, for a period of two weeks, to supervise the timbering and screening of the tunnels once they had been excavated.

One of two entrances to the Underground Hospital, 2022.
Photo: Trisha Fielding.

With the approval of Mount Isa Mines, Dr Ryan, together with Len Roles, Chairman of the Hospital Board, addressed a large gathering of miners as they went on— or came off— shift. They outlined their plan to excavate an air raid shelter in the hill behind the hospital. According to a Union Organiser, Mr Parker, who had been invited to be part of this delegation, it was impressed upon the men that the only way possible to build a suitable shelter was through their co-operation. And it was made clear that they would have to volunteer their labour. This meant that the work would have to be undertaken in their own time — after, or before — working their eight-hour shifts underground at the Mine. Mr Parker, quoted in The Worker in March 1942, said that “the men there and then agreed to give their wholehearted cooperation”.

Miners coming up from underground at the end of a shift, Mount Isa, c. 1935.
Photo: State Library of Queensland.

Keith Sue See was a mechanic with the Mine who looked after the compressors supplied by the Company for the construction of the Underground Hospital. He worked with Wally Onton, drilling, charging and firing the faces for the tunnels. In 2001, Mr Sue See recalled how Wally would tell him to “run like hell!” before the charges went off — when rocks, smoke and dust would come flying out of the tunnels. The miners coming off shift would muck out the drives ready for them to drill, charge and fire the next day. He noted that this work took “quite a few weeks”, and then after the mining was finished, the timbering was done, followed by the fitting out of all the cupboards, shelves, benches, beds/bunks, power and water. 

An E-shaped floor plan

Three parallel tunnels roughly 20
 metres long were driven into the face of the hill in an 
east-west alignment by drilling and blasting. A fourth
 tunnel, on a north-south alignment, connected the 
three parallels tunnels, which gave the air raid shelter
 an E-shaped floor plan. Internally, the underground 
hospital was timbered like a mine, using two different 
techniques. The north tunnel was heavily timbered 
with three-piece sets of sawn Oregon posts and caps 
24cm squared in sections, and top-lagged (ceiled)
 with hardwood planks resting on the caps. The rest
 of the shelter was lightly timbered with round logs of
 local Gidgyea timber — an extremely hard, heavy and
 durable wood. The walls of the tunnels were bare rock (a light-coloured shale) and the floor was left as bare earth. A narrow vertical shaft was placed at the end of the north tunnel, ostensibly for ventilation, but in the event of a bomb blast, could function as an escape route. 

Nurse Eileen Lister (later Richardson), stands next to the ladder at the foot of the ventilation shaft in the Underground Hospital, 1942.
Photo: MIMAG, December 1977.

The residents of Mount Isa must have felt at least a small sense of relief when their new air raid shelter was finished. Named the Onton Shelter, it was officially opened on 4 July 1942. It was lit by electricity and had been fitted out with an operating theatre, 32 bunks in two tiers, cots for children and cupboards for storage.

Entrance to Underground Hospital, Mount Isa, 2022.
Photo: Trisha Fielding.

Former Nurses recalled the Underground Hospital 

Alice Thatcher (nee Gralton) was a trainee nurse at the Mount Isa Hospital at the time the Onton Shelter was being built. In 1996, after she had heard that the Underground Hospital might be re- opened, she wrote to the Hospital Board noting that she remembered many practice drills. She stressed the importance senior hospital staff must have placed on those drills, writing: 

“The Air Raid siren would go off without any warning, sometimes at regular intervals; usually about once a week. We all knew what we had to do and if anything was forgotten we certainly never made the same mistake twice... Everything was checked regularly to make sure if needed there would be no hiccups. At the end of the first entrance there was a miniature theatre set up. Small sterilisers, dressings, instruments, sterilised linen, all in readiness if an emergency operation was needed. At the end of the third corridor an emergency Labour Ward was set up in the same way.” 

Eileen Richardson (nee Lister) was another nurse who worked at Mount Isa Hospital when the Underground Hospital was mined. In 1996, Mrs Richardson provided a detailed description of the internal fit-out of the shelter. There was a ventilation shaft and ladder in one corner of the back wall of the shelter. This was there in case the doors at the front of the tunnels had been damaged by a bomb blast and couldn’t be opened. 

Cupboards were stocked with first-aid packs, medicines, dressings, instruments needed for emergency operations, blankets, food and water. There was an operating table, complete with all the necessary equipment for administering anaesthetic; a steriliser, which was connected to electricity — but if that failed, could be heated using a primus stove. In the event of a fire, the shelter was equipped with cans of water, hoses, shovels and buckets of sand. 

A staged photograph, depicting hospital staff conducting a mock operation, in the operating theatre of the Underground Hospital, 1942.
L-R: Sr Dorothy Walsh, Matron Ida Glen, Dr Ned Ryan, Dr Reg Shortbridge. The 'patient' was Nurse Eileen Lister.
Photo: MIMAG, December 1977.

Mercifully, the Underground Hospital never had to be used for its intended purpose. Alice Thatcher recalls using it to catch a few hours’ rest between shifts. It was quiet, and the temperature inside the tunnels was (and still is) much cooler than the temperature outside. “During the Summer months we nurses, after working night duty, would sleep during the day in the shelter... It was our only way of escaping the heat,” Mrs Thatcher said.

“I’m glad we never had to use it as it was a long haul from the hospital to the shelter as we found out when we had air raid practices and had to take patients up on stretchers.” — Eileen Richardson

An entirely civilian initiative 

Unlike other speedily completed wartime infrastructure throughout North Queensland, such as roads and airfields, the military were not involved with the construction or the operation of Mount Isa’s Underground Hospital in any way. In his 1997 Conservation Strategy report, historian Dr Peter Bell stressed this point, writing: 

“The Mount Isa Underground Hospital was an entirely civilian initiative, involving only the District Hospital and Mount Isa Mines, and it was probably finished or very nearly so before the first American troops arrived in Mount Isa. Neither US nor Australian armies ever played any part in the running of the civilian hospital.” 

The Underground Hospital was a remarkable achievement. A shining example of community spirit. One scribe, known as Estee, writing in MIMAG in January 1948, neatly encapsulated the achievement, with this summary: 

“It stands as a monument to the men of Mount Isa; a monument to untiring effort; a monument to the unselfish spirit which prevailed at a time when no man knew what the next day held for Mount Isa, or for that matter Australia.”