Jean Devanny - author and political activist

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 24 August 2020.

Jean Devanny was an author, political activist, feminist, socialist, and naturalist (and a whole lot more besides). She was born in New Zealand in 1894 and migrated to Australia with her husband and children in 1929. A member of the Communist Party, she was very active in the labour movement and often spoke at public rallies and meetings.

Author and activist, Jean Devanny, no date. Photo: James Cook University Special Collections NQID 13768. Used with permission.

Devanny was also a prolific author. She published around 20 books (both fiction and non-fiction), as well as many short stories and articles. Some of her novels were controversial because they were considered by the standards of the day to be too explicit, even 'indecent'. Her 1926 novel The Butcher Shop was banned in Australia for many years.

Jean Devanny speaking in Sydney, 1930s. Photo: James Cook University Special Collections NQID 13815. Used with permission.

Devanny saw her novels as a tool to convey her political views and one of her main concerns was the position of women (in society). Devanny's theme in The Butcher Shop highlighted the economic and sexual inequality of women within marriage. She believed only a socialist state could offer true independence for women. Another of her novels - Sugar Heaven (published in 1936) – looked at the role of women during a labour strike in the sugar-cane fields of North Queensland.

Devanny was extremely active in literary circles and was a friend and correspondent of writer and political activist, Miles Franklin. Franklin (whose best-known work was the book My Brilliant Career), left an endowment that provided for an annual literary award - the prestigious Miles Franklin Award. Other literary friends included Katharine Susannah Prichard, Marjorie Barnard, Mary Gilmore, and Nettie Palmer.

Before settling in Townsville in 1950, Devanny had spent time living and working in north Queensland (particularly in and around the Cairns area) at various times in the 1930s and 1940s, and had developed a friendship with Cairns doctor and naturalist - Hugo Flecker - who introduced her to the North Queensland Naturalists' Club. She spent some time living on Green Island in a makeshift camp, investigating the flora and fauna of the Great Barrier Reef. And in late 1944, Devanny accompanied Flecker, and ornithologist Stanley White, on a three-day trip to Woody Island, off Port Douglas, to observe the abundant bird life. (As an aside, the scientific name for the box jellyfish - Chironex fleckeri - was named after Flecker, and the Flecker Botanic Gardens, in Cairns, also bears his name.)

L-R: Stanley White, Dr Hugo Flecker, Jean Devanny, on Woody Island, 1944. Photographer: Michael Sharland. Photo courtesy James Cook University Special Collections NQID 13965. Used with permission.

James Cook University Library holds the Jean Devanny Archive. Donated to the library in 1969 by Devanny's daughter, the archive contains personal letters and papers, lectures and speech notes. It also includes an unpublished, typewritten manuscript by Devanny, entitled ‘Life on a Barrier Reef Island’ or ‘Island Interlude’. It was written in the 1950s, when Devanny spent some time living on Magnetic Island. (She spent several months in 1950 and 1951 there.) It’s essentially a memoir, in which she vividly describes Island life – the rugged landscape, the diverse vegetation, the wildlife, and the people she befriends.

Jean Devanny (at right) with a friend, on Magnetic Island, no date. Photo: James Cook University Special Collections NQID 13796. Used with permission.

The manuscript is different to her other books because Devanny writes so joyfully about the Island, and of the people she encountered. Perhaps it’s her description of place that makes this manuscript so fascinating. When she first set foot on the island, she was struck by the 'massive blocks of jagged granite, plinth-like, rounded or squarish, many of them certainly hundreds of tons in weight', piled high, one on top of the other.

But even more thrilling to Devanny, than the 'magnificence of rock formation' and the 'lavishness of vegetation', was the abundance of bird life. She wrote:

Currawongs, sulphur-crested cockatoos, friar birds and peewits, united in cacophonous cawing, screeching, guggling, piercing, piping and whistling... The eye took in dozens of them in one sweep.

Whereas Devanny's published books (her novels at least) are full of conflict and angst, and she herself was described as fiery and agitational, 'Life on a Barrier Reef Island' or 'Island Interlude', celebrates the sheer pleasure she found in the gloriously abundant natural setting of Magnetic Island.

Jean Devanny died in Townsville in 1962.

Portrait of Jean Devanny as a young woman, no date. Photo: James Cook University Special Collections NQID 13767. Used with permission.

Sources and further reading:

• Life on a Barrier Reef Island or Island Interlude. Unpublished manuscript by Jean Devanny. © Deborah Hurd, Digital version 2020. Available at: https://nqheritage.jcu.edu.au/756/
• https://jculibrarynews.blogspot.com/2020/05/50-treasures-life-on-barrier-reef.html
• https://jculibrarynews.blogspot.com/2018/02/special-collections-fossickings-50.html
• Ferrier, Carole, Jean Devanny: Romantic Revolutionary, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1999
• Devanny, Jean, Point of Departure: the autobiography of Jean Devanny, edited by Carole Ferrier, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld., 1986
• Store, Ron, 'Devanny, Jane (Jean) (1894–1962)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1981, accessed online 13 August 2020 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/devanny-jane-jean-5968

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

Mary Jane Derrer - M.M.

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 11 November 2018.

Late in the evening of 22 July 1917, four Australian nurses were working at the 2nd Australian Casualty Clearing Station, in Trois Arbes, France, when it was bombed by enemy aircraft. In an act of great bravery, Sisters Mary Jane Derrer, Clare Deacon, Dorothy Cawood and Alice Ross-King heroically rescued patients trapped in burning hospital tents. Witness accounts describe nurses running to tents shattered by bombs to rescue patients, either carrying them to safety or placing tables over patients' beds in an effort to protect them. All four women were subsequently awarded the Military Medal for their heroism. It was the first time the British award for 'bravery and devotion under fire' had been bestowed on nurses in any theatre of war.

Sister Mary Jane Derrer, M.M. Photo: © Imperial War Museum (WWC D4-1-14)

Commanding Officer, Lt. Col. J. Ramsay Webb, recorded the basic details of the incident in an Appendix to the unit's official War Diary.

I have to report the following incident at this Station. On the 22nd instant at about 10.25pm an enemy aeroplane flying low over the Station dropped two bombs. The first fell at the rear of Ward C.5 blowing a hole in the ground about 15ft in diameter and 6ft deep in the centre. Ward C.5 was made up of 4 small hospital marquees arranged in a square. Of these one was completely destroyed and the three others rendered unfit for service. Some equipment was destroyed. The mortuary is also wrecked, the roof and two sides being blown out. Two patients and two orderlies were killed and many of the men were wounded. The second bomb dropped outside the southern boundary of the Camp near the Cemetery. The total casualties were 4 killed and 15 wounded. - Lt. Col. J. Ramsay Webb

Sister Alice Ross-King recorded a personal account of the bombing in her diary, which provides us with an insight into what Sister Mary Derrer may have experienced on the night of the bombing. Here, Sister Ross-King describes running along the 'duckboards' towards one of the hospital tents, which contained a patient named Gilmore, who was suffering from pneumonia.

I raced on and the next thing I knew I went over into a bomb crater. I shall never forget the awful climb on hands & feet out of that hole about 5ft deep greasy clay & blood tho I did not then know that it was blood. It was right in front of Gilmore's tent - which was 3 marquees joined together, with about 46 stretcher cases in it. The tent had collapsed and though I shouted nobody answered me or I could hear nothing for the roar of planes and Archies - I seemed to be the only living thing about. - Sister Alice Ross-King

Sister Mary Jane Derrer, of the 2nd Australian Casualty Clearing Station. Photo: Australian War Memorial

Mackay-born Mary Jane Derrer trained as a nurse at the Mackay General Hospital between 1910 and 1913. In 1915, at the age of 24, she enlisted for the war effort and saw service in Egypt, England and France. She returned to Australia in September 1917 and was discharged in December.  She re-enlisted in March 1918 and subsequently saw service in India. She returned to Australia in November 1919 and for a short time nursed at the Kangaroo Point Military Hospital. She continued her profession as a nurse in Mackay at the Lister Private Hospital.

References:

• Unit Diary - No. 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station - July 1917, Australian War Memorial
• WWI Diaries of Sister Alice Ross-King, Australian War Memorial
• Service Record of Mary Jane Derrer, National Archives of Australia
• Queensland Times, 2 February 1918, p. 8

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