See the sea: Dromana (1871), by James Howe Carse depicts a haughty illustration of colonial life, recording the boats’ coming and goings.
MARK ASHKANASY
Beneath the surface of Samuel Elyard’s meticulously rendered and seemingly dangerous watercolour painting Burning of the Barque “India” off Greenock, are a thousand stories waiting to be told.
Set in the troubled waters of the Atlantic, some 1200 nautical miles off Rio de Janeiro, the painting depicts a famous 1841 maritime disaster.
It started when a candle accidentally fell onto some spilt rum, immediately igniting a fire. The flames spread with such rapidity that all efforts to extinguish the blaze were unavailing.
Elyard’s painting captures the wild scene with maximum impact. Passengers cling to ropes, in horror, hoping to get a position on the lifeboats, which valiantly struggle against the headwind.
In the background, there is a French whaling vessel, the Roland, which, according to a newspaper report in the Port Phillip Gazette, was just nine miles from the disaster. The ship sails calmly through the seas, clouds opening up, beaming sporadic rays of sunshine.
Excellently displayed in a large exhibition at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (MPRG), the painting stands as a reminder of the extreme conditions that many faced when travelling to Australia.
Sea of Dreams: The Lure of Port Phillip Bay records the illustrious history of the bay in five overlapping and interconnected themes – from its first known exploration in 1802 to the emergence of Melbourne as an economic and cultural powerhouse in the 1850s and the massive impact this had on the environment.
It also pays some attention to Aboriginal history, and the destructive effect of European settlement on tribes that had lived undisturbed in the region for thousands of years.
Mornington resident Robyn Randles has a great affiliation with the painting. Her great-great-grandmother, Agnes Robertson, was just six months old when she boarded the fateful ship in Greenock, Scotland.
As the fire took hold, Agnes was thrown from the sinking ship into a lifeboat and was separated from her mother and father. Along with the rest of the 176 survivors, she was picked up by the Roland and they eventually landed in Rio de Janeiro.
Agnes’ parents spent six weeks looking for their baby daughter before being reunited. Together they sailed on the ship Grindlay, which arrived in Melbourne on October 22, 1841.
“I first came across Agnes’ story a couple of years ago when I was researching my family genealogy,” says Randles. “I had only ever seen the painting in books where the reproduction wasn’t great. I wasn’t able to see the French flag on the whaler boat, so I always assumed she was saved by pirates.”
Randles was “shocked” when she saw the missing painting in real life. She explains how it finally pieced together all the puzzles of the story.
Rickett’s Point Beaumaris (1890), by Charles Conder.
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“It’s an amazing story, a pure fluke; and that ship was full of them,” says Randles. “Agnes went on to have 11 children and become an important person in the community. Her husband, James Moodie, was the shire councillor of Kyneton. And her grandson, Eric Moodie, the chief architect of the Commonwealth Department of Housing, was my father. I think it’s amazing that she survived, and was able to keep the stories living on and on.”
MPRG director Jane Alexander says the exhibition has conjured many personal stories from the public.
“Lots of people have been coming in to find out more about their forebears,” she says. “We have been accumulating lots of names and most of them are happy to talk about their own personal family stories and the successes and disasters of what happened.
“Port Phillip Bay was the gateway for so many people who chose to come to Australia. My maternal forebears all came out here in the 1840s, ’50s and ’60s, and one thing they all had in common was they were searching for a better life.”
Diary entries by immigrants describe long, arduous voyages across the world, a frightening passage into the Heads, then elation when they approached the shore and saw the rich flora and fauna of the hinterland. They had never seen a bigger harbour. The dream for many had come true.
From Shortland’s Bluff, later to be renamed Queenscliff, Governor Charles La Trobe wrote in a letter dated October 30, 1853: “My dear wife, yesterday and today I see you at every turn – on the beach, on the hill at the lighthouse, on the set of our pretty cottage.”
The exhibition also explores the bay’s financial growth, revealing how early technology, agriculture and commercialisation influenced the experience of the bayside haunts.
Unlike Botany Bay, Melbourne was an economic proposition, and was developed not as a penal colony, but as a place for business.
With the 1850s goldmining boom, Melbourne experienced enormous wealth and Port Phillip underwent a period of rapid and far-reaching change.
The bayside became a place for leisure. Affluent day trippers and holidaymakers would flock by paddle steamers to places of extraordinary beauty – Queenscliff, Sorrento, Geelong, Williamstown.
Slumbering Sea, Mentone (1887), by Tom Roberts.
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In the artwork Dromana (1871), James Howe Carse depicts a haughty illustration of colonial life, recording the boats’ coming and goings. In the far distance you can see small communities dotted around the bay.
In the foreground is an early version of the couta boat, renowned for its speed and agility in shallow water. There are also two sailing boats, which were part of the mosquito fleet used to transport produce to Port Melbourne.
In the centre is a tug – a small, clinker-built iron paddle steamer – which would have been constructed in English shipyards in 1867. It would have been primarily used to tow large sailing vessels from Port Phillip Heads to the deep water port at Hobson’s Bay.
The senior curator of the exhibition, Rodney James, says this is one of the most important works of the exhibition because it ties together the main themes of the bay – trade and commerce, European settlement and recreation.
“The painting reveals a great period of time, when people were going to the length and breadth of the bay to enjoy new and fun experiences,” says James. “If you get close to figures you can see the absolute sheer delight on their faces at the boat coming in. Once the boat would have arrived they would have been taken in a little horse and buggy to the various guest houses.”
Dromana is one of Carse’s largest and most accomplished works. Commercially printed by Charles Netteton, a leading photographer of the day, the work was strangely not exhibited in Australia. James believes it would have been either commissioned directly or was held on to by the artist so he could take it back to Scotland to sell and promote the proud lifestyle of the colonial settlers.
The bay was also a place for intense reflection and creativity. In Slumbering Sea, Mentone (1887), renowned artist Tom Roberts depicts an illusion of isolation and individualism. The woman in the foreground is seated in a pristine white dress with a black sash and a white hat. She directs our attention to the activity at the water’s edge, where another woman, possibly her sister, greets a paddleboat holding two figures dressed in a genteel manner.
The whole layout of the painting is inviting. The translucent stillness of the seawater, the sheltering cliff face and the sunlight all accentuate the exquisiteness of this relaxing summer day. The people, even the dog, are at ease with the environment, using it solely for leisure.
“Roberts was a true storyteller,” says James. “In this work there is a lovely human connection with the bay, and way he does that formally is by the use of banding which links them all. He is a master of giving a compositional narrative unit to the works.”
Other paintings that explore this theme of leisure include the summer-scented Rickett’s Point and Sorrento paintings (1888-90) by Charles Conder and works by Eugene von Guerard, Arthur Streeton, Walter Withers and a particularly haunting depiction of St Kilda Pier by Ugo Catani.
Encompassing paintings, sketches, lithographs and engravings, the exhibition tells a rich collective history of the bay.
“There is something about the universal appeal of the water and our beaches,” says Alexander. “You probably equate beaches with all the positive times in your life – the times when you were with people you wanted to spend your time with – and Port Phillip Bay is a really significant expanse of water that has touched the lives of the vast majority of people living in Victoria, even Australia.”
Sea of Dreams is just one of a two-part exhibition. The second part, covering 1915 to the present, is about three years away.
“We always envisaged it would be a two-part exhibition because it was just too big to put in one exhibition,” says Alexander. “I think it’s really important to inform and educate the public, in a nice, non-schoolie way, and I think through art we are able to do this.”
» Sea of Dreams: The Lure of Port Phillip Bay 1830-1914 runs until February 19 at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Civic Reserve, corner Mornington-Tyabb and Dunns roads, Mornington. Admission: $4 (adults) $2 (concession). Phone: 5975 4395.