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lack of food and the horses were failing; one had to be shot. The going was difficult, soft deep sand, and within
forty-eight kilometres of their destination a range of hills barred their way; only bright moonlight enabled them to
negotiate its rocky gorges. Around 7 pm on 14 May 1883, exactly one month since they had set out, they rode their
stumbling thirst-crazed horses down from the range and on to the Overland Telegraph Line.
Telegraphists Bole and Goss were surprised to have visitors ride in from the east and amazed to find a woman
in their company. Telegraph stations were spaced at 240-kilometre intervals north and south, but east and west the
virgin bush stretched away for hundreds of kilometres. The telegraphists’ surprise would have been greater had
they known that Caroline was at the time three months pregnant.
Two days later Favenc and Crawford left to explore the McArthur River area with the fittest horses while the
Creaghes took the weaker animals the 560 kilometres to Katherine. Arriving there three weeks later they awaited
the return of Favenc and Crawford, then travelled to Southport by horse and buggy, boarded a ship and returned
to Sydney. Caroline’s second son was born in north Sydney on 19 January 1884; she named him Gerald Harry.
The family moved to a dairy farm at Nankine Creek near Rockhampton in Queensland. Later Harry became
manager of Apis Creek cattle station. On 6 August 1886 he was accidentally killed when a horse that he was
breaking ran into a tree. Caroline was at that time five months pregnant and gave birth on 26 December 1886 to
another son whom she named Harry Percy Archer Butler.
To keep herself and her sons she opened a guesthouse in Rockhampton. Later she went to Tooloombah Station
as a housekeeper. On 10 December 1889 she married Joseph Jupp Smallman Barnett, manager of Marlborough
cattle station. Joseph was born in Grantchester, England, on 7 March 1849. He came to Australia in 1864 in the
sailing ship The Golden City with his father Thomas Smallman Barnett and his two brothers Thomas and John Venn
Barnett.
Caroline and Joseph lived on Marlborough for many years. Caroline had six more children; twins Eric John and
Lionel Tom were born on 1 November 1890, then two daughters, Mavis Lilla on 11 December 1893 and Moira Jessie
on 5 January 1896, followed by Harold Douglas, 6 January 1899, and finally Evelyn Roy, 6 May 1902.
On 26 April 1899 Caroline boarded the SS Perthshire with five of her children, the youngest of whom was five
months old, on an intended visit to New Zealand. Gales sprang up and two days later the ship’s tail end shaft broke
and she would not steer even under full sail. For seven weeks she drifted helplessly away from the shipping lanes.
By this time Caroline was extremely worried for her baby, whose supply of condensed milk was nearly finished.
Repairs were affected by Perthshire engineers only just in time to prevent the ship being cast on to the rocky
coastline of Norfolk Island. Perthshire was later taken in tow by the SS Talune. Safely back in Sydney, Caroline
decided not to continue her journey.
In 1905, to assist with the expenses of the children’s education she again opened a guesthouse in Rockhampton.
Joseph later retired there owing to ill health. In 1920 they moved to Sydney and when Joseph died in 1922 she
spent some years in Roseville, and then settled in Mosman. She made her last trip to England in 1938 to visit her
youngest sister, Minnie Duff, whose husband, the Honourable Charles de Vere Duff, was a brother-in-law to the
Princess Royal. Caroline was then seventy-eight years old. At the age of 84 she slipped on a mat on a polished floor
breaking a hip and did not recover. She died in Sydney on 11 November 1944.
E Favenc, General Report on Country in the Northern Territory with Sketch Map; Sydney Morning Herald, 20 June 1899; E C Barnett, diary
in possession of Mr E R Barnett, Newport, New South Wales.
W J M MAFF, Vol 1.BATTARBEE, REX (1893–1973), artist, was born in Warnambool, Victoria, in 1893, the son of dairy farmers.
Until the First World War, Battarbee was occupied in helping to manage the farm. In his spare time he practised
painting watercolours, taking informal lessons from his sister Florinda, who had received formal training. This was
the only training Battarbee ever had in watercolour painting.
In 1915 Battarbee joined the Australian Imperial Force and served in France before receiving severe injuries
during the battle for Bullecourt. He spent four years in hospitals as a result of those injuries and even when he left
hospital he was unable to return to farm work. However, upon turning to his painting as an alternative, Battarbee
found that a living could be made from it. He continued to paint for the next 10 years, travelling around the
mid-west of New South Wales and Victoria painting local landscapes and gaining rapid recognition for his work.
In 1928, with fellow artist John A Gardner, Battarbee made his first trip into Central Australia. The two painted
several landscapes there, but had to return to New South Wales because of financial difficulties.
In 1934 the two returned and continued to paint landscapes. They held an exhibition at Hermannsburg Lutheran
Aboriginal Mission in that year and received an enthusiastic response from the Aboriginal population. Battarbee
suggested that the Aboriginal response was due to most of the exhibits being depictions of local landscapes;
land which was both familiar and significant to all the Aborigines at Hermannsburg. In the same year, Battarbee
won the Centenary Prize in Melbourne for the ‘Best Watercolour Painted in the Last Two Years’.
Battarbee returned again to Hermannsburg and Central Australia in 1936, this time alone, eager to teach the
Aborigines of Hermannsburg how to paint in a European manner. He later said that his reason for painting in
Central Australia was because the colours that could be found scattered throughout New South Wales and Victoria
were all in the one place here, and the clear, hazeless air gave them a picturesque beauty that was not to be seen
anywhere else. Battarbee also had a high regard for the people of Hermannsburg and, of all the Aborigines he had
encountered, was most fascinated with the Arunta (also Aranda) tribe.
Albert Namatjira came from that tribe, and when Battarbee came to the mission for the third time,
Pastor F W Albrecht allowed Namatjira to travel as camel boy on an expedition in search of new subjects to