Mary Gilmore’s letter [by Mary Gilmore, 7 March 1932]

[Editor: This letter from Mary Gilmore was published in The Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW), 7 March 1932.]

Mary Gilmore’s letter

From Mary Gilmore:—

There may be some residents who remember my writings in the “Silver Age,” which at the time I write of was published at Silverton by Messrs. Thistleton and Taylor.

I remember Wonnaminta Station and the Kennedys and how they came as a host to town. I also knew the Smiths of Mutooroo and Keith and Ross when they were little boys.

I was the second woman assistant teacher under Joseph Watts at Silverton.

Wyman Brown was warden. Penrose, the brewer, was Mayor (if there was a mayor), Edward La Barte Church of England clergyman, Crommelin stock inspector, and de Baun just going. Tantram just came to the big hotel, then a one-story place, I think.

The ivy that later spread from house to house on the Silverton to Broken Hill field all grew from some sent me from Wilcannia. Mrs. Curnow planted some of it, watered it with cold porridge, soup, tea, or anything wet (water being too scarce to be given daily then) and people came twenty and thirty miles to see it when the sprigs were a couple of feet high. She was offered £1 for a sprig and refused it. Later on it was sold at 1/6 and 1/ an inch or two on behalf of the Silverton Hospital, and brought in about £30— so Mrs. Curnow wrote me in after years.

As there may be some of the children I taught in Silverton now grey-headed readers of your paper, I have told you all this to awaken interest, and perhaps get a paragraph of remembrance. I am not now on the “Worker.” I left in 1931. My next book is just ready to go to the publisher. If you have room for them, the lot are “Marri’d and Other Verses.” “Hound Of the Road” (prose), “The Tilted Cart,” “The Wild Swan,” “The Worker Cook Book,” “The Passionate Heart,” and “The Rue Tree.” The new book is not yet named, and is to be followed by “Recollections,” and then another on “New Australia” (in Paraguay).

Source:
The Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW), 7 March 1932, p. 2

[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]