Gertrude Byrne married George Simmonds in 1933 and they made their home in Goulburn. They had three girls, Joyce, Gwen and Dorothea. My mother was in the middle. Dorothea’s recent passing prompted me to write something of the Simmonds family’s background and early life. There are many gaps in this story, but here is what I know.

The passing of Dorothea Mabel Walker (Simmonds)

On 1 June 2023 my father, stepmother and brother Stephen joined our cousins Wendy, Susan and Wayne to farewell their mother, my auntie, on her final journey. Dorothea Mabel Walker died at Banksia Lodge in Broulee, on the NSW South Coast, on 29 May 2023 at the grand age of 85. She was born Dorothea Simmonds but growing up we always knew her as “Auntie Dorothy” which later in life somehow got shortened to “Auntie Dot.” In fact it wasn’t until early last year when we were visiting her and Ronnie at their home in Broulee on the south coast of NSW that she informed us, with a twinkle in her eye, “My name is Dorothea,” and when I thought she was joking, pretending to be grander than she was, she insisted, and of course she was right. But I never heard my long departed mother, her older sister, call her anything but Dorothy or Dottie or simply “Dot.” Maybe Mum didn’t even know…?

Speaking of names, Dot was a Simmonds at birth, a Walker when she passed, and a Murdoch in between, since her first husband was Harold Murdoch, and all her three children were born Murdochs, though only Wayne still bears that name, since both Wendy and Susan have taken on their respective husbands’ family names. Harold Murdoch, or “Bibby” as his children always called him, passed away in 2014 at the age of 82, though he and Dot divorced many years earlier, when Wendy , Susan and Wayne were teenagers. But that is another story.

It was not in Broulee that we stood in the chilly wind last Thursday as Auntie Dot’s coffin was lowered into the earth, to lie beside her mother and father, Gertie and George Simmonds. Rather we were in Goulburn, where Dot spent the first half of her life. The old Goulburn cemetery lies to the right of the main road when driving down the old Hume Highway into Goulburn from Sydney, and being on the side of a hill it commands a view over the whole town. The Baptist section stands highest of all the denominational divisions, and until a few years ago, according to Wendy, was overgrown with grass and weeds. Now that it has been tidied up it has pride of place looking over all the other graves to the city beyond, which lies in a shallow valley between the low hills of the Southern Tablelands of NSW, north of Canberra.

Dorothea’s funeral was conducted in a little chapel at a different graveyard on the other side of town, before the coffin was loaded into a hearse and transported to where she was laid to rest. Wendy, Dot’s oldest daughter, asked me to speak at the funeral, to give some historical background to the lives of Dorothea, Gwenneth and Joyce, the Goulburn girls. After some introductory words, I was called to speak first, before Wendy gave the eulogy proper. I had written some notes about the Simmonds girls ancestry for Wendy to include in her speech, but she asked me instead to read it out myself. What follows is a reworking of that story.

New Australians

Joyce, Gwen and Dorothy Simmonds were all born in Goulburn, in 1935, 1937 and 1938 respectively, the three daughters of George, a gardener, and Gertrude. The family’s history was only recently Australian; their father was an English migrant, and on their mother’s side their grandparents were Irish. But the three little girls only ever knew one of their grandparents face to face, and that was Susie Byrne, their mother’s mother. Their other grandmother, Mabel Simmonds, was in England, and though she planned to come to Australia “when the war is over,” sadly she became unwell and died suddenly of breast cancer in 1946 before ever she left England’s shores. I have some letters from her to Gertie written during the last year of her life which tell of her plans: she clearly loved her three unmet granddaughters so far away in Australia, and was looking forward to meeting them. Sad that it was not to be.

Mabel’s husband, George Simmonds, had died in England in 1928, long before his son had married and had a family, so Mum, Joyce and Dot never knew him. They heard stories of course – their grandfather had been a market gardener in the west of London and had been a veteran of the Great War. He had died, so my mother believed, of lung disease caused by mustard gas in the trenches, though I have found no evidence of him having even been in the trenches during the war – he was in a transport company and was responsible for horses, and later motor transport, so probably rarely carried a gun. He was involved in the Salonica campaign in 1916, lesser known than the Western Front, and after an illness had been transferred back to England, only to be sent to Dublin for the last years of the war, where the Irish fight for independence had begun, necessitating the presence of the British Army to quell the rebellion (ultimately a lost cause, as we all know). But even if old George Simmonds had not been a victim of gas warfare, he was certainly traumatised by his military service, and the only photo I have of him, taken in hospital, shows a broken man. His son George, the girls’ father, who left England only four years after his father was demobbed, remembered that man. He had been only nine when his father went to war.

The girls’ Irish grandfather, Susie’s husband George Byrne (all the men in the Simmonds girls’ young life seemed to be named George) also died, in 1929, before Gertie and George met and married. Their Irish grandmother, Susie, was the only one of their grandparents they ever met. She lived in Sydney, and had a holiday home in Ocean Beach, near Ettalong on the Central Coast of NSW. A holiday home seemed very exotic to the Simmonds girls, who, being children of the Depression years, were very poor. From time to time when they were very small they had the chance to spend time with their grandmother and their spinster aunts at the house by the beach, but it was a long train trip from Goulburn, so their visits there were few.

Susie Byrne had lived a fascinating life, and would tell the girls stories of Co Kerry in Ireland, where she had been born in 1861, but also of North America, where she had spent the majority of her youth, before the family came to Australia. Susie’s parents, William and Mary Hickson, had migrated from Ireland to Boston Massachusetts, in 1865, but after 12 years there had been persuaded to return to Kerry and migrate a second time, to Australia, where all the rest of the Hickson clan had settled. Susie was 16 when she arrived with her siblings and parents in Sydney in 1878. She married George Byrne, who came out from Kerry some years later, in 1885. George’s parents had known Susie’s parents in Kerry.

George and Susie Byrne had six children, five of whom were girls. Their one son was named William – “Uncle Will” to Joyce, Gwen and Dorothy. There had been one other brother but he died in infancy. The Byrnes were an odd family really, largely because they belonged to a rather conservative Christian denomination (some would say sect), which was known as the Brethren church. That might explain why three of the Byrne girls never married; there were few men around who measured up to their rather austere religious expectations. Actually, there were few men around at all in the years after WW1. But two of the daughters did marry, the first Connie, who married an Englishman called Thomas Walmsley, and some years later Gertrude, who married another Englishman, my grandfather, who like his father was named George Frederick David Simmonds. Both of these marriages ended sadly prematurely. But it is Gertrude and George’s story that concerns us here.

Mixed marriage

I don’t now how my grandparents met. What I do know is that they married in Queanbeyan, near Canberra, in 1933. Gertie’s younger sister Isobel had moved to this little country town near Canberra around the time their father died – in 1929 – and was working as a secretary. In 1933 Gert and her sisters Kathleen and Frances were still living at home in Epping (Sydney) with their widowed mother. Connie had already married by that time, and also lived in Sydney. Will was living at home with his sisters and mother in 1930 and was working as a taxi driver, but he moved out shortly after. It was the Depression and needing to find work he drifted around NSW and Queensland.

George, on the other hand, was working as a station hand on a property 500km west of Queanbeyan. How did he come to meet Gertrude? I can only imagine that Gert was visiting her sister Isabel, and that George fortuitously happened to be in Queanbeyan at the same time. Had Will Byrne, Gert’s brother, met George during his wandering around rural NSW looking for work? Perhaps he had told George about his four unmarried sisters, and offered to arrange an introduction, if only George could get himself to Queanbeyan. Maybe Will had Isabel in mind, the youngest of the sisters, who was closer to George’s age. But perhaps when they arrived in Queanbeyan Gertrude and her two other sisters were there visiting, and George fell for Gertie, and Isabel was not interested.

Or perhaps George had another friend who he was visiting in Queanbeyan, and the address which is recorded for Isabel in Queanbeyan (Morrisett Street) was actually a boarding house where George’s friend was also living. The electoral records for 1933 record Kathleen and Frances but not Gertrude at the same address in Queanbeyan as Isabel, which is odd since the same electoral record has Kathleen and Frances listed in Epping. Gertrude does not appear at all in the electoral record for 1933. There is today a big old house at the end of Morisett Street in Queanbeyan, now a Thai restaurant, but it could have been a boarding house in the 1930s. A boarding house could certainly have been the scene of a chance encounter between the English station hand and the four sisters. George may have been staying there too. Whatever the truth, and it is likely we will never know, it seems that there was a lightning romance and on 15 July 1933 they were married. Gertie was 32 and George a month off 28.

I imagine the whole family gathered in Queanbeyan for Gertie’s marriage to George, except perhaps for Connie, who had three small children. On their marriage certificate George’s occupation is listed as “station hand,” and his address is Booligal, Hay. According to the electoral roll for that year he was working on Roeta Station. I have a sense that their marriage was not wholly approved of by Gertie’s three sisters. George was English, and Church of England to boot, which the Brethren saw as not much better than being Roman Catholic; they had already lost one sister (Connie) to the established church, from which their parents had defected many years before, in Ireland, and now a second one was “going back.” Furthermore George was four years younger than Gertie, though she may not have mentioned this to her sisters. Worst of all, he was a smoker!

After they were married, for reasons which are unclear, they made their home not in Hay, where George was working, but in Goulburn. Electoral records show that Isabel was living in Goulburn in 1934, though her address is different to that of George and Gertie. It may well have been that George continued to work on the station at Booligal during the first years of their marriage, but that accommodation for a young married couple on the farm out west was not available. If Isabel was moving to Goulburn for work, it made sense for Gertie to do the same so the sisters could be close to each other while George was away. Better than moving back to Sydney to her mother. George listed his official address as Goulburn and travelled there as often as he was able. Australia was emerging from the Great Depression and work was hard to find, so it would not be surprising if he held on to his job for fear of not finding another.

The electoral roll for 1935 lists Isobel at the same address as George and Gertie, 208 Bourke Street. However, Joyce’s birth certificate in June that year indicates that her parents were living in a house called “The Glebe” in Clinton Street. I have tried to find a house by that name in that street, but have thus far been unsuccessful. It does not appear in a comprehensive list of old Goulburn house names in the Goulburn library archives. It does sound rather grand – “The Glebe” – not really in keeping with the economic reality of George and Gertie’s life. Could it also have been a boarding house? Or had George finally found work as a gardener for a wealthy family, and the job included accommodation? And what of Isobel? Did she move there with them? I have no way of knowing. The electoral roll for the year after, 1936, shows that George, Gert and Joyce were still at The Glebe, but Isobel lived at another address. Interestingly, however, that same record shows that another relative, Jack Simmonds, George’s younger brother, was living with them by that time. He had come out to Australia three years after George, and had also been working up and down the country as a farm hand. I met “Uncle Jack” once, when I was a child, but I never knew to ask him then about his experiences in the 1930s. He did tell a little about his childhood in England. But that is another story.

Goulburn girls

Joyce was born on 28 June 1935, two years after George and Gertie tied the knot. However, she was not their first child. According to Joyce’s birth certificate, there was a son born earlier, presumably in 1934. The document states bluntly, “Previous children of marriage – one male deceased.” My mother never spoke of this older brother of hers, and Dorothy only mentioned him to Wendy later in life, much to Wendy’s surprise. Was he stillborn? Or did he succumb to a disease in infancy, as so many infants did in the days before antibiotics? I have found no death certificate, and there is no grave that I know of. Gert must have been extremely thankful that Isabel was living closed by when she lost her firstborn. With George so far away, perhaps Isabel moved in with Gert when she found she was pregnant for a second time.

My mother Gwen was born in January 1937 when Joyce was 18 months old. Dorothy came along a year or so later in 1938. When Mum was born the family lived in Combermere Street, so they had clearly moved from The Glebe. I know nothing really about those early years in the family’s life.

WW2 broke out at the end of 1939 and George must have been distressed as he thought of his widowed mother and his youngest brother Fred, who were living in western London during the Blitz. I have wondered why George didn’t volunteer – he was 34 when Britain declared war on Germany, so not old. Perhaps he felt the responsibility of his wife and three little girls too keenly. And he didn’t want to lose his job. He was a farmer at heart, not a soldier. His place was in primary production on the land. Perhaps he hated the idea of war, having grown up during the First World War and seen his father return from active service a broken man. Gertie would not have wanted him to go with three daughters under five. Many Brethren were pacifists, though possibly not the Byrnes. After all, Gert’s brother Will had been on the Western Front, and although he was too old for active service by the time the Second World War came, he did sign up as a trainer for young recruits during the war.

In any case, George and Gertie had moved away from the Brethren when they married, compromising their respective traditions by joining the Goulburn Baptist church. The Baptists were conservative – no dancing, no movies, no smoking (!) – but not as extreme as the Brethren, and more tolerant of other Protestants, even the Anglicans. My mother remembered her youth in the Baptist church as very positive, and though she ended up marrying my father, an Anglican, her own faith journey through life was born in “non-conformist” ways.

Things fall apart

At some stage during the war years the family moved to Hay. I have a few photos of their time there – the girls look to be around 7, 5 and 4 – so that would have been about 1942. If George had really worked there since his marriage in 1933, it must have been a relief to finally be able to have the whole family together. Alternatively, if the other scenario was true and George had been working in Goulburn during those early years of their marriage, it would seem that the owners of Roeta Station had asked him to come back.

My mother always spoke of their time in Hay in glowing terms, and the photos shine with their joy, but their happiness was short lived. At some stage George fell from a horse and sustained quite serious internal injuries. Exactly what happened is uncertain, but they were forced to move back to Goulburn and the years that followed were years of struggle. George was unable to work and there were no sickness or unemployment benefits. They were very poor.

It was during that time that Gertie and George were forced to place the three girls in St Saviours Girl’s Home, an institution run by the Church of England. I believe they were there for a year or so, mid forties I suppose. George was an invalid and Gert may have been forced to get work. They simply did not have enough money to feed the girls, and were forced to rely on charity. Mum never spoke of those years to me, but Dorothy told Wendy that she hated that place. Dorothy was the smallest of them, and at night she would creep into bed with one of her older sisters. But if she was found out she was punished for breaking the rules. They were always hungry. On Sundays their mother would walk up to St Saviours and take them to the park. They lived for those outings.

Such things seem very odd, even inhuman, to us now. But it was not so unusual for poor people at that time to be dependent on charity to survive. A cousin of theirs, Keith Walmsley, the son of Connie Walmsley, told me in the later years of his life that he and his siblings had also been in a children’s home for a short period when they were very small. Gertie’s children were poor because their father was sick. The Walmsley children were poor because their father had by that time deserted them, and their mother Connie was forced to go out to find work.

Eventually George recovered enough to look for work. I have some letters from his mother written in 1946 which are addressed to a property called Chatsworth near the little country town of Binda, about 65km north of Goulburn. Chatsworth, which still exists, appears to have been mainly a sheep station, though for a time they also bred horses. The property was owned by a Goulburn doctor called Williams, whose name appears on the front of the letters sent by Grannie Simmonds from England. The letters give the impression that the Simmonds family were all living at Chatsworth, but how George was employed is uncertain. In the electoral rolls for 1949 and 1954 his occupation is listed as cook. He may have had he same kind of work at Chatsworth. It is not clear how long he and the family lived in Chatsworth. His mother mentions his recurrent sickness in her letters, and makes reference to her own suffering, though there is no hint of a diagnosis in her letters. She died at the end of 1946.

He never went back to riding horses, so the big outback stations were no longer for him. He ended up gardening for wealthy people in Goulburn. He had been growing things since his childhood days in the west of London. Now he did the same in Goulburn, on the far side of the world. My mother said they were happy days, despite their poverty. Her parents were happy together – she does not remember them ever arguing. They had come through a lot together.

George’s health problems were ongoing. After a specialist appointment at RPAH in Sydney he was returning to Goulburn by train when he suddenly collapsed and died. His wife and daughters were devastated. My Mum described it as the saddest day of her life. She was just 18, Joyce 20, and Dorothea 17. George himself was only 50 years of age.

The family breaks up

It was about that time that my dad turned up on the scene. He tells me he met George, Mum’s father, shortly before he died, so he had already made the family’s acquaintance in 1955. He and Mum married when she was 21, after they had known each other for 3 years. I have often wondered how his early meetings with the Simmonds family were. He must have encountered them at church. He was from Sydney, where the Anglican Church was much “lower” than in Goulburn, and I suspect he was not entirely comfortable with the bells and incense of St Saviours Cathedral. It would have been easy for him to walk a few hundred metres extra along the road to the Baptists; he was 22 when he came to Goulburn and must have been pleased to meet the three delightful Simmonds girls. They were no doubt delighted too. Joyce, I suspect, was too serious for Dad, and Dorothy not serious enough. He chose Gwen, and early in 1958 they married. Mum was just 21 years old.

Dorothy had married before Mum, and Wendy was born in the same year Mum and Dad married. But what of Joyce? I cannot be sure, but I suspect that she too was fond of someone in those years, but was snubbed. Broken hearted she left Goulburn and moved to America where she worked for World Vision, a newly formed Christian charity which specialised in child sponsorship. She was gone for ten years, and I know little of what happened during those years; from what I recall her times were initially happy but at some stage she again fell in love, only to be rejected again, resulting in a deep depression which almost killed her. When she returned to Australia in her early thirties she seemed a broken woman, and she never really recovered.

Mum and Dad went to Fiji not long after they married. They were gone for seven years, during which time first my sister Jenny and then I were born. When our little family returned to Australia in 1965 we did not go back to Goulburn. Dad found a job in Tamworth with the Department of Agriculture and northern NSW became our home.

Dorothy and Harold remained in Goulburn and raised their three children there. Gertie (Nanna Simmonds to us), now a widow, was still there, still desperately poor, but greatly loved by her daughter and grandchildren. We would visit from time to time, and though she was a soft and cheerful person, my impression of Gertie’s life was of poverty and loneliness. Joyce, when she returned from America in the late sixties, also went back to Goulburn, and for a time lived with Nanna Simmonds, but her life was punctuated by recurrent admissions to the Kenmore Mental Hospital, which is unfamiliar to me but which Wendy remembers well, having often visited Auntie Joyce there.

With the passing of Auntie Dot they are all gone, the Goulburn girls. Gertie died in 1975 and is buried on the side of the hill overlooking Goulburn, beside her husband George who had passed away twenty years earlier. My mother died in 1999, at the age of 62; in the midst of life she developed pneumonia, sepsis and died. She is buried in Tamworth. Long before Mum died Joyce had disappeared, her mental torments having caused her to cut herself off from the family that loved her; she left Goulburn, and where she was nobody knew. Mum and Dorothy both went to great lengths to find her, without success. She did not want to be found. When Dorothy died last week, Joyce’s whereabouts was still unknown, but the very next day while searching on the internet I found a picture of her burial place at a cemetery in Canberra. It seems she died in 2020, just three years ago, though we still have no knowledge of the circumstances, or who paid for the grave.

So the Byrnes, with their five girls, and the Simmonds, with their three, have all gone, and with them those family names. The only boy of those two generations who survived to adulthood – William Byrne – died childless, as far as I know. I am one of the three sons my mother had, and Dorothea had one, and Wendy, Susan and Wayne all have boys, as my wife Maria and I have. But our names are all different from the quintessential English Simmonds, and the age old Irish Byrne. We, like so many Australians, can only look back and remember our roots in distant lands. But we remember our parents and nannas and grandpas all with great love and affection and miss them. We, their descendants are many, and we are now busy writing our own stories.