Continued from Part 1
Whalemen, rebellion and Albany’s original newspaper;
Jimmy (Ned) Newhill and 1880’s Albany
Above: Edward August Newhill, known among his friends and family as Jimmy, was granted title to the harbour after camping, fishing and hiding deserting whalemen there during the 1880s, but Newhill also led one of the single largest labour revolts in the history of American whaling activity off the Australian coast when he walked off Bartholomew Gosnold at Albany in May, 1883. Image: Undated portrait c. 1920 Source: Lauren Rowe – Rowe family papers
To understand the story of the man who came to be known as Jimmy Newhill, we first have to understand the story of American whaling on and off Albany’s shores across the 1800s, particularly the latter half. This constitutes the bulk of the history, principally the relationship Albany had with the New Bedford whaling firm John Tucker & Co whose four ships, Bartholomew Gosnold, Platina, Canton II and Bertha were stationed off King George Sound between 1877 and 1887. Within this story, however, lies the overlapping one of Princess Royal Harbour becoming coaling depot for the arriving steam age which significantly impacted development of the town around the waterfront. Also, Albany’s first locally produced newspaper came into being toward the end of both the whaling and P&O eras playing an important role in documenting it, along with the drive for the railway, third essential element of the waterfront precinct. Of vital macro importance at this time too were pastoral interests and arrival of the telegraph service from 1877, the combination of which resulted in the settling of the so-called Eastern District which brought with it dire cross-cultural consequences; Albany’s judicial club, headquartered in the newly constructed government buildings looking directly down on the jetty, complicit in its violence. By 1883 the telegraph service allowed the innards of Jimmy Newhill’s story of arrival and remain to play out as it did. And as if that were not enough, the Newhill story ties with Irish poverty and convictism, the effects of which drew the father of Newhill’s locally born bride, Elizabeth Cullinane, from the fringes of West Cork during the aftermath of Ireland’s Great Hunger. Moreover, Elizabeth Cullinane’s registered maternal grandparents were William and Mary Sounness, an 1840’s settler couple rooted to early Albany’s highly influential Scotts fraternity. The Sounness legacy was built along aspiring European lines in the Mount Barker area but there remains the nagging suggestion the Cullinane children were not entirely European, bringing into the picture another cross-cultural relationship and as yet unidentified Menang mother.
Could there be a richer backdrop to local family history than this?
