Mrs. Dance about to fell a tree to mark the foundation of the city of Perth in Western Australia in 1829 – the celebrated painting by George Pitt Morison
Jack Bradshaw’s book Jinkers and Whims, a pictorial account of the evolution of the timber industry in Western Australia, begins as follows:
The symbolic felling of a tree to mark the founding of Perth in 1829 was an apt beginning. For the colony to develop beyond a tent city on the beach, the commodity most needed was timber …
I enjoyed reading this. It reminded me of the time one of Perth’s most virulent environmentalists was giving me a hard time about my support for the timber industry. She referred sneeringly to the fact that Perth was founded by the felling of a tree, and people like me still hadn’t learnt our lesson. I forbore to remind her that she lived in a suburban house on a block from which the native trees had all been cleared, which had jarrah floors and karri roof timbers and electricity delivered on jarrah poles.
But I did mention Jack’s point. Had the first settlers not been able to utilise the local timbers for houses, stables, fences, boatbuilding, bridges, firewood for heating and cooking, and the multitude of other purposes to which timber can be put, they would have had to remain living in tents on Cottesloe beach. It is doubtful that they would have survived.
Put all that aside. There is a far more interesting story associated with the famous act at the founding of the city of Perth. This is the story of “Mrs Dance’s Tree”, the construction of a superb little sewing box from timber from the tree, and the adventures of this box as it travelled to England, into the hands of the Royal Family, and finally back to Western Australia, first to Government House, and then to the WA Museum (where it is on display as I write).
I will get to the business of who actually felled the tree, to the tree itself, and to the sewing box, in a minute. But first, back to that momentous day of August 12th, 1829 when the city of Perth was founded.
Only a few months earlier, HMS Challenger, a troopship under the command of Captain Charles Fremantle arrived at the mouth of the Swan River. It was the first ship associated with the proposed Swan River colony. Fremantle’s job was to set up a camp, and to secure the area for the soon-to-be arriving settlers.
Just getting ashore was tricky. The seas in this area are treacherous, with rocky reefs and sandbanks (uncharted, or poorly charted at that time), and there were strong on-onshore winter winds. Captain Fremantle landed a small detachment of the 62nd Regiment (under Captain Irwin) at the mouth of the Swan River but decided to make his headquarters on Garden Island on the western side of Cockburn Sound, where there was a safe anchorage. Here he was soon joined by Captain (later Sir James) Stirling in HMS Parmelia and a few days later Captain William Dance in HMS Sulphur. These two ships carried the first settlers to the Swan, the men and women who had decided to make new lives in the new colony.
On arrival, the settlers were landed on Garden Island where they established a temporary camp, comprising tents and rough shelters made from brushwood.
The first encampment for the settlers of the Swan River colony, on Garden Island
Stirling immediately set out in a cutter to explore the Swan River. He had in fact already explored the river once before when he visited the area in 1827 and decided it would be an ideal place for a new colony. It was either on this trip or the second that he decided on the site for the colony's capital. Returning to Garden Island, he issued the following proclamation:
"On the 12th August, the anniversary of the day on which His Gracious Majesty [King George IV] was born, the first stone will be laid of a New Town to be called Perth, near the entrance to the estuary of the Swan River. After that date the Public Business in the several Departments of government will there be transacted, and all applications for land, or on other subjects, received."
A campsite was set up at the site selected by Stirling and a small clearing was made in the bush. On the appointed day, a large party was assembled, having been transported there from Garden Island over several days in relays in the ship’s boats. Soldiers of the 63rd Regiment were in ceremonial dress, there were officers, regimental surgeons and seamen from HMS Challenger and HMS Sulphur, plus the Colony’s various civic officials. There was a single woman in the party, and this was Mrs Helena Dance, the wife of the Captain of HMS Sulphur. Mrs Ellen Stirling, wife of the Governor, who would have been expected to participate in the ceremony was ill (she had given birth to their first son on board the Parmelia on the voyage from England) and could not attend.
So, a legend is born: Captain Fremantle’s journal entry for the day includes: “…to celebrate the commencement of the New Town, Mrs Dance cut down a tree …”
Or, as historian Pamela Statham put it:
It was thus Mrs Helena Dance, and not Ellen Stirling, who entered history by cutting down a tree to mark the occasion.
… a story reiterated by historian Garry Gillard:
It was Mrs Dance who cut down the tree on the 12 August 1829 on the occasion of the official ceremony of the foundation of the Swan River colony.
Stirling later recorded that a tree was felled, but did not specify the feller. He did explain that a tree was felled rather than a stone unveiled, because of "there being no stone contiguous to our purpose".
The tree having been duly dispatched, Stirling proudly pronounced the birth of the new city, the soldiers fired a salute with their muskets, and all present, gave three cheers.
The felling of the tree
It seems unlikely to me that Mrs Dance actually felled the tree, especially if she was dressed in the outfit, and using the implement shown in Pitt Morrison’s painting (which is said to have been meticulously researched).
Fragment from the Pitt Morison painting, showing Mrs Dance about to do the deed.
The implement held by Mrs Dance looks to me more like a ship carpenter’s hatchet than a felling axe. Moreover, the tree looks like quite a substantial hardwood, with a slightly spiral grain, and it would have taken some effort (and woodsman’s skills) to fell such a tree – even if she had been an experienced axewoman, was wearing appropriate clothing and had an implement more suited to the task. I think it far more likely she took a little peck at the tree, perhaps slightly wounding the bark, and then the actual felling was done by the brawny young marine standing nearby, with a proper felling axe to hand.
This view is reinforced by an extract from a letter written by one of the sailors from HMS Sulphur, present on the day. A copy of this letter is held at the WA Art Gallery, where the original of the Pitt Morison painting is stored (but not displayed). The un-named sailor wrote:
…at half past four the ceremony commenced. Mrs Dance, the only lady to venture so far up the river was proposed by the Governor to christen the town, which she did by holding an axe … she then gave one blow with it upon a large tree, which was then cut down …
Wikipedia’s discussion of the painting also seems to me to be largely correct:
The official ceremony depicted in [Pitt Morison’s painting] was held on a small hill overlooking the Swan River in the immediate vicinity of the present Perth Town Hall. As no stones were readily available, it was decided to mark the occasion by felling a tree. The only woman to accompany the party so far up the river from Fremantle Mrs Helena Dance, was invited to strike the first blow. [The painting] depicts Mrs Dance holding the axe and about to make the first cut. Immediately to the right of her in the painting is an axe-man, waiting to complete the task.
Historian Ruth Marchant James is also circumspect. She wrote:
[On] August 12, the Foundation of Perth took place. As Mrs Stirling was unable to make the journey with her infant, Mrs Helen [sic] Dance, wife of Capt Dance, performed the Foundation ceremony.
Nevertheless, the legend persists to this day that Helena Dance “cut down” the tree and it is easy to see why … the idea of a woman doing the job has a distinct romanticism.
Ellen Stirling missed out on the axework but, as it turns out, she was not forgotten on the day. A section of the trunk of the tree was cut out and taken back to Garden Island. Here, further legend has it, one of the ship’s carpenters was put to work to make a sewing box, which was suitably inscribed and given as a gift to Ellen as a memento of the occasion.
The tree
The botanical identity of “Mrs Dance’s Tree” (as I like to call it) is nowhere recorded. I have seen it referred to variously as a jarrah, a banksia and a sheoak. This vagueness would not have helped the artist Pitt Morrison. Nor is his painting helpful to a modern dendrologist: the bark does not look like jarrah, and the foliage does not look like banksia. What we do have, however, is Mrs Stirling’s box, reputedly made from timber from the famous tree and, as we will discover, this should solve the botanical puzzle.
“Mrs Dance’s box”
This is of course, a misnomer. It was never Mrs Dance’s box, but Ellen Stirling’s. But I have heard it referred to as “Mrs Dance’s box” and have always liked to think of it that way myself, due to the part she played in the ceremonial felling of the tree. Apart from that, I just like the name “Mrs Dance”. It conjures up an image of a young woman of humour and vitality, a dancer. Helena was in fact, according to her husband’s journal, the only woman amongst the settlers who was “game” to make the trip up-river into unknown, and perhaps dangerous country. I imagine her as a feisty and adventurous young woman, up for anything.
Sir James Stirling (as he was by then) resigned as Governor in 1837 and with Lady Stirling, returned to London, presumably taking the sewing box with them. The box then disappears from history for nearly a century. But one day in 1932, while browsing in a curiosity shop in London, it was spotted by Queen Mary (wife of George V). The Queen was said to be an expert on antiques. She picked it up, read the inscription, and realised its historical significance. The Queen purchased the box and arranged for it to be sent off to the then-Lieutenant-Governor of Western Australia, Sir John Northmore.
Queen Mary - mother of King Edward VIII (the Duke of Windsor after his abdication) and King George VI – was Queen consort and Empress of India from 1910 to 1936, and an expert antiquarian.
The box was held in WA’s Government House’s collection of memorabilia for many years. For a while (in 1979, the year of WA’s sesqui-centennial), it was displayed in the foyer of the R&I Bank in Barrack St, close to the spot on which the tree was felled in 1829. It was then donated to the WA Museum where it is on display to this day. I have been in to look at it, and to photograph it (but was not permitted to handle or open it).
My photograph of Ellen Stirling’s sewing box, on display at the WA Museum
Strange to say, I have a personal association with “Mrs Dance’s Box”, and it was this association that led to the resolution of the question about the botanical identity of “Mrs Dance’s Tree”. A few years ago, I was contacted by WA’s botanical supremo Alex George. He had been asked by the WA Museum to identify the wood from which the box is made. There was a suggestion that it might be jarrah, or perhaps banksia, and the museum felt it needed to know for sure. Alex sought my opinion, knowing me to be an old timber man. I replied that an exact determination could only be made by examining a sample piece of the timber with a microscope and then running the wood’s characteristics and properties through ID software – timber technologists do this sort of thing all the time. I suggested we contact Dr Graeme Siemon, one of Australia’s foremost timber experts, a good friend of mine, who lived nearby.
Needless to say, the museum did not want a sample of the wood to be sliced from the box, so we had to go on physical appearance, and this could only be done at arm’s length, the museum ruling that the box was untouchable, at least by me and Graeme. But from a close study of several enlarged photographs, I decided that the box was made from sheoak, the timber of which has a very beautiful and distinctive grain. I also knew where the tree had been felled, and that one of the most common trees growing in that area was the Western Sheoak, Casuarina fraseriana. I could not be 100% certain without proper microscopic examination of a specimen of the timber, I told Alex, but Western Sheoak was the most likely candidate. This is what Alex reported, was accepted by the Museum, and is understood to this day.
By the way, sheoak timber proved to be of tremendous value to the early settlers. The wood is easy to split and becomes hard and waterproof when dry. It was the ideal timber for splitting into roofing shingles. Sheoak shingles formed the roof of nearly every house and building in the Swan River colony for years to come, pending the importation of slate from Wales, and of galvanised corrugated iron from NSW. Rooves of sheoak shingles were still as good as new more than a century after installation, and some have survived to this day, admittedly under a protective cover of roofing iron.
There is one other intriguing question: who made the sewing box?
It is a beautiful little box, a masterly bit of craftsmanship, especially when you consider that it was made (according to legend) by a ship’s carpenter from either the Parmelia or the Sulphur. He would have had only rough ship’s tools to work with, none of the precision instruments of the professional furniture or woodworking craftsman.
It is a good legend, but I doubt it is true. The craftsmanship is so good, I suspect the chunk of timber from “Mrs Dance’s Tree”, or at least a chunk of some timber or other was taken back to England by Elllen Stirling, and there was made into the sewing box by a skilled cabinet-maker. All of the timber is finely dressed and polished; it must have been seasoned (dried) to enable this to have been done with precision, a process taking many months or years.. The inlaying of the sapwood, and the delicate fitting of the lock and hinges is especially well-done. I find it hard to imagine that the beautiful little brass hinges and the brass inscription plate would have been available or could have been forged and inscribed at Swan River in 1829.
The brass plaque on the lid of Mrs Stirling’s sewing box. The inscription says: “This box was made from the tree which was cut down at Swan River in 1829 by his Excellency Sir James Stirling for the purpose of laying the foundation of the capital of Western Australia”.
Had this inscription been written at Swan River in 1829 it is unlikely that the cutting down of the tree would have been attributed to the Governor himself. This reinforces the idea that the box was made, and the inscribed plaque added at a remote date, and by someone who was not in Western Australia at the time.
It is a small box, only 275mm in length, 200mm in width and 105mm in height. I was not able to see inside the box, but this description was provided to me by the museum:
Inside the box, there is a folded, purple coated, flat paper compartment on the inside of the lid which can be fixed in place with a metal hook. There are also velvet-lined wooden compartments inside the box, and the tray is removable.
… along with this photograph:
The lid and the nine internal compartments are lined with blue velvet. I am by no means a connoisseur of sewing boxes, but I can imagine the compartments filled with needles, pins, thimbles, cotton thread, a ball of wool, scissors and the other paraphernalia of the seamstress.
I am sorry to say that there is a degree of scepticism amongst professional historians about the whole box story (including the part played by Queen Mary), describing it as being “too good to be true”. But good stories can be true. There doesn’t seem to me to be any doubt that a sewing box, with the above inscription on the lid, was sent to the WA governor by the Queen, is made from timber from a Western Australian tree, and is today on display in the WA Museum. I am happy to believe it.
What happened to Captain and Mrs Dance?
The Dances left WA in 1832 when Governor Stirling sailed on the Sulphur to England, seeking support for the beleaguered colony back on the Swan River. Stirling returned, but the Dances did not. Captain Dance seems to have fallen on hard times after leaving the Navy and ended up in a Debtor’s Prison. Helena Dance survived him, living in England and France, before dying in 1863. I wonder if she ever realised how her “15 minutes of fame” as an axewoman would still be celebrated in the centuries ahead.
The painting
The painting by George Pitt Morison was done almost 100 years after the actual event depicted. It was commissioned to celebrate the centenary of Western Australia in 1929. Apart from James Stirling and Mrs Dance, other identifiable people in the painting include Captain Charles Fremantle, Commander Mark Currie, Major Frederick Irwin, Captain William Dance, the Colonial Secretary Peter Broun, Dr William Milligan and the Surveyor-General Lieutenant John Septimus Roe.
To my disappointment, the Government Botanist (and my hero) James Drummond, who had come out from England with James Stirling in the Parmelia, does not seem to have been invited … or perhaps he had been invited but was too busy off in the bush botanising at the time. I would not be surprised to learn that he asked to be dropped off at Mt Eliza, which can be seen in the background above the Narrows in the painting, and is today part of Kings Park, on the way upriver to the celebration. No doubt if Drummond had been present he would have identified the tree, and there would have been no need to ponder the question of its identity over the next 200 years or so.
Although the painting is in the possession of the WA Art Gallery (which now seems to go under the name “Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar”), it is not on public display. Suspecting that this might be because the Museum is ashamed of our colonial past or anxious not to upset the environmentalists because of its association with tree felling, I wrote to the Gallery Director. I was assured that the painting would one day again be displayed.
And so it should be. Whatever the rights and wrongs of our colonial past, and whatever some people think about the felling of a tree, our history needs to be preserved. The story of the foundation of Perth, the sheoak tree, Mrs Dance, Queen Mary and the little sewing box is perhaps merely a byline of history, but the story, and the Pitt Morison painting, illustrate a significant moment in Western Australian history.
Fragment from the Pitt Morison painting
A nice touch in the painting is the little boy kneeling behind the axeman, with his picnic hamper, glasses and wine bottles. He seems oblivious to the ceremony and in my view is dangerously close to the tree and its felling. He is not named, nor is he formally dressed, so I assume he was not the son of one of the officials or settlers. Rather I suspect he was a cabin boy on one of the ships, detailed that day to take charge of the provisions. The wine was presumably brought along for drinking a suitable toast after the guns were fired, although this is mentioned by nobody who was there.
The site today
The site of the tree felling and foundation ceremony is marked today by a bland little plaque set into the footpath on the east side of Barrack Street in the centre of the city, just outside the steps to the Town Hall:
It is an insubstantial memorial. The pedestrians of Perth walk over it without a downwards glance.
I wonder if any descendants of William and Helena Dance exist today. Perhaps the Lord Mayor of Perth might track one down and invite her to plant a Western Sheoak tree near this spot (or up in Kings Park) where a new “Mrs Dance’s Tree” would be an interesting and living reminder of this quirky snippet of WA history.
Literature consulted:
Appleyard, R.T. and Toby Manford (1979): The beginning. European discovery and early settlement of Swan River, Western Australia. University of WA Press, Western Australia
Bradshaw, Jack (2012): Jinkers and Whims – a pictorial history of timber-getting. Vivid Publishing, Fremantle, Western Australia
Gooding, Janda (1989). Layman, Lenore; Stannage, Tom (eds.). "'The Foundation of Perth': George Pitt Morison's Persistent Image". Celebrations in Western Australian History (Studies in Western Australian History) (10). Nedlands, Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press: 115–120
Marchant James, Ruth (1990): Story of the Sewing Box reputedly made from the tree cut down by Mrs Dance for the Foundation of Perth. The Sunshade, August 1990.
Statham, Pamela (2003): James Stirling: Admiral and Founding Governor of Western Australia, University of WA Press, Perth Western Australia.
Acknowledgements:
I thanks these people who helped me with this story: Erica Boyne, Head of History at the WA Museum; Sally Casey, volunteer guide WA Art Gallery; Emma Bitmead, Curator at the WA Art Gallery; Shervaun Steenson, Executive Officer at Government House; Sue Hunter, Senior Librarian at the State Library; historian Lenore Layman and botanist Alex George. | |
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