There is a road that runs in a perfect dog-leg between two highways, in the town I grew up in. On the corner of the bottom highway, there was the family house of girls I went to school with. We'd pass the house every day in the safe bubble of a country kids school bus and this house was prone to drama ... entertainment. As kids we never understood why the mum was so big and angry and her daughters were fighters. I sort of understand it now. I didn't then.
Anyway, Pensioner Road. This is the same road but I guess people living on there didn't want to be labelled with living on Pensioner Road, so it must have been petitioned to turn the road name to Pioneer Road.
Between 1850 and 1868 a lot of British men were sent out to the colonies. They'd previously fought in the Napoleanic wars, the colonial wars in Afghanistan, Africa and India. They didn't seem to want to go home to a domestic two-up-two-down rental situation in England. So they were offered a patch of land in great southern land in return for being cheap trained soldiers for garrison or police duties. These men were trained as soldiers and had fought for the empire but part of their pensioning off scheme meant they could emigrate with their families to ... Pensioner Road.
Eleven hundred Pensioner guards, eight hundred and seventeen women and a shitload of kids (about fifteen hundred) emigrated to Western Australia during this period. The influx of Pensioner Guards at this time has been called by some historians as 'a noteworthy genetic and cultural influence on colonial Western Australia.'
After 1857, most of the Pensioner guards who where in Albany were fighting in the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. This is where it gets interesting for me.
Dad said to me recently, 'You henna your hair. It reminds me of those women from Pensioner Road. They hennaed their hair.'
'Pensioner Road?'
And then he told me the story of the women who'd arrived with their husbands in Albany in 1850. They used henna in their hair and khol to decorate their eyes.They'd come straight from India to Albany. Their hands were henna tattooed. When I told this story to my son, he said, 'Oh my god mum! These women must have seemed like a bunch of witches! 1850s Albany.'
Have you heard of the Chelsea Pensioners? They still exist, living in free housing at Chelsea, London, wearing old-fashioned uniforms and posing for photos.
ReplyDeleteAre they the same mob as the Pensioner Guard? Interesting. Thanks Tom.
DeleteI like your son's reaction to the story!
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine when all these white women, schooled in cooking and beauty classes in India, suddenly arrived in 1850s Australia? It's the basis for a ripping yarn.
DeleteInteresting Sarah. I didn't realise we had Indian pioneers in Albany. Did they stay? I don't remember seeing any Indians in Albany until relatively recently.
ReplyDeleteThe wives of the Pensioner Guards were white women (British) who had lived in India with their husbands during the Raj. I think that's why they were seen as super exotic when they came to Albany, with their hennaed hair and khol. Sorry, shoulda made that clear in the post.
ReplyDeleteoh wow, what an interesting tale Sarah. A bit of India arrives in WA.
ReplyDeleteThat is so amazing Sarah its good to research history of WA HEY unbelievable in some ways
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