A Happy Life

By Michael Taylor

Margaret Bacon's long life of love, loss and many different addresses. A story that begins with her pioneering, ship-building grandfather and tells of her many years as a school-teacher, raising three children alone and an extraordinarily successful extended family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Taylor
• Release date: Dec 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463166215

Michael Taylor

Michael Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Transport Planning at the University of South Australia. Author or editor of eight transportation books, Dr. Taylor is a leading pioneer in transportation network vulnerability analysis.

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A Happy Life

by Michael Taylor

Copyright 2018 Michael Taylor

All Rights Reserved

Smashwords Edition

Formatting by Caligraphics

ORIGINS

By 1pm on Saturday 10th October, 1903, the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean had flowed through the mouth of the Bellinger River and slowly made their way twelve miles upstream to the town of Bellingen. It was a good time to be launching a ship.

Horsemen, pedestrians and the occasional vehicle streamed into the sleepy town from all directions to get a view of the newly built, ‘Alma Doepel’, a magnificent three masted topsail schooner more than 115 feet long. A crowd of 500, almost the entire population, had gathered on the river-bank waiting for the high tide. Then, Carl Doepel’s wife would ceremoniously smash a bottle of champagne across her bow, sending the vessel down the wooden skids into the calm waters of the Bellinger River. After more than a year of construction using locally sourced timbers and a full-length keel cut from a tree that had no branches for 100 feet, there was about to be a very public demonstration of Carl’s ship-building skills.

Time would clearly show the ‘Alma Doepel’s grace, resilience and long, productive life – all qualities that would be mirrored by her builder’s future grand-daughter, Margaret. But, there was a lot of water to pass under the bridge before then.

Born on the shores of the Bothnian Sea in Kristnestad, Finland, forty-nine years earlier to Carl, a tailor, and Greta, Carl junior was orphaned as a nine year old and destined for a life on the ocean. After spending five years living on a farm and being looked after in return for his labour, his uncle from Sweden, who was a sailor, picked him up and took him to sea.

For many years young Carl served a hard life before the mast, sailing the seven seas before landing in Sydney and deciding to jump ship with a couple of mates. The three men hid themselves until their ship, the classically named, ‘Mermaid’, cleared Sydney Heads. It was the early 1870’s when the trio set out to seek their fortune in the developing colony of New South Wales.

Carl ended up joining a timber cutting gang who were making their way up the coast and eventually found himself in the newly established town of Bellingen, mid-way between Sydney and Brisbane, where he decided to settle in the late 1870’s. The Bellinger River, on whose banks the town sat, was named only as a result of a draughtsman’s error in reading the final letter as an ‘r’ and not an ‘n’ when compiling colony maps from an original document. It was the river that appealed to Carl though, with its access to the ocean and a fledgling marine industry. He was a big, strong young man who wasn’t afraid of hard work and soon found himself a job salvaging a shipwrecked sailing vessel near the mouth of the river. He then moved on to building a wharf further upstream at Fernmount before the enterprising Carl decided to go into business for himself.

He was assisted by a friend who had jumped ship with him. Michael Leconnen was also a big, strong Finn and it would be ‘Big Mick’, as he became known, who would fell the giant tree and cut the keel for the ‘Alma Doepel’. Big Mick would work beside Carl for all their working lives before passing away in Sydney at the age of eighty, having never owned property or a home of his own.

Sea-going vessels could not navigate through the Bellinger river mouth, so Carl would load flat bottomed punts with 50 tons of produce and manually pole them twelve miles downriver to meet the vessels. Farmers on the river were desperate for a more reliable means of getting their produce to the market in Sydney and in 1884, with 50,000 bags of maize rotting on the banks at Bellinger Heads Carl found a solution. He turned his biggest punt into an ocean-going craft by removing the bow and stern, adding sections including sideboards and fitted it with a full set of sails. The 97 foot long ‘Surprise’ continued a regular run to Sydney, much to the delight of the farmers, and so Carl built a second boat called ‘The Bellinger’, a 98 foot long ketch that would achieve fame as the fastest sailing vessel on the New South Wales Coast, before being wrecked off Queensland’s Stradbroke Island in 1892. She was valued at 14,000 pounds, and was uninsured.

In 1898, a third vessel, the 114 ton, two masted topsail schooner, ‘Violet Doepel’, was especially designed and built for the timber trade with a shallow draft in order to navigate the Bellinger River mouth. Unfortunately, she would take on water in heavy conditions and sink seven years later. Luckily, she didn’t catch fire as her cargo at the time included coal, gunpowder and dynamite. The Captain and six crew were saved and this time Carl had her insured for 1200 pounds.

In 1900, Carl and his wife, Mary Anne had a new home built on part of her father, Henry McNally’s property. It was described at the time as ‘...one of the roomiest, most complete and well finished residences in Bellingen with orchard, flower garden, lawns and a tennis court. It still stands today.

Along with his ship building interests the entrepreneurial Finn also operated sawmills, at one time having three in the area between Dorrigo, Thora and East Bellingen. The Dorrigo mill would be destroyed by a bushfire in 1912, and after a slump in the timber industry only the Bellingen mill would remain, but it would be operated by the Doepel family until 1952.

His fourth vessel, the ‘Alma Doepel’ - named after his newly arrived four month old daughter - would be described by competent shipwrights of the time as one of the best and most faithfully built wooden vessels ever launched on the coast. Their assessment would be proven correct as the majestic square rigger would still be sailing over one hundred years later.

Carl Frederick Doepel – Margaret’s paternal Grandfather

As thirty-seven year old Mary Anne Doepel swung the bottle of champagne on that fine Saturday afternoon in 1903 and launched the long and eventful nautical career of her husband’s pride and joy, her parents looked on with their own pride.

The ‘Alma Doepel’ afloat on the Bellinger River

Family legend had it that Irish born Henry McNally went to Sydney in 1864 for a week, from his home in Kempsey, and came back with a thirty year old wife named Rosa. Whether he had met her previously, possibly on the ship from Ireland, or was just a smooth talker who got lucky, the union would result in a daughter, Mary Anne. Before her birth, the couple left Kempsey and walked to the mouth of the Macleay River then headed north along the beach. They were accompanied by a pig, a cow, a hen and a basket of eggs.

The young couple and their menagerie were on the lookout for suitable farming land and, after a sixty mile walk, they discovered the rich, lush valleys around the Bellinger River. Their new home would soon become the town of Bellingen. Mary Anne would be born in 1866, four years before the town was surveyed and allotments were sold and would quite possibly be the first white child born there. The difficulties that beset the early pioneers were formidable but after years of hard work, courage and determined effort, the McNally’s had built a home and acquired a considerable amount of property. Henry and Rosa would have five more children and their farm would stay in the family until 1983.

At the launch of the ‘Alma Doepel’, Henry was a healthy seventy-three year old and would live another eight years. Rosa would pass away four years before him, in 1907. Their eldest daughter, Mary Anne, had married Carl Frederick Doepel in