What is it about the gaze of the woman seen in these two photographs, from JCU Library Special Collections’ Edward Cunningham album, that is so compelling?
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| Nellie Maud Wharton, with her father William Thomas Wharton, 12 May 1910. JCU Library Special Collections North Queensland Photographic Collection, Edward (Ted) Cunningham Album, NQID 2380. |
Is
it the frank look, direct to camera, of the young bride – at only seventeen,
she was indeed very young – as she walks beside her father towards the church?
Is it the sideways look at the camera, in the second photo, with the hint of a
smile conveying warmth and a touch of humour? Who was this woman who carried herself with such assurance?
Born in December 1892, Nellie Maud Wharton was the fourth child, and first daughter of Queenslanders William Thomas Wharton and his wife Elizabeth (nee Longwill). It must have been a lively childhood for Nellie and her six siblings, growing up on north Queensland pastoral properties, chiefly at Birralee* Station on the Bowen River.
The man she was about to marry, in a small church in suburban Sydney where her father maintained a residence, was of similar background. Arthur “Harry” Cunningham belonged to one of the oldest pastoral families in the north, also with roots in the Burdekin and Bowen region. Eight years before the marriage Harry, and his partners, had acquired Strathmore Station, 27 km west of present-day Collinsville, and began the work of expanding and renovating what was to become a fine colonial homestead. It was here that the couple would raise their family.
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| Mrs Nellie Cunningham (nee Wharton), 1924. JCU Library Special Collections North Queensland Photographic Collection, Edward (Ted) Cunningham Album, NQID 2381. |
By the time the second photo was taken, Nellie was nearly thirty-two and the mother of four children, aged between three and eleven years. While her home might be ‘in the bush’, the stylish clothes suggest she is a woman also at ease in the city, with a sense of fashion and the means to indulge it. The fur cape might possibly have been rabbit but, given those black tail-tips around the hem, is almost certainly the much more costly ermine. Her skirt’s mid-calf hemline reflects the liberating standards of the post-war era even if it is well below the heights that young ‘flappers’ were flaunting at this time. Rather than the head-hugging cloche hats of the period, she wears a smart, dark straw hat in a more masculine style.
The casual pose
– perched on a worn section of balustrade, with walking stick and gloves – suggest
action and activity, as if she has paused, just for a moment to humour the
photographer, before heading outdoors for more interesting pursuits. And, for all her city fashion sense, the
scene in the backdrop is surely a reference to her bush upbringing and current
status as mistress of an important rural property.
We can hope that the confidence and financial well-being conveyed in these photographs stood Nellie in good stead as life’s inevitable sorrows unfolded. In 1925, the year after the second photo was taken, she lost the father who had walked her proudly to the church. More tragically, in 1929 her youngest brother, Frank, died from pneumonia. An older brother, Frederick, passed away four years later, in his early forties; both left bereaved families. Nellie herself was widowed at forty-nine when Harry died in Townsville’s Bay View hospital, following a road accident in 1942. Nellie lived on into her mid-sixties and the couple are buried together in the Belgian Gardens cemetery; the grave of her brother Frederick is nearby.
* In one of those small but enticing coincidences that historical research throws up, Nellie’s girlhood home of Birralee was one of the properties visited in the spring of 1892 by the anonymous Victorian artist,whose sketchbook featured as one of Special Collections’ 50 Treasures. This visit took place a few months before Nellie’s birth and apparently a little before her father acquired the property.
Liz Downes
Special Collections Volunteer
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