REMEMBERING PROVATE SHIRLEY

When I was a child, my family often used to go for picnics on a Sunday. After Sunday School, my father would have the car ready, my mother would have the sandwiches and drinks packed, and we would head off to some interesting part of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. My brother and I always enjoyed these picnics.

Regular spots were mostly on the northern side, including French’s Forest, the beaches and bays. Sometimes we would go to favourite spots like the picturesque Church Point, Bobbin Head and the charmingly named Coal and Candle Creek, in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

A year or so ago I remembered visiting a miniature sandstone sphinx and pyramids on some of these Sunday picnics.

From memory I pictured it being somewhere off the main road in a bushland setting. I also associated a feeling of solemnity with these visits. I did a bit of ‘googling’ and found that these unusually placed Egyptian replicas were in Ku-ring-gai Chase behind Lady Davidson Home. The stone works were crafted by a returned World War 1 soldier named Private William Thomas Shirley. Shirley had been badly gassed during the war. He made the replicas in 1925 and 1926, while convalescing at Lady Davidson Home. They were to serve as a remembrance of those soldiers who did not return from the battle fields.

During World War 2 my mother had joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment, receiving first aid training from the St John Ambulance Association to work in hospitals and convalescent homes like Lady Davidson Home. Perhaps she had actually worked at this home during the war and this accounted for our visits to such a special place.

This week I purchased a little book of poems entitled Memories in Verse, by Percy Dixon. Unfortunately this little volume is undated but from an initial reading, I would guess that the 1930s or 1940s is not too wide of the mark.

I was pleasantly surprised to come upon Dixon’s poem Little Egypt, a simple, sincere homage to Private Shirley and his stone carvings.

 

 

“…Along a byway lonely,
I contemplate today.

“Twas here that Private Shirley
Had carved immortal links
In rock, and parted early
From pyramids and sphinx.”

The poem suggests that Shirley’s stone creations came at considerable cost to his health. During their construction, he was “growing weaker”. Sadly Private Shirley only survived another couple of years, dying in 1929. The poem also includes a poignant reference to Lady Davidson Home and its bushland setting.

“A Soldier’s Home his dwelling
Sad legacy of war;
‘Midst wild flow’rs ever telling,
How sweet life was before.”

I definitely plan to return soon to this spot, first visited as a child on one of those memorable family picnics. While there, I too hope to do some contemplating.

[ posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 - © Jim Low ]