A collection of vivid travelogues of four mid-twentieth century tours to Australasia, South Africa and Guernsey bound as one, written by a well-travelled, plain-speaking (and writing) septuagenarian Leeds woman, Ethel M. Gaunt.
Sporadically kept, but then often at length, Gaunt writes engagingly about the places she visited, interested in their histories, cultures and people: “By the way the women wear a top garment and coloured petticoat, not grass skirts. The upper garment is called a ‘Mary’ and is a suggestion of the Missionaries”, she writes (as a white woman of her time in racialising terms) of “native” women in Rabaul. Recent history is present in the many vestiges of Japan’s wartime presence on the islands of Papa/ New Guinea: “the Japs were here [in Lau] and it is somewhat derelict, and houses are in process of being built; a very fine hotel is nearly finished not far from harbour and belongs to a woman.” She lingers over landscapes – “I went up the Mountain today (15 -) and for one brief five minutes she showed me the entire perfect cone, snow clad, dazzling in the sunshine and perfect with the blue of the sky as background” – and documents the flora and local produce: she “particularly like[s] the “Chinese Gooseberry” which looks very like a small potato but the flesh is bright green [...] and the shops are filled with tree tomatoes. A curious fruit, green like a small cucumber is the Fequeu[?]…”. They are accounts full of Gaunt’s fellow travellers, her many friends in Australia and South Africa, plus new acquaintances: “Next seat to me on the car [to New Plymouth, NZ] was a Miss Messanger, the range over which we were travelling is called after her Uncle ‘Colonel Messanger’”, and later she entertained a “happy crowd of women” from various New Zealand Women’s Institutes and “gave them a bit of old Yorkshire and sang ‘Ilka Moor b’aht ‘at’, greatly applauded.” The quality of the tea and coffee features often, as well as general comfort, she noted, for example, of HMS Bulolo (“a ship of 6000 tons and carries about 160 passengers. The cargo seems to be mainly sugar and tinned beef”): “one thing I don’t like about this ship are the cockroaches. They invade the cabins”. She did not hold back from complaining (about the Bulolo’s apparent poor timekeeping) to the Captain, who “roared at me like an angry bull and thumped his head and stamped, a ridiculous example of unrestrained temper.” She was not cowed.
For full details, please get in touch.
[ref: 2903]