No Longer a Wandering Spirit revives the legacy of 1800s Menang woman Bessy Flowers through family collab

A new book focusing on the life of 1800s Menang woman Bessy Flowers reclaims her story from historical archives by telling it with the help of her living descendants. No Longer a Wandering Spirit, published by UWA Publishing, focuses on Elizabeth “Bessy” Flowers, who was born in Albany in the 1850s, and later sent to a mission in Victoria. Bessy lived and studied at Annesfield, a school in Albany for Aboriginal children, where she later was a teacher. Bessy was a talented student, and in 1864, was sent to a school in Sydney to further her education, before returning to Albany. In 1867, she was sent to the Ramahyuck Mission in East Gippsland, where she continued her work as a teacher but her life soon became dominated by the Government’s rules controlling Aboriginal people, and she was unable to return home to Albany as she longed to. Co-written by Goreng-Wirlomin man Ezzard Flowers and Australian National University researcher Sharon Huebner, the book charts Bessy’s life from historical documents, letters and photos, and also includes the story of how creating the book brought Bessy’s descendants together. Dr Huebner first came across Bessy’s story when she was working for the Koori Heritage Trust’s Family History Service in the early 2000s, helping Stolen Generations survivors reconnect with their families. One of the families Dr Huebner worked with were descendants of Nora White, one of four other women Bessy travelled with to Victoria, and this introduced her to Bessy’s story. She later used Bessy’s story as the focus of her thesis for her PhD at Monash University. Dr Huebner contacted Bessy’s great-granddaughters in East Gippsland, hoping they would be able to tell her more about her life. “I had initially imagined that they would know stories about their great-grandmother and that we would be able to explore what their connection to her meant and I would be able to find out more about her passage from WA to Victoria,” Dr Huebner said. “But in fact, they knew nothing about their great-grandmother.” This prompted Dr Huebner to shift her work into a research project, focusing on returning the heritage materials relating to Bessy to her descendants, including photos of her and letters she had written that were kept in the National Archives of Australia and the Public Record Office of Victoria. “She was quite a prolific writer and on her movement from Albany to the Ramahyuck Mission in East Gippsland in June 1867, she constantly wrote back to Anne and Henry Camfield, who ran Annesfield,” she said. “So she writes herself into history.” In many of her letters, Bessy wrote of her longing to return to Albany, including in one letter from August 16, 1867: “Often and often my thoughts fly to Albany.” Dr Huebner said initially Bessy was “thriving” in the Victorian colonial society, but over time “the stranglehold of the Board of Protection squashed any hope she had of having a successful life”. “The letters begin with a young woman who had these aspirations and ideals for the future,” Dr Huebner said. “And then the reality of mission life, and the weight of having to answer to the Board of Protection, and to be governed by rules of someone else’s making, really started to impact on her capacity to care for her family and to be anything but an Aboriginal woman living on a mission. “And I think she definitely perceived herself as being much more than that. She perceived herself as being someone who could contribute to society no matter who was the governing authority. “I think she also had a belief that she could survive, and that she had the willingness and the capacity to carve a place for herself in what was a changing world for Aboriginal people.” Bessy married a local Aboriginal man, Donald Cameron, and had eight children, but in 1886 new legislation meant they had to leave the mission as Donald was of mixed race, and they had to move into a settler community, separating them from their family. Eventually, they were able to return to the mission, where Bessy tried to keep her own family together and help other Aboriginal women do the same. She died in 1895 and was never able to return to Albany. Dr Huebner shared the information she uncovered about Bessy’s life with her great-granddaughters, and went with them on trips to sites in Victoria that were significant in Bessy’s life. Her research brought her to WA in 2010, when she met Ezzard Flowers, another of Bessy’s descendants. Mr Flowers, who first learned about Bessy through an archival photo he saw when he was working as a TAFE student support officer in the 1990s, shared what he knew of her life with Dr Huebner. Together they visited Annesfield — now a residential home on Serpentine Road. It was a poignant visit for Mr Flowers, who walked past the home every day as a child on his way to school from the Aboriginal Reserve on Mt Melville without knowing of its significance to his family history. In 2011, Mr Flowers and members of his family travelled to East Gippsland to meet the Bryant family, including Bessy’s great-granddaughters and their extended family, for the first time. “We sat down and had a yarn and gave our different interpretations of what we thought about how she and the other four girls would have been on that journey (from Albany to Victoria),” he said. In 2013, members of the Bryant family visited WA, and travelled to the Stirling Range with Mr Flowers and Dr Huebner. “I took them out there because the Stirling Range, especially Bluff Knoll, Bular Mial, is a significant site, and it’s the boundary line between Menang and Goreng country but it’s significant to both regions,” Mr Flowers said. “So I had to take them out there to connect to that story and the importance of why we were there, bringing the spirit of Bessy and the other girls back home to country and giving them the opportunity to rest and look out over both sides of the Stirlings to their homeland. “So that was where the name of the book came from, No Longer a Wandering Spirit — they were spiritually back home, on country, and their spirits were no longer wandering. “This book echoes all those cultural and spiritual connections, through living voices, echoing the voices of those girls who were taken off country.” The book includes passages written by Mr Flowers and Bessy’s other descendants which share their perspectives. “I think it is historically significant because it’s a book that echoes family sentiments and opinions, voices and concerns in reviving (Bessy’s) spiritual legacy that has been under lock and key in all kinds of archival places,” Mr Flowers said. “And for us to actually bring it out, and give it a voice and a connection, from a history and heritage perspective, is totally important in why we reclaim the memory of this important story of this strong and resilient Menang woman, and the other four women as well.” He said he hoped the book would revive Bessy’s legacy in Albany and become an educational tool. “I hope that everybody who gets a book and reads it embraces the strength and the resilience of Bessy and the other four girls who left home, and that they will revive those memories through reading this book,” he said. “And that we could all reconcile with what happened in the past, but we could bring it into the present, and take it into the future so that we all listen, learn and understand the importance of reconciliation and closing the gap.” The book will be launched at an event next Wednesday at the Albany Entertainment Centre, which will feature Jim Morrison from Perth-based Stolen Generations support organisation Yokai, members of Bessy’s Victorian family, Mr Flowers, Dr Huebner, and a screening of their 2016 short film which also charts Bessy’s story. Tickets are available by visiting bit.ly/ 3FSFdJl.