Gillian Gregory

The women partners of famous men are often lost to history. Gillian Gregory’s novel From the Shadows repairs this injustice in respect of Eliza, long-time lover of the notorious Tasmanian bushranger Martin Cash. Eliza’s story is one of faithful love, struggle, danger, and suffering. Her adventures, and above all her resilience and courage, are worth recording and celebrating. This is also a book of immense appeal for lovers of horses and dogs. 

More significantly, Gregory’s precise recreation of the contrary lives of rich and poor in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land from the 1830s to the 1850s will captivate readers with a concern for social and gender inequality. 

Australians have travelled far from the inequities narrated so vividly in this novel, but as many would argue, not far enough.

Assoc. Professor Cheryl Taylor, James Cook University, Townsville 

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(Re)writing women

A reflection on From the Shadows-the story of Eliza Cash by Gillian Gregory.

Most of us will have heard of Martin Cash-gentlemen bushranger and confirmed larrikin, a charming Irishman who, against the odds, escaped twice from Port Arthur, dodged the hangman’s noose, and lived long enough for a best-selling biography to be written about him.

By the time of his death (1877) the bushranger figure was cementing a place in the developing origin story of Australia, a mythology all male, all white and forged in the struggle against the alien and

unforgiving bush and the forces of British oppression. First in the pantheon of Australian types, Cash and Kelly are Irish, anti-authoritarian, class warriors, new men living by their wit, bravery, and charm. Naturally, this type (beloved of film makers and PMs) has endured merging seamlessly with

ANZACs and swaggies in the great story of the nation’s birth.

It may surprise some of us that the first Australian bushranger John Caesar arrived on the First Fleet aboard the Alexander. “Black” Caesar was neither Irish nor white but a “freed” former slave most likely of Afro-Caribbean origin. To all but a few die-hard history buffs, his story has been lost.

On reading Jill’s book, I was struck by resonances with Lawson’s The Drovers’ Wife. (I say Lawson as this piece of Henry’s writing seems to owe a debt to his mother Louisa who published The Australian Bushwoman a year before The Drover’s Wife). She is nameless, her thoughts solely on survival and

her children alone in the bush, tethered in place by obligations to the absent drover. No roaming adventure for her, her thoughts are “untold”.

Narratives of early nation building are stories of male heroism and endurance: to paraphrase historian Marilyn Lake, while women gave birth to the population, men gave birth to the nation. Not all men -witness the silence around Australia’s Black Founders. Not all women toiled nameless or

forgotten either: money and class ensured a legacy of sorts for Elizabeth McArthur though her husband has most of the credit for her pioneering agricultural work.

Most fell into obscurity. When they appear (usually briefly in newspapers, correspondence, and official report), they fall into cliché-drunk, slatternly, indigent, fallen or sainted, long-suffering mother/wife. 

Now, Eliza Cash speaks. The historical record has more than a little to tell us about Eliza. She is a “companion” to Martin- certainly true-and a “prostitute” and “drunkard”-contestable as fact but strong markers of her fall from class and grace. Hers is the dark counterpoint to the strong masculinity of Martin’s almost heroic portrait: not wife or mother, without land or money or a

respectable place in colonial society.

Through careful research and intelligent writing, Jill has remade Eliza, presenting a compelling and real portrait of a women who risked all for her lover, leaving a respectable husband (though he was drunk, unstable, and aggrieved for most of their life in the Hunter Valley) for love. And there is no doubt theirs was a love story. Martin looked on Eliza as a prize- an educated woman, undeniably attractive just as he was spirited, loving and very smitten! 

Jill has created a powerful narrative. Eliza’s story is in one sense a series of failed new starts as she accompanies Martin to jobs that do not last, into cosy cottages that soon must be vacated as Martin looks for the next best thing-the one venture that will set them up for life. Along with the wretched miserable failed ventures, Jill captures Eliza’s rare moments of warmth and companionship with women friends, the love of the faithful dogs and horses that must too be left behind. For nearly all of their 8-year relationship, Martin was an itinerant agricultural labourer though his exploits as a bushranger are wonderfully captured.

She does find love in many places and the culmination of the action sees Eliza taking her own life back in a powerful way. This is not all of her story. To say more would be to tell too much and you must read this wonderful book.

Greg and I have known the Eliza story and Jill’s dedication to her for some decades. We met in Townsville and soon came to see how Eliza’s story had taken hold of Jill’s imagination. It has been a long germination from the idea that would not be silenced to the beautiful book we see today. I must pay tribute to the assiduous support and editorial assistance that Greg and Cheryl Taylor (then both JCU academics) provided. Like me, they had a long acquaintance with Eliza as she came from the shadows and we love the triumph of this story, told at last! May there be many more complete

narratives that tell the stories that have been obscured, forgotten or over-written by the dominant Australian origin stories.

In closing, as we celebrate Jill’s achievement, I must reflect on the crucial role played by another accomplished historian, Jill’s daughter Tracey whose inspiration, urging and encouragement kept the flame alive. This book is a truly fitting testament to her legacy and a promise made and kept by a loving mother.

Address given by Beth Keating at the launch of From the Shadows