HENRI JOSEPH LEOPOLD DE CLOSEPS D’ERREY (1858-1937)

FAMILY life in the wilderness of early Gymea

Henri D’Errey was born to parents Henri Joseph and Eileen Agnes D’Errey 12 May,1858 in France. In 1888 he married Marie Ferran in Sydney.¹ Henri was a seaman and away for long periods but he came home often enough to add a child to the family every two or three years. Both parents were of French extraction, with Marie said to come from Mauritius.² The D’Erreys resided in Sydney where her father also lived. The 1890s was a period of depression after three decades of economic growth and although Henri found some work on ships, it was not easy. Henri and Marie lived at Strawberry Hills in the city and the births of three children were registered to them at Waterloo for the period to 1894. Harry’s birth in 1897 was registered at Kogarah and the remaining children born in the 1900s were registered at Helensburgh.³ This probably indicates that by 1897 they were living in the Sutherland area as these were the closest registration offices to Sutherland.

 Marie’s son, Mark, born at Gymea, relates the story that his mother saw an advertisement for the Holt-Sutherland Estate offering 99 year leases at £2.8.0 annually for three acres. Money was tight and some cheaper housing for the family was certainly a necessity. As Henri was away at sea, Marie’s father accompanied her to look at the land advertised. However, a promised coach did not meet them at Sutherland railway station and determined to see some land, Marie followed a rough map to Dents Creek where Gymea TAFE is now. She knew the family would need fresh water near any land chosen but the area was slimy and filled with weed. They followed the creek down past the home of Mr Reid, who was the first teacher at Miranda School then on to Woronora Road, now known as President Avenue, a name given to it after the establishment of the first Shire Council. Crossing the road they walked along through the bush to what is now Talara Road and on to what became Kenna Place where Marie saw the three metre wide crystal clear creek. Water lilies lined both sides of the brook while Christmas Bush and Waratahs flourished in the area. She knew she had found a very suitable place for their home.⁴

In 1894 the family were evicted from their city home. They came to their land with their children, Leo aged seven, Augustine aged five and Eva aged three, all their possessions, a tent, axe, hammer, mattock, shovel and a cross cut saw. Their clothes were mostly received from the Government Benevolent Society. With no money and little food, they pitched the tent as a temporary home and Henri set to work to build a bag humpy of three rooms with a dirt floor and a bark roof. Marie walked to Sutherland to obtain food on credit from Bramley’s shop, on the site of the southern corner of McCubbens Lane. She bought one loaf of bread, one tin of Golden Syrup, ½lb tea, 2lb sugar, one tin condensed milk and potatoes. Green vegetables were the wild watercress in the creeks.⁵ It was a difficult start for the young family and a sign of the times.

Henri worked at Schofield’s farm for a time, planting tea in the area of First and Second Avenue, just south of the present site of Gymea Bay Public School then went back to sea again. Marie found the isolation very difficult to bear with three small children in her care and at night wild cats, usually twice the size of domestic cats, added to her discontent. She told her children of the time she was viciously attacked by a wild cat which she had cornered in the fowl pen. This encounter left her with scars on her back for life and a determination to find a new location for their home. Marie sold the property of three acres with slab humpy to Mrs Cadden and her daughter for £10. The family then settled on 1½ acres at the corner of North West Arm Road and President Avenue, though the ‘corner’ was ‘only wilderness’. They were closer to passing traffic and had ample fresh water.⁶ Their daughter Marie was born there in 1901 and their son Mick also, on 25 March 1904⁷ and life was very hard for them all but especially  so for the young mother.

In 1900 there was a near tragedy for the family. Harry South, the baker, when delivering bread twice a week, usually jumped the creek to get to the Derrey’s home. On one such occasion he noticed two-year old Harry Derrey floating face down in the water, pulled him from the creek and successfully revived him. Another bread carter, Jack Fitzpatrick, found the hill near their home, heading east along President Avenue, rough and steep. He used to whip his horse to encourage him to pull up the hill, but in desperation would often light a small fire under the horse. The canny horse would turn sideways and the cart would be over the fire!⁸

In the summer of 1903-4, Marie took on a job picking beans at two pence a bushel on Bob Marien’s farm near Sylvania Road. It meant bread and butter to her as she was too ashamed to go to Sutherland to Bramley’s store being badly in debt to him. She bought scrag meat for the dog at Stapleton’s Butchers, though they did not have a dog. They were not the only ones going without as, during that period, other people arrived in horse-drawn carts with all their belongings and dumped them in the bush where a primitive shack would be erected – the only home they could afford.⁹

At the new home site Henri built a pise (rammed mud) hut with a grass tree roof, hidden from the view of passers by on President Avenue, though Marie was still able to see anyone who was travelling on that track. One winter, a few years after Mick was born, catastrophe struck after continual rain and wind for days caused the south wall of their mud hut to collapse, sending half the mud into the area where Fred and Mick were sleeping. Henri was away at sea so the boys slept with their mother until the weather cleared and repairs could be made. For Marie this consisted of shovelling the mud out of the hut and tacking corn bags in place, a very temporary solution until Henri returned.¹⁰

Bushfires were a problem with the grass roof of their home. Mick recalls that any bushfire that began at Liverpool when a westerly wind was blowing, would finish up at Cronulla. ‘When my mum saw a fire coming, she would tell us kids to fill every available tin bucket or saucepan with water from the creek, to throw on the roof when the fire arrived. While we were filling the tins, my mum would take all our bed clothes outside, in case the fire got into the roof, she would then stack them in a bundle and cover them with a wet sheet and place her Rosary beads on the top, and say to us ‘The Lord and Our Lady will protect them.’ And the strange thing was, through a dozen fires, we never had our roof burned.^11”

One of young Mick’s responsibilities was to listen for the train in mid-afternoon as it puffed up the incline between Como and Sutherland as this would give his mother some idea of the time. It usually came through about 3pm.¹²

Mick had his first close-up view of the Pacific Ocean at the age of six years in 1910. He tagged along behind his older brother Fred and his mates, Tom Avery and Chris Dube who were 12 years old and Claude Gough who was about 15. They tried to make him return home and told him he wouldn’t be carried, but he was always his brother’s ‘shadow’ and went anyhow. They walked along President Avenue to Kiora Road, then down through the gully, past the head of Yowie Bay where there was no road and up the other side to Highfield, now known as Caringbah. On the gravelled Malvern Road, now the Kingsway, the Sutherland to Cronulla coach driven by Bob Cook offered them a lift as the coach was empty but they refused. When they reached Woolooware Road, then just a cart track, Mick saw the sea and the ‘mountain of sand’ on the coast. They headed down to the mangrove swamp now Tonkin Park and to Laycock’s boatshed for a drink of water, on through the Gunnamatta Park area to Shelly Park where Mick had a drink from a waterhole. Then on to the Esplanade area where two old tram cars were in place as week-enders, along the gravel road of Ewos Parade to the site of the future RSL Club then down to Cronulla Beach. In the centre of the beach which had sand to the foot of the surrounding slopes, there was a temporary dressing shed with no roof and bag sides on piers six feet high, reached by a roughly-made ladder. They climbed the windswept hill between North Cronulla and Cronulla where Mick sat and gazed in wonder at the scene before him. It was an amazing sight to him and the mammoth walk had been worth it. But he still had to get home!¹³

Mick straggled behind the boys as they headed further along the expanse of sand and was dragged up one of the thirty foot high sandhills by the older boys. He saw miles of sand to the north, and they noted a black speck which proved to be Joe Monro, then about 27 years old, returning from fishing with a catch of whiting. Joe would eventually build the impressive Cecil Hotel and Ballroom on the hill above Cronulla Beach and serve as a Councillor for 32 years.¹⁴

The boys continued on past the Cronulla Beach Hotel, a two-storey brick building with an upstairs verandah, where they had a drink of water. Mick was feeling very tired and still had five miles to drag his feet. They had kept their promise not to carry him. They set off along the road from Cronulla when a horse-coach came along which Mick thought was driven by Alf Giddings, a Cronulla man who ran the coach service. He offered them a lift and the boys refused. Mick’s heart sank but lightened when the driver said ’What about the kid?’ Mick was on the coach in a flash and was put off at Smith’s Dairy, now the site of the Gymea TAFE, walking through the bush to his home on President Avenue, tired, hungry and thirsty with his mind full of the ‘wonders of that mountain of sand and that vast area of water called the Pacific Ocean.’¹⁵

Mick attended Sutherland Public School and remembers Dorothy Ann Wiles who became his teacher in 1910. She was only about 20 years old and the daughter of the Rev. Henry Wiles who had been  appointed Minister of the Methodist Church in Flora Street. They had a home in Glencoe Street next door to the present site of the Presbyterian Church, which was on Mick’s track from his home through the bush to school.  Mick and his sister would pick the bush flowers on a Sunday afternoon and present a bunch to her as she came through her gate on Monday morning. They would then walk to school together singing songs about native flowers. In 1916 when World War 1 was raging, the Rev. Wiles conducted a ‘Church Service for Peace’ for the children in the playground under a large stringy bark tree.¹⁶

 Mick’s school days were not consistent. He often missed attending because there was no food for him to take for lunch. When things were really bad he would call on Mrs Walden to see if she wanted any manure for her beautiful garden. He could earn sixpence or a shilling for one or two loads of manure which he collected on the site of the present Entertainment Centre as the cows from the nearby dairy would get out at night and settle there. These earnings would buy bread for the family.¹⁷

 On Saturday nights the shops remained open at that time and Henri and Marie would take their family shopping. Mick’s penny to spend would burn a hole in his pocket, but after considering the variety of lollies in the window of Powe’s Newsagency at Sutherland, he would rush in and buy his choice.¹⁸

About 1912 when the old Yowie Bay Hotel was operating, Marie took a job washing and ironing for the Hotel in the one day. It was degrading for a married woman to go out to work, but it was very necessary to pay the annual fee to the Holt-Sutherland Company. Marie walked from North West Arm Road to the Hotel near Yowie Bay Wharf, then back again after her work was finished. Mick remembers one night when his mother was due to come home and a severe storm was approaching, his sister asked him was he afraid to take a raincoat and hurricane lamp to meet their mother at the bay? ‘No said Mick but he was terrified, especially of Walker’s bullocks which sometimes broke out of the slaughter yard and camped under the pine trees growing along the fence between the present Walker Avenue and Sylvania Road.

 The storm really hit on their way home with the whole works thrown at them – thunder, lightning and wind. A bolt of lightning struck a big tree near them and wood flew everywhere. Marie was making the Sign of the Cross and Mick lost no time in doing the same. His mother was saying her prayers in French and she only did that when she was really scared. It was a terrifying experience for them both and Mick remembered it all his life.¹⁹

Even family laundry days could be a major project in drought times when tank water became precious. Marie would take a big round tub laden with soiled clothes, washing board, soap and blue bag and a kerosene tin to boil her clothes down to the creek near the junction of now North West Arm and Avenel Roads. Her daughter Blanche would help her through the bush and boil up the tin before she went to school. Marie would do her washing, hang it around then return home and come back later to collect the dried washing.

 Henri came and went as his ships docked and sailed. In 1913 when he was home, Henri cleared two acres for Tyldsley who intended to start a poultry farm there, off President Avenue. The area was well known for poultry farms and many set up farms as a regular source of income. Tyldsley had first lived in a tin shed with a ceiling five metres high until Sid Zealey, a local bricklayer, built his house. Tyldsley had a magnificent tenor voice and Marie was also known to be a good singer. They lived two hundred yards apart and their voices often joined in melody across President Avenue.²⁰

Constable Lewis was the Sutherland Policeman and the Derrey family sometimes had dealings with him. There was a curious incident when Henri Derrey took a load of wood on his dray to Sutherland. At the railway station the horse dropped dead so Henri called on the Constable and explained what had happened. There was a small crowd around the dead horse, but Constable Lewis obviously decided he needed to be sure and shot the dead horse in the head.²¹ On another occasion a couple of the Derrey children were at the receiving end of his disapproval. The policeman had an orchard at the rear of his residence at Sutherland and the eldest Derrey child once climbed over the paling fence, obviously hoping for some light refreshment, and left his sister waiting outside. When Constable Lewis asked where the brother her was she replied  ‘He’s in there’, pointing into the orchard. They were probably lucky to get off with a very stern lecture.²²

 Visits to the dentist were undertaken only when absolutely necessary. Mick recalls an extraction performed by Dentist Vern Barnett in his old weatherboard room in Flora Street Sutherland and the glass of water he was given by the nurse to rinse his mouth afterwards was full of ‘wrigglers’. These usually enjoyed life in the water tanks of that period.²³

 At 11 years of age Mick carried the mailbag from Warman’s boatshed at Gymea Bay to the Sutherland Post Office and back again each Saturday morning, receiving the sum of two shillings and six pence. However, the long walk with sometimes only two or three letters, finally became too much effort, even for the amount paid and he relinquished the job after five weeks.²⁴

The news that the war had ended was greeted by the residents of Sutherland Shire who ‘went wild with joy’. Mick recalls that there was much banging of tins and blowing of the tram whistles, Mick’s older brother Fred served during the First World War and returned safely. With his deferred pay he built his mother Marie a house which was probably a castle to her after her many years of primitive dwellings with dirt floors.²⁵

When Mick was 14 years old, he received a notice to report to the Hurstville Drill Hall for a medical examination prior to his entry into the 34^th Battalion, after which uniforms were issued. Mick’s hat came over his ears and he had to pad it with newspapers. His pants, tunic and puttees were all oversize but the boots fitted! Parades were held on the corner of Kareena and Port Hacking Roads, opposite the site of the Kareen Hospital on Wednesday or Saturday afternoons at 2.30pm  They also spent two weeks in Liverpool camp, billeted in long tin sheds where, on occasion he might be startled by a bayonet being driven through the wall near his head. The men competed in athletic events against other battalions from the South Coast at the Sydney Sports Ground, doing their training along Port Hacking Road from Kareena Road to the Six Ways. It seemed like an early version of Dad’s Army.²⁶

Mick’s first real job was with Milner’s Nursey and later he worked with Fred Dent who was testing stratum for the future Woronor Dam with his diamond drill.

In 1920 Mick had a brush with the Law. He had been offered a job by Barry Lewis an ex-naval man, helping to clear land at Gymea for £2 per week. One Friday afternoon he was asked to cut a load of wood the following morning for delivery to Caringbah and when the load was ready for delivery, Barry told him to hop aboard and come for the ride.

On the journey back they acquired another passenger, Stan Gray, and as they approached the Wine Bar at Caringbah, Barry suggested a ‘nip of wine’. Mick, being only 16 years old, knew little about wine, but the party alighted and Barry bought them each a brown muscat at ninepence a glass. On the journey home they were singing very lustily when they were surprised by the sudden appearance of Sergeant Packer who took the bridle of the horse and escorted them to the Police Station in Kareena Road. He threatened to charge them all with ‘being a public nuisance and disturbing the peace’. Barry was worried about his reputation and what his mother might say and pleaded that none of them had previous convictions. The Sergeant told them to get out and Mick records that ‘the three of us walked out quietly - without even the assistance of Packer’s boot – which was unusual’!²⁷

More families made their homes at Gymea over the years and amongst them was the Freeman family. In July 1914 they bought land that would become the corner of Gymea Bay Road and Forest Road, which had been originally selected by Tom Hutcherson and cleared of scrub. Tom, with the help of Jack Macey, built a two-roomed weatherboard shack there, mostly of second hand timber, and a few bag fowl houses. With fowls already installed he put the land up for sale. Young Connie Freeman was seven years old at that time and growing up at Gymea she met and got to know Mick, who she later married. ²⁸

 Their wedding on 27 April 1929 was the first to be held in the newly built Catholic Church at Belmont Street Sutherland.²⁹ Mick and Connie had three daughters over the years, Elaine, Marie and Patricia.³⁰

During the depression of the 1930s Mick took any job that came his way. In 1931 he was offered a job cutting bakers’ wood out at Glenfield and asked his mate Les Bourke to come and work with him. Les had been a soldier in World War 1 where he had been badly affected by gas. He lived with his wife and three children in a bag humpy on the corner of Forest Road and Grays Point Road, then only a cart track. As married men they both knew that a job, any job would put some very necessary coins in their pockets. ³¹

They worked in heavily timbered country for some time, camping under a sheet of canvas propped up by four sticks, their beds of chaff bags filled with leaves and stretched over four support sticks, with a blanket to cover them, they were camped on an army firing range and dodged bullets and heavier missiles at times. Finally the contractor came with his wagon and loaded their work, promising to return. They asked him to buy them some stores as they were almost out of food and gave him all the cash they had – 4/3d. They waited three days but the contractor did not return. They scrounged some cigarette butts from the bush area where they were working and enjoyed their first smoke in days. But they needed more than that. They decided to walk to Liverpool.³²

Their journey was memorable as they saw the Southern Cloud overhead about 9am on 21 March 1931 heading for Melbourne. Some time later on that flight it crashed in the Snowy Mountains, disappearing for many years until found in October 1958. About a mile from their camp they met another woodcutter and although he had not seen the contractor, he did give them a couple of dried crusts and some treacle. Another woodcutter encountered in the bush had a scar on his face and he later proved to be William Moxley who was convicted of murder of a man and woman in that area the following year.³³

Mick suggested to his mate Les, that they walk to Sutherland and though Les protested that it was too far, he finally agreed. A storm was brewing and broke soon after, drenching them. Les’ shoes fell apart and he finally was unable to walk on his badly damaged feet. Mick helped him as much as he could and actually carried him on his back for about ten miles. Mick’s shoulders and back were chafed and cut through Les gripping his wet clothes to hang on. At Sutherland they did not have the heart to walk to Gymea and, bedraggled and penniless, they sought help from the tram conductor. He agreed they could travel free and added that he would think of something if an inspector appeared. They were home after a long and exhausting journey! But a fortnight later Mick’s mate Les died.³⁴

 A few years later  Mick was working with a gang, unloading concrete slabs for Jannali Railway Station, even well into the night with the aid of carbide lights. A local resident who lived up the hill behind the present Jannali Inn would spy on the workers, writing letters to both the Railway Department and the Council (who were paying half the costs) complaining that they were ‘loafing on the job’ when they completed that job well ahead of schedule, they were complimented by the Chief Engineer for Railways.³⁵

Henri and Marie parted company and were divorced in 1924.  The Sydney Morning Herald of 9 December 1924 records that Marie Amelie Derrey (or d’Errey) formerly Ferran had petitioned for divorce from Henri Joseph Leopold de Closets Derrey (or d’Errey) on the grounds of desertion and a decree nisi was granted. Henri remarried in 1931 in Newtown to Agnes E Nichols. A son, also named Henri Joseph Leopold was born to this couple but must have died very young as his death was recorded in 1937.  Henri died on 21 December 1946 at a private hospital and was cremated on 23 December at Rookwood.  

Marie died in 1947 at the age of 78 in the home which her son Fred had built for her. Marie was a remarkable woman who struggled for years to bring up her children under difficult circumstances. She was a big influence in their lives and  of their chosen partners.³⁷ This was possibly the result of the strong family bond which existed in this family, nurtured by their isolation and dependence on each other.

 Mick’s memories of his life and experiences in early Sutherland Shire, were recorded in many issues of the Historical Society’s Bulletin and Mick became a respected historian of the local area. In his last few years he had surgery to remove his legs and had mastered the use of his artificial legs so that he could attend the regular meetings of the Sutherland Historical Society which he had so strongly supported. This was recognised by the Society when he was awarded Life Membership. He died in 1985 aged 80, a true pioneer of the Sutherland Shire.³⁸

^{Merle Kavanagh}

First published in  Sutherland Shire, Some Early Residents, 2006, by Botany Bay Family History Society. Compiled by Maree McKinley and Sue Hewitt.   

Click on the name HENRI JOSEPH LEOPOLD DE CLOSEPS D’ERREY (1858 – 1937) in the heading of thIs story. You will be taken to the database entry for Henri Joseph and his family.

Endnotes

1       NSW BDM Index 1888/390

2       SSHS Bulletin No 77, Aug 1991 p 74

3       NSW BDM Index 1889 09116, 1891 36637, 1894 04323, 1897 22724, 1901 13253, 1904 12789

4       Sutherland Shire Council, Shire Pioneers List No 1

5       SSHS Bulletin No 47, Feb 1984, p95

6       ibid.; Mick Derrey, Gymea 70 years ago, (Derrey Vertical File,LSC at  SSL)

7       Card in Local History Index in LSC at SSL

8       SSHS Bulletin No 53 May 1977, p53

9       SSHS Bulletin No 54 Nov 1985, p120

10  Derrey, Gymea: 70 years ago

11  ibid.

12  SSHS Bulletin Vol 2 No 17, Feb 1997 p403

13  SSHS Bulletin No 52, May 1985, pp97,98

14  Sutherland Shire Council Pamphlet Councillors of the Sutherland Shire 1906 and onwards, dated Sep 2002

15  SSHS Bulletin No 52 May 1985, pp97,98

16  SSHS Bulletin No 40 May 1982, p23

17  Notes on pioneers compiled by Diane Oliver, Sutherland Shire Librarian, List 1, Aug 1981

18  ibid.

19  op.cit. No 24, May 1978, p156

20   op.cit No 54, Nov 1985, p144

21  SSHS Bulletin No 62 Nov 1987, p314

22  ibid.

23  SSHS Bulletin No 55 Feb 1986, p191

24  SSHS Bulletin No 61 Aug 1987, p289

25  Interview with Connie Derrey, 25 Nov 1992 (LSC at SSL); SSHS   Bulletin No 56 May 1986, p214

26  SSHS Bulletin No 50 Nov 1984, p51

27  SSHS Bulletin No 26 Nov 1978, pp212,213

28  SSHS Bulletin No 48 May 1984, p10

29  SSHS Bulletin No 50 Nov 1984 p50

30  SSHS Bulletin No 52 May 1985, p112

31  SSHS Bulletin No 18 Oct 1976, pp108,109

32  ibid.

33 ibid.

34 ibid.

35  SSHS Bulletin No 29 Aug 1979, p291

36  NSW BDM Index 1937, 3754

37  NSW BDM Index 1947 26158; Interview with Connie Derrey

38  SSHS Bulletin No 52 May 1985, p89