A G Hamilton
Source: Dr Joe Davis via "Kembla Jottings" Facebook page
Alexander Greenlaw Hamilton was teacher at Guntawang from 1870 to 1887.
He married Emma Thacker of Guntawang (NSW BDM 2307/1864 V18642307 42A) whose father Charles Thacker was the overseer on the Rouse Estate. Their children included:
- Charles Greelaw Hamilton - born 1874 (NSW BDM 14645/1874)
- Harold Wynne Hamilton - born 1875 (NSW BDM 15205/1875)
- Edgar A Hamilton - born 1878 (NSW BDM 16967/1878)
The following extract from an account of his life describes his time in the Gulgong district.
--------------------------------------
Hamilton arrived in Australia with his father and mother, in or about his fourteenth year. In 1866, he succeeded in passing the examination test demanded by the Education Department of New South Wales for candidates desirous of teaching in "country schools''. Although successful in the written and oral tests, he was considered to be too young to be placed in full charge of a school, and a compromise was effected whereby he, although only fourteen years of age, gave the whole of the instruction, whereas, officially, his mother was recognized as the responsible agent to the Department.
This school was at Fish River Creek. Somewhat later, the family moved to Meadow Flat, where Hamilton was placed officially in charge of the school. In 1870, he was appointed to the position of assistant at St. Mary's Church of England School at South Creek. At a later stage, but during the same year, he attended a course of training for teachers given at Fort Street, Sydney, and, in October of that year, he was promoted to the charge of the public school at Guntawang, a position which he held until 1887.
Here, at Guntawang, commenced a remarkably happy period of his life. Here it was that he met and married Emma Thacker, of Guntawang. Hamilton was married on the twenty-first anniversary of his birthday, his wife being but eighteen years of age. She it was who became a lifelong companion and helper to him, accompanying him on various lengthy excursions for the collection of Natural History material. Here it was that he commenced his long and fruitful communion with Nature; here it was that his sons were reared and introduced to the secrets and beauties of Nature; and here it was that many lifelong friendships were established with leaders of scientific thought in Australia.
Here also it was that he created, gradually, a deep interest in Natural History objects among the country people in his neighbourhood, and the members of Hamilton's family have very lively recollections of the non-co-operative and vigorously protesting representatives of the local fauna which were from time to time unceremoniously introduced to the attention of the Hamilton household -- birds of all sorts, graceful marsupials, writhing snakes, bloated lizards, fearsome insects and other arthropods, many things slimy and slippery, together with uncommon plants. The collections consisted generally of organisms which were considered, by the youthful collectors, to possess some special feature or attractiveness, such as uncommon beauty or ugliness, particular aggressiveness or dangerousness.
In addition to these job lots arriving, in impromptu fashion, from all points of the compass, Hamilton himself had gathered around him his own particular pets, ranging from birds and lizards to kangaroos, wallabies and opossums. One of his greatest treasures was a platypus possessed of very retiring habits. lt preferred darkness to light, but not "because his deeds were evil". lt was made as comfortable as local conditions permitted under the peculiar circumstances, seeing that Hamilton's small home plot possessed neither a handy river nor lake in whose banks the strange guest might conceal itself. Finally, however, it was persuaded to be happy and comfortable in a nest improvised from a box attached to a tree stump. Under cover of night the wary monotreme would take its courage "in both hands", as it were, and, making use of the darkness as a substitute for its natural gloomy underground passage made in the river or lake bank, would venture forth and collect worms and other gastronomic delicacies (which had been supplied with a generous hand by the Hamilton family from a tub of water which the unsuspecting pet possibly mistook for an inlet of its own natural river or lake-like expanse of same.
Hamilton possessed a very strong community spirit which found expression in whole-hearted participation in the social activities of the various districts in which he happened to live. These activities he extended in certain directions. At Guntawang, for example, he was responsible for the establishment there of a School of Arts, the work of Librarian devolving upon himself. Indeed, the amount of scientific, social, and sporting activities which he compassed in non-official hours was a never-failing source of wonder to his family, for, although his chief hobby was Nature Study in its various ramifications, nevertheless, at Guntawang. at least, he was known not only as a naturalist, but as an enthusiastic cricketer, musician, sketcher, painter, photographer, and general helper and counsellor. In all the local musical activities, whether sacred or secular, he was facile princeps. He was the organist of the church and leader of the choir, as well as being the acknowledged leader of the local concerts and dramatic performances. In local cricket circles his assistance was valued specially in the batting and wicket-keeping departments. The gloves worn in the country at that period gave insufficient protection against the incoming tendency to fast overarm bowling - as opposed to the old underarm delivery - with the result that every finger of his right hand appears to have suffered severely, either by having a bone broken or a joint dislocated due to his own stubbornness in maintaining his close stand behind the wicket.
Sketching ("drawing") and painting were not hobbies so much as means to an end, namely, the simplification and clarification of Natural Study descriptions. He appeared to possess a special gift in drawing, whereby he caught the natural expression of the various subjects chosen for illustration. This gift he employed freely in his earlier studies in the preparation or coloured illustrations of plants, birds, and other objects of the district for identification by William Woolls, Baron von Mueller, and other authorities, but all strangers to the district. His black-board sketches, moreover, proved to be of most definite assistance to his Natural History classes.
Photography was especially welcome to him as being a most marked help in his studies. His first attempts were with the cumbersome and obsolete wet-plate system. This, as is well known, was a lengthy and difficult process, involving the employment of the focussing apparatus, the painting of the plate, the screening of same, the exposure and the development at once afterwards. ln the Guntawang days (1870- 1887), many of the local residents had considered him to be a little "queer" because of the' meticulous caution and care taken by him in observing the habits of animals, insects and plants; but when he went through the solemn ceremony of photography with his high tripod and its black cloth, the wet plate, the focussing details, the seriousness observed by him in making the important plate exposure, the careful extraction of the plate and development of same, then, indeed, the rustics felt confident that their school teacher was not "quite like" other men in the settlement.
The photographic hobby remained with him to the end, and very numerous were the excellently coloured lantern slides of plants prepared by him.
Despite all his other activities, he was an omnivorous reader. He spent all that he could afford (and even what he could not really afford, according to family testimony) on books. Hamilton possessed one point, at least, in common with his platypus, in that he pursued his hobby of reading much about the same time that the beloved platypus was pursuing its own hobby of exploration and grub-hunting in the mud of the big tub, namely, night time, when "man's work is done", and field work, therefore, was supposed to be impracticable even for Hamilton. Many a time the sight of "Greenlaw" coming home quite unobtrusively, but with his bag suspiciously heavy, would cause his wife to wonder as to the nature of the contents of that same bag, for, if of books, it might have some slight effect on the domestic budgeting for the month.
Atter the Guntawang days, he became a golf enthusiast, and, on the steep slopes of the coastal area near his home or the school, he enclosed an area with high wire netting so as to safeguard the golf ball when practising "shots".
Hamilton was a keen collector, but, withal, he had a marked aversion to cruelty in any form. This would not allow him even to keep pets in confinement against their will. He inculcated in the children of his district the love of sympathetic observation of bird activities in the field, so as to obviate the wanton destruction of birds for idle curiosity. The studies of animal life in their natural surroundings involved the taking of lengthy excursions, but Hamilton was an accomplished and tireless walker. As a naturalist he was to New South Wales much the same as John Muir was to California, the lover and protector of Nature.
Settlement at Guntawang was markedly scattered, and medical aid, from accredited practitioners, was almost non-existent. Hamilton naturally stepped into the breach in emergency, and was called upon for help in cases of accident, snake-bite, and other ailments, requiring skill beyond that possessed by the ordinary bushman.
In 1887, he accepted the position of Head Master of the Mt. Kembla Public School, and was introduced thus to an entirely new environment. From the open forests of the inland area he now came to the rain forest of Illawarra; from the dry land of the inland slopes he came to the seaside with its shoreline and its teeming wealth of life. The neighbours here were not "settlers", but coal miners in the main. The rain forest which clothed the neighbouring ranges gave him contact with a fauna and flora possessing appearances and habits differing markedly from those of the more open country of Guntawang.
NEWS ITEMS
1874 - Guntawang
Our correspondent states that the usually quiet town of Guntawang was enlivened on Tuesday evening by the kindness of Mr. Hamilton, the public school teacher, who delivered the first of series of lectures on behalf of the Guntawang School of Arts. The subject was the ‘The Composition of the Atmosphere and the Properties of it various Constituents.’ The lecture was illustrated by chemical experiments, the room being darken for that purpose. Some little amusement was caused during this part of the lecture in the fear displayed by the Chairman of the meeting being propelled by the explosive material employed somewhere or another—perhaps in the midst of the audience.
Source: Gulgong Evening Argus, May 30, 1874
1884 - JUVENILE INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION. THE CLOSING DAY.
After remaining open for a period of about eight weeks, the Parramatta Juvenile Industrial Exhibition was brought to a close on Saturday night. It has been visited by large numbers of persons, the attendance representing every district, if not every town, in the colony, and many of the visitors being from other colonies.
Section A
...Collection of Ferns, &c. — Charles Hamilton, Public school, Guntawang, I.
