by Jim Low
I was introduced to Polly Flood through the writings of Jim Harper.
Harper was born in Coonabarabran in May,1878. As a child, he moved to Angledool in northern New South Wales with his parents. This area was first settled by Europeans in the late 1840's, after Sir Thomas Mitchell's exploration in 1846. Angledool was originally Angledool Station and later became a private township. The site of the town was about thirty kilometres from the Queensland border and approximately one hundred kilometres north of Walgett.
It was in Angledool as a child that Jim Harper met Polly Flood. She was a local Aboriginal woman who taught him to swim in the Narran River.
Polly was also a proficient concertina player. When Jim Matthews was licensee of the Commercial Hotel in the 1880's, he and his wife encouraged dances there. They turned the hotel's largest room into a ballroom and had Polly play for the dances. The dances were very well attended and would often last until sunrise. “And couldn't Polly Flood play that concertina,” commented Harper.
In the 1940's Jim Harper wrote weekly articles for the Collarenebri Gazette. In one of these articles he imagined himself as the first piano in Angledool. For a few years the piano was housed at Yerranbah Station before being installed in the Commercial Hotel.
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“The dining room of the old bark pub was the scene of many a glorious night's dancing,” wrote Harper, in the guise of the piano. “Lit with candles and slush lamps, it showed off the latest styles in ball dresses. They never offered any excuses for the music; it was absolutely the best procurable, and was supplied by a half-caste woman, Polly Flood, on concertina. Polly Flood! Goodness gracious, she was a woman with a family in the eighties and yet today, with the aid of a stick, she may be seen tottering up Fox Street, Walgett. Oh, Polly, Polly! If your thoughts ever carry you back to those dim and distant eighties at Angledool, do not hold it against me that I was instrumental in pushing you and your concertina into the limbo of forgotten things. I was just a step in the march of progress on the Narran.”
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A picture of Polly Flood, in later life, can be found in the State Library of New South Wales' “At Work and Play” Series, - 03109. The caption for the picture reads: “Polly was a well known aborigine - Walgett, NSW.”
Jim Harper also wrote a poem about Polly Flood, when she was 96 years old and living in Walgett. In the poem he refers to her as “a fun free friend”. It appears that Polly often acted as a midwife when she lived at Angledool.
“White babies were born out there
With you the first to hear their cries
And give them tender love.”
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“To make your burden less
As silently you face the shades
In all your loneliness.”
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Harper had been raised having a respect and concern for the Narran Aboriginals. He witnessed the decline in their numbers and the slow destruction of their way of life. Regretfully he knew only too well how these forces impacted on the lives of individuals like Polly Flood.
The song I wrote about Polly highlights her time in Angledool and her unique contribution to that frontier settlement towards the end of the nineteenth century. Like Harper's writings, I hope it helps stop her story from slipping into “the limbo of forgotten things”.
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Jim Harper
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The quotes from Harper's newspaper articles and his poem about Polly come from the book 'Memories of Angledool', compiled by Mrs Pat Cross of Mehi, Angledool.
