The Remarkable Professor Jakelin Troy and the Indigenisation of Australia - Part 1
The Indigenisation of our Australian society has been occurring steadily over the past two decades, but it seems to be reaching a crescendo in the last year or so, with new examples appearing in the media monthly [see Further Reading below].
This post is about an attempt to racialize our culture by the insertion of Indigeneity into one of our more enduring and endearing Australian stories, that of Banjo Paterson’s poem, The Man from Snowy River.
Tom Burlinson and Sigrid Thornton in The Man from Snowy River, 1982 (Guardian Australia)
So iconic is the poem, The Man from Snowy River by Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson he and it are represented on our $10 banknote. The poem was first published in The Bulletin, an Australian news magazine, on 26th April 1890. (Wikipedia)
The Man from Snowy River: rewatching classic Australian films
As recently as 2014, none other than The Guardian Australia was correctly telling us that,
More than just an Aussie horse opera, this [1982] film employs stunning scenery, technical flair and Kirk Douglas in two roles in its pursuit of an uplifting conclusion…Those unfamiliar with his story – a romantic kangaroo western set in Victoria’s sunbaked Snowy mountains – will recognise the legendary title by which he is known.
A creation of celebrated bush poet Banjo Paterson, The Man from Snowy River occupies an iconic residence in Australian pop culture. …George Miller (not to be confused with Oz cinema's other George Miller, the director of Mad Max) invests thought and empathy in depicting another kind of quintessential Australian character: determined women who, in many ways, are far stronger than the men around them.
The Man from Snowy River is perhaps best remembered for its sense of adventure. Although the film takes a long time to arrive at an uplifting conclusion (Miller reserves the physical and personal triumph until the very end), it doesn't disappoint…
“He’ll dig his own grave,” scoffs Harrison, when Jim embarks on a dangerous hunt to retrieve a prized colt. What follows is the fist-pumping moment the entire film has been building towards. Set to a rousing score, majestic green landscapes are trampled by beautiful horses and, unsurprisingly, our homespun hero returns victorious.
Banjo Paterson’s poem is about as iconic as you can get in Australian culture - one of those foundational representations of what being an Australian consists of. Even though most of us do not ride horses, or live or work on the High Plains, we can feel the romantic connection because we are Australians and we believe in the Australian project and our history. Just as few of us are athletes, we were all down there on the track with Cathy Freeman in the Sydney Olympics, our hearts pumping as she headed towards the finishing line. Similarly, most of us have never served in the Australian Defence Forces, but we all feel and understand that patriotic emotion that swells up in each of us each year around Anzac Day - because we are Australian and we believe in ourselves. Those who don’t understand this are either not Australian (yet) or wowsers or, more worringly nefarious types who want to modify, cancel or even destroy these iconic representations of Australia for their own un-Australian political ends.
And so to The Man from Snowy River, the next Australian cultural icon to be challenged and ‘re-assessed’ with a racial lens by the cultural revolutionaries. Specifically, in the case of Banjo’s poem, the activists with their racial obsessions are asking themselves, “is there an opportunity to Indigenise The Man from Snowy River”?
It seems that there is indeed, as the we learned from the Sydney Morning Herald in 2021,
‘The man from Snowy River immortalised in Banjo Paterson’s famous poem has always been portrayed as a white man, but new claims in a book suggest he was based on events surrounding an Indigenous stockman’.
- Tim Barlass, Man from Snowy River had to be Aboriginal, says author, SMH, 1 September 2021
And now enter Professor Jakelin Troy, a Director of Aboriginal Research at Sydney University, who is an Aboriginal Australian from the Ngarigu community of the Snowy Mountains. Professor Troy tells reporter Barlass in the same SMH article,
“I don’t think any of us really care who the man, or woman, from Snowy River was, but it is an interesting thing to explore because it definitely plays into the mythology of the area. One piece of research says he was my father’s great uncle called Jim Troy. Banjo stayed with the family and Jim Troy fits the description even down to the horse. They bred them tough like their horses which were a mixture of Timor pony which are really tough and thoroughbreds with a bit of Arab to make them a bit finer. The horses were a mixed breed ... We will probably never know who the actual person was.” - [our emphasis in bold and see Note 3]
"'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!" - (Alice)
So who is this Indigenous Professor Jakelin Troy claiming that Jim Troy was her ‘father’s great uncle’ and why would she make such a claim? To enter into questions of a person’s identity and motivations it is hard to avoid being accused of the ad hominem but, in the following discussion, more than enough valid argument will be provided to defend us from this charge.
Professor Jakelin (Jaky) Troy
The following information regarding the professional life of Professor Jakelin (Jaky) Troy is freely available online from her employers and herself.
Professor Jakelin Troy, tells us that she is an ‘Aboriginal Australian and my community is Ngarigu of the Snowy Mountains in south eastern Australia’.- Source University of Sydney
Figure 1 - Professional and ethnic details for Professor Jakelin (Jaky) Troy. Source University of Sydney
Professor Troy is appointed as a counsellor to a governmental committee, the NSW Geographical Names Board, whose board members are appointed by the Governor of NSW.
Figure 2A - Professor Troy’s professional qualifications to enable her to sit on the NSW Geographical Names Board. Source : NSW Geographical Names Board
Figure 2B - NSW Geographical names Board Selction and Composition of Members. Source : NSW Geographical Names Board
Professor Troy is highly regarded and respected within her fields of expertise. Using publicly available genealogical resources, including freely available family trees put online by Professor Troy’s relatives, the following initial family tree emerges for Professor Troy.
Figure 3 shows Professor Troy’s father, Eric Troy and her mother, Shirley Troy (nee Beed) at the bottom of the tree. Their marriage was a second marriage for both of them.
Figure 3 - Lower section of Professor Jakelin Troy’s Family Tree based on information currently accepted information
Professor Jakelin Troy confirmed that she is part of this particular family tree of Troy’s because, way back in 1994, she included an acknowledgement in her PhD thesis at ANU. In this acknowledgement, she listed four of her relatives - her father Eric, her mother Shirley, her grandfather Henry Beed and her sister Martine (See Figure 4).
Figure 4 - Screenshot from Jakelin Troy’s 1994 thesis, "Melaleuka : a history and description of New South Wales pidgin" which confirms her parent’s, sister and grandfather’s names.
Further corroborating evidence is provided in Eric Troy’s death notice, published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday, April 9th, 1990, p37 (Figure 5).
The death notice confirmed that Eric was survived by his wife Shirley and two of his children, the girls, Jakelin and Martine. He died at home at 300 William St Bathurst, the same address that he shared with his wife Shirley as far back as 1977 when they were both recorded at that address on the Electoral Roll of 1977 (See Figure 6).
All this corroborating evidence from different, unrelated sources confirms that we have located the correct family tree of Troy’s, of which Jakelin is a member.
Figure 5 - Death Notice for Eric Troy, Sydney Morning Herald on Monday, April 9th, 1990 p37.
Figure 6 - Electoral Roll excerpt of 1977 showing Eric and Shirley Troy living together at the same address as cited in Eric Troy’s Death notice.
The marriages of Shirley Troy (nee Beed), who is Professor Jakelin Troy’s Mother
The marriage records confirm that Professor Troy’s mother Shirley married a Derek King in 1951 and then, after their divorce in 1965, she married Eric Troy in 1966 (Figure 7). Professor Jakelin Troy says Eric Troy is her father.
Figure 7 - Details of the two marriages of Shirley King (nee Beed), Professor Jakelin Troy’s mother.
A 1951 newspaper article celebrating the first marriage of Professor Troy’s mother, Shirley Beed to Derek King, provides corroborating evidence to Professor Troy’s claim that her grandfather (Shirley’s father) was called Henry Beed.
The Daily Telegraph of 31 August 1951 included a photo of Shirley and Derek at their wedding and mentions that Shirley was the only daughter of Captain and Mrs H[enry] John Beed of Willoughby (See Figure 8). This is Professor Jakelin Troy’s maternal grandfather, who she acknowledged in her PhD thesis (See Figure 4 above).
The electoral roll of 1968 confirms that Professor Troy’s grandfather Henry John Beed is living with his wife in Willoughby North - See here. This provides corroborating evidence to support the Daily Telegraph’s wedding article.
Figure 8 - Article announcing the marriage of Professor Troy’s mother Shirley to her first husband. Married in the kilt', The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW), 31 August 1951, p. 12.
The above genealogical work establishes with enough corroborating evidence that we have located the correct family line of Troy’s to which Professor Jakelin belongs. Her mother is Shirley Beed who had two marriages, firstly to Derek King and then to Eric Troy. Professor Troy is linked to Shirley’s father, Henry John Beed, who Professor Troy acknowledges as her grandfather.
Now we are in a position to move up the family tree and examine the claim that she is related to Jim Troy, The Man from Snowy River, a claim made by Professor Troy, as reported in the SMH article.
Professor Jakelin Troy’s Claims to be related to The Man from Snowy River
In the SMH article of September 2021, Jakelin Troy claims that Jim Troy of the Man from Snowy River fame was her ‘father’s great uncle’.
This would make him a brother of Jakelin’s father’s grandfather (her great grandfather). In Figure 3 above of the Troy family tree, Professor Troy is therefore claiming that Jim Troy was a brother of Sydney James Troy. That is, Jim Troy was a great uncle of Professor Troy’s father, Eric Troy.
We have located the details of the seven children of the Troy family at this part of the family tree. Figure 9 lists the six siblings of Sydney James Troy, all who were born in the 1840s or 50s. He had only two brothers, George and Thomas. He did not have a brother named Jim or James Troy.
Professor Troy is wrong to claim that, ‘her fathers grand uncle was called Jim Troy.’ The genealogical evidence of her line of Troy family does not support this claim at all.
Figure 9 - Siblings of Professor Troy’s great-grandfather, Sydney James Troy. Professor Troy is claiming one of these is Jim Troy, the Man from Snowy River.
Professor Jakelin Troy appears to be misleading the readers of the Sydney Morning Herald when she claims that, ‘One piece of research says he was my father’s great uncle called Jim Troy’ when in fact there is no evidence in her Troy family tree to support her claim. Professor Troy has not publicly explained what this ‘one piece of research’, that she is said to possess, might be.
A further troubling aspect of her claim is that it leads the reader to believe that not only is she related to Jim Troy but that by implication, Jim Troy was Indigenous given that Professor Troy herself claims to be Indigenous. This is a fair conclusion for the SMH readership to come to given that the topic of the article was the claim that Banjo Paterson based his character, The Man from Snowy River, on an Indigenous stockman.
So who was the real Jim Troy and was Professor Jakelin Troy related to him at all?
The genealogical records show that James Samuel “Jim” Troy of The Man from Snowy River fame came from a completely unrelated Troy family line - same surname but no shared ancestry with Professor Jakelin Troy’s family tree of Troys. The family tree of the Troys to which Jim Troy, The Man from Snowy River, belongs is shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10 - Troy Family Tree to which Jim Troy, The Man from Snowy River belongs.
Jim Troy’s Death Certificate - Source Ancestry user sweetwhitedove1 shared on 06 Feb 2010. They note: BDM Death Certificate of James Samuel "Jim" Troy, given to me by Michelle in Qld.
This is an example of one of the most hurtful aspects of the Indigenous Cultural Revolution that is sweeping through our popular culture in Australia. It is not enough for the revisionists to just leave some Australian cultural and historical icons alone - whether they be names of places, colonial statues or even simple fictional poems, like The Man from Snowy River. Instead of building their own Indigenous icons based on facts of which all Australians can be proud, they instead feel the need to attack and revise our existing colonial and Australian icons, even if they have to engage in fabrications and non-Truth-Telling to achieve it.
In our opinion, we suspect that Professor Jakelin Troy was ‘just-making up’ her family links to Jim Troy, the prime candidate for the character in Banjo’s poem - and she knew she was ‘just making it up’. That is why she provided no actual evidence to support her claim that she, as an Indigenous Troy woman, was related to Jim Troy - she didn’t provide the evidence because she couldn’t. We believe she was trying to Indigenise The Man from Snowy River, not to claim an unrecognised Aboriginal success, but to create doubt in the minds of Australians that their beliefs in their stories were false. This gas-lighting technique is sweeping academia as a way of denigrating the received history of Australia. The gas-lighters want to destroy our confidence in the Australian project and make us feel guilty about the depiction of our society and our country within our popular culture. She appears to want Australians to seriously doubt, or even hate, their history.
But why would this be? And why would foundational Australian Institutions such as the University of Sydney (1, 2 ) and the ABC/SBS (1, 2,) be such ardent supporters of Professor Jakelin Troy and her work?
Our researchers continued their SAT Analysis [Note 4] of the publicly available archives to try and answer this question. We were startled by the results that started to come in, as we suspect many of our readers will be also.
"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - (The Queen)
Professor Jakelin Troy and her Claims to Country
As our genealogical research continued, we found that the claims made by Professor Jakelin Troy became ‘curiouser and curiouser’.
In a Facebook post of 12 January 2021, Professor Troy tells us of her love of, ‘Kiandra the high plains of my Country, Ngarigu.’ She posts of her mother, ‘Shirley Troy our Country’ and the fact that her grandmother ‘loved this country and knew it all’. The date of the post is signifcant - 12th January 2021, which Troy informs us is the 116th birthday of her grandmother. A reader of this post would logically conclude that Jakelin is relating to us the love of Country of these three Aboriginal women - herself, her mother and her grandmother.
Figure 11 - Professor Jakelin Troy professing the love of Country on behalf of the three women of the Troy family - Source Facebook
A commonly accepted understanding of what ‘Country’ means to Aboriginal people is provided by the Mungo Aboriginal group,
‘When Aboriginal people use the English word 'Country' it is meant in a special way. For Aboriginal people culture, nature and land are all linked. Aboriginal communities have a cultural connection to the land, which is based on each community's distinct culture, traditions and laws. Country takes in everything within the landscape - landforms, waters, air, trees, rocks, plants, animals, foods, medicines, minerals, stories and special places. Community connections include cultural practices, knowledge, songs, stories and art, as well as all people: past, present and future. People have custodial responsibilities to care for their Country, to ensure that it continues in proper order and provides physical sustenance and spiritual nourishment. These custodial relationships may determine who can speak for particular Country. These concepts are central to Aboriginal spirituality and continue to contribute to Aboriginal identity. Aboriginal communities associate natural resources with the use and benefit of traditional foods and medicines, caring for the land, passing on cultural knowledge and strengthening social bonds’.
The presumption here is that to an Aboriginal person, their ‘Country’ is where they and their ancestors were born. Country consists not only of the physical landscape of their particular region of birth, but also the deep cultural connections, language, traditions and laws that they have, and their ancestors had, for that region.
So this is where it gets confusing when we, as non-Indigenous Australians, try to understand Professor Jakelin Troy’s claim of ‘Country’ in the Snowy high plains.
To have a deep connection with ‘Country’ we would have thought an Aboriginal person and their ancestors must have been born on a particular piece of ‘Country’ and lived there as a family over the generations so as to develop a deep cultural and spiritual attachment to that particular piece of ‘Country’.
It seems however, that in the case of the Troy & Devine families (Jakelin’s father’s line) and the Beed & Speer families (Jakelin’s mother’s line) none of them at all seem to have been born on Ngarigu Country. In fact, at this stage of our research, most of them seemed to have lived the greater parts of their lives well away from the claimed First Nation area of Ngarigu, which encompasses the Snowy Monaro region, south of Canberra, in NSW.
Freely available in the public domain are records that suggest that:
- Professor Jakelin Troy herself was born in 1960 at The King George V Memorial Hospital for Mothers and Babies, a former hospital in Camperdown, Sydney. See her Birth Notice under her mother’s name as Shirley King (nee Beed) in the SMH here. This confirms she was born in Sydney, a long way from Ngarigu Country;
- Jakelin’s mother, Shirley Troy/King (nee Beed) herself was born in 1928 as her Birth Notice in the SMH confirms here. Although the Birth Notice does not mention the hospital of Shirley’s birth, we do know that in 1928 her father [H.J. Beed] was listed (excerpt here) in the Sands Sydney, Suburban and Country Commercial Directory 1928, pg 2 as living in Arncliffe, a suburb of Sydney. Further corroborating evidence that Shirley Beed was living and growing up a long way from Ngarigu Country is the fact that her parents Henry John Beed, (who Jakelin Troy acknowledged in her PhD thesis] and his wife Sylvia, Shirley’s mum, are listed in the 1933 Electoral Roll (here) as living in Rockdale, the suburb next to where they were living in Arncliffe in 1928 when Shirley was born.
- Further corroborating evidence that the family is firmly ensconced on Sydney ‘Country’ in the late 1920s and early 30s and living nowhere near Kiandra, Professor Troy’s claimed ancestral home, is the fact that Shirley’s brother was also born in Newtown Sydney. In 1933 a Birth Notice (here) was published confirming he was delivered at Matron Angermunde's hospital. Now, Matron Olive Angermunde is none other than Shirley’s grandmother - that is, Sylvia is having her mum Olive act as midwife while she gives birth to Shirley’s brother in 1933. The remarkable Matron Olive Angermunde is a woman we will return to in a future post.
- In her Facebook post, Professor Troy celebrates her grandmother, who would have been 116 years old on 12 January 2021. Grandma is in fact, Sylvia Elizabeth Olive Speer. Sylvia was born on the same day 116 years earlier than Professor Troy’s post - the 12th January 1905 - in the South-Western NSW town of Hay (see Figure 12 for map and Figure 13 for her position in the maternal family tree of Jakelin Troy). Sylvia’s birth was recorded in the Hay-based newspaper, The Riverine Grazier.
These results from the public records place us in a quandary - why is Professor Jakelin Troy implying in her Facebook post that the three women in her family - herself, her mother and her grandmother - all have a love and spiritual connection in an Aboriginal sense to ‘Kiandra the high plains of my Country Ngarigu’, when in fact none of them were born there or even seemed to have lived there?
Further enquiries in the archives using a SAT Analysis methodology (Note 4) took our researchers on a course that revealed some totally unexpected findings.
Figure 12 - Map of New South Wales with towns associated with Professor Troy’s family and ancestors. Only Tumut, Kiandra and Thredbo are within Ngarigu Country. Map Source - Wikipedia
Figure 13- Abridged family tree for Professor Jakelin Troy’s mother, Shirley Beed and grandmother, Sylvia Elizabeth Olive Speer.
"Curiouser and curiouser!" - (Alice)
The Family Trees of Professor Jakelin Troy
In 1960 a baby girl was born at King George V Memorial Hospital for Mothers and Babies in Camperdown, Sydney. The proud parents, Derek and Shirley (nee Beed) King commemorated the birth of baby, Jakelin Fleur by placing an add inThe Sydney Morning Herald in 1960.
Figure 14 - Birth Notice of Jakelin Fleur King in 1960.
We know that this Birth Notice relates to Professor Jakelin Troy because we know her mother Shirley’s first marriage was to a Derek King as shown in Figure 8 above.
We also know Professor Troy has the unusual middle name Fleur which we can see on the 1980 Electoral Roll when she first appears on an Electoral Role living with her mum Shirley, and Dad Eric, at the same address in Bathurst. This would have been her first enrolment and puts her age at about 19 or 20 in 1980 which corroborates her birth date in 1960. At this time in 1980 she was going by the name of Jakelin Fleur Troy.
Figure 15 - Excerpt of the Electoral Role of 1980 which corroborates the Birth Notice on 1960 for Jakelin Fleur being Shirley and Derek’s daughter. Source here
Our researchers now wondered what was going on here. Were the family trees of the Troys and Kings enmeshed with regard to the ancestral claims of Professor Jakelin Troy? Were we being asked by the Professor to ‘believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast’? These developments gave us pause for reflection.
In general, all of us are entitled to a level of privacy. Our family life is our business and ours alone. However, people in public life expect to have a higher degree of public scrutiny at times. Any ‘public officer’ carries additional responsibilities compared to ordinary Australians and taxpayers.
A public officer or public servant has a duty of care to be truthful and to act in good faith in all their public responsibilities. What they say and do is very important while at work and they need to be held to account when they do not fulfill the duties and responsibilities that our society expects of them.
When Professor Troy goes on the record in the Sydney Morning Herald, commenting on the identity of The Man from Snowy River, and says that ‘one piece of research says he was my father’s great uncle called Jim Troy,’ we, the public want to be absolutely certain that she, a public officer employed by the Univeristy of Sydney is, to the best of her ability, being truthful. She needs to have that incontrovertible, ‘one piece of research’.
As we have shown above, she didn’t provide that research because she couldn’t - we believe she just made it up. This false claim is very hurtful to Australians who cherish Banjo Paterson’s poem and all it represents. It is also very hurtful and disrespectful to the descendents of the real Jim Troy, those Australians from a completely different Troy family tree.
After much deliberation, we decided to progress the research into Professor Troy’s family tree to the point where we could understand the ancestral reasons for her love of Country in Kiandra and the Snowy high plains region. There must be some legitimate connection that Professor Troy can lay claim to, rather than having to resort to an attempt at appropriating the ancestry of the real Jim Troy, in an effort to claim a connection with the Snowy River region.
Borrowing from Alice again, we asked ourselves on behalf of Professor Troy, "'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!", and so we started to look at the man in Professor Troy’s Birth Notice of 1960 - Derek King.
Figure 16 - 1943 service photograph of KING DEREK VERNON MORRIS : Service Number - 429118 : Date of birth - XX XX 1924 : Place of birth - NEUTRAL BAY NSW : Place of enlistment - SYDNEY : Next of Kin - KING ALFRED. Source NAA A9301, 429118.
Figure 17 - Professor Jakelin Troy: “I am Aboriginal Australian and my community is Ngarigu of the Snowy Mountains in south eastern Australia”. - Source - University of Sydney
Derek [Vernon Morris] King had been in the armed forces during the Second World War. His military service file in Figure 16 is available online. As his photograph in 1943 shows, he is an attractive young man who obviously appealed to a young Shirley Beed such that they married in 1951.
As a member of the New South Wales Scottish Regiment, Derek wore a kilt on his wedding day (Figure 8 above). His father, Alfred William Vernon King had also been a military man and is commemorated today as having been a distinguished officer in the First World War. We know that this 1943 photograph of a Derek King is the Derek King in our story, because of his middle names - he takes Vernon from his father and Morris from his mother, as confirmed in his family tree in Figure 19.
Figure 18 - Australian war memorial entry for Derek King’s father, Alfred King. Source
Figure 19 - Abridged family tree of Derek King showing his father and mother and marriage to Shirley Beed.
It appears that the young Derek King might have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed an upper-middle class life, at least in terms of material comforts and pursuits. His parents had married in one of the nicer suburbs of Sydney, Woollahra, and Derek had been born in the equally nice suburb of Neutral Bay. His mother spent a good deal of her time in high-society, living the life of a socialite around Sydney town with frequent mentions in the social pages of Sydney’s newspapers (see Figures 21-23 below).
Derek’s father was a journalist and in 1928, at the age of 30, he embarked on a career in London’s Fleet street with the Sydney Morning Herald.
Figure 20 - First Class passenger list showing a young 3yr old Derek accompanying his journalist father and mother to London’s Fleet St in 1928
Young Derek along with his parents boarded the ship, Suevic of the White Star Dominion Line and set sail for the UK.. The passenger list (Figure 20) recorded carrying the King family - Alfred Wm [William], Journalist, aged 30 years; Agnes, H’Wife, aged 26 years and Derek V., Child, aged 3 years.
Proposed Address in UK: C/O Sydney Morning Herald, 58 Fleet Street, London EC4
Travelled: One [First] Class, Date of Arrival: 16 March 1928
Derek’s father ultimately became the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald’s London Office during the War, from 1941-1944. He then became the Reuters editor in New York, followed by the manager & editor of the Australian Associated Press from approximately 1944 to his death in 1957 in New York. Derek’s uncles were also heavily involved in the Sydney Morning Herald - here.
Presumably his father’s work provided a good income for the family because after the war, and before his marriage to Shirley, we find young Derek in the vanguard of the Australian cultural invasion of the UK that was to carry on through to the 1950s and 60s. In Figure 21 we see Derek King, the artist, working in an Abbey art colony in the UK prior to his departure for the south of France to live for a year painting.
Figure 20 - Excerpt of a magazine article showing Derek King in 1948 in an abbey art colony in the UK, prior to his departure for a year of painting to the south of France. Source - The Sphere Magazine 18 Sept 1948, p375. Full page here
The high society life continued for Derek and Professor Troy’s mother, Shirley Beed, when she married him in 1951. The high society of Sydney could read about the impending wedding of Professor Troy’s mother, Shirley in the social news and gossip columns of The Sunday Herald Sun.
Figure 21 - High society news of Professor Troy’s mother’s impending wedding to Derek King. Source - The Sunday Herald, Sun 26 Aug 1951, p19.
Shirley’s mother-in-law to be , Mrs A. W. V. King, was a keen high society hostess during the depression of the 1930s in Sydney. She organised and attended a number of Sydney’s fund raising functions.
Figure 22 -Bridge party fund raiser organised by Shirley’s mother-in-law, Mrs. A.W.V. King. Source - The Sydney Morning Herald, Fri 26 Aug 1938, p3. From Day to Day in Sydney.
Figure 23 - Fund raiser with Mr & Mrs A.W.V. King, Shirley’s parents-in-law, in attendance. Source - The Sun, Sun 4 Sep 1938, p10 SYDNEY LAST NIGHT
Some of the high society life that Derek had been exposed to by his parents, when the three of them were living in London and later when they were back in Sydney, must have rubbed off on him. After his artistic sojourn in the UK and the south of France in 1948, and his society marriage to Shirley in 1951, we find Derek and Shirley living an upper-middle class life in French’s Forest (Sorlieville) in Sydney. He, working as an architect and she, as a teacher, as indicated on the 1958 Electoral Roll.
Figure 22 - Electoral Roll of 1958 showing Derek and Shirley King in Sorlieville (Today’s French’s Forest)
Derek and Shirley then make a decision that we suspect is pivotal to how Shirley’s daughter, Professor Jakelin Troy some 60 years later, makes a deep, loving connection with the ‘Country’ of the Snowy Monaro region as she tells us in her facebook post of 2021 (Figure 11 above).
The story of Derek and Shirley King’s connection to Country is told by Noel Murray in his diary record, The Berghutte Ski Club Diary aka The House That Jack And Jill And Fred Built.
Murray, a keen skier, tells us in his diary record of the Berghutte ski club that,
‘… In 1957 we moved into a new new house in Earlwood and Joe Peplow, who lived a few doors away … came down and introduced himself and family, delighted to meet another skier, an unusual sport for an Australian in those days. The following winter (1958) Joe invited us to go skiing with his family and friends. They were Derek and Shirley King and Peter van Ritten … On the Saturday of the June weekend in 1958 we went up to ski at Smiggin’s Hole … The following morning Derek, Shirley, Peter and Joe, having heard of a land auction at Thredbo, travelled there. On their return they announced they had obtained a lease on Lot 18 for a deposit of ten pounds. They invited us to join them and form a ski club…[p1]
We held our first official meeting at the King’s home in French’s Forest on the 9th of September, 1958 [confirmed on Electoral Roll - see Figure 22].
By this time we had twelve members approximately. Derek King was President … Shirley King was Secretary … At a second meeting held on 30th September … we were advised that we were incorporated as a Company … the registered office was at French’s Forest [Derek & Shirley’s home?] [p2]
[On completion of the building] … the first names in the visitors book were the Kings …[p7]
At a meeting on the 23rd May [1961], we received a letter of resignation from Derek King together with a surprise request for 270 pounds in payment of his fees as Club architect’. [p11] - Source - Berghutte Ski Club diary
And so ends the relationship of Derek and Shirley King with the Berghutte Ski Club at Thredbo, deep in the Country of the First Nation of Ngarigu [Ngarigo] peoples, less than a year after they proudly welcomed their baby daughter, Jakelin Fleur, into the world in Sydney.
Figure 23 - On ‘Country’ with ski lodge developers, Derek and Shirley King - Source
Acknowledgement of Country
Snowy Monaro Regional Council acknowledges that Aboriginal people were the first people of this land. Council recognises the Ngarigo people as the traditional custodians of the majority of the region we now know as the Snowy Monaro region. We pay respect to knowledge holders and community members of the land and waters and to Elders past, present and emerging. - Source
And so it seems that perhaps Professor Jakelin Troy was correct in her Facebook post - her mother Shirley Troy (nee King) was able to pass on her love of ‘Country’ to her daughter including mum’s traditional language and the family’s cultural [land developer and architectural] connections at Thredbo.
Figure 24 - ‘Sacred landscapes: snow and the high country - Dr Jonica Newby and Professor Jakelin Troy take us into the coldest regions of Australia, deepening our understanding of the spiritual importance of snow.’
"I think without country we have no spirit," Professor Troy says, "country is spirituality."
She has translated an old corroboree song that she believes was sung to bring the snow – and it's worked.
"I first sang it with my colleagues and my countrymen and my daughter at Dalgety in late April," Professor Troy says. "We sang it in the late afternoon and within two days there was the biggest dump of snow."
"It actually became the coldest winter we had in the last hundred years."
- ABC Soul Search , 10 Oct 2021
And so ends Part 1 of our investigation of Ngarigo woman, Professor Jaky Tory’s influence on the Indigenisation of our Australian society. In Part 2 of our research we will follow Beed and Speer family lines of Professor Troy’s mother, Shirley Troy (nee Beed) so stay tuned.
Notes and Further Reading
Proponents of the name change for ‘Moreland’ council name - the Mayor of Moreland is in the kilt and beret
Note 1. Decision to change the name of the council locality of Moreland in Victoria.
Note 2. Proposals, plans and actualities to restrict or ban certain activities due to Indigineous cultural and heritage reasons - rock-climbing in Grampians and re-introduction of dingoes, renaming of Ayers Rock and restricted access to Uluru , the debates over Welcome toCountry ceremonies, indigenising the curriculum at Universities, et al
Note 3. - A brilliant piece of political writing here by Professor Troy. She illustrates the use of the classical Greek rhetorical technique of Apophasis (also known as praeteritio). Troy here has placed in the reader’s mind that Jim Troy, a commonly accepted real-life candidate for Banjo Paterson’s, Man from Snowy River, was from her family, her “fathers great uncle”. The reader then logically assumes that he was Indigenous given that they both share the same surname and Troy herself claims to be Indigenous. She then completes the paragraph with an escape clause when she says, “We will probably never know who the actual person was.”
A brilliant piece of apophasis - she is telling the reader, ‘No one can really claim to know who he was but I’m going to make that claim anyway.’
Note 4. - SAT Analysis stands for a research methodology, Spatial-Associate-Temporal Analysis, that allows the very rapid searching of the archives to link places and people across time to create highly accurate family trees. It has also been used to solve very long-standing historical mysteries, as recently describe in the book Truth-Telling at Risdon Cove.
Further Reading - Derek King the Artist.
Note 5. - The life of the artist is often at the mercy of Fortuna (self-induced many would say) and Derek King seems to be no exception. When we next come across Derek in the archives it appears Fortune’s Wheel has turned for the worse. He is living in a ‘guest house’ in, as us Melbournites would kindly observe, ‘the Paris end of Kings Cross’ dealing with the raw facts of life that are often on show in the streets of that part of town.
Source - The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW ) Sat 29 Oct 1949, Page 10, DEAD NURSE "CURIOUS ABOUT DEATH"
Note 6. - Theories on the who The Man from Snowy River really was.
A discussion of the various contenders for Banjo Paterson’s character (No mention of Professor Jakelin Troy’s family), Link : The Weekly Times 8 March 2014 , or pdf
A 1938 newspaper article discussing Clancy of the Overflow’s identity, pdf: STOCKMAN OF WHOM POET SANG Clancy of Overflow - Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 21 December 1938
Source: Ancestry user sweetwhitedove1 originally shared this on 14 Dec 2009
"Troy was related by marriage to Thomas McNamara, said to be “Clancy”, subject of another famous Paterson poem, Clancy of the Overflow." Source: Weekly Times 8 March 2014 above.
Jim Troy's sister, Teresa Mary Troy, was married to Thomas Michael "Clancy" McNamara.
