by Whispering Gums

A post in our 2025 series featuring works published in 1935 (or by authors who died in 1935). This post includes a story that was published in The Bulletin on 11 December 1935, and is by Tarella Daskein, née Tarella Quin.

As with many of the lesser-known writers we research for this blog, Tarella Daskein (1877-1945) proved a little challenging to pin down. It’s not that she wasn’t known. Indeed, Wikipedia and AustLit both have entries for her, but that there were conflicting details of her life. For example, both Wikipedia and AustLit had her death date as 1934, which was curious given Adelaide’s The Advertiser reported on her visiting that city in June 1935. How could that be? Further, The Advertiser also had her husband as Mr. T.S. Daskein while Wikipedia and other newspaper articles had him as Mr. T.M. Daskein. Compounding all this was her use of multiple names, including some confusion over her maiden name. The above-mentioned Advertiser, for example, reported it as Quinn. AustLit, however, resolved this by noting at the end of its entry that her name had been incorrectly spelled as ‘Quinn’ in Miller and Macartney’s Australian Literature: A Bibliography (1956). The death date issue was clarified by, strangely, Wikipedia’s article on her father, Edward Quin, which gave her death as 1945 and cited a newspaper notice as evidence. And a death notice for her husband confirms him as T.M. not T.S.

So, all that resolved, who was this Tarella Daskein? Tarella Ruth Quin was born in Wilcannia, second daughter to pastoralist and one-time member of the New South Wales Legislature, Edwin Quin, in 1877. She is best known as a writer of children’s stories, but also wrote three adult novels – A Desert Rose (1912), Kerno (1914) and Paying Guests (1917) – and many short stories which were published in contemporary newspapers and magazines. AustLit provides a good outline of her origins. She was one of eight children. Her father owned a dairy farm called ‘The Leasowes’, near Fern Tree Gully in Victoria, and a sheep station called ‘Tarella’, after which she was named, in far western New South Wales near Wilcannia. ‘Ella’, as she was known, was educated in Adelaide, but spent most of her life on stations. She married Thomas Mickle Daskein, part proprietor of a station in far northwest NSW.

AustLit says that her first writing comprised short sketches of station life, which were published under the pseudonym “James Adare” in the Pastoral Review. At the editor’s suggestion, she also wrote some stories for children, which she sent to Ethel Turner, hoping to have them published in Sydney newspapers. However, Turner apparently recommended they be published as books. Her first book, Gum Tree Brownie, was published in 1910, with illustrations by Ida Rentoul whom Ella’s younger sister, Hazel, knew at school. This began a long partnership between the two, with Ida Rentoul Outhwaite illustrating many of her books for children. Wilde et al say she was “one of Australia’s most successful writers of fairy-stories for children” and that “humour, irony, a fluent, dramatic style and fantasy reminiscent of Lewis Carroll enliven her stories”.

Past editor of this blog, Bill Holloway, has written on Tarella Quin, having come across her in Katharine Susannah Prichard’s autobiography, Child of the hurricane. Apparently, Prichard was governess for a year at Tarella Station in 1905, by which time Tarella, who was six years older than KSP, was already a published author. Prichard, says Bill, is “pretty dismissive” of Quin’s writing.

However, not all were. Several contemporary reviewers praised her adult novels, often singling out Kerno: A stone for special mention. On 10 April 1915, Adelaide’s Observer wrote:

“Kerno,” although similar in some respects, is nevertheless distinctly different from “A Desert Rose.” The latter is a novel – the former is a study – a keen analysis of human feelings and desires. One cannot well peruse the book without thinking deeply, and wondering what one would have done in circumstances like those in which the leading actors found themselves placed. Young people and those having a preference for light ephemeral literature may be inclined to consider the story rather tame; but all who have a true appreciation for human nature, and endeavour to probe into its many and varied qualities, will find in it compelling and absorbing interest.

Those who praise Kerno mostly praise it for its “real” characters and deep understanding of human nature. Indeed, the Observer says that it “richly deserves to rank among the best truly Australian novels”. Daskein was also praised for her understanding of and ability to convey life in the bush and, as the Observer says, for her “descriptive writing which … captivates the reader”.

Notwithstanding all this, Quin mostly wrote for children, with The Australian Women’s Weekly claiming, after the publication of Chimney Town in 1936, that

She has published more ambitious volumes, but her tales for children have a unique charm that makes one feel that this is her real metier.

Quin’s publishing career lasted from around 1907 to the mid-1930s, so it was no flash in the pan. She was well-known to readers of her time, and, according to Adelaide’s The Rouseabout, had some presence in literary circles, including being “a foundation member of the Melbourne centre of the P.E.N. Club and a constant attendant at its meetings”. She died on 22 October 1945, at a private hospital in Melbourne. The fact that I found little mention of this beyond The Rouseabout’s short article suggests that in the last decade of her life – after the death of her husband in 1937 – she faded from view.

Today’s piece, “The camel”, was published in The Bulletin’s Christmas issue in 1935. It shows a writer a writer who knows the outback, knows how to entertain her audience, and, who firmly belongs to the bush tradition. Life is tough, but our woman protagonist is resourceful.

The camel

THE woman strode along the dusty road at an even, unhurrying pace. She had no need to hurry, for she had nowhere to go, and was merely walking away from a past and a home that had crashed about her ears.

In this drought homes had collapsed like packs of cards about those who had built them up over so many years, and the ruin in the land was so untidy and universal one wondered if, with the return of rain and good times, homes would ever reappear.

She felt strangely free.

Perhaps no one had ever thought of walking out as she had done, without luggage or her worthless belongings—the faded cambrics hanging on the wall, working aprons, incredible hats, old shoes–

She had no children, for which she was thankful; and her husband? She shrugged her shoulders carelessly. Perhaps he had gone now. One came to an end of everything in time, and he and she had long ceased to call the tie that bound them together love. So, when their house of cards fell about their ears, she put on her faded straw hat, laced on her strongest shoes and, in a blue print dress, turned her face to the coach road where once a week the coach creaked along with its meagre dusty load of mailbags.

She hadn’t even said good-bye.

Under the brim of the straw hat deep hollows made shadows beneath her burning eyes. They were green, her eyes, but they burnt nevertheless, green and staring; and her light, scanty eyebrows and high cheekbones made for a strange and arresting face. Her straight mouth was tightened in a folded line, and the skin of her face and neck was coarse, wind-burnt and unwomanly. Her hands were red, her shoes dusty, incredibly dusty.

She had walked now for a full day, turning aside for a drink at an occasional waterhole and then trudging on unaware. She was tired and hungry and in despair.

And then, suddenly and unexpectedly, rushing from the horizon came a cloud of dust racing and eddying towards her, the sunset beautifying the rolling clouds.

Here was something coming to break the tenseness of her solitude. She welcomed it while fearing it.

WITH a grinding of brakes and a half sideslip in the loose sand the car drew up beside her, and she stared fiercely at its cargo.

It was full of men, pseudo bushmen, pseudo townsmen, men who had made money and who were out to make more; red-faced men, jolly men and men who had drunk a good deal at the last township.

The driver was a rat-faced little fellow whose business it was to drive the car. He was only that. The owner of the car sat beside him, and a couple of men in the back seat.

As the car pulled up beside the woman she stood and faced them in the gilded evening dust.

“Good evening,” said the big man.
“Good evening,” answered the woman levelly.
“Taking a walk?” asked the big man half facetiously.
“Seems like it,” answered the woman.
“I seem to know you. Surely you are—you are Mrs.”
“My name is Anna,” said the woman quickly.
“Anna?”
“Yes—Anna.”
“I see. And you are walking to —where?”
“God knows,”

There was a pause.

“It’s all right,” said Anna, smiling, and there was something of a rough beauty in her smile.
“It’s far from right. I heard —they foreclosed, didn’t they? Where is your husband? What are you going to do?”

The big man asked the question curiously and with a not unkindly interest, but he was in a hurry, while the two red-faced men in the back seat looked at the woman with a very faint interest. This was an interlude in a long, dull day, and not a very interesting one. The smooth, red-faced men liked their women pretty.

“I don’t know.”
“Would you take a job?” He had to hurry on, but he would like to help—he always helped where he could.

Anna did not answer. The late sunset lit up her rugged and tired face, and they noticed the dust on her pale eyebrows and the dried sweat round her mouth.

“Yes,” she said. “What is it? I’ll take anything.”
“Half a mile along the road is a hut —an out-station belonging to us. I want a caretaker. The couple got drunk last week and I fifed them. I want someone to keep it in going order, to keep the little room at the back clean for me when I sleep there, and to do the cooking. The coach passes once a week, bringing your stores. It has passed by for this week —yesterday—but there’s plenty of stuff there in the cupboard, and the key of the hut is lying on the top of the rainwater tank. By the way, the tank is empty at present, but there’s water in the creek two hundred yards away. You would have to carry it.”

She nodded.

“Would you care to take it on?”
“I’ll take it on. Is there a telephone?”
‘‘Yes—well, out of order just now, but I’ll send a man; we’ve been busy with the mustering. I’d lift you back, but–“
“I’d rather walk,” replied the woman ungraciously standing bathed in the fire of the evening sky. She looked broad and flat and barren to the four men. She seemed endowed with masculine courage, and yet somehow looked so pitifully feminine as they drove away.
“Poor devil,” said the big man; “she wasn’t always like this. They’ve had bad luck—her husband’s no good.”

The rat-faced driver seemed the only one who was interested.

AS she drew near the galvanised-iron hut it took on a strange beauty in this riot of dust, sunset and sky — a little refuge set on the plain, with a creek two hundred yards away, where her water was stored, and a high galvanised-iron verandah shading the front of the house.

As she drew nearer a faint fear invaded her — the fear that is induced by the lifeless. It was so lifeless, that little dwelling; almost sinister—hostile.

And then she saw the camel.

She had been so used to camels, to seeing them driven and ridden and loaded, that her only feeling was a vague comfort as she saw the great beast in the distance feeding. At least it was alive. The camel did not raise its head at her approach,

She groped for the key on the top of the empty tank and let herself into the hut.

“Just camel and I,” said Anna, smiling grimly.

The hut had wooden bunks by the walls and a rough table, with its legs planted in the hard-trodden earth; a wide chimney, with a chain suspended from blackness for boiling a billy, and a rough bench where kerosene tins were ranged upside down. They were her buckets, her water-carriers. A double-barrelled gun stood against the wall.

She gave a wooden laugh born of weariness, and then hurried to find matches to light the lamp. Then she lit a fire and made some strong and bitter tea.

“Last night,” she thought, “I had a home. Yesterday I had a name. To-day I’m Anna”–

They were banal reflections. She had no self-pity.

She tossed aside the straw hat and ran her roughened hand through her hair that long ago had rusted, not silvered; but then she wasn’t old, of course—not very.

She wondered almost dimly what would be her end.

She heard the soft, shrouded step of the camel passing by, a slur in the dust, and smiled again.

“Camel and I! ” said Anna; and she quenched the light and, lying down on the bunk, fell asleep.

The next morning she woke aching and tired, but at peace.

“I needn’t get up,” she thought, and went to sleep again. How wonderful to get up and go to bed when one wanted; to have a roof over one’s head and to be paid for having it!

There were spiders up there in the roof with a red stripe down their backs, full of poison and death; cockroaches ran across the floor, and she heard a mouse squeal.

“I don’t care,” she thought; “I’ve got away.”

Then she went to sleep again. At midday she rose and made a thorough examination of her surroundings. There was the little bedroom, neat and clean, at the back of the house. Also there were ample provisions, tinned goods, flour, sugar, salt and tea —blessed tea, coarse, strong common tea.

She dressed and picked up her buckets. There was still a billyful of water in the hut, but for the sake of action she sallied out to get fresh water.

And then she opened the door. What a day! Blue sky, out of which a multitude of white cockatoos tumbled screaming, and the round world reaching to the sky. Life, after all, was good.

She swung her buckets and moved towards the creek, the rhythmic creaking pleasing her.

And then–

SHE heard a blubbering, a mad, insane noise that was not like anything she had heard on earth before —sounds that were surely bred in hell.

But there, there it was —the camel! She saw the great prehistoric shape rocking towards her with its neck outstretched. It galloped clumsily, blubbering as it came. It meant mischief, teeth bared, eyes blazing. She had heard of mad camels. Here was one dropped out of its team.

There was only one thing to do. Anna ran back to the hut for her very life, and as she closed the door the camel arrived roaring. She heard it blubbering at the door as it shuffled in the dust.

Her very veins prickled with cold, stark horror. She still had a billy of water, but outside, between her and the creek, roamed the mad beast, and suddenly the tin hut felt frail and insecure.

“Five more days to coach day,” she calculated, “but they will go.”

The camel, in its mad and lonely brain, was perhaps glad of this human companionship. Anna stayed in the hut all day, while the camel hung sullenly about, and the feeling grew in her that she had a foe here more implacable and terrible than anything she had faced in her darkest days. This was a palpable horror.

At midday, as she sat on the edge of the bunk the sky suddenly seemed to become overclouded, the hut full of shadow; a redness as of a duststorm was before the window.

She stared for some time before realising it was the dusty red body of the camel obliterating the day. there was no blind to the window, and she was obliged to watch the rocking, living wall standing divided from her only by a pane of glass all day, a great, dusty, hairy wall that moved incessantly. It slavered, rocking.

At dusk, fearfully she watched the big animal wander away up the plain to feed, bending its head to the saltbush. Under cover of darkness she ran to the creek for water, but the camel had heard the creaking buckets, and she reached the hut again only a moment before it arrived, blubbering angrily, at full gallop.

This was going to be awful, she ruminated. This was madness itself.

At first she had been afraid of a man arriving at the hut, and now if only a man would arrive—anyone.

She loaded the double-barrelled gun and stood it in the corner of the room, her hard hands shaking. She had never shot anything in her life. No, she could not shoot the camel —not yet.

Whatever could she do? Four days to coach day! But perhaps a traveller would arrive.

In the night she heard the camel rubbing itself against the corner of the house. She listened to the rasping of its mangy hide as it scraped backwards and forwards, shaking the hut.

A terrible horror enveloped her. In the night outside was a shape with a crazy brain. She thought of it now as only a shape, but alive and terrible.

When to-morrow arrived it would be only three more days to coach day—three days, three days! But there were three days.

When Anna got up next morning she moved about putting things to rights, trying to fill in her time for an hour or so; then went to inspect the small spare room adjoining.

She opened the door and stood for a moment looking in. Then, with a heart-breaking whimper, she ran forward with shaking knees.

The bed had been slept in, the room used, and the occupant had departed for fear of frightening her; a traveller had slept beneath her roof and slipped away. Upon the pillow was pinned a piece of paper. She read the message written there.

“Thanks for the bed—l didn’t want to frighten you.”

A shilling lay on the table. A shilling! The only coin she possessed in all the world, and the man had come in the night and left before dawn; and the camel was there outside!

“Oh, God!”

She ran to the door and gazed out over the plains. The camel was standing rumbling not far away, shaking its big, loose lips and muttering to itself. She tiptoed to the gun and tiptoed away again. No, no; she was shaking too much.

WHEN coach day really arrived she sat by the window watching hour by hour that speck that joined road to heaven. It would soon be here —only five hours —two hours more —only one now.

And then on the horizon towards evening rose a puff as of smoke, a curl of dust, a little cloud moving sluggishly. It was the coach.

She watched it idly and unconcerned.

The coach!

She got to her feet and seized the gun. There was something to be done. Frightened no longer, she opened the door, and the big shape rumbled threateningly. Pointing the gun at the angry beast she fired point-blank at its head. She fired again, and with a horrible lurch the camel fell to its knees, its blubbering choked in its throat.

“Oh!” she screamed.

She ran forward as the big head fell to earth with neck outstretched beneath the verandah, and looked down upon the dying of the shape that had terrorised her. There was only an involuntary twitching of muscles beneath the dusty old hide and a queer bubbling sound that continued for a moment and then ceased.

She sighed convulsively and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

And then the coach arrived.

Sources

Bill Holloway, “Tarella Down a Rabbit Hole“, The Australian Legend (blog), 16 December 2021 [Accessed: 19 August 2025]
The Rouseabout, “In Town and Out“, The Herald, 12 November 1945 [Accessed: 16 August 2025]
Tarella Quin, AustLit [Accessed: 16 August 2025]
Tarella Quin, Wikipedia [Accessed: 16 August 2025]
Tarella Daskein, “The camel“, The Bulletin, Christmas Number, Vol. 56 No. 2913 (11 December 1935)
William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews, The Oxford companion to Australian literature. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2nd, edition, 1994