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 20 October, 1935, and is by South Australian writer, Edna Davies.
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Of all the writers I’ve researched for this series, Edna Davies has proved by far the most difficult. Even AustLit had nothing on her besides a list of a handful of works. So, I’ll start at the end, where we get some facts. Her death was reported on 26 December 1952 in the Family Notices section of The Pioneer (from Yorketown, South Australia). It said she was 56 years old, which suggests she was born in 1896. The notice gives her name as Edna Irene, identifies her parents, and names her siblings as Daisy, Keith and Jack (deceased).

There are two other entries for her in the newspaper in December. On 12 December, a brief article announced that ‘Miss Edna Davies, “Pioneer” representative and correspondent, has been absent for some weeks because of ill health, and is at present in hospital, where she may have to spend some time yet’. They identify someone who will gather news, and add that “until Miss Davies’ return to Minlaton, advertisements, or payment of accounts, should be sent direct to the Pioneer Office”, which suggests she had an administrative role. They conclude this announcement, by saying that ‘The weekly feature “Comments on the News” (Written by Miss Davies) will, we regret, have to be temporarily suspended”, which confirms her writing contribution.

On 26 December, the same day the death notice appeared, they published a brief obituary. Here it is in full:

Press and Radio Correspondent Dies
Yorke Peninsula generally will feel the loss of Miss Edna Davies, of Minlaton who died in an Adelaide Hospital on Monday. Miss Davies, whose name is particularly familiar to readers of “The Pioneer,” has served many years as Southern and Central Yorke Peninsula’s chief correspondent for radio stations, provincial and metropolitan newspapers. People in many Peninsula towns will miss the friendly weekly phone calls she used to make in her search for news about the doings of local organisations and people. Her articles, as well as her Peninsula news items, have been of great value and interest, and we join her brother and sister and our readers in mourning her sudden demise.

So, it’s likely that she was born in Minlaton, central Yorke Peninsula, which is about 30 kms north of Yorketown, the home of her employer The Pioneer. Indeed, on 20 March 1926, a brief article appeared in The Pioneer, headed “Minlaton. Farewell to Miss Edna Davies”. The article describes an event that was held at the Minlaton Institute “to bid farewell to Miss Edna Davies and Mr. Jack Davies” (presumably the brother mentioned in the death notice.) They were leaving for London. “Eulogistic addresses were given ” by several people, and “a useful cheque” was handed to Miss Davies. What does this tell us? Not a lot, but we can glean some information. She was around 30 years old, and seemingly not married. She was known in the community, at least enough for her departure to be reported on, albeit social news like this was more common at the time. However, it also tells us – from the headline – that it was she, not her brother, who was most known. By 1931, she was back in Minlaton, because a newspaper column by her has by-line of Edna Davies of Minlaton. 

There are more articles, stories and columns by her in the papers which provide insight into who she was, and what she thought about life – local, national and international. For example, on 20 June 1952, she writes in her “Comments on the News”:

READING about a press conference Mr. Menzies had recently in London this thought struck me — “What much wider outlook British pressmen seem to have than do their colleagues in Australia.”
And that’s a bad thing for Australia. Because if pressmen haven’t a wide outlook how can the public, who depend on them for news of the outside world, be expected to have one.

She puts it down to the “old problem” of Australia’s geographic isolation, suggesting that “we are so isolated from other places that it it [sic] hard to realise that their welfare and their doings are important to us”.

I have not spent the time locating all her articles, but she warrants more research. Certainly, she does seem to be another example of a woman who made a career for herself in journalism and writing.

When in comes to short stories, AustLit lists 5 stories by her, and we list 12 short stories in our Stories from online archives (11 from the 1930s and 1 from the 1940s), but these are just a few of many short stories by her that were published in South Australian newspapers, and The Bulletin. Yes, The Bulletin. At least two stories by her were published by The Bulletin in 1935, and I am sharing one here, titled “Scrub”. It’s perfect “Bulletin-fare”, with its story of a woman who cannot get over a childhood nightmarish experience in the bush, and an intriguing take on lost-child-in-the-bush tradition in Australian culture. The page is headed with “A Feeling Sketch of the Mallee”.

Scrub

FOR so long she had dreaded this patch of scrub; dreamed of it as an ugly, sinister thing that would haunt all the rest of her days, just as that other patch had haunted all her youth. And here it was smiling at her, welcoming her to her new home as a bride should be welcomed, with gay flowers and nodding plumes.

As Tom helped her out of the car he asked: “Happy, Lucy girl?” She smiled back at him: “Completely happy.”

She did not tell him of the load that had been lifted from her by that patch of smiling scrub. He didn’t know of the dread that had been haunting her ever since he told her he had bought the old Bartlett place, and that they would go there immediately they were married. She had known there was scrub on the Bartlett place. Tall, straight trees she loved, but not those horrible, twisted caricatures that always seemed to grow in scrub.

It was because of the scrub that she refused to go near the place before they were married. She was afraid of the sight of it, but she felt that, once married and doomed to live there, she would somehow find the courage to endure — and then the scrub had smiled at her!

Smiled widely, happily, understandingly, as though it had known her fear and was saying to her: “All scrubs aren’t alike, you know. You needn’t be afraid of this one.”

And the bright green leaves of the mallee and the duller ones of the tea-trees all nodded at her, as though to say: ‘That’s right; there’s nothing to fear.”

But it was some weeks before she could persuade herself to walk in the scrub. She would stand on the verandah and look at it, and even wave it a greeting on her way to the gate or to the paddock for the cows, but it took courage to enter those tangled paths.

The memory of that other scrub was still too close for her to tread this one carelessly. Sometimes, as she stood on the verandah, the smiling scrub of the old Bartlett place would fade and she would see again that other, older scrub, with its sinister tea-trees, gnarled and twisted.

As a child, her mother had always warned her that unpleasant things lurked there. Unpleasant things which, magnified a hundredfold, had come to life on the night of the storm.

Once more fear gripped and held her as she stood there and relived that hour.

She remembered that the pony had not wanted to go into the scrub, and time and time again, after they were in and the thunder had started, she had not wanted to answer to the rein. Lucy had often wondered since whether Midget had seen visions of her own, or the same frightful images that she had—-the hairy, twisted faces of grinning giants; the horrible head that had no body, and the body that had no head. The giant with huge, hairy arms stretched out to grab her every way she turned, and the one she never saw, because he kept pad, pad, padding just behind her.

She could hear his padding even through the thunder. Sometimes he got so close that she could feel his hot breath on her neck, and when the lightning came she was afraid to look behind for fear she might see his great hairy hands stretched out to grab her. She screamed and screamed, but no one came. She and Midget rode round and round, with no sight of the cows they had been sent to get, and she, at least, as lost as if she had been a thousand miles from home.

AT last, wet through and worn out with fear, she had given Midget her head, and a few minutes afterwards she was carrying her through the gate where the cows had passed some time before.

Her busy parents had had no time to soothe her frightened nerves, and even a hot-water bag and tea in bed had taken hours to quieten them enough for sleep to take control. All scrub had been haunted for her since, until that on the old Bartlett place had smiled at her, and when at last she found the courage to walk there it made its welcome good.

There were logs to rest on just where sun and shade met happily. Old man’s beard and Christmas bush sprawled profusely over the bushes, scarlet runner brightened the ground, little blue and yellow flowers poked up their heads in unexpected places, and magpies warbled “Good-day” to her from the branches.

The kindly growth of spring hid the ugly things, the gentle wind whispered music in the leaves, and the sun lightened and brightened everything.

She gradually realised, as she visited the scrub more often, what a place of enchantment it would be for a child. She determined that no child of hers should find it a frightening place, so young Tom was introduced to the scrub early in life, and chased rabbits and birds and played fairy tales there to his heart’s content.

Lucy played with him, and, later, when small Betty could only totter on uncertain feet, she was introduced to the delights of the scrub. She loved it. She would chuckle with delight when a magpie warbled, and tumble over sticks and stones in her totterings after sunbeams.

Lucy watched them and thanked God for the scrub on the old Bartlett place.

Young Tom was five and Betty three when they got lost in the scrub. It was dark when a frantic Lucy found them asleep under some bushes. They had only been playing Babes in the Wood they explained but Lucy had endured sixty terror-filled minutes before she found them, and in that time the scrub had changed from a friendly to a frightening place. Some of her old childish fears came back as she searched frantically and the twisted tea-trees, which in happy, playful, daylight hours had been grinning gnomes and dwarfs, swelled in the terror-filled dusk to leering giants, with a horrible secret hidden among their gnarled trunks.

She realised then, looking at the scrub through her fear, that it had grown and thickened in those six years. There were gnarled and twisted tea-trees in it that in happier moods she had not noticed, but now their grotesque shapes reminded her horribly of those other tea-trees, and she shivered as she looked at them.

For a little while she did not encourage the children to play there, but with the coming of spring she found the scrub put forth fresh charm. Her fears faded, and once more it became a fairy playground in which she watched her two imps make believe, and sometimes joined with them.

Nearly every day they went there, and sometimes, in the evenings before he became busy with the harvest, Tom would help with the cows, and they would take their tea to the scrub and eat it. Then there would be a wild half hour afterwards, when all four would enter the land of “Let’s Pretend.” They were happy days, and once more Lucy thanked God for this friendly scrub.

IT was midsummer when young Tom came running, crying that a snake in the scrub had bitten Betty. Wild-eyed and dumb, Lucy sped towards the place, She found Betty playing happily, a lizard sunning itself near by, and could find no signs of any telltale punctures on the child. They spent some anxious hours watching her, and although next day she was as well and happy as ever Lucy could not hold her cup steady enough to drink her tea.

All her old fears came back, strengthened. On her way to the milking she looked at the scrub, and shudder after shudder shook her. Only yesterday it had looked friendly and inviting, its gently-waving branches promising a haven from the hot sun. To-day she knew it for what it was, a smiling monster. It held out inviting arms and promised all sorts of pleasant things, then, when you had accepted the invitation and had grown to rely on its promises, it turned on you, and allowed its sinister powers to play with you and torture you. Exactly, Lucy thought, like the webs the spiders spin to the flies, which look so beautiful with the dew and the sun shining on them.

She felt that never again could she have any faith in the scrub; indeed, never again could she have any peace of mind while the scrub was there to lure the children with its sinister charm. It would have to go. She felt that she couldn’t bear it if they went there again to play; and if the scrub remained, how keep them away?

She consulted Tom. Told him the story of that long-ago frightened child and the fears of the grown woman frightened in turn for her children. Together they went to look at the scrub, one summer evening when the last rays of the setting sun were turning the mallee twigs to red-gold, when the rabbits were frisking at their evening meal and the magpies warbling a paean of praise to the departing day.

THROUGH the long days Tom worked, when the harvest was over, driving rabbits and birds from their homes, depriving lizards and spiders of their shelter, tearing trees and bushes up by the roots, while the children made new games to fit the broken trees,

He hated to see the scrub go. He liked a bit of scrub on a place, but he said no word of that, only told Lucy how her pile of firewood was growing,

Lucy hated that pile of firewood, and longed to set it off like a bonfire, so that she would no longer have to see those twisted limbs that seemed to shrink humanly as the hot sun dried them.

When at last they were dry enough to burn she piled them on recklessly, and when the children played their usual game of “fairy fires,” seeing all sorts of beauties in the red coals and leaping flames, she found it hard to see anything but misshapen giants and grinning devils.

They planted trees to hide the scar where the scrub had been. Trees that would grow straight and tall, with no creepers clinging to their trunks where sinister things could lurk, and Lucy prayed passionately that they might grow quickly, quickly, and banish the memory of that tangled wilderness. For the memory persisted, and on washing days, when she poked the long, thin, twisted limbs of the old tea-trees into the blaze under the copper she imagined they were snakes twisting and hissing at her, for she knew that so long as they remained the memory of that old scrub would remain, and even the sight of the new “plantation” could not drive it away.

Sources

Edna Davies, “Scrub“, in The Bulletin, Vol. 56 No. 2906 (23 Oct 1935)

All other sources are linked in the article.