by Whispering Gums

A post in our 2026 series featuring works published in 1946 (or by authors who died in 1946). This post includes a story that was published in Tasmania’s Advocate on 22 June 1946, and is by the Victorian-born Bene Gibson Smyth.
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Bene Gibson Smyth is somewhat of an outlier in our series, because she was better known as a songwriter and composer than as a writer of stories or poetry, and mostly for children. However, she did have a presence in her lifetime. She has a brief entry in The Australian Women’s Register, and a little more in AustLit and the National Library of Australia’s manuscript catalogue.

As a result, the biographical details available for her are minimal, but here’s what we have. Bene Gibson Smyth was born Robina Gibson Hunter at North Sandridge, near Bendigo in Victoria, on 16 September 1883. She appears to have been the elder daughter. There is no information about where she was educated, but the brief biographies say that in 1910, she married James Stuart Smyth at Newmarket in Melbourne. The notice in the Argus states that the wedding occurred at the “Flemington Presbyterian Church”. (This is presumably St Stephens, and according to Wikipedia, Flemington includes the locality of Newmarket.) They had three children, including a son, Ross Gibson Smyth. She died in 1966, in Ourimbah, New South Wales. Her married name was, according to The Australian Women’s Register, Robina Gibson Smyth. Presumably, Bene was a family nickname she used through her life. The main catch for researching her name is not this first name issue, but occasional misspellings of Smyth to Smythe. (Fortunately, this is not as tricky as some naming issues.)

The National Library of Australia lists five books by her, for which she did both “words and music”: The lucky white horse (1928), Ten everyday songs for children (1931), Special day songs (1933), Ten new songs for children (1944), and Fairy clocks and other songs for children (c. 1954). The State Library of Victoria adds three single scores: That’s John and Saturday’s child (both 1929), and The road that runs down to the sea (1926, with words by Gertrude Hart, herself a children’s novelist, short story writer and poet).

Smyth’s papers in the National Library’s manuscript collection include ‘an album titled “Song stories for children”, c1946; a musical play, “The wishing well … adapted from Stories told by Little Miss Kookaburra” (alias Hazel Maude, who broadcast bedtime stories in Australia), c1936; and individual songs’. The Library adds that “some of the song lyrics are by Gertrude Hart” and that the papers include “a sheet of typewritten poems by Queensland writer Mabel Forrest, with a covering note from the author”. (Forrest’s story,”Not an ordinary woman”, published under her pseudonym M. Burkinshaw, was featured in Francie Finn’s AWW post ). Was Smyth a friend of Mabel Forrest (albeit Forrest died in 1935)? Was she going to – or did she set – Forrest’s poems to music?

It has not been easy to discover much more about Smyth, but these brief mentions of Gertrude Hart, and Mabel Forrest suggest some level of involvement in the literary culture of her time. In terms of her presence, Trove searches reveal that her songs were often sung at school events (such as Speech Days) and set for children’s eisteddfods (and similar competitions). For example, her song “Four leaved clover” was set for the NSW State Eisteddfod in 1935, “A rainy day” was set for the Launceston Musical and Elocutionary] Competitions in 1939; and “On a Pine Trunk Grey” and “All on a Monday morning” were sung at the Gawler Primary School Annual Speech and Prize Giving Day in 1947. The recurrence of these occasions and the fact that the song choices vary suggest that her song books were known and well used.

Adults too performed her music, such as at an event held by the English-Speaking Union in Melbourne in November 1931. Titled “An Hour with Modern English and Australian Poets and Composers”, it included Mr J. Alexander Browne singing works from “the following composers.— Quilter, Hageman, Coleridge-Taylor, Edith Harrhy, Bene Gibson Smythe [sic], W. G. James, Elgar and Martin Shaw”. Many of these are still well-recognised composers.

Her most remembered work, however, is probably the song, “We would remember them” (also known as “Anzac Day”). Blogger Val Lennie wrrote in 2018: “This was the title of a song/hymn we learnt at Fairfield Primary School, Victoria, Australia, in years prior to the outbreak of World War II … Every Anzac Day since I left the school in 1940, I sing it, although I never hear it sung as part of remembrance ceremonies”. A 2014 thread on The Mudcat Cafe discusses the song, with one responder discovering a reference to it in a thesis titled, “Classroom music in Victorian State Primary Schools, 1934 to 1981”, and sharing that ‘Bene Gibson Smyth’s ‘We Would Remember Them’ (also called ‘Anzac Day’) captures the innocence of the Australian boys who signed up for the Great War, with no idea of the horrors they would have to face’. The thread was still live in 2022.

Bene Gibson Smyth, then, was primarily a writer of songs, and was well-known during her times as such, but we did also find one short story of hers published in 1946. Because Smyth died in 1966, this story is still in copyright, so we are including an excerpt, here, with a link to the full (and edited by us) story in Trove’s digitised version. Titled “Belladonnas”, it is set in a bush hospital, and involves childbirth, a mysterious old woman and the enigmatic belladonna. Containing both realistic and fanciful elements, it provides yet another insight into who Bene Gibson Smyth might have been.

Belladonnas

IN the warm sunshine the bush hospital looked cool and remote, with its background of enfolding mountains and its grassy surroundings – green after recent heavy rain.

From their place on the corner cupboard the belladonnas looked serenely down on the small entrance hall of the hospital, their lovely pink contrasting well with the rich blue of the Chinese jar that held them. Matron, passing by, wondered if their perfume was too heavy; then decided that the wards were too far away to be affected.

She took another peep at the sterilised preparations in the tiny theatre. “Just in case he comes,” she said to herself. Then she went quickly along the wide verandah where the Leg Fracture and the Mastoid were helping each other’s recovery. It was checkers to-day, she noticed.

Continue …  here

Sources and notes

Bene Gibson Smyth, “Belladonnas“, in Advocate, 22 June 1946 [Accessed: 11 May 2026]
Family Notices, in The Argus, 24 September 1910, p. 13. [Accessed: May 12, 2026]
Mudcat Cafe is an online forum and database dedicated to folk music, blues, and traditional music, and is archived by the Library of Congress
Papers of Bene Gibson Smyth (MS Acc11.044, National Library of Australia catalogue [Accessed: 11 May 2026]

All other sources are linked in the article.

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