FRIDAY JUNE 2 at 7.30pm
Burnside City Uniting Church, 384 Portrush Rd Tusmore
THE CAMPBELLS OF ANLABY: Working and Social Life in Mid North South Australia – Dr Janet and Sue Scarfe
Anlaby in the Mid North of SA is mainland-Australia’s longest continuous working merino stud, dating from 1839 and owned by the wealthy Dutton family until 1978. The talk will cover a history of three generations who lived and worked on the station from 1860 to 1940.
Whereas other accounts concentrate on the Dutton dynasty, this talk focuses on the Campbell family, in particularly Hugh, a shepherd in the 1860s and 1870s, and his son Charles, overseer from 1904 to 1938. The talk describes the impact of various changes over the decades and places the property and the employees in their wider context in the district and in South Australia – droughts, fires, World War I, the Depression, the emergence of new occupations and social change.
The speakers are the co-authors: Dr Janet Scarfe is a professional historian and biographer. Her research interests include family history and biography, Australian Army nurses in WWI and WW2, and controversies around the ordination of women in the Anglican Church in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. She is currently writing a biography of Dorothy (‘Puss’) Campbell and her service overseas in WW2 with the Australian Army Nursing Service and plans to publish in 2023. Sue is a genealogist who undertook the initial research into the book.