As always, Bert

This is the story of Bert Corrin - who travelled throughout Australia and New Zealand - often-times by bicycle - seeking employment during the depression years - told through his letters - and his lifelong friendship with Helen Blackshaw.

Bert Corrin sailed from England in 1927 aboard the SS 'Naldera' bound for Australia and during the voyage became friends with bride-to-be Helen Rigby who was on her way to New Zealand to marry Arthur 'Lloyd' Blackshaw. Bert disembarked at Adelaide where he began his decades-long journey to find work and a place to call home. Soon after, he wrote to Helen and so began a lifelong friendship which lasted for 58 years, always ending his letters 'As always, Bert'.

Helen and Lloyd married soon after she arrived and as they made their lives together at Cambridge, on the banks of the Waikato River, Bert struggled to find employment and at their suggestion came to the North Island from Queensland in 1929, where Lloyd helped him find to work on Birch's dairy farm at Hapua, Masterton.

Bert stayed for two years, visiting Helen and Lloyd on several occasions, before returning to Australia, where he took up his search for work and a home 'on the wallaby track'. Bert's wanderings took him to Victoria seeking gold, dining on fruit from deserted orchards; to Cardwell in north Queensland living on the fish he caught; then across to Darby in Western Australia, with his bicycle and swag, camping out and living rough. In 1938 Bert found himself once again in north Queensland, having made his way across the south of the continent from Kalgoorlie picking fruit and bailing hay, to work on a sugar plantation. All the while writing regularly to Helen, and she to him.

"I just had a scare ... A brown snake came gliding along side me. As it is only a tiny tent and I have my bike and food in too because of rain we were rather congested, I could not hit him as he was on the other side of the bike and being as agitated as I was standing up trying to climb the tent wall, he got out before I did."

When England and its allies went to war in 1939, Bert worried about his elderly mother in York and signed and on as a crew member of a sugar boat heading to Montreal from Townsville. After "fifty four days to Panama without seeing another ship, and rationed to half a bucket of water a day" he found himself in Yorkshire in December 1939.

In 1943 Bert wrote from Gambia - as a Leading aircraftman (LAC) stationed at RAF Station, Bathurst, West African Forces. He was attached to the Marine Aviation section, working with flying boats undertaking anti-submarine patrols and air sea rescue. Bert was later stationed in York and Red Hills Lake in India before being discharged at the end of the war.

Still keen to find land and settle down, he was granted passage on an aircraft carrier to Sydney and from there headed north to Cardwell finding work at the sawmill. Bert went next to Kuranda, near Cairns working on the railway. Late in 1946 he found himself in Cooktown finally settling on 5 acres where he could plant a food garden to supplement his income and build a home.

He described his life 'a bit like Robinson Crusoe' - he set up two 'one-man army huts' side by side, with mangoes to eat, as well as wild pigs, he dug a well, and lighting was by kerosene lamp. A boat went to Cairns once a week - a journey of  9-10 hours.

Contained within this collection of over 300 letters, several sketches, photographs, poems and manuscripts is the story of Bert and Helen's lives, their dreams, and their aspirations. Bert was a talented story teller filling his letters with local anecdotes, born of the tropics and the adventurers who settled there.

• April 1948: Darky Addison has the instincts of a flying fox - knowing where all the ripening fruit trees are in Cooktown
• March 1953: the sawmill closed down; roadworks are at a standstill due to lack of funding; it is a season for boils, ringworm and ulcers; and the air-ambulance had a lot of work with broken arms, ribs, illness, 3 deaths, smash ups, goring by a bull and sea-wasp stings.
• February 1971: the undertaker emptied a corpse out of a coffin at a funeral because the family wouldn't pay enough for the coffin
• October 1973: the Butcher died; the Matron's son was killed by a car; a new shop opened in main street; the hardware store burnt down; and detectives are investigating stock stealing.

Bert and Helen were keen poets. Helen later had several of her works published. This is one she penned, describing milking on her Waikato farm during the depression:

"At least I am not in a storm at sea.
I run my hand along the bony ridge
Of Lucy's steaming back, and set her free,
(Wet wood. God knows how I will cook the tea.)
And better still - I am not playing bridge!"

Helen's children visited Bert in Cooktown, the youngest moving to Australia in 1968, and in 1981 the friends were reunited when Bert flew to the North Island and stayed with Helen and Lloyd at their home in Wanganui. Bert passed away in Cooktown in October 1985 and is buried in the local cemetery.

Bert's delightful letters and manuscripts were donated by the Blackshaw Family to the State Library of Queensland, so that his stories and life could be heard and remembered.

• Herbert Corrin, 1902-1985
• Helen Blackshaw (nee Rigby), 1893-1991
• Arthur Lloyd Blackshaw, 1906-1997

Read more ...

• 2789, Helen Blackshaw and Bert Corrin papers, State Library of Queensland
  -  Collection guide
• 'This slender volume'. Helen Blackshaw, 1961
• 'A Quaker pacifist who saved lives' (Lloyd Blackshaw served in the Pacific during the Second World War) Shore News, 20 April 1955 p.13

Watch ...

• Cooktown (1966) British Pathe. YouTube
• Spoken: Cooktown Story. Harold Ludwick provides a shore-to-ship account of the first interactions between the crew of the Endeavour and the Guugu Yimithirr people. YouTube