‘Say not – when yesterday you gave
Your child to sleep
beneath the wave,
That could it lie
beneath the sod
‘Twould nearer seem to
you and God”
Written for Mrs.
Calhoun on the day of my departure from Portarlington.
With love from Olga
Straubel’. 16/6/81.
Retired second-hand bookseller Ted showed me a
poem by Olga Straubel in an old scrapbook he had acquired fifteen years
early. Many of the pages are filled
with symmetrically placed die-cut Victorian paper ornaments of flowers and
animals printed in Germany. Occasionally there are pressed ferns. Ted contacted
me, not because of the scrapbook, but because there are also two carefully
handwritten poems that seem somewhat out of place. One is signed by Olga
Straubel, an early teacher of Portarlington and Ernst's mother.
A brief history of Olga Straubel
Johanna Maria Olga Straubel (known as Olga all her life)
was born in 1860 and lived in Richmond. Her family were staunch members of the
Melbourne German Lutheran Community. Olga took up a position as a primary
teacher in Portarlington, as a young single teacher, on the 27 May 1881 and was transferred to another school in 14 June
1881. Not a very long career in Portarlington but one she remembered well. She told her children
it was in the middle of an onion glut and the excess onions were fed to the
animals so everything – even the eggs - tasted of onion.
The poem she wrote comforts someone who has
lost or buried a child at sea. I
found a reference to the death of Philmore Calhoun who was drowned after
falling from the Sparrowhawk. He was accompanying his American father Captain
Calhoun and drowned off Cape Schank. The second mate dived in but he could not
be recovered. The poem is written approximately eight years after the accident.
At that time the Calhouns ran a family hotel in Portarlington where Olga may
have stayed while she taught. If she stayed there it is likely she heard the
sad story of a child who was ‘buried at sea’ years earlier. I wonder?
A fatal accident at sea occurred on the 16th of June, off Cape Schanck,
whereby Philmore Calhoun, about ten years of age, the son of Captain Calhoun,
of the Sparrow hawk, was lost overboard. The lad was proceeding from aft
forward, when he fell over the side. The second officer immediately jumped
overboard and swam to the spot where the child was observed last, and succeeded
in picking up his cap ; but, nothing more was seen of the youth. The ship was
hove aback and a boat lowered, which picked up the second officer.
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