Longueville is a peninsula that sticks out into the Lane Cove River between Woodford Bay and Tambourine Bay. So the first part of my walk yesterday was along the Woodford Bay side. Much to my chagrin, I only discovered today that Woodford Bay was the site of some decent Aboriginal resistance to white settlement. In 2004 there was a 'reconciliation ceremony' including a welcome to country - presumably by surviving Cameraigal - a speech by the mayor and the unveiling of a plaque that reads "Memorial Plaque to honour and recognise the the Cameraygal people who defended their Country by resisting British invasion”.

I include some excerpts from the mayor's speech:

The first record of contact in the Lane Cove area between the British and the Cameraygal people is in the diary of Lt. Ralph Clark of the marines, who landed at Woodford Bay on 14 February 1790. He reported amicable encounters with Dourrawan and Tirriwan, two Cameraygal men, exchanging gifts as well as food. Clark also recorded that Dourrawan’s wife had already died of smallpox.

Over the following years, convicts, grasscutters and timbergetters worked in the Lane Cove area. An early British settlement north of the Harbour was established at Woodford Bay where a stockade was built to protect the convicts and settlers from Cameraygal attacks.

In 1794, free land grants of Cameraygal country were made in the vicinity of the area which is now occupied by the Lane Cove Shopping Centre. With the destruction of native fauna and flora and the interference with their gathering, hunting and fishing practices and their sacred, cultural areas, the Eora realised that permanent changes were taking place to their countries without their consent. Armed resistance was the logical consequence to this arrogant disregard of Aboriginal Law and Customs. The settlers’ clearance of Cameraygal land triggered further resistance in the Lane Cove area, with the burning of crops and attacks on farmhouses and settlers....

Former Judge Advocate and Secretary of the Colony, David Collins had recorded that in 1797 the Eora were ‘exceedingly troublesome to the settlers in the Lane Cove area’ and that settlers were ‘perpetually alarmed’. The ‘Sydney Gazette’ of September 1804 reported an attack on Wilshire’s Farm at Lane Cove, estimating that the number of Eora involved ‘must have exceeded 200’.

In 1816, in response to raids on farms from Lane Cove to the Nepean River, Governor Macquarie dispatched a military expedition, lasting twenty three days, to the Nepean, Hawkesbury and Grose Rivers. Orders were to capture Aboriginal people and to shoot all resisters. The aim, as Macquarie recorded, was to ‘strike them with Terror against Committing Similar Acts of Violence’ and ‘to drive them to a distance from the Settlements of White Men.’ Aboriginal people were now outlawed in their own land, but Aboriginal resistance continued and sovereignty was never ceded.

Free land grants continued until the ‘Ripon Land Regulations’ in mid-1831. Rupert Kirk was the last person to receive a land grant in the Lane Cove district when he received 320 acres, which took in all of the Longueville peninsular, extending from the water at Woodford Bay, where we meet today, northwards to Longueville Road.

Kirk used the land to start a soap and candle factory - another instance of the North Shore's former industrial history.

If I'd known, I'd have hunted down the plaque. As it is, I took a couple of photos of Woodford Bay as it is today (without the stockade).


I chatted to a couple of guys down by what they called 'the wreck', a badly parked boat. They were obviously local (I think one of them owns the boatshed in the previous photo), but didn't know who owned the boat. It has been lying on its side there for some time - a pretty expensive wreck!


Longueville is full of very posh houses. The median price is $2 million. Apparently Nicole Kidman used to live there. In 1880 there were still only two residences in the area. I'm pretty sure this is one of them (there's a lot more of it behind the tree on the left).


The suburb was gazetted in 1920. And quite a few more mansions were there by that time. The origin of the name Longueville seems to be a matter of speculation, but the influence of the French chateaux is frequently to be seen, if on a somewhat miniature scale. The area is full of tiny parterre gardens, trees cut into baubles, and statuary. Here are just three examples.






More later.

Today I walked from Punchbowl Road to Centenary Drive, circling around the Strathfield Golf Course and back.

This vast flour mill on the Hume Highway, just past my halfway point, was originally established by N.B. Love.

Love was an aviation pioneer. He and a partner had tried to set up commercial aircraft manufacture in the early 1920s. The company supplied Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd [aka Qantas] with its first passenger commercial aircraft. But the company went into liquidation in 1923, due to lack of orders, and the Commonwealth acquired their airfield, which is now Sydney Airport.

Mr Love then married the flour miller's daughter and went to work for his father-in-law's company. Marriage is nothing if not a business partnership! In 1935 he registered his own company and built a flour mill at this spot. Then in 1940 he inherited his father-in-law's firm (some more flour mills). In 1958 he went into baking and floated the company which, 4 years later, was taken over by George Weston Foods from NZ, manufacturers of Tip Top cardboard.

The author, Daniel Connell, has spent many years working in the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and as a journalist and local historian, before writing a PhD thesis on which the book is based. I found the early parts of the book, on the history of the wrangles over how to manage the Murray after Federation, most fascinating. I understand a lot more than I did before about why it has been so impossible to reach any kind of institutional arrangement that would look after the health of the river system - even long after all parties know and agree that the rivers are in critical danger. The book also has a lot of interesting detail about the salinity problem, the relative importance of flows in the Murray and the Darling, the relationship between groundwater and surface water and so forth. Up to 2007 when the book was published, water trading tended to exacerbate rather than relieve the problem as a result of different jurisdictions (water entitlements meant different things in different areas). Connell tries to be optimistic - he points to the rising power of the Commonwealth relative to the states and an increasing tendency to resort to the law rather than to politics to resolve issues. The Commonwealth, of course, is the only government that can take a basin-wide view. More power to its elbow!

23 May
I got picked up at 8.30 by the guide. His name is Mark Sutton and he is one of the traditional owners (Mulyankapa) of Mutawintji NP. I was lucky that I was the only tourist going out there with him - all the others we picked up at the camping ground and they had their own cars (all 4WD of course, except for one guy in a Kombi-type van). Having the tour guide to yourself means the possibility of conversation.

The trip out there is 130 km, about half of it on dirt roads which, in the park itself, are badly corrugated. I read somewhere that Mark's uncle is Badger Bates (see previous post) and it is true. The two of them seem to take turns in chairing the local Land Council. When I mentioned that I'd stopped at Wilcannia, he said "good on you!" Apparently most people take one look at the place and put their foot on the accelerator. So I explained that over the course of my life I'd met a handful of people from Wilcannia and so I wanted to see it. One of these people, I met her about 35-40 years ago, was an Aboriginal woman who said that her grandmother (who had lived to over 100) had talked about how the whole area between Wilcannia and Broken Hill had been covered in trees, and was lush and green - not at all like it is today. The white people just cut down all the trees, totally transforming the landscape within a couple of decades. Later in our tour, Mark mentioned the last of the local 'clever women' who'd died in the 1970s at the age of 109. That set me wondering if it was the same woman or if it was just that women born before the arrival of Europeans had a very long life expectancy. Anyway Wilcannia is Mark's hometown. He left when he was 4 and went east to school. He lived in Newcastle through high school - turns out he knows the father of a colleague of mine - went to uni in Sydney, and came back to Broken Hill about 15 years ago.

We stopped for morning coffee in a creek bed. The gums are a smaller relative of the river red (E. camaldulensis) - their name is something like "ombrosa." The creek bed was damp, presumably from the rain a few days ago.


Most of the tour takes place in the restricted area. Mainly it is restricted on account of people having removed stuff in the past, but there is also an important "men's business" area. The guides make sure that tourists don't go to that place. There's a (white) park ranger living at the Park Centre, visible to the left of the picture, but that's because the accommodation was already built when the Aborigines regained ownership, and they didn't want to live in a place that was so closely linked to ceremony. (As Mark put it, the white ranger isn't superstitious, so living there is OK for him.) They've turned the old Park centre into a cultural centre. We were ushered in to watch and listen to a multimedia presentation of a Dreaming story that sounded really like a bit of Old Testament (floods, pestilence, etc). Unlike the OT, however, there is redemption - a sort of Garden of Eden story in reverse. When the people had been punished enough, god turned Mutawintji into a paradise for the people to live in. How nice a story is that! Paradise here on earth and the people can keep it if they behave well!

Then we walked across the valley floor to look at the first set of galleries. On the way we passed an oven floor. Only the floor is left - the rest has been washed away by flash floods. But this is where the corroborees were held. Ten different tribes used to congregate here for trade and ceremony.

I loved the story about how you dig a hole, put stones on the bottom to keep the heat, add flammable stuff, set a fire and then when the stones are hot you put in your kangaroo and emu and cover them over. But you leave the emu's head above ground - because you've stuffed both animals with herbs and when the herbs in the animal's cavity start to cook they send smoke out through the emu's mouth. When the smoke comes out you know your emu is cooked!

These two trees are of the genus Callitris. The one on the right is a termite-proof species (Black), the one on the left (White) is not. Unlike a lot of trees in the outback, they have a nice straight trunk that makes them excellent building material. Consequently, not many are left. Today, only the things built with Black Callitris are still standing (see my post on the Mungo Woolshed).


On the southern side of the valley is a long line of galleries covered in stencils and engraving. There are three types of rock art at Mutawintji - two on this side of the valley and a third on the other side. Here we find, first of all, stencils that are probably a maximum of 300 years old. It is sheltered from the prevailing south-westerlies, but there's water filtering down through the rock, so paint doesn't last long. The present owners have put driplines in - some modern plasticky substance that guides the water away from the paintings. The dark red ochre comes from the Flinders Ranges, about 200 km to the west. The yellow comes from somewhere to the east (I've forgotten) and the white is local gypsum.


There are stencils at child height and at adult height. People apparently made their hand stencils when they first visited this area for a ceremony during childhood, then when they came for other ceremonies as adults.


Only elders were supposed to make stencils of more than their hand. The more arm in your stencil, the more senior you were. You can clearly see a bit of dripline in the bottom left of this photo, but it's generally not very obtrusive.


Looking across the valley. The bump in the middle, that looks like a snake's head, is right by the location of Snake's Cave where the men's business takes place. Don't go haw hawing about men and snakes! The Rainbow Serpent is the creature in Aboriginal folklore that created most of the features of the landscape. How the serpent got into man's imagination is another question :) According to Mark, the snake is also important in Mulyankapa culture. Opals, for example, are said to be pieces of snake shit.


What you can see here is what's left of a double circle. If you stand with your back to the circle you will be facing the Snake's Cave. The circle indicates a water hole. The double circle indicates a ceremonial water hole and the hand print (not stencil) indicates men's business.


The second type of art at Mutawintji is engraved into the rock. Most of it in these galleries consists of animal tracks. The kangaroo footprints just behind Mark's foot are pretty obvious. I thought there were emu prints in this picture too, but blowed if I can see them now! They look like arrows - maybe that grey-looking bit just below the ?-shaped crack in the rock on the far left?


Then there's this thing. Mark said he'd assumed for a long time that it was a modern whitefella adornment. But one day an Aboriginal woman in his tour group said (I wish I could reproduce the intonation) "Nooo boy, that's women's business." "Right auntie," says Mark, "so what does it mean then?" "Noooo boy, that's women's business" replies auntie.


The "women's business" area (the women's equivalent of Snake's Cave is called Mushroom Rock) is away to the south and also restricted. Mark is trying to persuade them to share some of their stuff with strangers, but so far they won't. In the car on the way back he said that he thought the men didn't mind sharing so much because white anthropologists had been collecting data for 150 years and those anthropologists were all men "back then." Women were never asked about their business, so they're not used to sharing it far and wide and maybe they're more defensive because, due to the dominance of male anthropologists, there's a general presumption that the men's story is all there is to tell. However, Mark pointed out that the Mulyankapa, to which he belongs, are matrilineal. It follows that it must be the women who know most about the history of the people and their lands.

Somebody asked whether the people wore clothing. The answer was ever so slightly indignant (like what d'you think they were: cold blooded?) - yes they wore animal furs . Next question "did they wear shoes". Answer - only the 'clever men' wore shoes made of feathers, but that's all that can be said. The last clever man died in the 1930s, the last clever woman in the 1970s. Along the way Mark was talking a bit about medicinal properties of various plants, but how much of that was lost when these old 'clever' people died? White Australians know very well about the fantastic properties of ti tree (melaleuca) oil, but what other local wisdom are we missing out on?

This is, according to Mark, genuine whitefella addition. Apparently the blue tint is provided by Reckitt's Blue (which I remember from my own childhood as being some kind of laundry bleach).

According to this site, Reckitt's Blue was actually used by Australian Aborigines.
Around the corner was a genuine whitey graffito - a now completely illegible black-painted ad for some place in the Blue Mountains, a mere 1100 km to the east. The National Parks and Wildlife Service require that it is not scrubbed out because it is more than 50 years old.

Whatever. Now we're on our way across the valley to visit the third type of art. On the way, we see some 300 million year-old fossils - some kind of sea scorpion that left its tracks on the old ocean floor.


Caterpillar bag. I saw these yesterday too, at the arboretum, and thought they were birds' nests. But they belong to processional caterpillars which leave them in the daytime and return at night. Processional caterpillars walk together in line - nose to tail. I first came across processional caterpillars at Yeppoon in Queensland, though I somehow neglected to mention this at the time.


Another view across the valley. This time from the northern side, looking towards the southwest - but west of the galleries we'd just come from.


Now we get to the real highlight. These engravings are in the so-called Panaramitee style, after a place southwest of here in South Australia, where they were first noticed. Mutawintji is the eastern-most extent of this type of engraving. Nobody really knows how old they are, but carbon dating of organic matter deposited on them says at least 30,000 years. They have been subjected to various pressures - including the addition of chemicals to make them more clearly visible. This one is clearly an emu.


There is a huge jumble of engravings - all over the place. Some human figures here.


Among other things, a kangaroo.


Every surface is covered with engravings. Some years ago, the National Parks decided to clean everything up. They applied pressurized steam, which not only got rid of the ancient patina on the rock, it caused a huge amount of cracking and downhill slippage. Oops. The ladder-like structures worn by the human figures are apparently something to do with rainmaking cermonies.


Back in the valley, this creek has actually got some water in it - thanks to the recent rain. We passed an overhang with an ancient "map" showing 10 water holes, but the layout was changed by the ?Raine?s family that used to run the place as a sheep station..


Finally, at the Park Centre there's a display of some artefacts and a bit of political history. In 1983 the Park was blockaded by the traditional owners.


Political action by the Aboriginal community led to the Park being handed over in 1998. It is now leased back to the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the rent, which if IIRC is over $300k a year, is being put aside by the indigenous owners to buy more land in the area. Mark said that what they want to do first is to buy up land between Mutawintji NP and the nature reserve further east where there is the only known NSW population of the endangered yellow-footed rock wallaby. They want to create a corridor for these wallabies. Mark is proud of the fact that he designed the Mutawintji logo, which includes these wallabies as well as the Pleiades, aka Seven Sisters, who are part of the Mutawintji Dreaming.


I loved this place. I'm so glad I waited in Broken Hill long enough to go there. And it is so hard to get your head around 30 millenia of human civilisation. Or 45 millenia - which is the date they've given to Mungo Lady. Whatever. Burke and Wills came here (circa 1860) on their fateful mission to cross the continent. They were advised by the Aborigines that it was the last major source of water until ...what? There's bugger all between here and the Queensland border. On the way back from the Gulf of Carpentaria, all except one died, possibly from inability to prepare bush tucker properly. The sole survivor, a man called John King, is said to have been so destroyed by his experience that he only lasted another decade, dying at the age of 33. The Burke and Wills story must be a puzzle to the people who've always lived here.

21 May
Yesterday after lunch I went to the local art gallery where there was some good Aboriginal art (ranging from locals to stars like Clifford Possum Tjapaljtira and Emily Knangwarrye) and a small, but high quality collection of whitefella paintings (Nolan, Pro Hart, etc). The disappointing bit was finding out about the Wilcannia art scene that nobody mentioned when I was there at all. The "story posts" are done by a group of Wilcannia art students. They are a modern adaptation of an idea borrowed from elsewhere - the only Aboriginal people who traditionally do totem poles are in the Tiwi Islands off Darwin. These are in the car park outside the gallery. No photos allowed inside unfortunately - there is some beautiful stuff and the gallery is in an old store with stunning polished floorboards and staircases. Well worth a visit.


This sensitively placed item is by Guy de Main (I hope I've remembered his name correctly, can't find him on google) who teaches the above students at the TAFE.


I probably should've tried getting to Mutawintji this morning, but everyone had been so gloomy yesterday about the road being closed after yesterday's rain. So I went to Silverton instead. Near Silverton is the Daydream mine which is about the only place tourists can still go underground to see what it's like. The way in from the BH-Silverton road was dirt and open. It seemed as dry as a bone.

The underground tour was interesting, but nothing at all related to modern mining. The mine closed in about 1888, having been open for about 10 years. Everyone went to BH where the pickings were much greater. Miners' life expectancy was under 40. They died of lung disease, cirrhosis and infectious diseases, but nobody has any records any more. Mostly they didn't die from accidents - they were just mutilated so they couldn't work any more! At some stage the mineowners allowed just 10 wives on to the site - this turned out to be a great improvement as drunken brawling and rioting was reduced! Mostly the wives remained at Burra in South Australia where there had been the world's largest copper mine that had recently been mined out.

There were just five of us on this tour. When we got back to the surface there was a group of about 25 students from Iowa State University waiting to go down!


Above ground at Daydream.




The landscape around here would originally have had a lot more trees, but they were all chopped down for firewood and mine timbers.




The tea room at Daydream. Great scones!


Old mine workings on the road to Daydream-Silverton road.

More distant view of same.


Later I went to look at the Silverton cemetery, but only the rich and those well-respected enough to have a collection raised for them had headstones and the cemetery was run by somebody called "Bob the Finisher" who paid no attention to things like orderly rows and keeping records.

The most amazing thing about the cemetery, however, was the separate, fenced off area where some Aborigines are buried! I was quite mystified as both of the (marked) graves here were very recent. However, there was no information board to explain anything about this Aboriginal cemetery.


For the miners who died at Daydream, the funeral involved everybody walking into Silverton and back - a whole day expedition. They couldn't be buried near the mine, maybe because the ground is too rocky or, more likely, the mine owners didn't want newly arrived miners to be greeted by the sight of a vast cemetery!. At Silverton the cemetery is 47 acres. The miners' accommodation at Daydream comprised stone huts - the walls were about waist high, there was a fireplace in one corner and there wasn't room to lie down. This is because miners mostly slept in a sitting position in order to keep their airways clear. They would hook their arms over a rope strung across the hut so that they wouldn't fall over in their sleep. Two miners would share a hut. Since they worked 12 hour shifts only one would be "at home" at a time.

20 May
Arrived in Broken Hill about midday. It is much more spectacular than I'd imagined. The road in winds through low, red hills and then suddenly there's a mineworks on your left and around the next bend the town. I had a bit of trouble finding a place to stay - apparently there's some kind of football tournament on. Eventually checked into a motel on the opposite edge of town. They claimed to have wireless internet, but so far I can't stay connected for more than about 10 seconds. At the reception they told me with a shrug that "it's the weather."

Went to have lunch on top of the slag heap (or mullock heap, which is what they call it here). The restaurant, called Broken Earth, is quite good.

At the bottom of the mullock mountain is what's left of the original mine office of BHP. Recently merged with the UK-based Billiton company, it is now the largest mining company in the world. But it started with this modest chimney at Broken Hill, mining silver, lead and zinc in the 1880s.


BHP left BH long ago, but the mines are still going and the mullock mountain is higher than the surrounding hills. The mullock is on top of the Line of Lode which runs for several km right through the middle of the city.
Views from the restaurant.

Looking along Sulphide St, or possibly Bromide, Chloride or Iodide St. I'm not sure - BH is full of toxic sounding streets.



Grass struggling to take hold on top of the slag mountain. Even here the colours are amazing.


Looking along the mullock heap towards one of the still-operating mines.


The defunct Delprats Mine. Somewhere nearby is a memorial (I didn't find it) to a group of mullockers who got buried in their own mullock. Delprat was an early director of BHP (though later than the original group of 7 stockmen who took outthe lease). The founder was a stockman called Charles Rasp (real name - I kid you not - Hieronymus Salvator Lopez von Pereira. He was of Portuguese descent, born in Stuttgart).


The Miners' Memorial, also on the mullock heap. It was closed due to the weather, so this was as close as I could get. Names of miners who died on the job are listed inside.


Public art on the mullock heap.


Some old mine works half way up the mullock heap.


From the top of the slag mountain, I guessed that the most ornate building I could see would turn out to be the Trades Hall and I was right.

The Barrier Industrial Council used to be very strong and their building is correspondingly grand. One of the mosr famous BH personalities was Tom Mann. During the famed lock-out of 1909, Mann was allowed to stay out of gaol on condition that he did not make any speeches in the state of New South Wales. So he went down the road to Cockburn (just over the border in SA) and literally thousands of miners crammed on to the trains to go and hear him.

Down at street level the slag mountain dominates the town.




The motel info gave me a choice of Pizza Hut or Pizza Runner. I chose the latter because they advertised spice, but it has turned into Dominos. I'd never had a Dominos pizza before and it was faintly disgusting. The crust was not made of pizza dough, there was hardly any cheese, the topping was overcooked and the alleged pepperoni had no chilli at all!

1) Thomas Muir.
In the trilogy of Eleanor Dark about the early settlement of New South Wales, there is a character (a convict) who constantly gets into trouble for reading Thomas Paine's 'Rights of Man.' Today, in a thing on the radio about the new Museum of Australian Democracy in Old Parliament House, I discovered there was indeed a chap who'd been transported for his activities with Paine during the French Revolution. In 1793 or -4 he was transported for 14 years for sedition though, unlike Dark's character, he was to be treated as a gentleman not a convict (he was a university educated lawyer). There is a variety of stories about how he escaped from the colony after only two years, but they at least have in common that he swam out to a ship moored in the Harbour. Then he had an extremely adventurous trip via North America and Cuba to Spain. On the way, he lost an eye and was in hospital at Cadiz. Finally he moved back to Paris, but died soon after.

Charges made against Thomas Muir in August 1793.

(1) That he attended meetings at Kirk-in-Tilloch and Milton, of a society for reform, in which he had delivered speeches in which he seditiously endeavoured to represent the government as oppressive and tyrannical.
(2) That he exhorted three people residing in Cadder, to buy and read Paine's Rights of Man.
(3) That he circulated the work of Thomas Paine, A Declaration of Rights, to the friends of reform in Paisley.

Further, Lord Braxfield explained why he had to sentence Thomas Muir and others to fourteen years' transportation:

The British constitution is the best that ever was since the creation of the world, and it is not possible to make it better. Yet Mr. Muir has gone among the ignorant country people and told them Parliamentary Reform was absolutely necessary for preserving their liberty.

2) A shoe for democracy!


Description from the Powerhouse Museum which owns it.

Mule, womens, silk damask / leather / silk... maker unknown, prize work, England / unknown, [1848]
Womens single straight mule of turnshoe construction with needlepoint toe and covered thin Louis heel over white leather. Mule consists of red silk damask upper featuring a straight top edge from mid seat with fawn leather bound seat edge and silver braid around the top edge. Lining is in white leather and the sock is brown basket weave silk damask. Heel covered in blue/black silk is white stitched with crescentic top piece. Leather sole features a highly polished forepart and lighter breast... Early museum documentation includes (note by the late William Box Kingham: "This shoe has the best rocking pitch I have ever seen.")

According to information dating from an 1897 exhibition, the shoe was made and exhibited in a public house in aid of funds to defend the Chartist shoemaker Fay, in Finsbury, London, 1848. As a demonstration of solidarity, the shoe was subsequently carried through the streets of London. Apparently shoemakers were very prominent in the Chartist Movement - perhaps because the silk industry was heavily involved and they used silk.

Fay the Chartist.

Thomas Fay: One of a group of London conspirators who probably did plan some kind of coup or putsch following rejection of the third Chartist petition, Fay was charged with "sedition" and "levying war". He was a Roman Catholic from Dublin, working in London as a boot clover at the time of his arrest. Along with the others he was seized at the Orange Tree public house in Bloomsbury and tried at the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey before being sentenced to transportation for life. He sailed for Australia on the Adelaide, arriving at Hobart on 29 November 1849. The nine English Chartists transported on the Adelaide were immediately granted tickets of leave allowing them to seek paid work subject to certain police checks on their activities on their arrival, and were pardoned seven years later in December 1856.

I admit that I'd thought transportation was over by the time of the Chartist movement, while I knew about the Tolpuddle Martyrs and various Irish Republicans, this story surprised me. I need to learn more Australian history! Anyway, the little Australian history I studied at school told me that convicts were all poor people who were sent here for stealing bread and the like. At least one of these Chartist "conspirators" was the son of a freed West Indian slave and another one was a portrait painter!