The Story Teller - Jeannie Haughton visits

 

Many years ago in my former professional life I attended a conference where I heard the Reverend Tim Costello talk about the importance of family and community “story tellers.”

     He said these are the people who help create functional families and communities, their stories of the past and the relationship to contemporary issues were what grounded us, they gave us our sense of belonging, they provoked thinking about what we stand for, not just where our personal values come from, but also how we gained them and to question the relevance of those values to modern contemporary issues.

     This community is extremely fortunate to have in its midst one such story teller in Jean Haughton, the life partner of Rotarian and Chairman Ian Haughton,  who had the job of introducing Jean as guest speaker at the last dinner meeting.

     Jean first came to the Drouin community more than 40 years ago as a primary teacher, she always had a love of the performing arts and so on her retirement she had the time and inclination to pursue the interest to a point of passion.

     Jean is an accomplished playwright and theatre producer with many credits to her name; including the establishment of the local theatre company Off THE LEASH.

     OFF THE LEASH THEATRE Inc. is an exciting independent Gippsland theatre company co-founded in 2010 by playwright/producer Jeannie Haughton and actor/director Steve Wiegerink, which has since incorporated as a not-for-profit community theatre group.

   

 Since the late 90’s Jean has written and/or produced more than 20 plays, Wild Dog, Better is Peace – A Tribute to the ANZACS (2015), and Quilting the Armour, which gives a view of the Kelly women (Ned Kelly) and was performed in the Old Melbourne Gaol, are just 3 of her works that many have enjoyed.  

     Jean told her Rotary audience that she often looks for inspiration in the history of Gippsland, and an early pioneer, Angus McMillan is one such character who has prompted considerable interest both as a pioneer who opened up so much of Gippsland, but also what many believe is his infamy, when considered in the context of today. He is a man who has so many infamous annotations to his life and his treatment of the indigenous inhabitants.

     Her works on early Gippsland are unashamedly designed to shine a light on the unsavory events of massacre, dispossession and poverty that occurred in those times, along with a history of the role of women, so often forgotten or left out of history by neglect.

     In fact so much of her work is asking the audience to question the accuracy of records of the time and to encourage them to seek out their own information and to ask themselves to reevaluate their own beliefs and values about our past.

     Jean highlighted two books that may well promote our thinking and our view of these days, “Caledonia Australia by Don Watson” a Gippslander himself, Watson writes of those Scottish Pioneers, McMillan specifically, who opened up Australia after being brutally disposed of their own Scottish highland homes and how this was repeated by them as they interacted with the original owners of the land they settled.

      The second book she recommended was “The Captive White Woman of Gippsland - In Pursuit of the Legend by Julie Carr.”  A story of the search for a white woman rumoured to have been held against her will by Aboriginal Kurnai people in the Gippsland Region in the 1840s. Her supposed plight instigated searches and much speculation at the time, but nothing has ever been found that proved the woman ever existed.

There are several explanations for the development of this rumour, one being that it was to bring armed search parties into the area to terrorize and hunt the Kurnai, possibly by McMillan himself.

     One expedition left special handkerchiefs that she might come across, with a message in English and Gaelic (because it was thought she might be from the Scottish highlands) reading:

          Clearly the reader must decide for themselves, but one fact that is indisputable from accounts at the time, is that the Kurnai were considered to be to blame by many and they were hunted and terrorized by the various white search parties.

     Another of Jean’s productions is “Salute The Man,” about McMillan.

     She took her work to the International Women Playwrights Conference in Mumbai India, where it was one of the 60 play readings that were performed in 2009.

     In summary (this Editor’s summary), Jean readily acknowledges that much of her work is provocative, it is meant to be. She wants her art to promote discussion; it should invite people to question their own understandings beliefs and values. However she is not a slave to ideology, she knows and accepts that others will hold a range of views on any subject and they are equally as entitled to express those views. In fact to have those discussions is healthy and promotes understanding and informs. The thing we owe most to history is the truth.

     In thanking Jean for her presentation, Chairman Ian (who else would know her better) said that as he watched Jean go about her work he was always amazed at her level of passion, her resilience when things didn’t go as plan, her determination to see a project through and her dedication and intellect in “getting it right.”