Ethel Hassell facts for kids

Ethel Hassell (born in 1857, died in 1933) was an author who lived in Western Australia a long time ago, when it was a British colony. She wrote important books and diaries about the land and the Nyungar people who lived in Southwest Australia. She especially wrote about the people she knew near Broome Hill, Albany, and Doubtful Islands Bay.

About Ethel Hassell

Ethel Clifton was born in Middlesex, England in 1857. Her father worked for a shipping company called P&O. Because of his job, her family moved a lot. First, they went to Mauritius in 1859, then to the port city of Albany in Western Australia in 1861.

Ethel and her older sisters were part of the important P&O families in Albany. On June 22, 1878, Ethel married Albert Young Hassell in Perth. They had three daughters and four sons. Ethel Hassell passed away on October 30, 1933.

Life at Jerramungup

Ethel Hassell lived on a large farm called a station at Jerramungup. This was a very remote place, far from big towns and the state capital, Perth. She spent many years in the late 1800s living closely with the local people.

She wrote down their beliefs and creation stories about plants, animals, and the land in a diary. This diary was later published in 1975 as My Dusky Friends. It was unusual for her time to show such respect for the local culture. She was also very careful and thorough, including interviews with women of all ages.

Her Writings and Studies

Ethel also worked on a manuscript (a handwritten book) around 1930. She sent it to a publisher called Macmillan Publishers. A researcher named D. S. Davidson later edited her work. It was published in 1936 as 'Notes on the ethnology of the Wheelman Tribe of south-western Australia'. This came after her own book, Myths and folktales of the Wheelman tribe of South-Western Australia, published in 1934. These books were about the Willman people.

Ethel Hassell was an amateur ethnographer. This means she studied different cultures, even though it wasn't her main job. Her work is not widely known, but it offers a detailed and personal look at the people and environment of Jarramungup. This area was remote and not much scientific research was done there in the 1800s.

Unlike some other women writers of her time, Ethel did not focus on the conflicts that happened when colonists arrived. She believed that the historical events she studied were simply part of "progress." She wrote about her friends, saying:

‘they looked so happy and contented that I wondered if, after all, theirs was not the happiest existence. No care beyond a sufficiency of food and water which they could generally get. — My Dusky Friends: Aboriginal Life, Customs and Legends and Glimpses of Station Life at Jarramungup in the 1880s, p. 18.

Besides her studies of people and cultures, Ethel also wrote notes about plants and local history. She compared how the landscape had changed over time, looking at old drawings of King George Sound. Some of these observations were published in her local book, Early Memories of Albany (around 1910).