November 1918 bought with it the end of WWI and the signing of the Armistice at 11 am on 11th of that month, signalling the end of four years of warfare in conditions that even today are considered horrific. As that milestone was reached, another threat was ravaging the population worldwide, exacerbated and spread by the thousands of troops returning home including to Australia and New Zealand, the “Spanish Influenza”. The number of deaths in WWI was claimed to be between 20 to 40 million but may have been as high as 50 million. In the space of one year, 18 million people died from the influenza pandemic, including 15,000 in Australia. More people died from this outbreak in one year than died in the Black Death Bubonic Plague between 1347 and 1351. Nowhere was safe from the reaches of the infection. In far away New Zealand, where the death toll of their soldiers in WWI was 18,000, 9000 flu deaths were recorded in two months. In the small NZ South Island west coast mining town of Reefton (1916 census: population 4130), seemingly isolated and remote, twelve died, including my grandmother Ellen Seymour ASKEW (nee CHINNOCK) at the age of 33, the pregnant mother of a son and two daughters, the youngest just 9 months old. As in so many families in the northern hemisphere and in Australia and New Zealand the impact on this young family was devastating. Ellen (Nell) Seymour CHINNOCK was born at Wallacetown (later known as Broomfield, north east of Creswick) on 8 October 1885, the youngest child of William & Mary Ann CHINNOCK (nee SEYMOUR) who had sailed to Australia on the barque Victory from Plymouth on 29 July 1857, fourteen days after their marriage at Illogan Parish Church in Cornwall. William was 22 and Mary Ann 18.

Their families had lived in Cornwall for generations and were labourers at the tin mines or porters transporting coal to the mines for smelting, and ore to the ships in the well protected harbour at Portreath. On arrival in Melbourne on 7th November 1857, the young couple made their way to the goldfields, specifically to Campbells Creek, south of Castlemaine. William’s brother John CHINNOCK had migrated earlier and he and his family would have been a welcome sight after the many months at sea. The birth of the eleven children of William and Mary Ann CHINNOCK is a tour of the central Victorian goldfields towns, trying their luck as new discoveries held out hope in Campbells Creek, Donkey Gully, Loddon, Amherst, Talbot, and Wallacetown before finally settling in Allendale, east of Creswick. William and Mary Ann are buried in the Creswick Cemetery, William dying aged 70 in 1905, and his wife in 1917 aged 78 years.

On 16 August 1870 the ASKEW family, from the lead mining area near Allendale in Northumberland, set sail on the long journey on the Somersetshire with their 2 eldest sons Michael and William. John ASKEW and his wife Sarah (nee HETHERINGTON) were lured by gold fever when the ship berthed in October that year. The ASKEW family increased with the birth of Sarah Jane, Margaret and Mary Hannah at Springdallah, south west of Ballarat, John at Creswick (died age 10 mths) and lastly my grandfather, John George ASKEW, born at Broomfield on 6 May 1882. At the age of 23 he married Clara Gertrude LITTLE, but as so often happened, he was widowed when she died 10 days after giving birth to their son Jack on 29 July 1905. J

ack was adopted and raised by his aunt, Mary Hannah BURMAN (nee ASKEW) and her husband who were childless. On 23 January 1907 at the Ballarat East Town Mission in Steinfield Street, John George ASKEW, occupation ‘miner’ and Ellen Seymour CHINNOCK were married by licence. Their first child, Douglas George ASKEW was born at Footscray on 12 December of that year. Trans-Tasman shipping records to New Zealand giving the details of the ASKEW family’s voyage to the South Island of New Zealand have not been located, but the 1911 Electoral Roll, compiled for the General Election held in December is the first available record that lists John George ASKEW for the Buller District. Number 151 on that Roll, he is listed as living at Cornish Town, Globe Hill, miner. Cornish Town, also known as ‘Cousin Jack Town’, was located above the Globe mine (7 kilometres southeast of Reefton in the Victoria Range), housing the Cornish and other miners and their families who worked at the Globe Hill gold mine.

With cold winters including snowfalls and an average of over 90 inches of rain annually, and summer months averaging 21˚C, conditions would have been challenging. Gold was first discovered in the Reefton area in 1866 and gold bearing quartz lodes on Globe Hill around 1876. With two main shafts (A & B), extending below ground for 11 levels to a depth of 432 metres, a report by Oceana Gold in 2013 stated that from 1876 to 1920, 418,345 oz of gold was produced from the mine. Mining was abandoned in 1920, re-opened as an open cut mine in 2006 and closed again in 2016. Photos of the small settlement show rudimentary wooden cottages. According to a publication in 1978 celebrating 100 years of education in the Inangahua District, a school was staffed by teachers at Globe Hill from 1909 until its (presumed) closure in 1921. No doubt families, including the ASKEWs, adapted to their surroundings, formed friendships, and lived their lives to the fullest. A second son, Reginald Stanley, was registered at Reefton in the first quarter of 1912, followed by two daughters, my mother, Mavis Edna Elva born at Globe Hill on 14 July 1913, and Rita Alice born at Reefton on 13 March 1918. Separated by the Spanish Flu Barbara Wilson 1

Tragedy struck when Reginald died on 27th September 1917 at Reefton Hospital aged 5 years, the result of a “septic wound of left heel, infection of lungs and brain”. He had been a patient in the Reefton Hospital for 6 days, possibly from a childhood injury sustained at Globe Hill and was buried in the Reefton Cemetery. John (Jack) ASKEW may have been employed for some time at the Waiuta mine, 38 kms from Reefton, as a postcard depicting the Globe Mine with Cornish town in the distance, and bearing a message from “your affectionate Friend R J J Avery” dated Globe Mine 18 October 1912, includes in the message that “I am still going down to your place and cut a bit of wood for your wife. I have dug up the garden and set a few things…” – a friend indeed. How the Spanish influenza virus reached this small, isolated mining village is uncertain, but records from the Reefton Hospital cannot be disputed.

On 8 and 9 December 1918 respectively, Douglas, schoolboy aged 11 years from Globe Hill and Elva aged 5 years, child from Globe Hill, were admitted suffering from influenza. Nine and fifteen days later they were discharged. The same records show “Ellen Seymour ASKEW, aged 33 years, Globe Hill, Domestic” admitted on 12th December 1918 suffering from influenza, pneumonia and miscarriage and dying 8 days later on Friday 20th December. On Monday 23 December, The Inangahua Herald and New Zealand Miner, reported that “the funeral of the late Mrs ASKEW took place on Saturday in the Suburban Cemetery, the Rev. CROSSMAN reading the prayers for the dead. The internment was private”. Ellen ASKEW was buried in a grave adjacent to her son Reginald. The anguish of Jack ASKEW at the hospitalisation of two of his children and then the loss of his wife at the age of 33 years can be felt now, 100 years on. With Rita only 9 months old suddenly he was a widower with 3 young children to support. How he managed to keep working and look after his family is uncertain although some years ago a member of the CHINNOCK family recalled a family story that Jack wrote asking if one of his wife’s brothers or sisters could take the children, but the answer was in the negative as they were all struggling with their own families in mining towns in Victoria and Western Australia.The next factual information is in the records of the St

Andrews Orphanage, Nelson, New Zealand, when both Elva and Rita were admitted on 15th March 1922. There is a release date for Rita just over 2 weeks later on 29th March,destination Reefton, but it has to be assumed that Elva remained in the Orphanage on her own. School admissions record Douglas and Elva enrolled at Reefton Primary School from 3 Feb 1919, previous school Globe Hill, a change that must have come with their mother’s death. Elva’s last day at Reefton is 14 March 1922 a day before entry to theOrphanage, and Doug until 20 Dec 1922.....destination Australia! On 30 October 1923 Rita is enrolled at Reefton Primary, living at Reefton with M HAUB. On 21st March 1924 the Moeraki departed from Invercargill and the embarkation list includes Mr D G ASKEW, age 15, Scholar, Miss E E ASKEW age 10, child and Miss R A ASKEW, age 6, child, having boarded the ship in Lyttleton (Christchurch) and arriving in Melbourne on Tuesday 25th March. Their father did not accompany the children. Another family story relates that an adult couple travelled with the children and that their luggageincluded items for them from their mother including her needlework. All but two crocheted items went ‘missing’. Both are now framed and protected, one in my care the other with Rita’s granddaughter. On arrival in Melbourne the children, already traumatised by the death of their mother and realising their father was not travelling with them, were separated.

Rita grew up with the TAYLOR family (Sarah Jane “Ginna” ASKEW had married Henry TAYLOR), and Elva and Doug joined thenhousehold of their aunt Margaret WALLACE (nee ASKEW). Doug would have been of working age and Elva went to school with her cousins in Ivanhoe, until oldenough to work as a seamstress.n My mother spoke little of these years and when she did it nwas of an unhappy childhood, “under sufferance” and with little or no affection. Her contact with her sister Rita waslimited to family gatherings where they were never left alone. It was only many years later when both were working in the city that they managed to meet away from a supervised environment. When Rita married in 1941 she moved to Castlemaine to live, and it saddens me still to recall that the first time I met Rita was at my mother’s funeral in 1977, such was the gap. Doug went to work with the Victorian Railways, married Sylvia PEARCE and lived on their dairy farm in Gippsland. He was not often a visitor but he would arrive unannounced, travelling on his free Railway pass, on his way somewhere fishing, and would do the same arriving at Castlemaine to see his sister. Jack ASKEW visited Australia to see his children once.Sailing from Invercargill on 22 December 1927 on the S S Manuka, he departed again on the same ship on 13th

February 1928 as a steerage passenger “Mr J Askew, age 45,Miner”. Rita, at that time a 10 year old, recalled being asked “Do you know who this man is?”, and on being told it washer father threw a tantrum. The only person she recognised as her father was Henry TAYLOR. Photographs taken during this visit show a tall, thin man with Rita and Doug.In July 1938 when my parents announced their engagementin the Herald evening newspaper she was reprimanded by her aunt for not stating “daughter of the LATE Mr J ASKEW”, but she had not been informed of his death in the Reefton Hospital two years earlier on 18th November 1836. His obituary in The Inangahua Times on the day of his death noted that he had been a patient at the Hospital for 6 years, suffering from miners’ phthisis, “and where until unable to doso, was of great assistance to patients in the institution”. He was buried with his wife and next to his son. My sister and I visited the unmarked graves in 1999. Plaques recording theirnames and details are now in place. My mother also returned to Reefton in 1975 and recognised certain buildingsand places and memories of a childhood without the loving influence of her mother.The three children of Ellen & Jack ASKEW married and settled down to have their own families and to provide theoving family environment that they had been denied as the Spanish influenza devastated their family unit with the untimely death of their mother and separation from their father. Undoubtedly these events shaped their lives as the effects of WWI and the Spanish influenza did on countless families in all corners of the world. *The 1918 influenza pandemic outbreak was commonly referred to as the “Spanish flu”, but it did not originate in Spain. It was given the popular name by journalists when the Spanish monarch, Alfonso XIII, fell seriously ill with influenza in May that year