FARRAGO 8 – A guest post by Peter Solness, artist, teacher, traveller and sometimes Henry Beaufoy Merlin* impersonator.

As a young photographer in the 1980’s the jingoism of Australia Day back then never convinced me. I was looking for stories that would engage more fully with our journey as a nation.

At 26 years of age in 1985 I took my first overseas back-packing trip – not to Asia or Europe as was ‘de rigueur’ in those days, but on a jet plane across the Pacific Ocean to South America, then a train and finally a river boat, arriving at the docks at Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay.

Norman Wood with his wife Leonarda (in glasses) at the local Concepcion markets.

It was at these docks 92 years earlier that 500 Australians arrived with their bags and belongings to establish an Australian Utopian colony in the remote jungles of Paraguay. It was about as far from Australia as anywhere on the planet.

As history attests, the members of the New Australia Colony ultimately became “beached on a foreign shore by the dreams of their leader William Lane”.

The best publications to research this story are: A Peculiar People by Gavin Souter (Sydney University Press) and Paradise Mislaid by Anne Whitehead (University of Queensland Press)

My interests as a photojournalist were to document the remaining vestiges of the Australian Colonies and their descendants.

I meet and photographed William Wood who at 92 was the last Australian-born member of the colony. He sailed as an 8-month-old baby from Australia, arriving in 1893.

William Wood at his home in Asuncion at 92 years of age, with his sister Rose.

He was very frail but still regaled me with fond memories of growing up in the colony as a child. It was a happy time for the colonist’s kids. Though they were starved of sweet food – and used to get down under the tables to lick any spilt sugar off the floor of the community hall.

The rest of my portraits were descendants of the colony. Norman Wood, William’s younger brother became my friend and guide as we travelled about the country. We became pen friends for years afterwards until he was too old to write. (I was always delighted to see his hand-written letters with colourful Paraguayan stamps appear in my mailbox.)

Norman Wood, my travelling guide and dear friend

There were two other old men of Norman’s generation still living on the colony of Cosme. One was his brother Wallace 86 who uncannily died just 5 hours before his brother Norman, and I arrived to visit him.

Born and living his entire life on the colony with all the residual customs of an Australian ancestry combined with the local language and customs of the Guarani and Spanish influences meant Wallace’s funeral and grieving rituals had an extraordinary blend.

There was the Catholic Novena, there was a simple pine board coffin fashioned from local materials, and on the day of the funeral itself, his brother Norman reading passages from an English language Anglican pocket Bible found on the homestead bookshelf, as Wallace’s coffin was lowered into the red soil of Paraguay.

Wallace Wood was a very respected man and the community felt his loss deeply.

The fact that 98% of the people in the congregation could not understand English and therefore could not understand a word of what Norman spoke, did not matter.

The procession of Wallace Wood’s funeral service through the village of Cosme.

The only other surviving member of Wallace’s generation was Rod McLeod who was a great storyteller and fine character.

Rod McLeod in his kitchen at home in Cosme

The rest of my photographic documentation focussed on the generations beyond these old men. A cover article of my coverage was published in the Good Weekend Magazine on Australia Day 1986.

The opening picture spread showed three boys standing at a farm fence in the colony. Raphael, Ruben and Lorenzo.

Cover story in the Good Weeknd Magazine, Australia Day 1986

The quirk of the image is that the middle boy Ruben had red hair and freckles. They were grandsons of a colonist George Titilah. The story headline – ‘Ginger Meggs in Paraguay’.

Even at 85 Norman was still a competent horse rider

After lugging a cardboard box marked ‘Paraguay 1985’ around during my ‘ever-house-moving life’ over the ensuing 39 years, I’m relieved to say that last month I finally had this archive of Kodachrome slides, black and white negatives and hand-written letters from Norman safely deposited in the archives of the National Library in Canberra.

A satisfying outcome for a story that has endured in my memory and my imagination and undoubtedly will do so for the rest of my days.

* Henry Beaufoy Merlin is principally remembered as the photographer responsible for the Holtermann collection of photographs in the Mitchell Library, Merlin is the first recorded presenter of a puppet theatre in Australia. Read more about his fascinating life at The Dictionary of Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales and at The Australian Dictionary of Biography.