A letter home ...
- Feb 27
- 6 min read
Salvation Army Australia Museum Specialist BARRY GITTINS brings you a War Cry excerpt of correspondence sent home by an Australian Salvation Army officer, Adjutant Mrs Mary Berney, from her appointment at a ‘leper station’ in Indonesia in 1911.
Pursuing history is an elusive pastime, with language, culture and worldviews all potentially concealing the experience of those who’ve gone before us and often confounding our efforts to understand their lot.
The lives of figures who’ve passed in recent or distant memory can be so radically different from our own that we can struggle to understand what they survived or, indeed, the circumstances in which they thrived.
The following excerpts come from a letter sent home by Adjutant Mrs Mary Berney (nee Captain Druery). She’d just arrived at a new appointment in Java 115 years ago, in 1911, with her husband Robert and young family.
Her new home in Indonesia, then a Dutch colony known as the Dutch East Indies, was facing a widespread plague outbreak, and the Berneys had been appointed to a Javanese ‘leper station’; a far cry from Mary’s Central Queensland experiences.
“The journey started from Samarang at 6 a.m. by train, and at 8.30 a.m. we were changed into dogcarts for half-an-hour, when we arrived at a spot where coolies were waiting, 30 of them, for us, our two children, and our baggage. Not being very well, I crept into a long narrow bed with the baby, the bed being completely covered in from the sun and rain (the latter being very frequent).
“The bed was carried by eight coolies, four in front and four behind. My husband sat in a deck chair facing Allen, who was accommodated in the same manner, and I could hear them keeping up a conversation during the day. I could see nothing except the bit of country from the front of my tandoe, the only opening …
“When the thing started, I laughed until I cried; but when the novelty was passed, it was no laughing matter. Jog, jog, jog, jog, it is as though all your internal organs are being shaken into a jelly, and poor little baby made desperate attempts to crawl over me to the opening; but at last he sank back to sleep. The mattress and pillows made things quite comfortable, but the jolting was awful, especially going downhill or along the level places between the hills, which were very short stretches, few and far between.
“I wondered at how the coolies kept going, hour after hour, up tremendous hills, the road full of boulders and loose metal: their feet must be awfully hard. They never stopped until they got half-way, after two and a-half hours travelling. They then had coffee and dinner, and we started again. They took a shortcut through the rice fields where the road was little more than a bridle path raised up between the wet fields … a fall would have meant a drop of 3ft. or 4ft. into a swamp; but they say this never happens. The latter part of the way is terribly steep … it ended at last at 3.15 p.m. or 3.30 p.m.
“The place is not so beautiful as I had expected … At the bottom of the valley is the river flowing between rocks and boulders, and the lepers' quarters are on either side – Javanese on the one side, Europeans on the other. We were welcomed by the native converts with the band playing and the flag flying. It is cold enough for me to wear flannels and stockings all day, though other folks do not do it. Perhaps I will not after a time when my blood gets thicker.
“Of the officers’ work I know nothing except that it is chiefly oversight. They only touch the wounds themselves when absolutely necessary; but they are kept going all day. I have to attend to the wash three times a week, from nine o'clock till twelve o’clock in the mornings. Everything is soaked in carbolic acid for 24 hours before it is taken away by the washerman.
Our own things are not, of course, and they are done by another man. There is a Javanese doctor living here now; he is only Javanese by birth. His education and training have been the same as that of a European doctor; but he seems to have more initiative than most of his class. I believe there are about 100 people here, but do not know yet …
“The patients have a club room, piano, organ, billiards, gramophone and are really well off. The Europeans are, for the most part, Catholics or spiritualists. The Catholic priest visits periodically. There used to be a staff of 80 military men to do the work now run by our handful of officers. Of course, we could do with many more if they were to be had. Two more will arrive in Java next week. They are Norwegian girls, and one is a trained nurse, but we do not expect reinforcements here.
“We have a nice garden, plenty of roses (monthly), gardenias, and yellow flowers like what we used to grow at Copperfield. A bullock is killed every other day, so the people have plenty. That, in fact, is all that I have to think about. We pay so much into the funds and get the same food as the patients, without the extra dainties ordered for the sick. Each officer is allowed half-a-bottle of milk from the institution, so ought to get fat. We have our own postbag here. One mail leaves and one comes in daily except Sunday, and my husband is the postmaster, for the handsome remuneration of a dollar (4s. 2d.) a month. The postman walks to and fro from Soekoredjo, about 15 miles.
“This is quite an interesting place. The hospital – at first purely military – has been in existence about 60 years. I took a walk to the cemetery one morning and found the graves of a number of people who died; one man was born in 1798 and was buried in 1851. The clubhouse of the hospital is just as old as I am – nearly 34 years.
“Next to us is the palatial residence of the Chinaman who was Government contractor all these years. He made his pile and retired three years ago, a year before the army took it over. His daughter was married this week, which has caused no little incitement in this quiet spot. Guests and relatives came from far and near – influential Chinese and Javanese, a brass band from Samarang and the usual gamelang with native theatricals, which last is to perform a few weeks still for the delectation of the native public. We were invited to the wedding at 1.30 p.m. and to the dinner at 9 p.m.
“The three girl officers here are new chums, and they found it most interesting as the wedding was proper Chinese in costume and ceremonial, the robes richly embroidered in gold, with the usual offerings and bowing before the family altar.
“But to our surprise at night, the bride, her sister-in-law, and cousin – all recently married – appeared in beautiful European wedding toilets of brocaded satin with their hair dressed high according to the prevailing European fashion, and they actually sat down to dinner with their mother and us, the only ladies’ table, the bride and bridegroom next to each other. True to Chinese custom, they never exchanged a word with each other, nor with anyone else, except when spoken to. The dinner was European, and we thought it would never end. We were very tired before it was over.
“Talking about women’s emancipation. It is going on fast in Chinese circles here. The Chinese – the rich, of course – are getting more and more European every day, educating their girls so that they are fit to move in polite European society.
“To return to the hospital, we were not compelled to come here. It is the wish of the chief of staff that every officer should be asked if he is willing before coming here. No one need come against his wish.
“If we had been required for the nursing work, I would have felt quite justified in refusing for the children’s sakes. The risk of infection is not very great according to scientific opinion, though there is a risk. Anyway, in all the years this place has existed no one of all the staff has been known to have caught it …”
We know precious little about Mary and her family, apart from what the letter reveals; she was a woman of curiosity, courage and a desire to serve her God and her fellow human beings.
