John Skinner Prout’s 1844 graphite and watercolour of Old Frying Pan. Photo: From the British Museum Collection of J B Davis.
I have long been grateful that the artist John Skinner Prout turned up in the Illawarra and produced so many local images in the early 1840s.
I’d also wondered why he produced so many very early visual insights into the Illawarra when the handful of other visiting artists only produced one or two and then fled back to Sydney or further down the coast.
The reason it turns out, as I only recently discovered, was that Captain Robert Marsh Westmacott who settled at Sandon Point in 1837 was a distant cousin of Prout’s wife, the former Maria Marsh.
The Robert Marsh Westmacott who had arrived in NSW as aide-de-camp to Governor Bourke in 1832 and later settled at Sandon Point was himself an amateur artist and, having already mixed in the most elevated circles in NSW, was in a position to advise his distant relative of the then less-than-good prospects in the colony for professional artists.
Sadly Prout had arrived just at the onset of a very major economic depression – one that would even send Westmacott himself broke.
An inscription note held by the British Museum with Prout’s image of Old Frying Pan refers to a list in Prout’s hand and sent to J B Davis: “Frying Pan was a well-known Aboriginal man from the Illawarra region who, during the 1840s, frequented the streets of Wollongong. His Aboriginal name was Woorramal or Muramulle.”
A man named Old Frying Pan first enters Illawarra’s European history back in 1829 when issued with a blanket and another one the following year.
On the Return of Aboriginal Natives taken at Wollongong on 21 May 1834, “Frying Pan” is the fourth person listed and said to have the native name of “Woorramal”, with a probable age of 35 and having one wife.
Contradictorily, on the later Return of Aboriginal Natives taken at Wollongong on 1 May 1840, Frying Pan’s age is estimated as 50 years.
Maria (Marsh) Prout (1807-1871) was married to John Skinner Prout and a distant cousin of well-known Illawarra settler Captain Robert Marsh Westmacott. Photo: Supplied.
In January 1840 the geologist Reverend W B Clarke noted that he had “lengthy discussions” with Old Frying Pan before going off “to attend a corrobery, a meeting of the blacks to which we have been invited by Old Frying Pan, alias Brown Bean, and some others, whom we got to throw the Boomerang for our amusement after dinner”.
The names “Frying Pan, Old Frying Pan, Woorramal, Muramulle, Mueamull and Brown Bean”, however, represent quite a collection of monikers but how close any of them are to this man’s actual Indigenous name will likely forever remain unclear.
W B Clarke also remarks that Frying Pan “is a fisherman but when I asked him to catch me some Dildils, a huge prawn abounding here, he was angry, and said only women took them, men catch nothing but with a spear”.
But what is remarkable is that there is one other reference to Old Frying Pan that appears to have to date remained unnoticed. It is from the Australasian Chronicle published in Sydney on 10 September 1840: “You have settled bread upon Frying Pan. It is amusing to see the attention he receives from all quarters since he began to poetise and speechify; and, while he is received everywhere with smiles and welcome, such as rarely, alas the poor blacks meet with from their white despoilers, the man’s humility never forsakes him. He smiles on his flatterers with a sort of inexplicable countenance that seems to proclaim his unconsciousness of meriting their compliments and kindnesses.”
It is a great pity we do not know the identity of the anonymous “correspondent” who penned this insight into an early Illawarra Indigenous man who appears to have already gained some proficiency in the use of English. Reverend Clarke also remarks that “the facility with which the blacks acquire our language is wonderful”.
The Reverend Clarke provides additional details about the individual he designates as Frying Pan in a description of the corroboree that he and his companions attended: “Mr Frying Pan, who with a red night cap on his head, sat beside the first fire. He made a great noise and when, as I was informed by an interpreter, he urged the dancers on and they said they could not get more than themselves to dance.
“He said ‘if the men don’t dance why don’t you take the woman?’ which afforded great merriment to all who understood him.”
W B Clarke then concludes his description of the corroboree with the following remark about Frying Pan: “Of the blacks it may be generally remarked that they are fond of seeing the whites amongst them … they generally ask for a sixpence as Frying Pan did tonight. I examined him closely on the subject of cannibalism. He was very angry at the idea, and said none of his people ever ate flesh.”
With all this contemporary commentary, combined with the image of Old Frying Pan by John Skinner Prout, there thus exists a more extensive written and visual record of this early indigenous man than for any other early nineteenth century Illawarra indigenous person still alive, while his hereditary property in perpetuity was then being actively dispossessed.
