Wild Potatoes of Normanby
Mary Watson and her cauldron [see previous entry] is just one head-spinning yarn in Cooktown Cemetery in far northern Queensland. A second grave not so far away belongs to a woman of a similar era. And her tale is no less remarkable.
Known by the tag the headlines provided, the Normanby Woman owned no other name. No age. No certain country of origin. In many ways she’s a legand, wrapped in a mystery, encased in chalky skin.
Her skin was the cause of her troubles. Back in 1872, living wild among an aboriginal tribe was not exactly a white woman’s prerogative. Her flaxen hair was regularly spotted by the gold prospectors of the day. Who was this sheila? One theory pointed to a German shipwreck of 20 years back. Perhaps a blond Fraulein had been adopted by the Normanby people.
She spoke English after all – though this extended to three words: MARY, POTATOES and (no surprise) WHITE. By all accounts her German wasn’t put to the test.
An enterprising shopkeeper named Jodrell lured the alleged hostage from her captors in 1887. The plan was to ferry this sixty-something changeling back to Cooktown, yet an Aboriginal ambush upset proceedings – and the woman’s horse. Her mare reared and bolted, tossing the Normanby Woman into the air.
A day later she died of head wounds in Cooktown Hospital. The autopsy failed to unravel the ethnological riddle. While her Euro-eyes were hazel, her skull, announced Dr Helmuth Kortum, possessed ‘the formation…of an Aboriginal gin.’
Between Mary and her pot, and the nameless woman of Normanby River, you can only hope frontier life has become a little kinder on the fairer sex. I can hear the skeptics murmuring in the corner.