Category: Cashmere

European Women on the Frontier: Mary Ann Armit

09/21/2020.Reading time 22 minutes.

By Lynley Wallis and Heather Burke As with much history, the stories of women are largely missing from histories of the Native Mounted Police (NMP). Yet despite this absence it’s clear that most NMP camps were also occupied by women, both Aboriginal and European. Like most colonial women, the European wives of NMP officers faced […]

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“I am, Sir, &c., Tom Coward”

02/04/2019.Reading time 38 minutes.

By Heather Burke Thomas (Tom) Coward was described as many things throughout his life: a ‘thoroughly good explorer’, an ‘experienced bushman’, ‘remarkable and interesting’, tyrannical, irascible, belligerent and domineering. He is one of the better documented NMP officers, chiefly because in his later years he seems to have told his life story to anyone who […]

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‘My Darling Lis’: John Kenny’s Letters to his Wife Eliza

07/05/2018.Reading time 19 minutes.

By Heather Burke We’ve written before about specific NMP officers who were eulogised in later life (Piecing together the officers’ list and Stanhope O’Connor). In reflecting on the various episodes in long and sometimes highly eventful careers, such accounts tend to portray these men as figures from a “Boy’s own” tale: full of adventure, exploration […]

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