After having been harassed and pushed about by authorities in Spain and France for many years, anarchist Salvador Torrents and his
friend , Juan Jordana , were pleasantly surprised to be
treated respectfully as passengers
aboard the SS Osterley which left Marseilles for Australia in 1915. Torrents compiled a detailed account of the trip and sent
back details to family and friends in Spain , including his wife and
daughter he had been forced to leave
behind. Torrents's ideology gave him further
insight into the
gross inequalities and injustices of the world.
At each
port of call Torrents went ashore
and bought postcards , some of
which are in the Special Collections at the Eddie Mabo Koiki Library, James Cook
University, Townsville . Sent from Port Said , the postcard below contained critical comment about the slave like treatment of workers
in Egypt.
In Colombo ,Ceylon, he was extremely
critical of the British and deplored the sight of skinny rickshaw men pulling well-fed and well-dressed people about .
By Peter Simon
Through their Spanish friends in
Melbourne ,Torrents and Jordana obtained work on a market garden in North Essendon
. Torrents had expected the old world's harsh ways to have less sway in far away Australia but found it gripped by the distant war which had extracted a terrible toll . He deplored the heavy drinking in Melbourne , which had also been noticed among Australians aboard ship . Nevertheless the modernness of Melbourne found favour. The French p , below, was sent to Torrents at Essenden.
After paying back the ship fare advance , the two close friends made their way to North Queensland seeking work as canecutters, postcards bought along the way included views of Mosman Bay ,Sydney, and Hamilton, Brisbane .
During the war , in an attempt to start new local industries, the Australian government offered new settlers cheap land for sugar plantations in Queensland . Hard working Torrents and Jordana pooled their money and took up 60 acres of rainforest at Mena Creek, near Innisfail, which they converted into a farm to which they brought their families in 1920.
Among the many other surprises in the Salvador Torrents collection at James Cook University are a number of early Northern Territory Edward Reichenbach Ryko real photo postcards. Born in Australia of German descent, Ryko, 21, rode a bicycle from Adelaide to Darwin in 1915 and travelled about the Top End taking thousands of photographs , a small number surviving , of the isolated part of the nation . Some of the postcards are shown below .
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Found by this writer inserted in a book at the university is the above 1944 receipt, one of two for sugarcane crushed for Jordana and Torrents at the South Johnstone co-operative mill.
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East Arnhem Land tribesmen.
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With competition from pigs, gathering "famous" red lily roots , Daly River.
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Armed Coburg warriors.
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Ryko opened a shop in Darwin but left the Territory in 1917 because the military wrongly regarded him as a German spy. Later he worked in the railways and became a noted botanist and student of natural history. The Northern Territory Library ran Ryko. A Wild Life exhibition to mark the centenary of his epic bicycle ride across the continent . Ryko's reconstructed bicycle was used in the celebration.
There are other early postcards , some taken in Queensland , not indicated as having been taken by Ryko , including the following 1905 posed shot of subjects carrying shields and wearing nameplates.
In the interesting Torrents's book collection is a copy of In Australian Tropics , by Alfred Searcy , an early Territory Customs officer based in Darwin for 14 years from 1882, later a South Australian parliamentary clerk. NEXT: Researching Torrents's strong interest in the Northern Territory , a Spanish connection is found during a tumultuous time in Darwin .
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A staged photograph showing Ryko under attack .
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In the interesting Torrents's book collection is a copy of In Australian Tropics , by Alfred Searcy , an early Territory Customs officer based in Darwin for 14 years from 1882, later a South Australian parliamentary clerk. NEXT: Researching Torrents's strong interest in the Northern Territory , a Spanish connection is found during a tumultuous time in Darwin .
