Eugenie Navarre is a writer with a passion for the colourful and different - personalities who made a positive contribution to the Planet - and little known outback places.

A rural upbringing at a whistlestop township, Macalister in S.E. Queensland, a journalism cadetship with Queensland Country Life newspaper and a degree in Journalism from Queensland University provided the essentials for the challenge of documenting the iconic cane barracks and folklore stories of pioneers whose epic feats tamed a wilderness wonderland.

Eugenie Navarre has lived at Trinity Beach since 1977. She works as a freelance journalist for magazines and newspapers. The animal rights activist, environmentalist and ‘gypsy wanderer’ has two adult children and a ninety-four year old mother who still runs her own grain grazing property.

Sample

The Cocos

Despite her eighty years and more, Santa Coco bubbles with exuberance and vitality like a good vintage champagne.

Together with ‘her Joe’, the late family patriarch, Santa epitomises the industrious canefield migrant saga when fortitude and endurance overcame overwhelming early 20th Century pioneering obstacles.
“There was no fancy stuff then. We survived because we had trust,” announces Santa Coco.

The psyche of the cane heyday remains deeply etched with a distinctive cultural patchwork of colourful bush yarns. North Queensland folklore evolved as the stories of courage and tenacity emerged out of the shadow of time.

Migration to the hot, steamy north was not for the fainthearted. Newcomers faced white Australia prejudice, language barriers, and difficulty in obtaining the most menial job in the lawyer cane-bound wilderness.

There were no subtle television introductions to the big bird cassowary, lurking crocodiles or poisonous reptiles. In fact nothing prepared new arrivals for such extraordinary wildlife, so alien to Europeans.

Initial telephone connections came in the 1930s, offering an important emergency lifeline, while supplying contact with the world outside this North Queensland cocoon.

The early settlers came, saw and endured. Emerging through monsoon and mosquitoes as the backbone of The Great Northern Sugar Movement.

Santa Coco retains a crystal clear recollection of her barrack heritage almost a century ago.

“My parents lived in the barracks and moved into the stables in the cutting season.

“The barracks had four rooms, for eight men, one after the other, a verandah and a big kitchen.

“I think it was iron on the outside.”

She remembers Aboriginals from the bush would come to the door wanting bread, sugar and bacca (tobacco).

“We had nothing, a pannikin to drink our tea, enamel plates and one hurricane lamp. That’s it.

“Some women were so poor they wore bags.

“A part of the stable was partitioned off and we had fertiliser bags for sleeping. I can smell those bags even today.

Links

to Eugenie Navarre's website