Introduction to Belonging

This is an account of the life and times of Dr. Charles Louis Gabriel. It incorporates quotes from the Gundagai Times and Gundagai Independent (shown in small print), a selection of Gabriel’s photographs, three reenactments, and many local and national events. Some Gundagai names are used and their characters depicted as accurately as possible, while others do not necessarily correspond to their profession, appearance or personality. Certain events and characters are entirely fictional, yet consistent with the wider historical context. Gabriel’s personal relationships are speculative but backed by material gathered over twenty years of research. Nevertheless the story remains fictionalised history.

In Search of our Louis Gabriel
Charles Louis Gabriel was born in Kempsey, New South Wales in 1857, son to Dr. Charles Gabriel and Emma Rudder. Like his father and grandfather before him, Louis became a physician, gaining additional medical qualifications at prestigious Edinburgh University. He probably practiced his new skills at sea as a ship’s doctor, then briefly in Sydney, before leaving in 1887. He then set up practice in Gundagai, and stayed for the remainder of his life.
Records show that he dedicated himself to his medical work, only taking up the fashionable hobby of photography around 1899. In the following ten years he produced over eight hundred glass plate negatives, many quite astonishing and accomplished, yet with a mysterious ‘x’ factor that noone could explain. The images are now in the National Library of Australia (NLA), a valued and astute record of Gundagai, that most iconic Australian town, and a crucial component of the Australian mythology.
In documentaries and publications Louis Gabriel has been presented as a typical country doctor and amateur photographer. ‘His story’ appears both dignified and mundane, yet his photographs suggest at a far more interesting story. Little significance has been given to the Gabriel family’s French, West Indian and African heritage. Always sidestepped, Gabriel’s physical features were always important in a colonial Australia engaged in a debate on nation, race and identity. In this book it is assumed that anyone identified as a ‘black’ would have a question mark over their social status, and be at risk of being judged bottom-of-the-heap. In contrast, a physician and surgeon could look forward to a future at the top of any town’s elite. So the questions quickly arose: how did Louis Gabriel fit into turn-of-the-century Gundagai? Did he adapt, survive and prosper, or not? Did he meet any opposition to his residency? And if he did, why did he stay in Gundagai?
On thing was clear: Louis Gabriel’s residence coincided with a crucial historical period when Gundagai was cemented into the Australian mythology- through stories, poetry and news reportage. The town asserted itself, perhaps vaguely at first, to be typically Australian: democratic, equal, rugged and practical. But where did Gabriel fit? Did he receive the Australian‘fair go.’ Did he belong?
Louis Gabriel photographs were widely acclaimed with the NLA’s publication of The Gundagai Album (1978). They impressed and puzzled me. They had a certain style, a way of seeing and organising people and places. The images were personalised, sometimes reflective, often with a strong sense of the documentary. They made distinctive use of the photographer’s shadow and the camera’s wide-angle lens. Why did he, and not others, produce such distinctive images?
In pursuit of their mysteries I twice visited Gundagai and Canberra. The Canberra trips allowed first hand look at all the Gabriel (and other) images. The Gundagai visits were crucial to getting a ‘feel’ for the town and its community. Subsequent visits to Sydney’s NSW State Library were spent pouring over newspaper sources, particularly the Gundagai Times and Gundagai Independent. The Internet search engine was extensively used. There was also repeated reference to the Gabriel images via the NLA website.
There were interviews too. Oscar Bell and Cliff Butcher, the two people who donated the images to the NLA, talked to me in 1983. These elderly gentlemen’s childhood overlapped with Gabriel’s later years. Coincidentally, they each represented the Catholic-Protestant sectarian divide that lay just below the surface of Australian society. I visited other residents too, and located Gabriel’s medical instruments and a first photograph of his father and (possibly) a sister.
It was on my Gundagai visits that I first heard the term ‘black doctor’ and the vague claim that he had ‘two wives’. Others denied it. What was going on? The term ‘black doctor’ was hardly surprising giving his appearance and background, but the term ‘two wives,’ persisting sixty years after his death was more mysterious.
The Gabriel family background sorely tempted me to trace back Louis Gabriel senior’s fantastic story. These people’s lives were swept along by the events of the French revolution and all that followed. Over time, these African outcasts developed strategies for coping with the racial and colonial suspicions and hostilities they faced in everyday life. The Black professionals sought acceptance through their strength, work, good deeds, local familiarity and longevity of residence. This cultural tradition was put to the test in Gundagai.
Many readers will ask: What is true and what is not, in this story? Many years fall between us and Gabriel’s life, so some sequene of events will be useful. I was also keen to explore his personal and emotional life in the context of historical events both large and small, so the chronology reproduced at the book’s end will assist readers in recognising events recorded in Gundagai’s newspapers and this story. For example, Louis did arrive in Gundagai in 1887. Arthur Elworthy was the editor of the Gundagai Times. Dr. JJ O’Dywer was his dispised rival. The Gundagai Independent was launched in 1898. Henry Lawson did visit Gundagai in 1900.
However the demands of history and fiction are often at odds. For example, it was the Sullivan brothers who launched the Independent, but for our purposes Patrick Sullivan alone is represented. Charlie Gilchrist was killed in the Boer War, but the fictional character is more elblematic than actual. Mr Mathews was mayor of Gundagai, but not for the long period represented in the book.
The results of these decisions are for others to decide. Yet, unmistakably Louis Gabriel is not presented as a passive victim of circumstances. He had tremendous advantages and disadvantages by dint of his personality, temperament, intelligence and heritage. His pursuits reflected an ambitious and determined character, someone who played an active role in the making of Gundagai.
I was reminded of this again recently. I found a record of an aboriginal woman giving birth at Gundagai Hospital in the early 1930s. It alerted me to the continuing effect of Gabriel work as chief Medical Officer, and his strong role in spreading medical services to all the peoples of Gundagai and District, regardless of their race, creed or colour. That is why, above all, we may feel that his story is also our story.

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Introduction to Belonging

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