Agnes Catherine YATES

Name: Agnes Catherine Yates

Date of Birth: 10 Dec 1895

Birth Location: Qualen River, Western Australia.

Maiden Name: Moriarty

Age at Burial: 80 years

Date of Death: 21 January 1976

Death Location: Bunbury Regional Hospital, Bunbury, Western Australia

Date of Burial: 23 January 1976

Denomination: Roman Catholic

Row/Grave: Row 7 Grave # 33

Grave Transcription:

In Loving Memory Of

AGNES CATHERINE HENRY

YATES LESLIE MCKENZIE

DEARLY BELOVED WIFE OF YATES

LES DEARLY BELOVED HUSBAND OF

Mother of AGNES

CLARE, VI, BERYL, MARK And father of

KEVIN & JEAN CLARE, VIOLET, MARK

PASSED AWAY 21 ST JAN KEVIN, BERYL & JEAN

1976 DIED 15 TH OCT. 1979

AGED 80 YEARS. AGED 80 YEARS

R.I.P TOGETHER AGAIN

Father: William Moriarty. Born 7 September 1852 at Wonnerup, Western Australia. Died 18 June 1911 at Capel, Western Australia.

Mother: Mary Agnes Murphy Born 1862. Died 22 February 1957 at South Perth, Western Australia.

Grandparents (father): William Moriarty. Born 1814. Died 15 March 1893 at Bridgetown, Western Australian, and Johanna ‘Julia’ Wilde. Born 1832. Died 27
27 October 1897 at Bridgetown, Western Australia.

Grandparents (mother): Timothy Murphy 1827 – 1865 and Mary Savage. Married 1861 at ‘Fatfield’ Ludlow, Western Australia.

Siblings:

Thomas Moriarty. Born 1881 at Ludlow, Western Australia, Australia. Died 17 March 1894 Wellington District, Western Australia.

Ellen Moriarty. Born 1884 at Ludlow, Western Australia, Australia. Died 20 September 1898 at Ludlow, Western Australia.

Margaret Moriarty. Born 1888 at Ludlow, Western Australia, Australia. Died 1948 Wellington District, Western Australia.

Richard Moriarty. Born 1890 at Ludlow, Western Australia, Australia. Died 1947 Wellington District, Western Australia

Mary Clair Moriarty. Born 1893 at Ludlow, Western Australia, Australia. Died 8 October 1980 at Hilton, Western Australia.

Edward James Moriarty. Born 1898 Sussex District, Western Australia, Australia. Died 26 May 1940 at Claremont, Western Australia

William Leslie Joseph Moriarty. Born 21 March 1902 at Capel, Western Australia, Australia. Died 17 January 2001 at Busselton, Western Australia

Spouse: Henry Leslie McKenzie Yates Born 26 October 1898 at Guilford, Western Australia. Died 15 October 1972 at Hilton, Western Australia, Australia. Married c1924 in South Perth, Western, Australia.

Children:

Mary Clare Yates, born 1922, died 2006 (Known as Clare)

Patricia Violet Yates, born 1924, died 1992 (Known as Vi)

Leslie James Yates, born 1926, (Known as Mark or Mac)

Kevin William Yates, born 1927 (known as Kev)

Beryl Margaret Yates, born 1929, died 2014

Jean Ethel Yates, born 1935,

Occupation: Housewife

Their Story

Agnes was born on 10 December 1895. She was born at Qualen River. Qualen is on the Avon River near York, Western Australia. Presumably her parents were living and working there at the time but probably didn’t stay there for long.

On her daughter Clare’s birth certificate, it says Agnes was born at Ludlow, Busselton which is where her father had grown up and where her mother ran the post office.

Agnes’s parents were William Moriarty Jnr. b.1852 and Mary Agnes Murphy born 1862.

The Moriarty family are among Western Australia’s very earliest pioneers. The first Moriarty in our line to arrive in Australia was William Moriarty Snr. b.1814. The Moriarty’s are from County Kerry, Ireland. William Snr. landed at Australind in 1840 as part of a surveying team for a land settlement scheme but is best known for the farm he established at Ludlow. Ludlow is in Wonnerup, just north of Busselton.

William Snr. had ten children one of whom was Agnes’s father, William Jnr.

The extended Moriarty family acquired a good number of properties. Grants purchased and leased. William Snr. had been clever at acquiring properties by applying for land grants in particular. His sons continued this practice. Their properties extended from Busselton, Yallingup and Capel to Bunbury and out to Bridgetown, and they leased government land in the hills inland from Busselton so they could graze their cattle there in summer The boys were co-opted into droving as soon as they were old enough to stay on a horse.

As adults the next generation of Moriarty’s which included Agnes’s father William Jnr had their own properties and projects, but they often worked together too in a range of industries including farming, droving, running the family timber mill, road building, blacksmithing and much more. They worked throughout the Southwest. Their activities often changing as many were dictated by the seasons. When droving they worked with two aboriginal men who assisted them for many years.

Agnes’s father William was one of the pioneering ‘Moriarty Brothers’ who, among other things, developed the historic Moriarty Stock Route from Cranbrook to Peaceful Bay. William’s brothers Ned and Arthur along with Booka, an aboriginal who grew up in the Moriarty household were the principal designers of the Stock Route which all six Moriarty brothers that were Agnes’s uncles assisted with.

Agnes spent her infant days at Ludlow near Busselton. Her family moved to the township of Capel next. Then in around 1907 her parents William Jnr. and Mary established a farm on the Capel River 6 miles upstream from Capel.

They lived at their Capel farm for four or five years. Those days on the Capel River farm were happy days. The family had an abundance of food. The farm had dairy cows, fruit, vegetables, chickens, geese etc. And while money was a scarce commodity the family didn’t want for much. The children attended a newly established local school. While standards were loose and relaxed by today’s standards, the children were happy and carefree. Agnes’s brother Les described these happy days of his childhood days in an oral history recorded by the Alexander Library (the state library). It is among our family records should you care to listen to it. Or it can be obtained from the library. Les tells one funny story about how he and the other children rode horses to school and carried guns. The guns were carried in the hope of coming across a kangaroo or other edible animals to shoot. Often, they would get side-tracked and would not arrive at school until around 10 or 11 in the morning. School was viewed as a very loose arrangement by the children and the animals they shot were welcomed by their parents as a useful contribution to the family food stocks.

Agnes was one of eight children. Agnes’s brother Les was younger than her, so she had to help look after him when they were children. A funny story. Les was in a cradle. He wouldn’t sleep or stop crying. So Agnes turned him around with his face into the sun so he would close his eyes. Agnes went to the original Capel school, the site on which her future son in law, Ron (Bunny) Carrigg taught many years later. It’s still there in the township of Capel. It opened the year that Agnes turned four. It is said she was allowed to attend even though she was only four because they needed the numbers. After moving out to their Capel River farm Agnes attended a school run by Ethel Yates nee Bleby. Ethel became her mother-in-law many years later when she married Ethel’s son, Les Yates. Ethel’s school was a small room on her farm, called the ‘Home Farm’, which was further upstream on the Capel River. Agnes walked about 6 miles to that school. She and probably her brother Dick and one or two of her other siblings set out for school together and picked up other kids along the way. They walked through the bush with slates and chalk in hand.

Les Yates, her future husband also attended that school. He was 3 years younger than Agnes. Les was 5yo when she was 8yo. Three years is a big age difference when you are a child. A funny story from those days. Les was annoying Agnes after school one day. He followed her and the others home for a short distance calling out annoying things to them. Agnes returned, knocked him over and lifted a heavy log onto him. The log was heavy enough to keep him in place. To the best of our knowledge she didn’t do that again during their married lives together. But perhaps she had set the ground rules for what turned out to be a special and loving marriage. Les grew to be a particularly strong man’s man. But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind us retelling that funny story.

Agnes also studied at a convent school in Bunbury. She told stories of how hard the nuns were on them. Hitting knuckles etc, was still a common practice in those days.

Unfortunately, Agnes’s father died when she was 15. In 1911 while he was working away from the farm, he caught a heavy cold and became seriously ill. He had been chasing cattle (droving) probably with his brothers, as he’d done many times. He was at Cranbrook when sickness overcame him. He announced that he would return home to Capel. The people with him could see that he was in no condition to ride a horse such a long distance and urged him to stay until he had recovered. Cranbrook is at least 100 km’s from Capel. He chose to leave however and forced himself to begin the journey. The journey was in winter rain. He rode through the night. It was cold and tiring and he was in a state of delirium and fever as he rode. When he reached home his condition was very serious. Agnes’s mother Mary put him to bed and took care of him using the methods of the day. He stayed in bed for two or three days but the illness, probably pneumonia by that time overcame him and he died.

He was only 58 years old. Today a simple injection of antibiotics would have cured him quickly. But that had not been invented in 1911.

The death of Agnes’s father meant that her mother was left having to support the children alone. The older children would have been able to support themselves by that time. The older boys probably worked in the timber industry. But Agnes, Les and Jim were still young and needed support. And Jim had Downs Syndrome. There were no pensions in those days, so Agnes’s mother had to sell the farm and go to work. As Agnes was in her teens, she was able to help her mother with her brother Jim and her younger siblings.

After her father’s death, Agnes’s uncle, her father’s brother Michael (called Mike) visited her mother Mary in Capel and suggested she take a job operating a boarding house for timber workers, mostly single men at the newly established timber mill at Donnelly River near Bridgetown. It is still there today (2024). It is now a holiday village with a timber mill town theme. It is a beautiful place to stay. Mike and another of William’s other brothers John, lived close-by in Bridgetown with their families. Mike had a bullock team. He worked with his two sons in the Donnelly River area. They hauled logs.

Bridgetown is only 20km from Donnelly River so they could keep in touch. Mike’s suggestion then that Agnes’s mother come out to Donnelly River was supportive. It would keep Agnes’s family close within the orbit of the Moriarty family. That must have worked well because while Agnes’s mother operated boarding houses at a number of different mills over the years, they were all close to Bridgetown and family.

Agnes helped her mother with the boarding houses. They moved every year or two following the timber cutter/millers as their locations moved and set up similar boarding houses. Their other boarding houses included one just south of Bridgetown on Moriarty Rd which was named after Agnes’s mother. Moriarty Road is still there but is just a bush track these days. And another of their boarding houses was at Kirup. A very pretty town just north of Bridgetown.

The deep forests in the area are breathtakingly beautiful so it was a beautiful place to grow up. It was a happy time in Agnes’s life. She describes her time at Donnelly River briefly in a recording she made many years later. We have that in our family records.

In 1924 Agnes married Les Yates. Henry Lesley McKenzie Yates. As noted above Agnes had known Les since attending the same primary school which was run by Les’s mother. Les had grown up on his parents’ farm which was about 6 km’s from Agnes’s parents farm on the Capel River. Les’s father was a lawyer but had taken up farming. Les had studied at Guildford Grammar in Perth and later fought in the Somme in France for five years during WW1. They met again after Les returned from the war.

After marrying, Les and Agnes moved around following work for 4 or 5 years. Les worked in the timber industry, mostly cutting railway sleepers. Sleepers were a priority at the time as the state railway network was expanding rapidly. They almost certainly planned to save and purchase a farm in Capel. Les’s work took them to Bruce Rock, Norseman, Margaret River and to several places in the Busselton area. In 1929 they purchased a farm about seven miles from the ‘Home Farm’, Les’s parent’s farm in Capel. This farm was only about two miles from the farm which Agnes’s parents had owned. Initially the farm did not produce much income so Les continued to supplement the farm’s income by working away from home cutting railway sleepers.

They only stayed on the new farm for about three years. After that time Les’s father Jim retired so Les sold his own farm and purchased his father’s farm. The ‘Home Farm’ was a dairy and mixed orchard farm. It was 11 miles upstream from Capel. It was a pretty little farm. It was next to the river so had a good source of water and it had a seam of very good soil crossing it.

Agnes and Les had six children Clare, Violet, Mack, Beryl, Kevin and Jean.

Agnes was an extremely active person, both mentally and physically. She was always on the go. She threw herself into the farm work, picking fruit, milking cows, running the household, raising the children. She was not above any jobs; she could mix it, labouring with the men if she had to. She cooked food from the farm chickens, rabbits, ducks etc, made jam, preserved fruits and so on.

She was a very knowledgeable gardener. Her garden covered almost all the land around the house. It covered what would normally have been grassed area. She had pathways winding through it for access. She enjoyed walking visitors through and pointing out the more interesting and beautiful plants.

Pussy cat Pussy cat
Where have you been?
I’ve been to London to visit the Queen
Pussy cat Pussy cat
What did you do there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chair

Agnes had several pets, some domestic, some from the wild. Cats and dogs were always kept, but magpies, possums and kangaroos were also encouraged. The kangaroos were the most special. Their pet kangaroo, Turpie and later Turpie’s joey, Oigle became regular visitors to the farmhouse. Each morning they would bound down from the bushes and wait by the front gate to be let in. Agnes gave them food and a drink of sweet milky tea. Sugar lumps were a special treat. The kangaroos spent their days at the farmhouse. They were very tame and were happy to be stroked and made a fuss of. At night they returned to the bush and presumably spent their nights with their kangaroo mates. To prevent farmers shooting them Agnes made little white collars for them to show that they were pets and not wild. The farm provided a good life for Agnes and Les.

Ethel Yates nee Bleby. Ethel also called Granny, was central to their family life. She was involved and was a kind of matriarch. A natural leader of the family group. She was well educated and had a world view. Her father was a lecturer in law. One of her brothers was a lawyer, another was a doctor in Canada etc. So she had good contacts and could give good advice. She also wrote for national journals and had contact with intellectuals around the world etc. Agnes found her helpful whenever the children were sick and so on.

Note. Ethel’s childhood family the Blebys have distinguished themselves. They include the famous West Indies/slave era missionary and writer Henry Bleby b 1809 and more recently two generations, father and son, have both been Attorney General of SA. You may care to Google them.

On the other hand the relationship had its tensions. Ethel had refused to attend Agnes and Les’s wedding on the basis that Agnes was Catholic. Animosity between the denominations was famously common back then. Ethel had been a big believer in education. She had sent both her sons Les and Reg to boarding school at Guilford Grammar in Perth. That was unusual in those days, especially among Capel families. Ethel was anxious to extend the education of Agnes’s children especially the girls.

Socials or dances, were common in Capel. They were big occasions. They were held either in the town or on a neighbouring farm. They were especially common during WW11 when they were used as fund raisers. Agnes and Les had a piano in the house. It was moved to the packing shed whenever they held a social.

Agnes could play the piano accordion and Les could play anything. Actually, Les could play a remarkable range of instruments. Music was too easy for him. He used to play accordion on stage for dances. Kids attended the dances. They slid on the floor as kids do as wax was put on the floor. A highlight for the children was when money was thrown onto the floor and they were allowed to run about trying to collect it. Then there’d be food in a huge kitchen/dining area. Great fun.

Agnes was close to her sister Clare. The two families spent time together quite regularly. Clare Moriarty married Leif Larson, a Norwegian sailor who arrived in Bunbury on one of his ship-board tours and stayed. In fact he jumped ship. Leif worked in road construction in and around Bunbury. They had five children, Dick, Patrick, Joan, Signa 2 years older than Beryl and Gerald the youngest. A musician. Beryl enjoyed being in Signa’s (Siggi’s) company. She was bright-eyed, attractive, enthusiastic etc. Clare was born with a shortened forearm and had a small club hand. Others found it amusing to see how dexterously she adapted. she held bread against her body with the club hand and sliced the bread perfectly.

Family was always important to Agnes. She was central to her ever expanding family. She always kept in contact. As the years passed her six children moved to different parts of Australia but she always kept in contact. In those days it was mostly by letter. She was good at remembering birthdays, anniversaries and so on. She was keen to hear all about her grandchildren and she kept everyone up to date with each other’s news. Family get-togethers were always magical, especially when family stayed with her at the ‘Home Farm’. At Christmas she decorated the house, Les put up a Christmas tree in the lounge and hung a swing in a willow tree for the grandchildren. With cows and sheds and tractors, special Christmas cooking, large family table settings and visits from Turpie, it was a special time. Agnes made a fuss of everyone and held the family together with her love. Love was a word she used freely.

Agnes was very creative. She had a wide range of hobbies. Her art and craft interests included paper bark painting, weaving plastic and display of artificial or dried flowers with driftwood settings. Knitting, sewing, cooking and gardening had been important interests for her throughout her life. She was an excellent dressmaker. She not only made family clothes for daily use which was necessary in the days before mass production. She sewed ball gowns and wedding dresses for her daughters to the standard of the best professional tailor or dressmaker. She was also a keen photographer. She took many stunning photos of land and seascapes around the Southwest region where she lived and travelled. She was a good writer and was a good shot. She and Les shared an interest in fishing.

In the late 1950’s Agnes and Les travelled around Australia in a 4WD pulling a caravan. They travelled up the WA coast to the top and across to Darwin then down the middle to Adelaide then Melbourne, Tasmania and Sydney then back to Perth and Capel. It was quite a remarkable achievement for the time as most of the country roads were still unsurfaced and extremely primitive. During the trip they visited all of their children, grown by then. Clare in Perth, Beryl in Derby, Vi in Melbourne, Kevin and Mac in Sydney and Jean in Kalgoorlie.

Agnes wrote up an account of the trip as a small book called Turning Wheels in her retirement. She wrote it as part of a writer’s hobby course she attended in Busselton. It has been typed up and is among our family records. It is well worth a read. It gives a good feeling for her immediate and extended family. In particular, it is a wonderful record of what life was like for travellers on remote Australian roads in 1956/57. Her description of the Australia they travelled through, shows how surprisingly different Australia was back then. It’s worth reading just for that alone.

Agnes and Les retired to Busselton after selling the ‘Home Farm’ to Les’s brother Reg in around 1970. They bought a pretty little house at 41 Harris Rd which, while being in the town, faced a paddock which was often filled with horses and made a pleasant outlook.

Busselton provided good fishing which they both enjoyed. Agnes was able to use her increased free time to pursue her many handicraft hobbies. She became increasingly independent in her retirement, often traveling to Perth to meet family and purchase supplies for her hobbies. She used her retirement well and enjoyed her final years.

Everyone liked Agnes. She was always involved, supportive and a full-on sleeves-rolled-up contributor. She was greatly loved. She had a bright personality. Her daughter Beryl described her as a ‘Sweetie’. That is high praise indeed.

Agnes died on 21 January 1976 at Bunbury Regional Hospital, Bunbury, Western Australia after a brief illness, aged 80 years.

Story written by Phil King, grandson of Agnes. Photos from Phil King photo collection.
With assistance from Jennifer Scott CDCP member.