For better or worse,the tides of change wash over Scotland Island

Scotland Islanders are workshopping a new drama,tentatively calledThe 2 Catherines based on the lives of two pioneering women who left an indelible mark on the island’s history.

Catharina Bouffier (1824-1910) ran one of Australia’s most profitable wine companies after her German-born husband died in 1882 when Australian women weren’t trusted with the vote,let alone running a business.

Scotland Island residents Dr Robyn Iredale,left,and Nettie Lodge take to the water.

Scotland Island residents Dr Robyn Iredale,left,and Nettie Lodge take to the water.Nick Moir

The island’s main recreational area – Catherine Park,near Tennis Court Wharf – was named after her by her son-in-law,Herbert Fitzpatrick,who subdivided the heart-shaped island in Pittwater in the 1920s.

Catherine Benns,an Indigenous woman known as “the Queen of Scotland Island”,was taught midwifery informally by her mother on the upper reaches of the Hawkesbury.

For most of her life,Catherine was a trader of fruits and shells,yet even in her 60s and living on the mainland,she rowed herself over from Church Point to deliver babies on the island she called home.

“Both Catherines were remarkable women,” says Dr Robyn Iredale AM,the powerhouse behind both the play and the island’s only cafe,also named after “The 2 Catherines” (open on the second and fourth Sundays of every month).

“Scotland Island is a much nicer place to live now ... Back then[in the late 70s],it attracted shirkers or people running away from someone or something.”

Dr Robyn Iredale AM

The play could be a metaphor for how much Scotland Island has changed over the centuries. And how it is changing even more now,partly as a result of the pandemic.

Scotland Island – one of only two islands within metropolitan Sydney to be home to permanent residents (along with Dangar) – has had a “good COVID”.

Before we’d even heard of Wuhan,the island was connected to the NBN. Not the inferior fibre-to-the-node version most of us on the mainland were conned into subscribing to,but fibre-to-the-premises,delivering a speed and package equal to anything in Australia.

At the same time,Ausgrid put an end to the infuriating electricity blackouts that had bedevilled the island for decades by laying a second (and soon-to-be-completed third) underwater cable.

Meanwhile,as Australia slowly grasped the calamity COVID-19 would cause,we were urged to work from home.

Eastern suburbians fled to their weekenders all over the northern beaches. Very soon they discovered they could conduct business just as easily on Scotland Island as they had within kilometres of Scots College.

Property prices soared. Juliet Wills – the secretary of the Scotland Island Residents Association and a former journalist turned L.J. Hooker real estate agent – has calculated home sales on the island rose 53 per cent in 2021.

“Many homes sold without coming to market,” Wills says. “Take 11 Florence Terrace. A two-bedroom waterfront log cabin on the north side of the island.

“In 2018,it sold for $1.8 million,thanks to its deepwater jetty and boathouse. In September,it sold for $4.2 million,without any improvements – a rise of 133 per cent over three years.”

Property prices have soared on Scotland Island of late.

Property prices have soared on Scotland Island of late.Nick Moir

Many of the “newcomers” are professionals with children,swelling the island’s population and filling the school ferries to Newport,either for the local public school or buses to faraway private schools.

“Homes are selling so fast the Sold signs go up a day after the For Sale signs,” says Roy Baker,a retired legal academic who now edits the island newsletter. “There’s a lot of academics on the island,plus IT people,artists,writers – and tradies. It’s a good mix.”

He quotes the 2016 census (the 2020 pandemic version hasn’t been released yet). There were 580 permanent residents on a winter’s night,spread around 350 private homes.

The island had a much more diverse European population than the rest of Sydney,Baker says:“Six times as many Germans,five times the number of Dutch,three times as many French as the average suburb.”

Overwhelmingly,though,most islanders spoke English as their first language – not just Australian-born but people from Britain,New Zealand,South Africa,Canada and the US.

If the census was taken today,there would be far more permanent residents,plus the backpackers catching the ferry to and from Church Point to stay in the Airbnb accommodation which bloomed even before the pandemic began.

Traditionally,Scotland Island has also been a refuge for artists,writers and musicians.

Nettie Lodge,whose latest children’s bookTell Tales will be published in February,arrived more than 30 years ago when it took two hours each way to cross the water and reach the CBD for her position as a university art lecturer.

Bungaree circumnavigated Australia with Matthew Flinders and was declared by Governor Macquarie “chief of the Broken Bay tribe” in 1815.

Bungaree circumnavigated Australia with Matthew Flinders and was declared by Governor Macquarie “chief of the Broken Bay tribe” in 1815.Australian Museum

“The island motto,” says the author/illustrator/academic,“used to be:if you lasted a year,you’d stay for good. A lot of people can’t handle island life. You need to be resilient and you need to learn to live with the bush.”

In the three decades Lodge has lived there not all improvements have met with her blessing. She’s glad the electricity blackouts – “so regular and so infuriating” – are over and also praises the NBN connections.

“But this is a very sacred place,an Indigenous space. Some people are trying to tame it now. Real estate agents tout it as a new-found paradise and want to turn it into yet another suburb with the perks of water and sewage pipes from the mainland.

“That’s completely unnecessary,given what we have managed to live with for generations.”

A famous former resident of the island,Sydney underworld figure Tilly Devine.

A famous former resident of the island,Sydney underworld figure Tilly Devine.Fairfax Archives

The many middens on Scotland Island attest to the thousands of years it was home to the Kuringgai people.

The most renowned (because his story was written down by Europeans) is Bungaree,who circumnavigated Australia with Matthew Flinders and was declared by Governor Macquarie “chief of the Broken Bay tribe” in 1815. Catherine Benns was a direct descendant of Bungaree.

Neither he nor she would recognise the place now.

Likewise,Scotsman Andrew Thompson,a convict/constable/magistrate who became one of the richest men in the colony under three governors (King,Bligh and Macquarie).

Thompson established a salt manufacturing plant around 1805 on the Pittwater island named after his country of birth.

Senator Kristina Keneally has a home on Scotland Island.

Senator Kristina Keneally has a home on Scotland Island.Alex Ellinghausen

Other famous residents would be equally perplexed,such as Tilly Devine,the notorious madam who ran a brothel on the island when she wasn’t scheming against Kate Leigh,her arch-rival in Kings Cross,during Sydney’s razor-gang era.

Labor senator Kristina Keneally and her husband Ben (nephew of author Tom Keneally) are the island’s most high-profile current residents. However,she has vowed to relocate to the electorate of Fowler (which includes Cabramatta and Liverpool) since being allocated the safe lower house Labor seat in September 2021.

Lodge,who moved to Scotland Island in the 1990s,isn’t convinced the island’s introduction to the 21st century has improved the quality of life. “The roads are better and families now travel in[golf] buggies to the wharves.

“But when I arrived,the island attracted people interested in an alternative lifestyle. It was a great place for writers and artists because the rents and house prices were affordable.”

Fellow islander,Iredale disagrees. “Scotland Island is a much nicer place to live now than when I moved in as a single mother with three children in 1978,” says the retired academic demographer.

“Back then,it attracted shirkers or people running away from someone or something. There were a lot of drugs and,I’m told,lots of wife swapping.

“Now we have artists,musicians,academics and writers and professional couples with young kids. The age range and the backgrounds of today’s Scotland Islanders are very diverse.”

Steve Meacham is a freelance writer.

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