Ailsa Margaret O'Connor (née Donaldson) (26 January 1921 – 3 February 1980) was an Australian artist specialising in sculpture and painting in the style of realism. Following her belief that art and artists cannot be separated from questions of society and politics, she was an activist against social injustice in Australia and abroad, and particularly against suppression of the rights of women.Caine, B and Gatens, M 1998, Australian feminism: a companion, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, pp. 468–469.
Background The discovery of gold in Australia was first made public overseas in September 1851. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people arrived in Australia over the next 10 years,Hill, D 2010, Gold rush, Heinemann, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, p. 88. amongst them Ailsa O’Connor's ancestors – miners from Ireland and Wales and stonemasons from Scotland. Their various destinations were in the future state of Victoria.Mather, K 2019, 'One gene leads to another', Lanarkshire Family History Society Journal, February, Issue 69, pp. 3–8.
Maternal family – Maldon Ailsa O'Connor's maternal ancestor who landed in Australia in 1862, was William David (1835–1904), a coal miner from the ancient town of Neath, Glamorgan, Wales.
William David, his Welsh wife Ann Walters (1836–1899) and their two young children settled in Maldon, Victoria where he continued mining – but for gold rather than coal.Mather, K 2018, 'Ourselves when young', Maldon Muse, December, volume 19, issue 4, pp. 6–7. At the time of his arrival Australian wage-earning gold miners were beginning to form the first mining trade unions, demanding that mining companies reform workers' conditions, including an eight-hour working day (albeit for six days per week) and improved health and safety measures.Reeves, A 2007, 'Trade Unionism and the Australian Mining Industry: the influence of Central Victorian goldminers, 1870–1920', in K. Reeves & D. Nichols (eds.), Deeper Leads: new approaches to Victorian goldfields history, BHS Publishing, Ballarat, Victoria, p.168. The Maldon Museum has the banner of the Amalgamated Miners' Association of Australasia – the earliest known surviving trade union banner in Victoria.'Banner of the amalgamated miners' association of Australasia – Maldon no. 14 branch', Victorian Heritage Database, viewed 6 Nov 2018, http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/201052.
William and Ann David, with many of their children and some of their grandchildren led their lives in Maldon, and were buried in the Maldon Cemetery – see the supplementary pictures section, at the end of this article.
William David's son Alfred married Australian-born Amelia Jane Birmingham (1862–1942), whose Irish father, Thomas Birmingham from County Armagh was also a miner in Maldon, and whose mother Emma Caroline Goodhead was English, from the city of Birmingham.
The Maldon State School Pupil Register records the admission of Alfred David's future wife when she was 12 years of age, in 1874. It later registers the admission of her second daughter Amelia Jane David (known as Millie) aged 3 years 1 month, in 1888.Maldon State School No. 1254 pupil register, Part 2, 1873–1891, p.16.
Margaret Flora David (1888–1968) was the fourth of their 12 children born in Maldon.
Upon her marriage, in 1915, Margaret Flora David left Maldon and went with her new husband, Ralph Charles Donaldson (1888–1955) to his home town, Heyfield in Gippsland, Victoria.
Her husband worked as a labourer until, at 40 years of age, he had learned the skills of a baker. The family moved to the far south-west of Victoria to Portland and were soon running the bakery there. The bakery building (now a bank) stands on the corner of Henty and Percy Streets. It has been heritage-listed for preservation.Victorian Heritage Database, Heritage Council Victoria, viewed 5 Oct 2018, http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/112743.
Paternal family – Heyfield Her paternal ancestors descended from a line of stonemasons living in the 14th century town of Airdrie, North Lanarkshire in Scotland. David Donaldson (1820–1886), had left Scotland for America, then joined the new gold rush to Melbourne, Victoria in about 1852. There he married another Scot, Annie Thomson (1826–1906), and set up his own stonemason's company.
For five years the Donaldsons lived in a pre-fabricated iron house in North Melbourne that is now heritage-listed and conserved by the National Trust.’New site for iron house’, Trust News, National Trust of Australia (Victoria), vol.8, iss.1, Jul 1980.<ref>Abercrombie' and the Donaldson family: information and photographs supplied by the great granddaughters of David and Ann Donaldson, 1999, National Trust Victoria Iron House Project, National Trust, Melbourne, p.31.</ref>
In the 1860s the high country to the east of Melbourne caused a number of gold rushes, including in Matlock in 1861.'Aberfeldy', Victorian Places, 2014, viewed 18 Sep 2018, http://www.victorianplaces.com.au/aberfeldy. The Gippsland area originally attracted not only gold prospectors but also settlers with agriculture in mind, as well as service providers catering to locals and travellers bound further afield.
David Donaldson and his family moved east, setting up a general store first in Matlock and then in 1878 in Morwell where he remained until his death in 1886.
His widow Annie and the two youngest sons, John Goulburn Donaldson and David Donaldson (Jnr) continued to run the general store for more than a decade, until Annie moved back to Melbourne for health reasons and the sons traversed the continent to another gold-rich area, Coolgardie, Western Australia. Annie's daughter, Agnes, had settled in Western Australia in 1894 with her husband, Charles Sommers, who became a member of the Western Australian parliament from 1901–1918, after having been the mayor of Coolgardie, 1896–1900.
Meanwhile, two other of David Donaldson's children had left Morwell for nearby Aberfeldy: the oldest daughter Elizabeth married an Aberfeldy butcher, the Irishman Thomas Dwyer from Tipperary, in 1879.Madden, IT 1973, Morwell historical society news, vol. 12, no. 5, 15 November, p. 20 & p. 39, viewed 30 Aug 2018, http://www.morwellhistoricalsociety.org.au/newsletters/Vol121973.pdf . (Newsletter takes time to display) Shortly afterwards, her brother Henry became the postmaster in the village, from 1880–1885.Waghorn JF 1987, Index: Victoria's postmasters and postmistresses, 1838–1901, self-published, Victoria, Australia p. 52.
After the death of Elizabeth (September 1884, aged 29) which was followed by that of her husband Thomas Dwyer (December 1885), the three orphaned Dwyer children lived with their grandparents, David and Annie Donaldson, in Morwell.Mather, K 2019, "Tipperary meets Lanarkshire in Australia: the kith and kin of Sir John Dwyer KCMG", Genealogical Society of Ireland Journal, vol. 20. The eldest, John Patrick Dwyer, showed extraordinary academic and sporting abilities, and would later become Chief Justice of Western Australia and be honoured with a knighthood and then a KCMG in 1949.'The Old Boys', Pegasus, Geelong College, June 1959, viewed 28 Sep 2018, <http://gnet.geelongcollege.vic.edu.au:8080/wiki/GetFile.aspx?File=%2fPegasus_1959_01_June_reduced.pdf >.
At the time of Elizabeth's death, her brother Henry Donaldson and his wife and children also moved away from Aberfeldy to Heyfield, where he was postmaster until 1896. His wife, Elsie, née Scott (1862–1948), took over from him for five years, being Heyfield's postmistress from 1886–1900.
Heyfield remained their home, and their third son, Ralph Charles continued to live there for many years with his widowed mother Elsie and his wife and three daughters, until the move to the Portland Bakery in 1928.
War heroes, 1914–1918 Two of Annie Donaldson's sons were involved in World War I, as was her grandson, the elder son of her late daughter Elizabeth, John Patrick Dwyer.
Ralph Charles Donaldson DCM was the first to enlist, aged 27. He became a driver in the 2nd Australian Division Signals Company from 12 Feb 1915 to 28 March 1919, fighting in 18 different locations. He was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, on 14 Dec 1916, for conspicuous gallantry on two occasions, working under heavy fire to maintain vital communication lines between base camp and the battle front. His service number was 1186.
Henry Archibald ("Archie") Donaldson enlisted in January 1916, at the age of 29. He was a school teacher living in Portland, Victoria. As a private in the 58th Australian Infantry Battalion he fought in 15 different locations, before falling in battle at the Somme on 13 March 1917. He is buried in Bull's Road Military Cemetery, Flanders, Picardy in France. His service number was 5089.Australian Government, National Archives of Australia, 2017, Series B2455, Record Search, viewed 3 Oct 2018, http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/search/index.aspx .
Their cousin, John Patrick Dwyer also enlisted, aged 35. In Freemantle he joined the 44th Australian Infantry Battalion in March 1916, returning to Australia after the end of the war. He reached the rank of lieutenant within 12 months. He had no service number, since he was an officer.Longmore, C 2009, Eggs-a-cook! The story of the Forty Fourth: war as the digger saw it, Naval and Military Press, East Sussex.
Childhood
Ralph Charles Donaldson's second daughter, Ailsa, was educated in the towns where her parents lived: Heyfield and then Portland, until her final year at school which she spent apart from her family, at Mac.Robertson Girls High School in Melbourne. There she matriculated with five subjects – gaining honours in two : Art and English.Mac.Rob Archives, 2018, personal communication (email), 8 Aug.
Ailsa Donaldson is reported by Sandy Kirby as recalling that after school her tertiary education began in 1937: I left home at fifteen, was at school in Melbourne, and at sixteen commenced an art course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology on a technical scholarship which paid an allowance of £7 a term plus fees. I used up two years of the four-year scholarship, managed to cram in a teaching course as well as a fine art course by going to classes every night, then a further year of teacher training, and at nineteen I was on the payroll in front of those large wartime classes of Brunswick boys, ousted from their classrooms by the needs of airforce trainees. (Kirby, 1995)
Not only disruptions to school life resulted from World War II – most other aspects of Australian life were impacted by the severity of the austerity and dangers at home, added to anxiety for the troops sent overseas. The Australian National Archives' World War II Collection contains the military dossiers of six male relatives of Ailsa's extended David and Donaldson families who fought overseas, whilst at home, her widowed aunt, Annie Ethel Warren, née Donaldson, enlisted in the Army Citizen Military Forces in Melbourne, at the age of 50.
Ailsa Donaldson married during the war, to another artist Victor George O'Connor, who enlisted in the Army Citizen Military Forces, rising to the rank of Sergeant, whilst his younger brother, Norman Andrew, and his sister's husband, Sidney Henry William Mounsey, fought overseas. Ailsa took her husband's surname thereafter, becoming Ailsa O'Connor.
Artistic maturity