To whom it may concern

During my investigations of Thomas Huxley I noticed a piece in The Bugle of 1 February 2023 concerning Huxley, within which several errors occur.

In the interests of correctness, I attach my notes on the subject.

Regards

Kevin Mills

Thomas Huxley in the Illawarra – setting the record straight.

The name Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) looms large in 19th Century science, while his descendants

for generations contributed to science and other pursuits in many ways. Huxley arrived in Sydney

on the ship H. M. S. Rattlesnake as Assistant Surgeon in July 1847. A visit by Huxley to the

Illawarra and Jamberoo in particular during his Australian stay is sometimes cited.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald of 26 January 1935 about Thomas Huxley includes

several errors. The piece states “Huxley and his companions remained several weeks in the district

[Illawarra], and investigated its resources.” While Thomas Huxley did have a connection with

Illawarra as he would later marry a Jamberoo girl, Henrietta Heathorn (1825-1914), he never

visited the district as far as is known.

The Sydney Morning Herald piece is also incorrect in stating that Huxley had “met his bride-to-

be at a hotel at Jamberoo”. A paper in the Royal Historical Society Journal by Jervis (1942) again

suggested that they met “at the little inn at Jamberoo.” Beale (1973) and later McCalman (2009)

and Bashford (2022), through proper research, correctly point out that they first met at a party in

Sydney, where Henrietta had lived for several years in the house of her married sister. The pair

met several times at balls in Sydney and Huxley regularly visited Henrietta at her home and soon

decided to marry. Further, he married Henrietta Heathorn in London on 21 July 1855 (Bashford

2022), not in 1849 as stated by the newspaper, the article going on to contradict itself by stating,

correctly, that it was the engagement that occurred in 1849.

The following quote is taken from the book Green Meadows – Centenary History of Shellharbour

Municipality New South Wales, by Bayley (1959, p.27) and is attributed to “the eminent scientist

Professor Huxley”.

“From Wollongong to Jamberoo the road was a mere dray track through a forest of

tropical foliage, gum trees 200 feet or more in height, gigantic Indian rubber trees with

broad shiny dark green leaves, lofty cabbage palms and many another kind of tree

towered above us so that their tops made a twilight canopy impenetrable to the

sunlight, save for an infrequent clearing in the forest made by the settlers axe. Huge

lianas, some as thick as a man’s arm, hung down snake-like from the trees. Magnificent

ferns, clinging to the fork or trunk and branches were pointed out to me.”

The above book by Bayley (1959) did no better with dates. The date of Huxley’s visit to Australia

was 1847, not 1843 as stated in Bayley (1959), therefore making it impossible for him to have

visited Illawarra/Jamberoo in 1843. Nor was he with his family and “as a boy ... taken to live on

a farm at Jamberoo” as suggested; Huxley grew up in England (Bashford 2022). It was Henrietta

Heathorn who came to Jamberoo as a teenager in 1843 with her family; her father took on the

Woodstock Mill at Jamberoo.

More recently, an article in the Kiama newspaper The Bugle of 1 February 2023 (pre current ownership) repeats the

mistakes and adds to them. As noted above, the marriage to Henrietta was in 1855 not 1854 as

stated in this newspaper piece. That piece also suggests that “Huxley was visiting from England

with Charles Darwin”. Darwin had visited Australia in 1836 and never returned to the Southern

Hemisphere, let alone with Huxley or anybody else in 1847. The strong connection between

Huxley and Darwin would occur years later, Huxley becoming known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’

because of his staunch defence of the theory of evolution, which Darwin published in 1859.

The truth is that it was Henrietta Huxley who had arrived in Jamberoo in 1843 with her family and

who wrote the above description of the forest seen by the family on the way to Jamberoo. The

quote comes from an article titled Pictures of Australian Life 1843-1844 that appeared in The

Cornhill Magazine in 1911. This was many years after she left Australia in 1854 and 16 years after

Thomas Huxley died in 1895. The full version of Mrs Thomas Huxley’s description is as follows:

“From Wollongong to Jamberoo the road was a mere dray-track through a forest of

tropical foliage; gum-trees two hundred feet [61 metres] or more in height, gigantic

indiarubber trees [Figs Ficus spp.] with broad, shiny, dark-green leaves, lofty cabbage-

palms, and many another kind of tree towered above us, so that their tops made a

twilight canopy impenetrable to the sunlight, save for an infrequent clearing in the

forest made by the settler's axe. Huge lianas, some as thick as a man's arm, hung down

snake-like from the trees. Magnificent ferns, clinging to the fork of trunk and branches,

were pointed out to me by my father, as affording water in their sponge-like forms

during times of drought of thirsty wayfarers.”

In summary, Thomas Huxley never visited Jamberoo, nor probably even came to the Illawarra, he

never met Henrietta in Jamberoo and he married in England not Australia. Mrs Henrietta Huxley

(nee Heathorn) should be given full credit for her wonderful description of the rainforest of

Jamberoo valley before it was almost completely destroyed in the decades after she had left

Jamberoo.

References

Bashford, A. (2022). An Intimate History of Evolution. The Story of the Huxley Family. The

University of Chicago Press, 576 pp.

Bayley, W. A. (1959). Green Meadows – Centenary History of Shellharbour Municipality New

South Wales. Shellharbour Municipal Council, Albion Park, Weston & Co., Kiama, 186 pp.

Beale, E. (1973). T. H. Huxley and Illawarra – A Note upon a Non-event. Illawarra Historical

Society Bulletin, May, 5-6.

Huxley, T. H. (Mrs) (1911). Pictures of Australian Life, 1843-1844. The Cornhill Magazine,

December, 770-781.

Jervis, J. (1942). Illawarra: A Centenary of History: 1788-1888. Royal Australian Historical

Society, 28 (3): 129 – 156.

McCalman, I. (2009). Darwin’s Armada. How four voyages to Australasia won the battle for

evolution and changed the world. Viking/Penguin, Camberwell, Victoria, 423 pp.