taggerty

In the early 1930’s Harold Beatty acquired a new set of friends. At first they used to meet up at Robur Tea House and in 1932 switched allegiance to Tate’s Tea House in the basement of the newly opened Manchester Unity Building. “The first escalator in Melbourne went down to it”. First he met Wilfred McCulloch with whom he shared a studio in town, then Wilfred’s brother Alan. It’s possible that his sister Peg Beatty knew Alan McCulloch before Harold did. Her diary records that on 24 Jan 1931 Ron Vial took Winifred Blair, herself and Alan McCulloch to Dromana for the weekend, and 5 Dec 1931 Peg and Norman Atkins were beaten at tennis by Alan McCulloch and Lena Carter. The Tate’s Tea House group eventually included (among others) Donald Town, Colvin Smith, Lionel Smalley, Victor Ransome, and Cyril Muskett. Along with the McCullochs, Harold considered the last three of these among his closest friends for life. (1)

At about the same time, Harold was spending weekends exploring the surf beaches of Mornington Peninsula in his car. After his marriage he no longer lived at home so Peg was less aware of his movements, but her diary records that during 1932 and 33 Harold and Betty spent holidays at Flinders; Peg spent Christmas 1933 at Dromana with Ron and Winifred Vial and others and were visited there by Harold with Donald Town; 28 Dec 1934, Harold, Wilfred “and another lad” went to Rye back beach to camp for a few days; Harold, Wilfred and Alan McCulloch camped there again the first weekend of January 1935 and later dined with the Beattys at “Enniscrone” Mont Albert; 2 June 1935 “Harold motored us to Rye back beach and showed us his shack”. (1)

Rockpools near “McBeatsome” at Rye Back beach, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. 1940 oil painting by Wilfred McCulloch

I don’t know what Harold’s wife Betty thought about it, but the camp (on the Mornington Peninsula ocean beach somewhere between Rye Back Beach and Cape Schanck)  was an extended Boy’s Own adventure from the stories we heard. Several of Harold’s friends shared his love of isolated beaches and body surfing. Getting there involved an 80 mile drive from Melbourne, then crossing paddocks into the sand dunes with the farmer’s permission. At each visit Harold would take as many of his friends as they could cram into the car in those pre-seatbelt days. They revelled in having this new domain entirely to themselves and many weekends and holidays were spent there over a period of several years. They spent hours on the beach skylarking, playing “McBeatsome ball” and body surfing.  The surf there was usually rough and could be dangerous, and at least once they almost drowned in a spectacular “tidal wave”. Harold recalled spending a couple of minutes under water gripping a rock for dear life. They explored rock formations and rock pools and the clifftop aboriginal middens. They collected driftwood to cook their chops and sausages, though they had to be careful to clean the frying pan properly as Victor Ransome was a vegetarian and was suspicious that his own meal might be contaminated with meat! According to a draft poem of Alan’s “He eats onions and things which he cooks in a tin And millions of biscuits instead” (3). They collected enough driftwood to build a shack, and furnished it with a stove. Apparently it measured 28x20ft (2) and was slung with chaff-filled hessian bunks (4). The most regular adventurers, presumably all present the day they decided to name their camp, were Harold Beatty, Alan and Wilfred McCulloch, Victor Ransome and Donald Town – so McBeatsome Town it became. Clem Christesen mentions the following activities, based on the recollections of Alan McCulloch: shooting the breakers on a ship’s hatch cover; tossing the “caber”; long-distance racing along the beach and sand-hill jumping. Harold held the record for the latter “at 44ft,3in” and he and Alan were rivals for camp champion. Christesen said:

Beatty was a most dynamic personality. He knew a lot about astronomy; and on many evenings, with the group lying around him on the beach, gave long discourses on the stars…[Harold remembered that they talked and talked about all kinds of things, including the stars] He was an Electrical Engineer, a wizard with cars – he made an electric car which, when he changed ‘gears’, used to burst into a shower of blue sparks – and was a mad-cap driver. (2)

Some misadventures are mentioned by Alan McCulloch in his jocular draft verse: Victor Ransome falling during the 440 race due to “getting into the rough”; Alan chopping his own toe with a spade and felling a “wopping big tree” which narrowly missed landing on his own head to the amusement of the others; Wilfred[?] leaping with fright after looking down a hole for a rabbit when a large snake came out instead. (3)

Cyril Muskett in the shack at “McBeatsome”, Rye Back Beach, Victoria c 1938. Oil painting by Colvin Smith

As several of the group were artists, the other major activity at McBeatsome was painting and the interior of the hut would be festooned with drying oil paintings. The youngest member of the group, a protege of the McCullochs, was a teenaged Arthur Boyd. Unfortunately for us, while Harold enjoyed art he was no critic.  “Arthur was just a kid” he said “We used his paintings to clean the frying pan! Wilfred was the future great artist!”. Others were more discriminating though, and one surviving painting of Arthur’s from this period is of Harold on the beach at McBeatsome wearing red.

Harold was bemused but proud to find their camp written up in later years as “The last of the artist’s camps” (2) and pleased to be remembered in a biography of Arthur Boyd as (among other things) “an avid collector of painters and other eccentric friends” (4). As it happens, Harold and Arthur were the last to visit the camp. 7 April 1941 Harold was devastated by the death of his beloved 3 year old son David from Leukemia. Sometime after this he ran into Arthur who (HAP said) was depressed because his recent exhibition hadn’t been very successful, was unconfident of his talent and doubting that he could make a career of art. HAP suggested they try to cheer themselves up by going down to McBeatsome, which they did. Arthur’s painting had changed from the impressionistic style that Harold loved, and he asked if, as a favour, Arthur could do a painting at McBeatsome in his old style. Arthur didn’t think he’d be able to, but said “I’ll tell you what Harold, I’ll paint your portrait”. HAP liked the resulting painting and, as usual they “tacked it to the wall of the shack to dry”. When Harold next visited the site some thirteen years later, it was difficult to work out where the shack had been. The area had been used by the Army for training, and the shack must have been a tempting artillery target. Christesen says “Harold Beatty returned some years after the War and found still standing a post gay with years of palette scrapings”(2) Needless to say, there was no sign of his portrait by Arthur Boyd, whose talent by then was rather beyond doubt!

The Second World War broke up the camp. Donald Town joined the RAAF and after the War Harold lost touch with him. In 1938 Victor Ransome had married Barbara Willan, fondly remembered by Cyril Muskett from that time as “a cuddlesome redhead”. She had earlier been romantically involved with Wilfred whose wedding present to his friends was naturally a Wilfred McCulloch painting. Victor enlisted in the RAAF early in the War and served in New Guinea as ground crew in a Catalina squadron ending up as a Flight Lieutenant (5) Cyril Muskett, who was English, had sailed to Europe for his honeymoon in March 1939 after marrying Sheenagh Page. The marriage didn’t last and Cyril was in London as an Air Raid Warden during the Blitz before returning to Australia. Harold and Alan were both rejected for military service. Wilfred McCulloch was a pacifist, but volunteered as a stretcher bearer with the AIF. He was posted as Missing in Action, though confirmation of his death (10 February 1942) during the Fall of Singapore was not received for a couple of years. Both of the McCulloch brothers were gentle, loveable, talented and larger than life, but everybody (and not only women) seemed to especially love Wilfred. Cyril Muskett tried to capture his charisma: “When Wilfred looked at you, you felt like the most important person in the World”. Harold felt Wilfred’s loss keenly, treasured his paintings, and occasionally revisited McBeatsome. Alan though, despite HAP’s blandishments over the years, and despite living only a few miles away, never could bear to return to the scene of their carefree days.

The whole stretch of ocean beach on Mornington Peninsula between Rye Back Beach and Cape Schanck has since been opened up to the public. I think the camp was at the western end of what is now Gunnamatta Beach somewhere east of what is now called  Boag Rocks.

Sources other than the recollections of Harold Beatty:
1. Diary of Peggy Beatty 1931-1935
2. Clem Christesen “Arthur Boyd and the last of the artist’s camps” Broadsheet of the Contemporary Art Society of NSW, Oct 1963.
3. 1930s rough draft of verse by Alan McCulloch.
4. Darleen Bungey “Arthur Boyd : a life”; Allen & Unwin, 2007 pp 40-41
5. Ransome family.