BABES IN THE WOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1943, Page 4

BABES IN THE WOOD

MEMORIAL TO JANE DUFF.

ENGLISH PHILANTROPIST’S ACT.

Strewn with gumleaves and grasses such as she once used to cover her baby brother, the grave of Jane Duff, heroine of the Babes in the Woods story of Australia, was almost forgotten.

Recently Australia honoured Jane Duff by unveiling a concrete headstone just placed over her remains at Horsham. Victoria.

From a hepherd’s hut in the bush 15 miles west of Natimuk, in Victoria’s Wimmera, Jane Duff, aged 7, Isaac Duff aged 9, and Frank Duff, aged 41, were sent to gather broom one mid-summer’s day in 1864. The Duff children picked flowers, chased butterflies and lunched on bread and treacle. Then, when evening shadows came, they had lost direction. Isaac cco-eed for Shepherd Duff, their father, but the only answers came from a cow and a howling dingo. Exhausted, afraid, the Duff children huddled at the foot of a tree, said the prayers their mother had tai - ght them. Then began the terrible drama of the “Babes in the Wood,” which every Australian school child was to read in Royal Readers and school papers. Next day, Shepherd Duff led 20 men in the search. After two days’ fruitless roaming, they called in friendly blackfellows, King Richard, Jerry and Fred. King Richard, on the fourth day, picked up the mark of a little boot, and said: “Here two big ones carry little one.” On the seventh day, King Richard looked at the staggering child-prints, inspected the troubled beds of brush and leaves which Jane had made for Frank, and said: “Here they plenty tired. Not much longer now.”

On the ninth day King Richard followed the footprints, suddenly looked up. He pointed to three pale, emaciated children lying on the ground. “They must be dead,” groaned Shepherd Duff. But the youngest, Frank, said weakly, “We coo-eed, Daddy, but you didn’t come.” Then he went into a coma. All three children were between life and death for weeks.

Every night in the cold, Jane had taken off her dress, wrapped it round her baby brother, covered him with leaves. For drink, they had only dew-, for food, leaves, berries and wattlegum.

In England, philantropist Sir Phillip Dalzeil, after reading a two-column account in “The Times,” ordered a statue of the three children in marble, sleeping among the leaves. He presented it to the shepherd’s daughter, Jane Duff, Jane Duff, at last to be honoured, died aged 75, a poor woman.