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The Aussie-Nilgiris connection

Thanks to Dr. A. Raman’s article on Madras – Australia links (MM, February 1st), I got interested in Sir William Denison, Governor of -Madras, and hence the following -jottings.
Sir William held the Governorship during 1861-66 (not as stated, until 1906 – Editor’s note: thank the printer’s devil). It was he who first mooted the question of the annual migration of the Government of Madras to the Nilgiri Hills. The scheme was immediately sent up to the Secretary of State, but was very firmly negatived by him twice, once in 1861 and again in 1862. However, from the 1880s, the proposal was implemented.

More than what Sir William did (as Dr. Raman has noted) for the promotion of cinchona plantations, he is noted for the far-reaching initiative taken in the matter of the spread of Eucalyptus. He brought about the first issue of orders for the formation of the plantations of these bluegum trees on all Government land in the -European settlements of Ooty, Coonoor and Kotagiri for the purpose of supplying firewood for the colonisers. Within the next -decade, the successful and “very profitable” cultivation of these Australian trees extended to more than about 1,300 acres. What this invasion meant for the Nilgiri landscape is an -entirely different story.

Sir William Denison, an efficient Governor, also temporarily became the Viceroy in 1863, owing to the death of Lord Elgin. Sir William moved to Calcutta and returned to Madras in 1864. Sir William was also the one who paved the way for the establishment of a Municipality for Ooty. He also tried to plant Nilgiri tea in the distant Peshwar hills (North West Frontier Province) but probably did not have the time to pursue it.

Sir William, surprisingly enough, took a benign interest also in the livelihood of the native Badagas. He encouraged the Base Mission at Ketti to construct an European loom there, “where Badaga boys wove excellent fabric”. It came to be actively patronised by the successive households of Governors in Ooty. This enterprise attracted a very good market among the European planters and their families in Malabar and as far as Coorg, Chick-maglur and Mangalore. Many Christian Badaga families affectionately remembered Sir William and christened their children, William. This enterprise came to be abandoned by the English Wesleyan Mission who took over the German work on the expulsion of all their missionaries at the outbreak of the Great War, 1914.
A lasting contribution to Nilgiris by the Denision family surfaced when SirWilliam’s daughter Susan Maria married J.W. Breeks (1863) who was private secretary to her father. Breeks later became the first Commissioner of the Nilgiris, independent of the original revenue jurisdiction under Coim-ba-tore, in 1868. Breeks soon rose to don the mantle of a free-lance -archaeologist. Breeks explored most of the unique circular burial vaults dotted on the hill tops. He has left for posterity an enduring and excellent collection of archaelogical and ethnological materials. But as the apocryphal tongues would wag, the ghosts from these graves took away his life, for Breeks tragically died of liver disease at the young age of 42 in 1872. The emanation of poisonous gas from these cairns and cromlechs may have caused the damage to Breeks’ liver! Had he lived longer, these proto-megalithic remains may have yielded a lot more of historic insights.

I suppose it may not be out of place to make mention also of Maj. (later Lt.Col) James Lushington Morant, the famous Roads Engineer of the Nilgiris who eventually retired to Australia. Apart from his pioneering construction of many heritage buildings in the Nilgiris, the Nilgiri Mountain Railway was actually his brain-child. It was he who first technically esta-blished the feasibility of this rail link (1874). This UNESCO-Heritage show piece came to be later constructed by Swiss -entrepreneurs. And as for -Australian missionaries, the descendants of missionary Brough from Adelaide who worked in Erode (1894 – 1934), in a rare gesture of goodwill, returned a large number of artefacts of -ethnic and cultural interest taken by him from the Kongu region to Chennai Museum in 2000.

Rev. Philip K. Mulley
Anaihatti Road
Kotagiri 643 217
The Nilgiris