We all have our favourite children’s stories. One of mine is The silver brumby. At the age when I first read it, horses were interesting animals to me.¹ I was intrigued by Thowra as the beautiful pale horse who was not like the rest. Looking back now through adult eyes, and given my own life experience, I probably related to Thowra’s difference and strength, and his approaches to the challenges that were always present in the environment surrounding him.

However, I also knew from an early age that the ‘Man from Snowy River country’ was part of my family’s story, with my grandmother being born and raised in the area. The story’s meaning has taken on new significance to me now she has passed, reconnecting me with the place she knew as a child. Re-reading the first edition copy she gave to me (that once belonged to her mother) made me want to learn more about its author, Elyne Mitchell. I wanted to know how the story came to be and what its publication history has been over time. I was lucky enough to find various editions of the story (and others in the series) in the Library’s Ken Pound Collection.

Left: Sticker promoting Corryong: ‘The man from Snowy River country’. Right: The first edition copy of The silver brumby that belonged to my great-grandmother, gifted to her by her brother. (Images supplied by author)

Sibyl Elyne (Elyne) Mitchell was the first daughter born in Toorak to Charles Henry (Harry) and Sibyl Chauvel on 30 December 1913. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Europe and upon the outbreak of World War I, her father served with the Australian Imperial Force in Egypt, Gallipoli and Palestine, while Elyne remained with her mother and two elder brothers in England.²

During his service, Harry Chauvel commanded the Desert Mounted Corps and has his own place in history, ordering the great cavalry charge, the Battle of Beersheba in 1917.^{3 4} The family returned to Australia in 1919.⁵ Elyne credits her father with teaching her to ride horses.⁶ During Melbourne Cup week in 1933, she met ski champion and lawyer turned politician, Thomas Walter Mitchell from the Upper Murray Region, whom she married in 1935.⁷

It is said of writing that you should write what you know. This is true for Elyne; her life experiences provided the themes on which she drew for both her fiction and non-fiction work. Still, in her memoir, Elyne Mitchell. A daughter remembers, Elyne’s daughter Honor recalls her mother saying on numerous occasions, ‘I just want to write a cracking good yarn’.⁸

Elyne would write about the histories of both families and the experiences of war, but her marriage opened up two further defining aspects: skiing and the ‘Snowy’, which at first she found a challenge, but later came to love.⁹ Her arrival at the Mitchell property, Towong Hill, in Towong (close to the neighbouring town of Corryong), introduced her to the surrounding landscape, with which she would come to have a deep affinity and knowledge. She was left to manage the property when Tom joined the 2/22^nd Battalion in the Australian Imperial Force in 1940, (later becoming a Prisoner of War in Changi after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942). ^{10 11 12}

View from Towong Hill, Towong [April 1954]. Victorian Railways; H91.330/3841

The first of Elyne’s 33 books was Australia’s Alps, published in 1942,¹³ and while her other works are not insignificant, it is her children’s writing — The silver brumby and the series it spawned in particular — for which she is best-known and has the most recognition.

Despite these successes though, it seems the recognition Elyne most wanted was not received. While the author was a recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to children’s literature in 1990, and was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters from Charles Sturt University in 1993,¹⁴ The silver brumby, which has been translated into 40 languages and became a film and an animated series, did not win the Children’s Book Council of the Year Award (or any other awards), receiving only a ‘Highly Commended’.^{15 16 17}

Elyne’s motivation for writing the first brumby story was to encourage her eldest daughter, Indi to read, because:

Towong Hill was isolated and lacked access to libraries, and Elyne was not happy with the reading matter available for her daughter [through her correspondence lessons], especially books, with a lack of Australian content.¹⁸

As early as 1945, Elyne was critical that Australians generally had very little in the way of literature that reflected our unique identity back to us.¹⁹ She felt Indi should have a connection with the environment around her, and at age 10 her daughter was also ‘crazy about ponies’.²⁰ Beginning as a short story, the book soon grew, with Indi ‘waiting at the typewriter for the next instalment.’²¹

The completed manuscript would prove a challenge to publish however. While Angus & Robertson published Elyne’s non-fiction titles, they showed no interest in The silver brumby. Disagreement between Oxford University Press offices in London and Melbourne resulted in its rejection, before Margarita Weber, a Melbourne bookseller whom Elyne met through family friends, encouraged her to send it through to Hutchinson, the eventual publisher.^{22 23}

Left to Right: The silver brumby editions (1958, 1970, 1971), Ken Pound Collection

Controversy followed the book’s release due to the anthropomorphic nature of the animals. This may also have contributed to its lack of awards.²⁴ The story has contributed to the tension surrounding brumbies by painting a romanticised view of them and what they represent (see The Conversation as an example). It’s portrayal of ‘The Man’ and progress ²⁵ can also be interpreted in different ways. Nevertheless, looking at the series through children’s eyes, it has the key ingredients of animals, adventure and excitement in an environment that is relatable.

Down the snow-slippery rocks he went, slowly at first, to make sure the man was following, but keeping himself partly out of sight. Then when the bay horse was quite close, he charged off, leaping and flying, almost trusting to the air more than the slippery leg-breaking rocks.²⁶

Where once the majestic descriptions of Thowra as he negotiated the danger around him caught my attention, now having a deeper sense of my family connection, I appreciate Elyne’s evocative descriptions of the local environment.

Spring comes to the Australian Alps like an invisible spirit. There is not the tremendous surge of upthrust life that there is in the lowland valleys, and no wildflowers bloom in the snow mountains till the early summer, but there is an immense stirring of excitement. A bright red and blue lowrie flits through the trees; snow thaws, and the streams become full of foaming water; the grey flattened grass grows upwards again and becomes greener; wild horses start to lose their winter coats and find new energy; wombats sit, round and fat, blinking in the sun-shine; at night there is a cry of a dingo to its mate.²⁷

Having followed up my re-reading of The silver brumby with Honor’s memoir, I was struck by her description of her mother’s writing space in the front room of their house:

Mum’s desk was at the east-facing window looking out past the verandah to a circular lawn surrounding a flowerbed. Beyond more flowerbeds were the large European trees surrounding the garden like a wall, separating us from the world beyond… Often she would sit thinking, writing notes and doodling, preoccupied perhaps with the view and almost certainly with thoughts and dreams well beyond the boundaries of the family, house and garden… The time she liked this view most was at dawn in winter, when the sun rose with brilliant spears of sunlight thrusting up behind the snow-dusted mountains.²⁸

It is easy to understand how this encouraged such rich writing.

Left to Right: The silver brumby editions (1974, 1987, 1982 compiled with Silver brumby’s daughter), Ken Pound Collection

Following surgery for a brain tumour, Elyne became increasingly frail. She moved from Towong Hill to a care facility in Corryong, but she remained a regular visitor to the Mitchell property (then managed by her youngest son), until she passed away on 4 March 2002. ²⁹ The last story in the Brumby series, Wild echoes ringing, was published posthumously in 2003.

While The silver brumby’s legacy may be received differently depending on your own views and the story’s broader controversial history, it does evoke passion and provides a sense of an Australian identity at a point in time, which is what Elyne was passionate about. For this reason, it will continue to have a significant place in Australian (children’s) literature.

As for me, I will keep remembering it fondly, as a connection to my family history.

Postscript

Elyne Mitchell wrote the novelisation of the 1982 film The man from Snowy River.³⁰ Interestingly, Banjo Paterson stayed with Tom Mitchell’s father in the late 1800s and they rode together into the mountains. It was thought to be this trip that inspired the writing of the ballad. ^{31 32}

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References

1. Black beauty also sat on my bookshelf.
2. Auchinleck, H, 2012b, On the trail of the silver brumby, Harper Collins Publishers, Sydney, NSW, p 22
3. Latreille, A, 2002, Sibyl Elyne Mitchell (1913–2002), Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, viewed 20 November 2024, <https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/mitchell-sibyl-elyne-18137/text29712>. Originally published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April 2002
4. Stephens, T, 1993, ‘The woman from Snowy River’, Sydney Morning Herald (Spectrum liftout), 11 September, p 3A
5. Auchinleck, 2012b, as above, p 22
6. Latreille, as above
7. Auchinleck, 2012b, as above, p 22
8. Auchinleck, H, 2012a, Elyne Mitchell: A daughter remembers, Harper Collins Publishers, Sydney, p 113
9. Auslit, Elyne Mitchell, viewed 4 December 2024, <https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A13160>
10. Auchinleck 2012b, as above, p 24
11. Latrelle, as above
12. Stephens, as above
13. Stephens, as above
14. Latreille, as above
15. Auchinleck 2012a, as above, p 112
16. Latreille, as above
17. Prentice, J 2002, ‘Elyne Mitchell, 19-13-2002, Matriarch of the High Country’, Viewpoint, vol 10 no 3, pp 2-3
18. Prentice, as above, p 3
19. As above, p 2
20. As above, p 3
21. As above, p 3
22. Auchinleck 2012a, as above, p 113
23. Prentice, as above, p 3
24. See Giuffre, G, 1990, ‘Elyne Mitchell’, in A writing life: Interviews with Australian women writers, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, pp 210-223, Prentice, as above, p 3, and Stephens, as above
25. Auchinleck 2012a, as above, pp 105-108
26. Mitchell, E, 1958, The silver brumby, Hutchinson & Co, London, p 116
27. Mitchell, as above, p 85
28. Auchinleck 2012a, as above, pp 78-79
29. Latreille, as above
30. Auslit, The man from Snowy River, viewed 4 December 2024, <https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C115730>
31. Stephens, as above
32. Latreille, as above