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Coffee Dreams.
An Attempt to Acclimatise Coffee in New Norcia,
Western Australia, 1869-1895
©
SHORT
VERSION OF
- VERSION MODIFICADA DE:
Teresa de Castro, "Coffee Dreams.
An
attempt to acclimatise coffee in New Norcia (1869-1895)", New Norcia's
Studies Journal (Perth, Western Australia), 11, 2003,
pp. 57-63.
(Sueños de café. Intentos de aclimatización del café en Nueva Nursia, Western
Australia entre 1869-1895)
Teresa
de Castro © 2009-2013.
This paper is protected by Copyright Laws
INDEX
Why was Rosendo
Salvado experimenting with coffee?
The arrival of the
coffee beans to New Norcia
Salvado Experiments with coffee
Success or failure
Reasons for the failure
In the previous number of New Norcia's Studies Journal I published a letter on coffee cultivation
that Salvado sent on 17 October 1869 from Ceylon to Venancio Garrido, prior of
New Norcia. In that letter Salvado informed Garrido of the sending to the
Mission of a box containing coffee seeds and coconut sprouts
from the region of
Kandy; he wrote a
memorandum on coffee growing and gave detailed instructions on sowing
procedures in New Norcia. In his letter Salvado also warned the Missionaries to
keep the contents of the box secret.
This article analyses what occurred during the
following years. The paper begins by examining some reasons that led Salvado to
cultivate coffee in the
Mission. It describes what happened to the experiment before and after Salvado
returned to New Norcia from
Europe. The article ends
by arguing that the coffee project had no success and by listing the factors
that contributed to its failure.
European settlers of
Australia in the 19th century were keen to experiment with new
plants and seeds, but they had no consideration for the ecological impact. At
that time Europeans were trying to adapt the plants of their homeland to
Australia, because they had the dream of recreating their
native land and landscape, the world that they call civilisation. With this
purpose the settlers worked diligently to transform the "New World" into something "civilised". T. R. Dunlap points out
that although the settlers saw themselves as pioneers, their expansion was the
result of the victory over colonial lands of an industrial society that served
a world market. In the 1860's in
Australia there was also a developing scientific interest in
the adaptation of foreign plants. Moreover, in the second half of the 19th
century the economy of the Australian colonies needed plants or animals that
could make money.
Salvado, as a member of the English gentry of that
time shared its passion for dietary and ornamental plants, and his scientific
curiosity made him to exchange seeds with his Australian and overseas friends. What
is more, when Salvado travelled he usually gathered seeds and plants and sent
them to the
Mission. Yet, the attempt to grow coffee in New Norcia had a
financial purpose. Salvado was starting a serious project of acclimatisation
that, if successful, would have an important impact on the economy of New
Norcia. Thus, this experiment should be understood in a wider context and
linked to the previous horse breeding business, and to the sericulture industry
and the renting of New Norcia's houses that started years later.
The option for an economy mostly based on sheep
husbandry and wool exports determined the daily life of the
Mission, generating a frenetic need for lands with water
resources to feed the livestock. The purchase or lease of any land was directly
related to the availability of spring watercourses, in
Western Australia most of them subterranean. As a result, the
exploration of wide land areas and of their water resources preceded any deed
application. The birth, dipping and shearing of the sheep, and the washing and
packaging of the wool were extra work to do before exporting New Norcia's
staple. Any climatic disaster, any death of animals because of poisonous plants
or wild dogs, and the fluctuation of the wool prices in
London had a direct impact upon the life of the community.
In addition, in the absence of any agricultural machinery, until the late 70's
the ploughing, sowing, manuring, harvesting, and threshing took a long time and
spent the energies of the whole community. In 1867 canon Martelli wrote to
Brother Martínez: "Brothers are getting old and cannot do what they could
do ten years ago. The prior's opinion seems to coincide with mine". Later,
Martelli wrote to Salvado talking in the same terms. Even prior Garrido advised
Salvado in 1868 to buy a threshing machine when the circumstances would be
favourable.
However, the exhaustion of the monks was not
accompanied by the wealth of New Norcia or by a comfortable life inside the
Mission. The accounts of New Norcia show a negative balance
since 1866. Concerned about New Norcia's financial situation Salvado wrote in
1867 and 1868 to the president of Propaganda Fide asking for a donation. New
Norcia's income served to feed and dress the monks and the
"Australians", to buy agricultural tools, to carry on the building of
the town, to pay the workers and servant’s salaries, and to supply other needs.
The main destination of New Norcia's money was the purchase of land blocks, the
payment of pastoral licenses, the sinking of wells and tanks, and the purchase
of rice, sugar and tea. This precarious economy certainly pushed Salvado to
experiment with coffee. Thus, Salvado told Venancio Garrido on
20 February 1870: "Take this matter with interest, being, as it
is, of great importance, though at present nobody knows it or perceives it
so".
Similarly, the Colony of Western Australia needed
profitable products to advance its economy. So, when Salvado returned to
Perth he found that the governor, F. A. Weld, had authorised an experimental
coffee station in
Champion
Bay (Geraldton). This station operated under Reverend
Nicolay's direction from December 1870 until December 1873, when it closed due
to the lack of positive results.
The letter that Salvado sent from
Ceylon on
17 October 1869 reached New Norcia on 25 November. Because Prior Garrido was in
Perth, Father Martínez, the administrator, and Santos Salvado opened and read
the letter. Although
Santos thought that
they might send for the box immediately, Martínez decided to wait for news from
Perth. The mail announced on 2 December the arrival of the
box in
Perth, and the next day Garrido sent some people for it.
Prior Garrido was also excited about this new adventure, and wrote to Salvado:
"The providential going of Your Lordship to
Europe makes me guess something important for the future of the
Mission". Canon Martelli was likewise expecting positive
results, and hoped he could drink a cup of New Norcia coffee in the future. The
parcel arrived at the
Mission on 10 December, and Santos Salvado sowed the coffee beans and the
coconut sprouts the same day following the instructions in Salvado's
memorandum.
Salvado certainly knew that coffee cultivation had
interested other people in
Western Australia before and, as a consequence, he was very secretive about the coffee
box. Nevertheless, the many people involved in its transport to New Norcia
contributed to spread the rumour that Salvado was going to experiment with
coffee. Thus, on November 1869 father Martelli wrote to Salvado: "Some
people doubt the success of your attempt. They say (...) that similar attempts
have been made and failure was the result".
The Correspondence between Salvado and different
members of the
Mission contains many details about the experiment. In
January 1870 Garrido informed Salvado that some coffee seeds had died because
of the dryness of the season. Salvado wrote back: "an extraordinary effort
must be made to achieve the desired purpose", adding that they should also
plant coffee at Marah Station. At the end of February one coconut plant had
died and the coffee plants had not yet sprouted. Garrido and
Santos divided the remaining coffee beans
into three portions to sow them in March, April and May. The situation did not
change at the end of March, though the brothers had sown and watered the coffee
several times. The seeds sown on December 1869 had already died. In April other
coconut plant died; however, the coffee was finally
growing.
Salvado was putting pressure on the brothers by asking
for details of the experiment in every letter, and the cultivation of coffee
was becoming a nightmare in New Norcia. Brother Cabané, in charge of the
agricultural affairs, wrote a letter to Salvado on 21 May in which he gave
reign to his frustration:
I'm
running from one place to another to look for any person who could give me any
information about the cultivation of coffee, because at the
Mission we are having
a rough time with such a plant. Finally,
today I've met an 'Indian' who has taught me a little, but I'm not satisfied
because he has told me that coffee has to be planted more or less as tobacco
is, and the time for sowing is the month of April. He says that if Your
Lordship had the opportunity to send us some instructions you wouldn't be
wasting your time.
In June only four coconut plants remained alive and
the coffee experiment was being developed at Marah. Unfortunately, Marah's
files contain many gaps for this period and it has been impossible to find any
other information on coffee. Nonetheless, before Salvado returned from
Europe the missionaries had sown the last coffee seeds in New Norcia without
results.
On Salvado's way back to
Australia, during his stopover in
Galle, he bought 28 pounds of
Kandy coffee beans
that he sowed partially on
30 November 1870 at New Norcia. The following month, on the 7th, the colonial secretary
F. P. Barlee ‑whose office dealt with matters related to public lands, including
botanical and experimental gardens‑ asked Salvado to swap Kandy beans
with Mocha beans and to send them to Reverend Nicolay; two days later Salvado
sowed the new variety.
At the end of March 1871 Salvado proposed to his
neighbour James Clinch a coffee trial on his fields, at
Berkshire
Valley. Clinch agreed to the experiment and asked for
information about soil, humidity and sowing time. On 3 April Salvado sent him
the coffee seeds and the planting instructions through ex‑brother Mauro
Beleda. On the 7th Clinch stopped at the
Mission and had a talk about the coffee with Salvado.
Although it has been impossible to find any other reference on Clinch's trial,
it is hardly probable that Clinch had any success.
On 5 April Salvado sowed again
Kandy beans but in May Salvado felt pessimistic about the project because his
biggest coffee plant had died and the remaining ones were in a bad state.
Salvado admitted flatly to Nicolay: "I have been unsuccessful as yet in
cultivating both
Ceylon and Mocha coffee (...) we have been trying for better than one year
sowing it every month, but without any good result". However, at the end
of that year, the plant that Salvado had sown on
30 November 1870 was still alive despite the bad weather. Salvado
planted his last coffee seeds on the 13 and
24 November 1871. Eventually, on
7 March 1872 Salvado informed Governor Weld proudly:
[QUOTATION REMOVED]
Unfortunately, on 10 March a hurricane destroyed
trees, crops and plants all over the Colony, and in July a flood covered New
Norcia plain. It is probable that these catastrophes ruined the coffee plants
because on
28 December 1872 Salvado
received another parcel containing Brazilian coffee seeds from Edward Laurance
through he Colonial Secretary's Office. This was the last news that New Norcia
sources kept about the coffee project.
In 1984 Muriel Berman summarised D. F. Bourke's
opinion that New Norcia gained fame throughout Western Australia for its up‑to‑date
farming methods and its success in experimenting with new products, including honey,
coffee and tobacco. Surprisingly, an examination of Bourke, included the page
cited by Berman, reveals no information that could support her summary
regarding coffee.
The absence of additional references to coffee in New
Norcia's sources for the period 1873‑1900 indicates, doubtless, that the
attempted acclimatisation did not have positive results. Indeed, there is
important evidence indicating the failure of the coffee project. To begin,
Salvado was keen to promote New Norcia's achievements; accordingly, if he had
obtained any success he would have told everybody and he would have left traces
at least in his diaries.
In the second place, in a letter that prior Santos
Salvado was writing in 1873 to the pretender to the Spanish crown, Carlos VII,
he listed the achievements of the
Mission, such as wool, horses, wines and rappée, but he did not mention coffee.
In the third place, on
16 July 1877 the Western Australian local committee for the
Universal Exposition of Paris, to be held in 1878, invited Salvado to
participate by sending New Norcia products. On 17 October Salvado only sent
several kinds of wine, pickled olives, snuff, dry fruits and cotton. Salvado
participated in several other exhibitions and no coffee was sent also.
Moreover, the author of "A New Norcia
Excursion", an article published on
3 May 1893 in the Western Australian, pointed out that the only two “not‑Mission‑grown"
products served to him at New Norcia were the sugar and the coffee.
Finally, on
25 June 1895 Salvado received a bundle of young trees, sent as a gift by the owner
of the International Nursery in
Sydney that
included a coffee shrub bearing beans. Salvado ordered the covering of the tree
to protect it from frost and to get ripe beans. As previously, Salvado did not
give further news. However, in the reports that Salvado wrote in 1882 and in
1900 to the Propaganda Fide (Ecclesiastical Institution that managed Missions),
in which he summarised the activities of the New Norcia since its foundation,
he did not mention coffee at all.
The factors that explain why Salvado had no success in
acclimatising coffee are: the inappropriate climate and soil of Victoria Plains
and Salvado's haste in his efforts to establish a coffee plantation: coffee is
a very delicate tropical plant, New Norcia did not have the same climate as
coffee regions in Ceylon, and Salvado was an amateur trying to make a business
of it in a short time.
J. W. Wooldrige, a planter from
Madras (India) with experience in growing tropical plants, who was
trying to obtain governmental support to start a coffee plantation in
Western Australia, remarked in 1878 that coffee growing required:
* Latitudes between 10°‑20° South. According to him the best area in WA would be
Beagle
Bay.
*
Primeval forest (i.e. rainforest).
*
Never failing rain at equal periods.
* Not
less than 4 feet deep soil.
*
Absence of frost.
* The
shrubs withstand cold provided it does not get close to freezing, without too
much wind.
Taking into consideration these requirements the
latitude of New Norcia was not suitable for the experiment. The alternation of
periods of dryness and floods, i. e. an irregular rainfall, characterised New
Norcia's weather in the period of the experiment; in addition, frost is a
characteristic of the winter in
Victoria
Plains. Salvado knew that he had to cover the coffee plant
during frost time, but he did not realise at the beginning that frost was
affecting just the sprouting of the plants.
Salvado's haste is evident from his letter to Garrido.
He affirmed that the best time to sow the beans seemed to be the end of April
(as indicated by the Indian whom Brother Cabané consulted), but at the end of
the letter he changed his mind and pointed out that it would be good to sow
some seeds after their arrival in New Norcia. Thus, the first series of
experiments started too early, as also did the second series that started on
November 1870. Furthermore, Salvado was experimenting with the beans to
accelerate their growth. For example, he soaked them for a few days to test if
they germinated sooner or lived longer. He later recognised that taking the
cartilage off the beans had prevented the coffee from growing.
Salvado knew that nobody had succeeded in growing coffee
before, but he certainly had many achievements in New Norcia's garden and was
very confident. He was used to acclimatising new plants, and, as he said in his
letter, coffee was growing in areas with worse climatic and soil conditions. It
is impossible to know if Salvado talked personally to any experienced planter
during his two stopovers in Ceylon, but it is certain that he did not buy
specific books that could have helped him ‑as on other occasions‑
face his problems with coffee cultivation. Nicolay and Salvado surely exchanged
opinions about coffee growing, but Nicolay was another amateur and not the best
adviser.
Altogether, Salvado had many problems and made many
mistakes. Salvado had told his friends outside the Colony that he had been
trying to introduce coffee in New Norcia, but after this 'publicity' he had
achieved no success. After the fiasco Salvado's silence was a convenient
attitude to make people forget that such a big effort had brought no benefits
to New Norcia Mission.
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