Ada Catherine JULIUS [611]

  General Notes:

An Ada C Julius aged 4 arrived in Victoria September 1884 aboard the South Australian from Britain.
Ref PROV - Unassisted Immigration to Victoria 1852-1923

Julius Jottings June 1901 No 5.
We were sorry to hear, a few months ago, that Ada Julius was down with typhoid fever.

Ada was a life long friend of James R Dennistoun of "Peel Forest" Sth Canterbury, alpinist and Antarctic explorer, she climbed with him in NZ and after one long day climbing, was described thus by him : "Ada is wonderful, and must be wonderfully strong, and has endless endurance and pluck". Ada and Dennistoun were said to have been linked romantically at one time, but Dennistoun was shot down over Germany in 1916 and died of his wounds.
Ada climbed most of NZ's major peaks, and was second only as a woman climber in Australasia, to the great Freda du Faur.

Ada nursed in England during WW1

A LITTLE KNOWN CLIMBER.
BY GRAHAM LANGTON
The first New Zealand woman to climb high alpine peaks is almost unknown and unrecorded. In her one climbing season, 1910-11, she showed considerable ability as a climber, reaching the summits of seven peaks, four of them over 10,000 feet.
However, there was no New Zealand Alpine Journal at the time, no climbs were recorded in the Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives in that year because the Tourist Dept was part of the Dept of Agriculture, and in the popular mind she was overshadowed by Freda Du Faur's ascent of Mt Cook that same season.

This climber was Ada Julius, the fourth daughter and sixth child of the Rev Churchill Julius and his wife Alice, nee Rowlandson. They had married in England in 1872, and Ada Catherine was born there in 1881. The family were in Ballarat, Australia, 18841890, before Julius became Bishop of Christchurch in the latter year. The Bishop moved around his diocese, and with his wife, visited the Hermitage and glaciers in February 1891.

Little is known of Ada's first twenty-five years as a younger daughter in a cleric's household. There is evidence that the family was aware of mountain climbing as a recreation in the 1890s. Bishop Julius was verbally attacked in March 1893 for stating-that he could conceive of circumstances under which fishing and mountaineering would be justifiable on a Sunday. Soon after, in January 1895, Ada's brother George climbed the East Peak of Mt Earnslaw in a long day from Kinloch.

However Ada's life must have centred round the church in Christchurch, and upper-middle class activities of Canterbury society. Visiting would have been an important part of her life, including to her sisters after they married. On 1 October 1908 she was bridesmaid at the marriage of her younger sister Bertha to Percy Elworthy of South Canterbury, who had climbed in Europe when at Cambridge University a few years before.

Ada seems to have been able to adapt to her circumstances, but she was not just a dutiful spinster daughter and aunt. She was independent enough to spend some time in the mountains in her late twenties. She was a friend of the Dennistoun family of Peel Forest, and in 1910-11 she went on two mountain expeditions with Jim Dennistoun to whom she was very likely unofficially engaged.

Ada's first major trip into the mountains was in late February 1910. She and Jim went with his sister Barbara, the-English climber Lawrence Earle, Jack Clarke as guide, and other men to help with the horses, on a trip to the Clyde branch of the Rangitata. Ada rode over to Peel Forest from her sister's at Pareora on 19 February on one of Mrs Elworthv's carriage pair, an old grey horse the party named 'Mont Blanc'. Most of them motored to Mt Peel on 21 February, and then rode to Mesopotamia. Dennistoun records Barbara and Earle as being very stiff, so presumably Ada managed the long horse ride well. Ada and Barbara seem to have worn long wide skirts both for riding astride and for their walking in the mountains.

From 22 February the party were mostly in tents as they moved up into the headwaters. On 27 February Ada and Barbara were in the party which got onto the McCoy Glacier, though they were not on the ascent of Mt Nicholson the next day. They all went down river on 1 March because of poor weather, and Ada and Jim walked together the hour and a half from McRaes to Stronscrubie when they might have ridden with the others. Ada and Barbara went out on 2 March as had been planned from the beginning, and the men made the first ascent of Mt D'Archiac on 12 March 1910 from the Havelock branch of the Rangitata river.

The following summer 1910-11 Ada spent about a month in the Mt Cook area and climbed a number of peaks, often as the only woman on the climb, though Barbara was in the party and there were other women in the huts. While a few New Zealand women had done some climbing, Ada was the first New Zealand woman to climb high.

In December 1910 Ada climbed Nun's Veil with Barbara and Jim Dennistoun, and Jack Clarke as guide. Then came a couple of big climbs which Ada accomplished with Jim and Jack - Elie de Beaumont on 14 December, a second ascent, and Malte Brun on December 17, a fifth ascent. George Dennistoun, brother of Jim and Barbara, joined them for Christmas at Malte Brun Hut, where there were other prominent climbing figures: Peter and Alec Graham, Freda du Faur, Hugh Chambers and George Bannister, while Mary Murray Aynsley was also in that party. Fortunately a photograph of this whole group was taken.

Ada achieved a first ascent of Mt Aylmer next to Tasman Saddle on Boxing Day, with the three Dennistouns and Jack Clarke. The following day she climbed De la Beche, a fourth ascent, and both Minarets, a third ascent, though Barbara was not on that climb. On 7 January 1911 Ada and Jim, with guides Jack Clarke and Jim Murphy, made an attempt on Mt Cook, only a month after Freda du Faur had been the first woman to climb that mountain. While they were the first party to reach Green's Saddle from the Linda Glacier, iced-up rocks prevented an ascent of Cook.

Though Freda Du Faur was wearing knickerbockers and a short skirt for climbing, it seems Ada might have worn a long skirt. This would have been difficult on Malte Brun and some years before Jack Clarke had encouraged the first women over Copland Pass to wear trousers, largely for safety reasons. Whether Ada wore trousers underneath and tied up or removed the skirt on actual climbs, is unknown. A family story tells of ice forming at the bottom of the skirt and injuring the legs.

While Jim Dennistoun's great enthusiasm for the mountains, and their relationship, were probably important, Ada must herself have enjoyed climbing to have done so much in a short time. She acquired such competence that by the end of the 1910-11 season she was second only to Freda du Faur as a woman climber, and was certainly the best and most active New Zealand woman. She could have continued to become a great climber, equal to Du Faur who was to become the foremost amateur climber of either sex in New Zealand before the war. However, there is no evidence that Ada ever climbed again and the reason is unknown.

Jim Dennistoun's other activities, or their relationship, may have had a part to play. He was in the Antarctic the summer of 1911-12. However, he did or hoped to do more climbing in the other seasons before the war. He climbed Mt Blackburn with G E Mannering and Peter Graham on 16 February 1913 and his hopes for climbing in 1914 were probably affected by his involvement in the search for three climbers lost in an avalanche on 22 February. Before that, in January, he had journeyed from the Rangitata to the Hermitage via the glaciers. Possibly Ada was overseas by then. Jim left for England about the time war broke out, in late July or early August 1914, but he suggested he would soon be back which implies he had some reason of his own and was not going because of the war.

Jim Dennistoun did serve in the First World War and died in Germany on 9 August 1916 of wounds received when a biplane in which he was observer was shot down over Germany on 26 June. For at least some of the war Ada was nursing in England, in London, but apart from this nothing is known of her life between 1911 and 1918 when she returned from England on her mother's death. For the next twenty years she looked after her father as Bishop and Archbishop and in his retirement from 20 April 1925. The day after that they left for a trip to England but most of this period was spent at the Julius house 'Cloudesley' in Christchurch.

However, within a few months of her father's death on 1 September 1938, Ada Julius married Melville Gray, in late February 1939, at Marlborough, Wiltshire, in England. The bridegroom was 91 years old, and because of this the marriage created a stir in English newspapers, to the extent that it took place at 8am to avoid reporters who had been pursuing various family members. Ada herself was 57 years old.

Melville Gray had been on South Canterbury stations from the 1860s to the 1880s, and he had visited the Mt Cook glaciers in the early 1870s. He was the organiser of the trip to the glaciers which Joanna Harper enjoyed in March 1873. From 1887 he was in Timaru and as a bachelor vestryman in his forties first met Bishop Julius in May 1890.

When Melville and Ada first met is unknown but it seems he proposed to her in the late 1890s. Vance writes that she apparently felt it was her duty to take care of her father, and would not marry during his lifetime which lasted another 40 years. However this cannot be the reason for her refusal in the late 1890s. The other four sisters were not all married till 1908 and Alice Julius, the mother, did not die till 1918. Only from that time was Ada perhaps responsible for her father. There seems no reason why Ada should have been committed to looking after her parents in the 1890s, and there must have been some other reason for not marrying Melville at that time, probably the difference in ages.

About the final romance Pinney wrote: "I leave to a family historian the problem of whether the marriage was the climax of a continuous courtship, or a platonic agreement to end life in happiness together." The reality was not quite either. Gray went back to Scotland in 1902. He may have visited New Zealand and the couple may have met in England during the war, and corresponded thereafter. On the death of Ada's father, Melville asked Ada to come and look after him. She was happy to do this, being used to looking after old men. Melville still wished to marry her, and Ada agreed, perhaps because of conventions, but also because she was willing to do so. Certainly they were happy together.

Melville and Ada lived at the Gray family home, Bowerswell, near Perth in Scotland, after their marriage, but for much of the 1939-45 war they gave their home over to war refugees, themselves living in two small rooms. Gray was still interested in New Zealand and the MacKenzie Country, corresponding with old friends until his death in 1946. Then Ada returned to New Zealand to live with Bertha and Percy Elworthy in Havelock North, and she died there of cancer in 1949.

In many ways Ada led a dull and colourless life, but neither of those words describes her. As with many women of her time there were few opportunities for her to do and be what she wanted. However, her one season in the New Zealand Alps, at a time when other New Zeaiand women were not climbing mountains, stands out as an indication of the energy and enthusiasm for life mostly hidden within Ada Julius.
Note: This piece is an adjunct to an account of the early women climbers in New Zealand in the NZ Alpine Journal. The author, historian Graham Langton, has full references for both articles.
Ref:The New Zealand Climber No. 8

  Research Notes:

NZ Card Index
Auckland Library
JULIUS, ADA
Climber P.153 NZSB Nov. 1965
NZCI000184759

  Other Records

1. Ada Julius: Over the years.
Image third from left ada 1914, Her Overland car, Ball Hutt Mt Cook 1911, at home at Cloudsley with her father.

2. Ada Julius: Letter to Harold Fenn in Timaru NZ, 1 Jul 1946, Scotland.
Bowerswell
Perth
1 July 46.
My dear Harry,
Bless my dear family across the seas for their kind & marvellously prompt response to the sad news. It gladdened my sad heart & seemed to bring you all so close, you see it was absolutely unexpected & a great shock ridiculous as that sounds - No one, with the physique of a man of 50 & absolutely perfect health & only a little deaf, able to read & go about, wants to go - He did so enjoy life & was as keen & eager as I was to be up & off on our travels when petrol came along - I don't now know why he slipped away & can only think athletes develop some weakness of the heart muscle later in life as that was absolutely his only shaky part. You can't judge of his type by the Julius which has some excellent qualities & some toughness and some rotten guts (to put it delicately) & other unfortunate tendencies. He had the inside of a child & arteries of a man of 50 the Dr said. Well regrets are so useless & I am now absolutely plunged into sorting & disposing of family possessions - of course the nephew's are round like flies round a honeypot & I like having them especially Willie James who is my own age - Ralph Millais is desperately & most unsuccessfully trying to find out "how he stands" all Mr Latto said was Mr Gray has not left Mrs G overwidowed in the riches she wouldn't let him so that may have cheered "the tenth inheritor of a vacant face" considerably. Is it any good making plans I don't know but so far my idea is to be finished here by Nov & spend the winter in Somerset leaving everything such few possessions as I retain stored in the garage - They promise to guarantee me enough petrol to take the car & I may then look up relations & friends & perhaps India before coming out to do ditto in Australia & New Zealand - I'm sure you would all be more pleased to see me if I had so recently inspected your belongings over here - what a lot of of infants are waiting in New Zealand to be inspected including my namesake - several excellent snapshots have given me a v'good idea of the beloved "Missus" & little E.L.F. and a v'good description of the new house sounds just the sort of place I should like to finish up with myself. Poor old Harry won't be changed v much I expect only a bit stiffer and leading a rather painful existence I fear. Do you think fibrositis gives one a faint idea of that vile "osteo" thank goodness my trace has long gone. I'm going to be jolly careful not to get it again - I shall write again if I succeed in looking up Charlie or Van or Adria or the Todds but at the pace set by the lawyers and Trustees who all boiled down to one unfortunate old fellow engaged in a hopeless task of searching for ancient documents among the ruins of his office in Leadenhall I don't see me away till November & may have to put off visits till the spring - poor old Arthur will feel terrible the old place passing out of family hands (after a century & a half like Bowerswell) but the accumulations weren't a quarter as bad as Ella was there to scatter them. These didn't belong to us so I couldn't do v much - as G.V. (Gordons Valley) remains in their hands you will often see B & P (Bertha & Percy) down & have Rachel, if that is of much benefit. I hope I shall get my promised photo of the family as Union Bank of Australia 70 Cornhill will have my address (if I remember to give it them) & so will Bertie C/o Alex Latto, George St. Life goes on as usual & we are tackling the fruit picking at least the "Vacus" was to jam & bottle & store in my garage for our separate uses - one family has found a house & gone & 13 souls remain & are desperately searching round though there is no hurry. Folk apply daily and if the maids weren't firm I daresay we should take them in so pitiful is their plight. Well old boy my love to you all and looking forward to our next happy meeting and meanwhile a photo and thank you for kind sympathy. (What does R.M.D. stand for?)¹ 3 July 46

1. RMD stands for Rural Mail Delivery.

Ada married Melville Jamieson GRAY [612] [MRIN: 180], son of George GRAY of Perth Sct [148] and Sophia JAMESON [7557], on 21 Feb 1939 in Marlborough WIL. (Melville Jamieson GRAY [612] was born in 1848 in Scotland and died in 1946 in Scotland.)