Personalities > Ethel Carmichael
Ethel Carmichael
The so-called Smooges or Smoodgers Cottages, on the eastern side of Jones Street, between Bowman and Harvey, were a row of houses, larger than usual in Pyrmont. They were owned by CSR and rented out to the more senior managerial staff. The name carried the implication that the occupiers had done more than just a good day’s work to merit such superior accommodation.
Living in less elegant company-housing in John Street, around the corner from Smoodgers, was Mrs Ethel Carmichael, who became known as the ‘Queen of Pyrmont’. Born in Pyrmont in 1886, she had strong CSR connections – her father-in-law, her husband, one son and a granddaughter all worked for CSR. Ethel herself, after a career as a tailoress, became a cleaner at the CSR research laboratory for 14 years, retiring in 1958. In 1986 the Sydney Morning Herald’s religious affairs reporter, Allan Gill, wrote an article to honour her hundredth birthday under the headline: QUEEN OF ULTIMO CELEBRATES A ‘QUIET’ CENTURY.
No smoking, no drinking, plenty of exercise and a ‘quiet life’ is the recipe offered by Mrs Ethel Carmichael, ‘Queen of Pyrmont-Ultimo’, who is 100 years old today. Quiet? Perhaps. But not uneventful. Mrs Carmichael, who must be the fittest centenarian in Australia, was for 70 years an active member of Sydney Flying Squadron 18-Footer Sailing Club, and continued to attend meetings until last year ... Easily the best known person in Pyrmont-Ultimo, Mrs Carmichael accepts her regal status with aplomb, and says she knows ‘absolutely everybody’ on the peninsula ... She has lived on the peninsula all her life. When she was a girl Pyrmont boasted shipyards, a tin smelter, the famous Pyrmont Baths – she was a member of Pyrmont Ladies' Amateur Swimming Club – and 25 hotels. At 16 she went to work for a city tailor, hand stitching waistcoats. In 1906, when she was 20, she married Robert Carmichael at St Bartholomew's Anglican Church, Pyrmont, now demolished ... Mrs Carmichael has outlived her husband, who died 44 years ago, and both her sons. As compensation she has 58 grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. I asked her if she would like to live to see the Bicentenary. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘They're spoiling Sydney like they spoilt Ultimo.’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 1986)
Ethel Carmichael did not live to celebrate Australia’s Bicentenary; she died in August 1987. She had been baptised and married at the local Anglican church, but St Bartholomew’s was no longer standing to receive and farewell her body. Instead she was received at St Bede’s, down the hill, and a Requiem Mass was celebrated by Father Jim Fowler. Sisters Teresa and Margaret, who used to lead the Rosary in Ethel’s John Street home, and cared for her in her last years, said of her: ‘She was like a little cock-sparrow, but she had a wonderful alertness of mind. Her life had given her great wisdom and a sense of real values. She was not swept away by affluence, like so many people are today. We will treasure her spirit. No-one will ever replace her.’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 25 August 1987)
Source
Colin Fowler, 150 Years on Pyrmont Peninsula : the Catholic Community of St Bede 1867-2017
