Gumnut babies: the enigmatic author, May Gibbs
It’s 100 years since May Gibbs’ Gumnut Babies burst onto the children’s literary scene. Yet who was the enigmatic woman behind the revolutionary bush babes?
Acanny businesswoman, adept at marketing her talents nationwide in an era when women were not meant to be doing such things. An illustrator for Britain’s suffragette movement as well as a creator of patriotic postcards for our World War I diggers. An early greenie. An icon on the scale of England’s Beatrix Potter, she created enduring legends of Australiana that remain tucked into all our hearts – our first local, non-indigenous fairytales. She is the magnificent, incomparable, enigmatic May Gibbs.
Born in England in 1877 to an artistic middle-class family, they came to Australia when little Cecilia May Gibbs was just four years old, moving originally to Adelaide, then Perth. She was precociously talented – first published as an illustrator aged 12. In her early 20s, May attended art school in London and went back and forth to England three times. At 36, on the eve of World War I, she made her final journey home to Australia, then settled in Sydney for good. And what a gift to the nation that was.
The time was ripe – with war imminent, there was huge demand for nationalistic images, a veeringto our own unique flora and fauna as opposed to the alien landscape of England. In 1913, illustrating the work of author and fellow legend Ethel Turner, May drew a cluster of naked “bush babies” peering from their gumnuts. The idea came to her “in the middle of the night”. She knewshe was onto something – she instantly took out a Commonwealth copyright registration. May’s bush creatures were inspired by “memories of West Australia’s flowers and trips to Blackheath [in the Blue Mountains region west of Sydney]”.
She was enchanted by the Australian bush, a keen observer, never without her notebook. “Everything always had a character and everything came alive to me,” she once said.
Sensing a golden opportunity at a time of extreme nationalism, May organised a printer to produce Gumnut Baby bookmarks and propaganda postcards for soldiers. “I promised the printer that I would pay him as soon as
I had the money in and he was nice enough to print them for me before I gave him a penny.” By the end of 1914, May had calendars, pictures and more than 30 postcards in production. Her drawings were conquering the nation.
In 1916, May achieved her dream after years of rejection – a published book. Two, in fact, and tiny – just as Beatrix Potter produced her early releases in a small format. They were Gumnut Babies and Gum-Blossom Babies, the publishing sensation of the war years. Australia’s children finally had someone telling them their own stories, inspired by their own beloved bush that they tramped through. Snugglepot and Cuddlepie followed in 1918. It opens with a plea for conservation – “Humans, please by kind to all Bush Creatures, and don’t pull flowers up by the roots”. May was always passionate about bush preservation.
She admitted that, to her, “Ordinary, conventional fairies with wands and starry crowns never did appeal.” May’s drawings of Australian flora also astounded botanists because they were so rigorously, scientifically accurate – and instructive. The evil Banksia Men she illustrated so terrifyingly can remain on trees for years and need fire to pop them open and drop their seeds. So how did May have a Banksia Man finally destroyed? By Mr Lizard throwing him into a fire, of course.
May was always working, not just on her Gumnut series, but on a growing range of magazine covers, cartoons and newspaper illustrations. “I find work my greatest pleasure and Sundays are very tedious. I’m always glad when Monday comes again,” she once said.
A notepad and pencil lived in her pocket, and holidays to Canberra and gardening sojourns were constantly interrupted by sketching. “The stories just rolled out of me.”
May’s life as an artist was unconventional and reclusive. She was able to pay her way, independent of her family, rare for a woman of that era. She was an excellent businesswoman, negotiating a higher royalty with her publisher, Angus & Robertson, and was also an inspiration for modern-day merchandising by producing calendars, handkerchiefs, pottery and cards.
“Everything always had a character and ... came alive to me.”
May was empowered, avant-garde, entrepreneurial, audacious – a pioneering, workaholic Australian businesswoman.
She married late, at 42, to a mining agent. They built a harbourside home, Nutcote, in Sydney’s Neutral Bay. It’s an artist’s dream of a dwelling, with a tiny kitchen – she wasn’t a cook – but the most glorious studio, with windows on three sides opening out to the sparkling harbour. Her sloping desk is still there today for anyone to visit. Her cherished garden has a tall gum and a gnarly old banksia tree for constant observation. She was happily married for 12 years before her husband passed away. They had no children – her creations were her babies. “To me they were always alive,” she gushed.
May’s gumnut illustrations captured children at their most delicious – that toddler stage of maximum fleshiness when you just want to eat them with kisses. She drew inspiration from the delighted reaction of children around her. “That gave me the greatest love and strength to make the books.” May’s creations are still in print a century after first appearing and not many Australian writers can lay claim to that distinction. Lisa Berryman, Harper Collin’s Children’s Associate Publisher, says, “When May Gibbs’ work was first published, what a breath of fresh air it must have been for children who had been fed a diet of traditional English storybooks. May created a world – set in the Australian bush that she loved and always wanted to preserve – that we could recognise and identify. She then filled her wondrous world with the most adorable – and also scary – characters, who are now icons and continue to delight children.” Whether we’re born and bred Aussies or came here later in life, we all know May’s cherubic Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Her work is a tea towel. A bookmark. A curtain. A soft toy. A legend. A book that Crown Princess Mary’s first born, Prince Christian, was given by us, the nation – indeed, a book that babies all over Australia still receive from adults who remember the characters from their own childhood. Our beloved characters, of our beloved bush.