On another farm at Broula, an area some 12 miles out of Cowra, was the Cummins family.  The father, Patrick, was Australian-born Irish and his wife, Brigetta,was from a German-speaking family named Rausch, from Luxembourg.  Her father, Nick Rausch, fought in the Crimean War before immigrating to Australia, bringing with him , as the ship’s notes record, his maid whom he later married.

Cummins Family. Monica on far left.
Back row: Jim, Will, Nick, Ursula. Centre row:  Parents, Bridget and Pat. Front row:  Monica, Pat, Gus, Alice, Brigetta

The eldest, Ursula, became a Brigidine nun and was a teacher. Alice, the eighth child, was a nursing nun with the Little Company of Mary. She was a theatre sister at the Order’s hospital at Ryde, Sydney and for a while she nursed at Hawera, Taranaki  doing general nursing and later managed the Mental Health Unit at Lewisham Hospital in Christchurch. Three of the Cummins boys, Patrick, Jim, and Gus entered the priesthood; Pat in the Passionist Order, and Jim and Gus as Redemptorists. Gus, because of ill-health was ordained later in life. In 1995 he celebrated the 50^th anniversary of his ordination. He died in 2006, aged 91, in the Orkney Islands. The two other daughters were Monica (the second child of the family) and Brigetta, the sixth child.

Of the remaining sons, Will, Nick and Tom all married. Nick had courted his lady friend for over 25 years, finally marrying when both her parents had died and he was 75. Unfortunately he lived only one year after their marriage. He was a great talker and had obviously inherited the Irish “gift of the gab’. After Pat’s death, Brigetta, in addition to her already large family, raised yet another child, Helen Dominic, after Helen’s mother had died in childbirth. Her mother had begged Brigetta to take her baby and bring her up.

The Cummin’s family were deeply religious Catholics;  they went 12 miles to Mass each Sunday in a horse and gig. During the winter, on frosty days, it was so cold that often they used to get out of the gig and run to keep warm. Bill is said to have thought Pat Cummins slightly eccentric, and Alice sometimes described her father as ‘a bigoted Irishman’.

Brigetta was generous and charitable, although at times she had to give her gifts without Pat’s knowledge.  At Christmas, when there was special food provided, the family would find that the left-overs such as cherries and other special treats which they had expected to have next day, had been given to a needy family.

The girls were all educated at the Cowra Convent School where Monica was a boarder.  She was an excellent scholar having come top of the class in many subjects and had received books as prizes. She became an expert needlewoman, producing beautiful embroidery and crochet and doing oil and silk paintings. Monica also played the violin. Her violin is now owned by Jacqueline who is a violin teacher and  the daughter of Monica’s eldest child, Marie.  When Monica left school she was kept at home to help with the younger members of the family. Tom, the youngest, was 16 years younger than Monica so she would have been busy with household duties and caring for her young siblings. She led a fairly sheltered life as did most other girls of that time.

The Cummins farm at one time consisted of 10,000 acres of fairly rough country; Pat Cummins had to relinquish half of his property during the Great Depression. Since then the property has been divided up into smaller holdings. The present owner, John Thornet, who is an ex Australian Rugby Captain, has 600 acres, which includes the old homestead. The back of the property is still fairly rough, but the front is great cropping country. Monica remembered droughts – one time there was no rain for two years. Bush fires would occur and when they threatened the buildings, the men ploughed a fire break around them.

Pat Cummins died in 1936 and his wife Brigetta, who survived him by 12 years, raised and sold turkeys to have some “pin money”. Tom had been the farmer of the family, and had managed the property but Nick,as the eldest son, was the sole inheritor of the farm.  Nick was a hopeless farmer and as the property became run down, he decided to sell it. Tom then trained as an electrician.  Mrs.Cass, a sister of Pat Cummins, widowed with no children, left her money to Brigetta, as she firmly believed that a woman must have independence.  With this inheritance, Brigetta bought a house in Cowra where she lived until her death in 1948. After Nick had sold the farm he bought another one at Theodore, Queensland, on the Dawson River.  When his niece Joan was working in Sydney in the 1950’s and wanted to visit him, he said it was “too rough” and instead came to see her in Sydney.

When Bill Anselmi (or Anson, as he was then) was courting  Monica, he was a young, good-looking man and must have swept Monica off her feet.  Naturally, as do all courting young men, he put his best foot forward with the Cummins family and was shown to be an excellent dish-dryer.