AustLit

Captain Charles Charles Pinney, son of Mr Henry Edward Pinney and Mary Jane Long, was born in Benalla, Victoria in 1883. After his education, Charles worked as a draughtsman for the Lands Department in Port Moresby before enlisting, serving in WWI 1914-18 in the AIF. He trained in Egypt as a private in the machine gun section of 4th Light Horse Regiment before landing of the shores of Gallipoli, without their horses, between 22 and 24 May 1914. Charles was wounded at Long Pine on 7 August 1914, but he returned to Gallipoli under the 5th battalion, 2 Infantry Brigade, working as 2nd Lieutenant before year’s end (Australian War Memorial (AWM)).

After his battalion was moved to the Western front, he was awarded the promotion of Lieutenant in France before becoming an intelligence officer for his brigade. After the battle of Pozieres in July 1916, Charles was awarded his final promotion to Captain on 24 March, 1917 and was awarded the Military Cross later that year for ‘conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty when in charge of a company in an attack” (AWM).

Charles married Mary Murray, daughter of Sir Hubert Murray, on 30 January 1918 in England, and after he finished his service, 14 January 1920, Charles returned to Australia with Mary. In 1920, he became Commissioner for lands and Director of Mines and Agriculture at Papua and in 1930 sat on the legislative and executive councils in Papua. Charles and Mary has two children, Maura and Peter, before Charles relocated his family for his Norfolk Is. administrator job in 1932. Charles retired to Sydney in 1937 and passed away November 19, 1945 on his 62nd birthday (AWM).

After meeting Pinney in Edirne, Dutch traveller Robert "Bob" Marchand became a companion to Pinney during his expedition from Greece to Burma. Pinney affectionately recalls his first impressions of Marchand in Dust on My Shoes, “the debonair, the cynical, the light-hearted, the proud and resolute Marchand; the budding philosopher, the youthful sage, the peerless companion” (43).

After parting ways on several occasions, they would cross paths in their journeys on several occasions, keep in touch by exchanging correspondences with one another throughout Europe and India. In these letters, the two traded information over the locations of friendly consulates and ambassadors such that the other could take advantage of hospitality, often money, a place to sleep and a lunchbox to see them on their way (Marchand). In July 1948, Marchand was taken by the Burmese Chindwin River during a period of severe flooring.

Pinney later visited Marchand's family in Europe.

Born in 1928, Dutch-born Anna was another one of Pinney’s travel companions, appearing in books Who Wanders Alone and Anywhere but Here. Anna’s early journeys saw her travel to Paris, Switzerland, Venice, Yugoslavia and Athens, where she met Pinney working as a night editor for newspaper, and she as a nanny for English editor with an Australian wife. Anna left her job after an unspecified incident so Peter and Anna travelled to Italy, parted ways, and Anna proceeded to join the Algiers to Cape Town auto rally.

Anna, met Pinney once more in Bulawayo located in modern day Zimbabwe where they worked for English Opera Company for play called “Elizabeth II,” before later travelling through Bechuanaland by which point she was feeling homesick.

“After crossing the Congo, travelling on boats, through swamps and sleeping in flew infested huts I’d had enough. I got a lift to Lagos and then to Kano. From there I crossed the desert to Morocco with a big petrol tanker and landed for a while in Tangiers. Sill hitchhiking I went from there by boat to Spain, through to Nice and so back to Holland” (Meisner)

Peter wrote to Anna but Anna’s mother, not approving of the correspondences, withheld the letters and wrote back to Pinney saying Anna had left and was married, a revelation not learned by Anna until after the passing of her mother.

Anna married an English-South African engineer in 1955 and lived for 45 years in north and south Rhodesia, and South Africa and had three children.

In a letter to Pinney’s daughter, Sava, in 2002, Anna reflected on her time with her travel companion,

“On a whole PP has not much exaggerated – as far as I was there, but of course I cannot vouch for the whole book. Although, I think he was very trustworthy and I found him a real old fashioned gentleman. I did not try to contact him, because I thought – not hearing from him – that this was the end of a good friendship” (Meisner).

As detailed in Pinney’s Ride the Volcano, Alice was in New York City in the mid 1950 while working as a copywriter on Madison Avenue when she met Pinney. Together, they travelled across America to San Diego then went south. In 1958, Pinney married Alice atop of Volcano Irazu in Costa Rica, made their way to Canada’s west coast where Alice wrote for radio, Peter worked on salmon boats – here is where Sava was born. The two eventually arrived separately in Australia, marking the end of their marriage.

Sava is Peter’s only child and currently resides in Sydney. She has done extensive research and writing on her father, holds copyright over much of the Peter Pinney Collection in the Fryer Library archive, at the University of Queensland. Sava currently resides in the living and working in Sydney. She has an interest in her family tree and her research has proven invaluable for the creation of this article.