Bene Gibson Smyth is a little different from the writers I have researched for AWW over the last couple of years. This is partly because she was better known as a songwriter and composer than as a writer of stories or poetry, and what she did write was mostly for children. She is little known today, but did have a presence in her lifetime. Of course! Otherwise how would she have come to my attention! This post, like most of my recent Forgotten Writers posts, draws largely on the one I posted on AWW.

Bene Gibson Smyth

Bene Gibson Smyth (1883-1966) was a little hard to research. She has a brief entry in The Australian Women’s Register, and a little more in AustLit and the National Library of Australia’s manuscript catalogue, but no Wikipedia article or entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

As a result, the biographical details available for her are minimal, but here’s what I found. Bene Gibson Smyth was born Robina Gibson Hunter at North Sandridge, near Bendigo in Victoria, on 16 September 1883. She appears to have been the elder daughter. There is no information about where she was educated, but the brief biographies say that, in 1910, she married James Stuart Smyth at Newmarket in Melbourne. The notice in the Argus states that the wedding occurred at the “Flemington Presbyterian Church”. As far as I can tell, this would have been St Stephens, in Flemington. According to Wikipedia, Flemington includes the locality of Newmarket. The Smyths had three children, including a son, Ross Gibson Smyth. She died in 1966, in Ourimbah, New South Wales. Her married name was, according to The Australian Women’s Register, Robina Gibson Smyth. Presumably, Bene was a family nickname she used through her life. The main catch for researching her name, however, is not this first name issue, but occasional misspellings of Smyth to Smythe. (Fortunately, this is not as tricky as some naming issues.)

The National Library of Australia lists five books by her, for which she did both “words and music”: The lucky white horse (1928), Ten everyday songs for children (1931), Special day songs (1933), Ten new songs for children (1944), and Fairy clocks and other songs for children (c. 1954). The State Library of Victoria adds three single scores: That’s John and Saturday’s child (both 1929), and The road that runs down to the sea (1926, with words by Gertrude Hart, who was, herself, a children’s novelist, short story writer and poet).

Smyth’s papers in the National Library’s manuscript collection include ‘an album titled “Song stories for children”, c1946; a musical play, “The wishing well … adapted from Stories told by Little Miss Kookaburra” (alias Hazel Maude, who broadcast bedtime stories in Australia), c1936; and individual songs’. The Library adds that “some of the song lyrics are by Gertrude Hart” and that the papers include “a sheet of typewritten poems by Queensland writer Mabel Forrest*, with a covering note from the author”. Did Smyth know Mabel Forrest (albeit she died in 1935)? Was she going to – or did she set – Forrest’s poems to music? Mabel Forrest published several novels – plus other writing – between 1906 and 1928, and does have a Wikipedia entry.

Anyhow, it was easy to discover much more about Smyth, but these brief mentions of Gertrude Hart (1873-1965) and Mabel Forrest (1872-1935) suggest some level of involvement in the literary culture of her time. In terms of her presence, Trove searches reveal that her songs were often sung at school events (such as Speech Days) and set for children’s eisteddfods (and similar competitions). For example, her song “Four leaved clover” was set for the NSW State Eisteddfod in 1935; “A rainy day” was set for the Launceston Musical and Elocutionary] Competitions in 1939; and “On a Pine Trunk Grey” and “All on a Monday morning” were sung at the Gawler Primary School Annual Speech and Prize Giving Day in 1947. The recurrence of these occasions and the fact that the song choices vary suggest that her song books were known and well used.

Adults too performed her music, such as at an event held by the English-Speaking Union in Melbourne in November 1931. Titled “An Hour with Modern English and Australian Poets and Composers”, it included Mr J. Alexander Browne singing works from “the following composers.— Quilter, Hageman, Coleridge-Taylor, Edith Harrhy, Bene Gibson Smythe [sic], W. G. James, Elgar and Martin Shaw”. Many of these are still well-recognised composers.

Her most remembered work, however, is probably the song, “We would remember them” (also known as “Anzac Day”). Blogger Val Lennie wrote in 2018: “This was the title of a song/hymn we learnt at Fairfield Primary School, Victoria, Australia, in years prior to the outbreak of World War II … Every Anzac Day since I left the school in 1940, I sing it, although I never hear it sung as part of remembrance ceremonies”. A 2014 thread on The Mudcat Cafe discusses the song, with one responder discovering a reference to it in a thesis titled, “Classroom music in Victorian State Primary Schools, 1934 to 1981”, and sharing that ‘Bene Gibson Smyth’s ‘We Would Remember Them’ (also called ‘Anzac Day’) captures the innocence of the Australian boys who signed up for the Great War, with no idea of the horrors they would have to face’. The thread was still live in 2022.

Bene Gibson Smyth, then, was primarily a writer of songs, and was well-known during her times as such, but I did also find one short story of hers published in 1946. Titled “Belladonnas”, it is set in a bush hospital, and involves childbirth, a mysterious old woman and the enigmatic belladonna. Containing both realistic and fanciful elements, it provides yet another insight into who Bene Gibson Smyth might have been. You can read it here. (A line in it caught my attention. The matron protagonist walks along the hospital’s wide verandah where she notices that “the Leg Fracture and the Mastoid were helping each other’s recovery. It was checkers to-day”. This reminded me of poor Frank McCourt’s (Angela’s Ashes) childhood hospital experience, around 1941. He has typhoid, and, being lonely, talks with the equally lonely young diphtheria patient in a neighbouring room, but they are roundly told off by the matron who says, “I told ye there was to be no talking between rooms. Diphtheria is never allowed to talk to typhoid and visa versa.” No helping each other’s recovery there!)

Sources

Bene Gibson Smyth, “Belladonnas“, in Advocate, 22 June 1946 [Accessed: 11 May 2026]
Family Notices, in The Argus, 24 September 1910, p. 13. [Accessed: May 12, 2026]
Mudcat Cafe is an online forum and database dedicated to folk music, blues, and traditional music, and is archived by the Library of Congress
Papers of Bene Gibson Smyth (MS Acc11.044, National Library of Australia catalogue [Accessed: 11 May 2026]

All other sources are linked in the article.

* Forrest’s story,”Not an ordinary woman”, published under her first married name, M. Burkinshaw, was featured in an AWW post by Francie Finn.