Extract from 'Armorial Vaudois'

To Australia

Henry Tardent's account of the family's journey to Australia, and the first couple of  months in Queensland makes very interesting reading, particularly the details of what was a very challenging journey in its day.  A brief biography of Henry Tardent's can be read on the Australian History of Biography website. He was joined by his brother Marc Alexis Tardent and together they established the Tardent Brothers winery in Roma. 

Hortense Tardent who was born in the Swiss colony of Chabag, was a distant cousin, grand-daughter of the colony's founder Louis Vincent Tardent.  They met by chance when Henry stumbled on the colony when he was earning his living as a tutor in Poland.  They married, and as the political situation in the Ukraine became more difficult, emigrated to Australia in 1887.  

Hortense and Henry were responsible for putting together the first family tree from the records Louis Vincent Tardent took with him from Switzerland. They were records copied by David Tardent who became the Schoolmaster of Vevey from Le Sepey communal archives. This was fortunate, as all these records were destroyed by fire at the end of the 19th century. 

Boom and Bust! Financial crisis in Australia in 1893 spread to Roma in Queensland, and saw the Tardent winery go under in a way that was common to many Australian businesses.  This account of the Tardents in Roma, by Felix Tardent, makes interesting reading.  Paul Tardent, eldest son of Henri and Hortense, was sent out to become a jackaroo on neighbouring properties at an early age His letters home, written in August 1891,  make poignant reading, and give a clear picture of the day to day concerns of life in the bush.

World War 1 found  four Australian Tardents fighting in France. Henri's sons, Edward, Emile and Jules, and Oswald, son of Mark Alexis, brother of Henri.  Australian Defence service records may be searched on line. They all distinguished themselves in the terrible milieu of war service in Europe. Edward, with the 42nd batallion, enlisted at age 18, was killed in action in Belgium in 1917, age 20. Emile on the other hand, was 36 years old, refused officers commission to stay with his men in the trenches,  and was awarded a Military Medal for bravery, returning to Australia with a bullet in the leg and a gas cough.  Emile Tardent wrote for Australian papers such as "The Bulletin"  from the trenches of the Somme. Jules Tardent was awarded the French Croix de Guerre.

Between the wars was quite a different period of history. An interesting literary Australian Tardent was Percy Stephensen. He was an associate of  luminaries such as Aldous Huxley and Alistair Crowley in UK, and  Norman and Jack Lindsay in Australia. Some of his views were exceedingly controversial. As in fact were Henry's. However I hesitate to judge given that they were the views of their respective times, and a period in Australian history which was characterised  by a relatively few settlers of European origin in a vast and different continent in a very different geo-political sphere of the world from western Europe.

Henry's son Jules was instrumental in recording, authored and published,  a fairly detailed social history of the Tardents in Australia.  The publication is catalogued in Australia government library catalogues.

World War 1

These photos were sourced from Australian military archives online. 

The Virtual War Memorial

The Australian War Memorial