The Diary of Lise Joubert
The chance purchase of an exceptional oil miniature of a young woman led to the
discovery of a fascinating story behind the beautiful Sydney Suburb of Hunters Hill.
To purchase this important piece of Sydney history, please see the listing here at Cache Antiques.
By Elizabeth Cheung for Cache Antiques.
Notes: This article was published in the Autumn 2025 issue of Antiques to Vintage Magazine. Since publication, we have learned that the artist who painted this beautiful miniature was painted by Legendre. There were several notable artists bearing the surname who were active in France during that time period, such as Jean-François Legendre-Héral. Research remains ongoing and any updates will be posted on the website.
The inscription on the back reveals it to be a rare portrait of Louise Marie Bonnefin in her youth, before she became Lise Joubert, the wife of Didier Numa Joubert who was one of Sydney’s most prominent merchants and ‘a key player in the history of Hunters Hill’. Although she lived largely in the shadow of her husband, Lise’s diary as translated by Karin Speedy on behalf of the Hunters Hill Historical Society casts new light on her role in establishing the Jouberts’ success. Examining the early years of one of Hunters Hill’s most prominent settler families, we also explore their role in Sydney society, including the notorious Sutton Affair.
Born Louise Marie Bonnefin in 1815, she spent her early childhood in Saint-Malo, Brittany. Lise was the first child of Pierre Michel Bonnefin, a former naval officer in Napoleon’s army and by then a merchant ship’s officer, and Louise-Laurence Duchêne. Although stated in Lise’s birth certificate to be
husband and wife, the two did not in fact legally marry until 1825. Soon afterwards, Lise’s younger brother Pierre was born.
At that time France had yet to have any possessions in the Pacific. By sending small groups of settlers to various Pacific islands, the state hoped to pave its way to gaining a foothold in the region. With France still reeling from the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, the allure of new lands and
opportunities proved too much to resist. By the 1830s the Bonnefins had settled in Kororāreka, New Zealand, where they had a modest estate of
approximately eight acres.
This brings us to the period in which this portrait was painted. Deciphering the inscription on the back of the painting, the portrait was painted c.1831 when the Bonnefin family was in the Pacific region. At the age of 16, Lise Joubert would have been a young lady on the cusp of adulthood. Her upswept hairdo, elegantly adorned with a tortoiseshell comb, along with her jewellery indicates a family of some wealth and status. Her evening dress, likely made from silk as well as her dainty belt indicates a family well-connected enough to know the latest trends from Paris as well as the ability to have them made. Her keen eye for fashion would continue into adulthood; in 1853, Lise noted in her diary the purchase of two silk dresses and a velvet coat in Sydney.
By this time a teenager, Lise would likely have had little knowledge of her father’s business holdings but meeting one of his business acquaintances would prove fateful. It is unknown when exactly the Bonnefin family and Didier Joubert first crossed paths, but by 1839 Lise and Didier Joubert were married.
Didier Joubert was born in Angoulême, France and when he left in 1837 for Australia at the age of 21, he did so as an agent for the Barton & Guestier winery. He arrived in Sydney on May 25 and quickly formed connections, purchasing sight unseen some land in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. Travelling there soon after, he became acquainted with the first Roman Catholic Bishop in New Zealand, Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier, as well as other members of the Marist Order. Given how closely knitted the French community was in Kororāreka, particularly around the church, one likelihood is that Didier first met Lise at church or a church social.
His earliest known voyage to New Zealand was in September 1839 and scarcely two months later, Didier and Lise were married. The speed of the wedding makes it almost certain that it was arranged beforehand, and that Lise as well as the Bonnefin family ‘had almost certainly crossed paths prior to Joubert’s trip to New Zealand’ (Speedy, 2023).
While Lise’s betrothal was certainly arranged by her father, it is also likely that he would have asked and received her consent. Young, handsome and eligible, Didier Joubert would have been the cream of the crop among the rather scarce prospects to be found in the colonies, as well as sharing the mutual interests of seafaring and sugar planting with Bonnefin senior. The young couple were speedily married, thus uniting Pierre Bonnefin and Didier Joubert’s shared business interests. With Bishop Pompallier presiding over the marriage, Didier Joubert’s ties to the Marist Order became closer. With the Marists eager to secure a base in the Pacific from which they could begin their missions, they found in Didier Joubert a useful ally. In 1844 during a trip to Paris, he would meet Marist Father Dubreul who would enthusiastically endorse Joubert to Marist founder Jean- Claude Colin, and so Joubert would gain the lucrative opportunity of providing shipping services for the Marists around the Pacific.
Thus the newlyweds had little time to settle down to married life. Lise and Didier would move to Sydney, where they initially settled in Macquarie Place. Having founded his own wine import business with Jeremiah Murphy in 1841, Didier would have found Sydney a far more convenient place to conduct business, particularly as he then went on to assist the Marists in securing their first Villa Maria on Tarban Creek in 1847. Shortly afterwards, he and Lise would secure Mary Reiby’s nearby Figtree Farm, not only to settle on their behalf, but to be closer to Didier’s main business partners.
Didier Joubert continued making frequent trips between Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and France. His business interests, particularly in the luxury goods of wine and sugar, rapidly secured his place in the Sydney business community alongside his business partner Jeremiah Murphy.
Despite its charming name, life on Figtree Farm was hardly idyllic. While Didier was away on his far-flung voyages and building his business empire, Lise was solely responsible for maintaining standards. On her shoulders rested the rearing of their four children, the crops and the livestock as well as entertaining the Jouberts’ acquaintances, the latter being invaluable in subtly expanding their social network.
While Hunters Hill was well situated in terms of shipping and proximity to the Sydney business district, from a horticultural perspective it wasn’t quite as appealing. In contrast to the fertile lands of Gladesville and Ryde, Hunters Hill had the disadvantages of steep and rocky terrain, arid soil and a lack
of freshwater. While this hardly deterred Didier due to the international nature of his business, it must have made Lise’s duties of tending the farm and managing the household that much more difficult. Few records survive from that period, but one of Lise’s diaries from 1853 provides valuable insight into her mind and daily life.
Lise Joubert’s diary was found among the Hunters Hill Historical Society archives in 2022. It is a daily record of her life on Figtree Farm in 1853 and beyond, when virtually nobody else was living in the area. The weather, recorded every day, was crucial to the success of the farm and the diary reveals Lise’s semi-independence as a woman managing her farm and business while her husband travelled the world and built his empire.
Her diary also served as a ledger in which she recorded expenses and the household income as well as the crops and livestock which provided
both sustenance and livelihood. While Didier certainly provided the majority of the Jouberts’ income, Lise recorded in 1853 an income of £91—5 - no small feat for a woman raising children and maintaining a respectable home, as well as hosting her husband’s friends and acquaintances.
Lise’s early years at Figtree Farm would have been a hard, somewhat isolated life. The French community of Hunters Hill was not only removed from English-speaking Sydney linguistically, but also geographically. Going to Sydney required the catching of the Bedlam Ferry, before then being transferred to a Sydney-bound steamer, then finally to a waiting coach. Until the 1850s, the Jouberts would only have the Thompson family as close neighbours.
As thus, the many visitors that Lise and her husband received were meticulously recorded, providing insight into the Francophone community of Sydney. Count Gabriel de Milhau, Léonard Étienne Bordier and the French Consul Louis Sentis were among the prominent figures that visited Figtree Farm and who would later become residents of Hunters Hill. Didier’s other reason for choosing Hunters Hill as his primary area of residence would prove prescient: the area’s stunning water views, which proved irresistible to many of Sydney’s well-heeled.
As the years went by, Didier slowly developed Hunters Hill, building beautiful sandstone villas such as Passy, Consul Santis’ residence, as well as his own stately home St Malo. Together with his brother Jules Joubert, who settled in Hunters Hill in 1854, he laid the foundations of Hunters Hill as a community.
Lise’s role, although relegated to the margins of history, was invaluable. She not only kept Figtree Farm and later St Malo in order while Didier was away, but recorded in her diary were visits with other ladies such as Mrs Moore, Mrs Smith and Mrs Murphy - not only friends, but “wives of her husband’s business associates” (Speedy, 2023). Dinners at the Consul’s House as well as visits by Mrs Sentis were recorded in her diary, understated hints at her role in keeping the Jouberts up to date and socially well-connected. She would also receive her husband’s seafaring acquaintances.
Didier’s career, however, was marred by one particularly notorious incident: the case of The Sutton, in which 65 Pacific Islanders were kidnapped and intended to be sold into slavery. While in 1858 moral outrage was commingled with geo-politicking and legal wrangling, to the modern reader it is clear that responsibility rests on every link of the chain that noosed these innocent victims: the ship’s crew and captain, the shipowner Didier Joubert, and the French Consul Louis Sentis as well as Joubert’s agent, John D’Allemagne - the delegate who veneered the sordid affair with the fiction of legal respectability.
While the scandal subsided quickly in 1858, we should not be so soon to forget this first known case of Australian ‘black birding’.
While it is unknown what Lise thought of this incident, as a woman in 19th century Australian society it would scarcely have mattered. All we know is her dispassionate notes of the aforementioned men involved in the Sutton Affair and their frequent visits to Figtree Farm in 1853. It has been said that
her referring to natives as ‘blacks’ in her diary was dehumanising (Speedy, 2023), but then again it might be noted that she also rarely mentioned her own children.
The complicated history of Didier and Lise Joubert remains shrouded in the mists of time, but perhaps the country town obituary of their daughter-in-law by Margaret Joubert best sums it up: “The family was well and favourably known, as one of the very old French families of Sydney… The name of Joubert was linked with the early history of Sydney, and will be remembered to a greater degree in and about that city than the name is known locally.”
References:
The author is particularly indebted to the Hunters Hill Historical Society as well as the translation of Lise Joubert’s diary by Karin Speedy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200926191341id_/https://shimajournal.org/issues/v14n2/13.-Speedy-Shima-v14n2.pdf
http://huntershillmuseum.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/KS-BS-Trans-Lise-Joubert-diary.pdf
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/192352316?searchTerm=Lise%20Joubert
https://huntershilltrust.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/HHT-JOURNAL-NOVEMBER-2015-RF.pdf
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/32188851/4261741
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13412391?searchTerm=Lise%20Joubert