The Tailor and the Shipwright

by Robert Westphal

  The problem was what to do with his savings. There was no bank and those that provided ‘banking’ services were untrustworthy. There had been a number of cases whereby ‘bankers’ had disappeared with their depositor’s money and William was not going to be one of those.

  The only reliable store of money in the colony that Foster could identify was property. Since he had built his initial home in The Rocks, most of the area had now been built out and it was getting hard to find unoccupied land. He determined that if he could buy additional properties and rent them, he would have a secure asset base and a regular income stream from their rental.

  There were always properties coming up for sale as owners moved to new locations or passed away.

  Dawes Point is divided by a ridge; the eastern side was The Rocks. Foster decided that the westerly side was less desirable as it faced the setting sun and in summertime became intolerably hot. Where his home currently was located, on the eastern side, he not only received the morning sun that was extremely desirable in the wintertime but also a cooling afternoon breeze in summertime.

  For the time being he decided to watch and wait. There were always owners who were more desperate than others and from whom you could buy property at a cheaper price. He would keep his ear to the ground and do more research on the prices at which properties were being exchanged.

  On the home front, while young William continued to grow, Maria’s depression was not improving. Her depression had been exacerbated recently by the death of her father in 1815, which followed the loss of her mother in 1810. She was lonely and longed for her former Norfolk Island community. Even the close location of her brother Nicholas did not provide enough support for her; he was often away working with a crew on local merchant vessels and absent when she most needed him.

  There was something missing from her life in The Rocks. The people were hospitable and friendly towards her, but she missed the shared history, the long-term companionships and close relationships that were so much a part of her previous life. There was little William could do to help lift her from the gloom that engulfed her. Maria was constantly crying and William junior was suffering from her lack of attention.

  Maria’s brother Nicholas had joined the crew of the Hawkesbury Packet, a sloop-rigged boat, launched and constructed in Cockle Bay. It sailed between Sydney and Newcastle. At the end of June 1816 the Packet’s return from Newcastle was overdue. There had been no information dockside and Maria and William had grown increasingly concerned as to the safety of the ship, the crew and more particularly Nicholas. While there could be many reasons for a ship’s late arrival, as each day passed they feared for the worst.

  Gradually information leaked back to the waterfront as members of the crew of the Hawkesbury Packet started to return to the harbour. Information gleaned from these crewmen indicated that the Packet had arrived in Newcastle behind schedule due to a storm, and there was two crew members unaccounted for, including Nicholas Thompson.

  The story of Nicholas’s fate was later published in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser on Saturday 6 July 1816, and it was from that article that William and Maria became fully aware of the tragedy that had befallen him. It read as follows:

  The Hawkesbury Packet, belonging to Mr Solomon Wiseman, of Sydney, and commanded by Mr Edward Watson, was driven considerably to the northward, and it was obliged to take shelter in Port Stevens, where she anchored the 20th ult. When her provisions being nearly expended, without a prospect of soon getting out again, or any chance of a supply, two of the crew, George Yates and Nicholas Thompson, tended themselves to walk into the settlement of Newcastle, to procure a supply for the vessel, in which Mr Watson and two other men remained.

  Taking with them a small proportion of the slender stock of provisions that remained, they set out in the morning under the guidance of a native, in whose friendly disposition they thought they might confide; but he treacherously conducted them towards an encampment of his tribe, by whom the unfortunate men were immediately seized and stripped naked, plundered of their food, and compelled without a guide to resume their journey in the best manner they were able, at a most inclement season, which was rendered excessive by incessant torrents of rain.

  Having travelled some distance towards the seacoast, Thompson sunk beneath the weight of cold, fatigue, and famine; was seized with a violent shivering, and could proceed no further. In that deplorable condition his eyes were closed in death; and his companion, reduced to nearly an equally feeble and perishing condition, unable to stand erect, crawled three miles through a bush, and reaching the seaside after dark, was taken up by some people belonging to a lime boat …

  The fate of the unfortunate man, Nicholas Thompson, who was a native of Norfolk Island, and much esteemed for the integrity of his character, brings unwillingly to recollection similar sufferings which men have heretofore been doomed to …

  As Maria read this terrible news she became inconsolable. She had lost a dearest older brother, Nicko. As she thought of the terrible final days of Nicholas’s life, her life in Sydney now became intolerable.

  What had he done to deserve this fate? He was a hardworking man whose prospects were bright. She could console herself with the fact he had been brave to the end: setting out on a long trek to bring aid to the other members of the crew. In Maria’s mind none of these positive thoughts could overcome her loss.

  William considered a number of alternatives to soothe his wife but they came to naught. He tried to encourage her to take more interest in her new life and child but struggled to find a way to lift her spirits.

  In the end, however, he came to the realisation that the only alternative was to put Maria and William junior on a boat to Van Diemen’s Land. In his heart of hearts he hoped that by sending Maria south she might get better and return to Sydney to him when fit and able. However, he was also aware that she might never return; she might build a new life in Van Diemen’s Land with her former community from Norfolk Island.

  And so it was, eleven months following Nicholas’s death, on 14 May 1817, Maria Foster and William junior boarded Rosetta southbound for Hobart Town. The Rosetta manifest records Maria’s departure.

  There was no bitterness between William and Maria. There was no divorce. If at a future time either party remarried they intended not to disclose their previous status. They would ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ as it were. There were many unrecorded relationships in the colony with children born out of wedlock and no one would query another one. People would assume they had never been married.

  William immediately felt their absence. On returning from work each day the house was deadly quiet. Even though he was relieved he did not have to go through the agony each evening of Maria’s sorrows, her chair was now empty and there was no conversation to be had. William junior’s absence was especially noticeable. The joy on his face with Daddy’s arrival home William sorely missed.

  William intended to stay in touch with Maria and William junior. He was in Van Diemen’s Land from time to time and would look them up to make sure everything was satisfactory.

  Meanwhile Governor Macquarie recognised the dilemma of the principal merchants and small businessmen. The stopgap measure of the Spanish florins did not fully work. The settlement still went about its business using promissory notes, merchant notes, store receipts, book accounts and payments in kind.

  In 1817, while ignoring opposition from England, Macquarie established the Bank of New South Wales. At last craftsmen like William Foster had a place where money could be deposited with some safety.

  22.

  Shell Cove

  MIDDLE HARBOUR, 1818

  Having decided to remain in Hunters Meadows, Tommy, Barney and Margaret continued to expand the farm. The initial two acres Tommy and Kelly had cleared in 1812 had been enlarged to sixteen acres by 1818. This had taken a lot of hard work, but it was now paying off for them.

  The expanded farmable area was divided into three sections: cro
pping, orchard and farm animals. The area under crops was ten acres; the orchard was two acres, with the farm animals penned in the remainder. The original goat had died and the farm animals now included two pigs and seven cows. At the end of 1818 they had stored 120 kilos of wheat and 840 kilos of maize on the farm. They regularly sold their produce in the markets. The farm had become very productive.

  In order to increase their self-sufficiency, Barney and Margaret established an acre of vegetable and herb garden around their home. They had erected fences around Barney’s cattle yard to enclose some recently acquired goats and cattle. Barney still had no legal title to the land.

  Bungaree and his mob still occupied the area on Middle Head granted to him by Governor Macquarie; an area known as Bungaree’s farm.

  As Anastasia had reached the age of seven it meant she could increasingly contribute to the running of the farm. Tommy was very keen to educate her. He knew the benefits of being able to read and write. So many in the colony could not do so. However, being out on the farm made it impossible for Anastasia to receive any formal education. He tried his hardest but it proved extremely difficult to get her to concentrate on the subjects at hand. She was more interested in matters around the farm such as feeding the animals, collecting blackberries and catching fish, to name but a few.

  Tommy persevered and eventually was successful. Her reading and writing skills slowly developed.

  The O’Neils and the Kearns were no longer the only Europeans in this part of the North Shore. More settlers were now inhabiting the surrounding bush and erecting huts. Many of the huts were built on land that had not been authorised or approved.

  Tommy, from time to time, continued to turn his mind to his Irish daughters, Eliza and Mary Ann Bridget. He wondered whether he should apply to the Governor to have them brought to Sydney. They were both now over twenty. As the town was so short of women he believed an application was likely to be favourably looked upon. The government was willing to pay the cost of resettlement so it was just a matter of Tommy preparing and lodging a written application. However, he was unsure whether the girls wanted to emigrate in the first place. And in the year it took them to respond they could easily change their minds, even if they initially responded positively to his letter. It would not be appropriate to worry the government if the girls had no desire in the first place.

  Tommy sat down at his home one afternoon and drafted a letter to Dublin seeking his daughters’ views on the matter. If their response came back positive then he would approach the Governor; otherwise, he would let the matter drop. The turnaround in correspondence would take, at best, twelve months. Between that correspondence and his application to the Governor and finding a suitable passage, years could pass and other events could overtake their departure. Without wasting any more time he went to town and posted the letter to his Eliza and Mary Ann Bridget.

  While Tommy was sending his letter to his daughters he noticed a letter addressed to Mr B Kearns awaiting collection. Tommy signed for the letter and delivered it to Barney when he got back to Hunters Meadows. It turned out it was a letter from Barney’s niece, Catherine Kearns, who was sailing on the Elizabeth departing Cork, Ireland mid-1818. She had been sentenced to a term of seven years. If the ship made reasonable time, its arrival date would be around November or December 1818.

  Often in the afternoon after a hard day’s work, the ‘family’ would take extended walks around the foreshore. In summertime they would bathe at the water’s edge and fish for the evening meal. They enjoyed strolling west along the beach just above the tidal line. Then they would walk over the rocks on the nearby point to a much smaller beach they named Shell Cove. At this beach the waterway narrowed and the long beach opposite was clearly discernable, but out of reach without a boat.

  They named the beach Shell Cove because of the unusual and wide variety of shells that could be collected on the beach. To sit on the beach as the sun set was a delight with the setting sun turning the sandstone on the opposite shoreline a deep red. Anastasia had great fun walking on the beach, as there was a lot to capture her attention, including the soldier crabs that scurried to and fro at the tidal line. She enjoyed building barricades and placing the crabs inside the sandy wall she had erected. She would then watch them attempting to escape. They always did.

  Tommy kept thinking of his childhood in comparison with Anastasia’s. Certainly his journey to New South Wales had benefited his youngest daughter.

  In the months following the letter received from Catherine Kearns, they monitored the anticipated shipping arrivals. When the Shipley moored on 18 November 1818, they received confirmation that the next vessel was expected to be Elizabeth. And so it was because two days later Elizabeth tied up at Port Jackson.

  Barney waited at the quay to greet his niece. He had no idea how to recognise her; she had been only eight when he had last seen her. The convicts came ashore and were lined up in the traditional way. He looked along the line. There were at least 100 women and a large number of children.

  Barney had been standing waiting for over an hour when he heard Catherine Kearns’s name being called and saw a woman step forward and identify herself. He made his way over to her and they greeted each other with joy.

  Barney introduced himself to the Prisoner Inducting Officer and had Catherine signed over to himself as a servant. Many of the women were destined to be taken by boat to the Female Factory at Parramatta. Catherine was pleased that Barney was there to take her out of the lineup as awful stories associated with prostitution had been circulating about the Female Factory.

  There was now quite a gathering at Hunters Meadows with Tommy and Anastasia, Barney and Margaret and Catherine Kearns. There were more hands to complete the chores but also more mouths to feed.

  Tommy and Barney kept up the work schedule right through 1819, clearing a further nine acres. They were able to get further help from indentured convict labourers. These were men who had recently arrived in the colony and who would be off government stores while working at Hunters Meadows. Tommy and Barney and the women weren’t strong enough to do all the work by themselves. Tommy was now well into his sixties and Barney had just turned fifty. To provide food to an indentured convict was well worth the cost of their labour. In addition, they became part of the family in the period they lived at Hunters Meadows.

  While expanding the cleared acreage they had reduced their cropping area for wheat and maize by a couple of acres. The acreage of the garden and the orchard barely changed over the twelve months but at the same time they had increased the number of cows from seven to eight and the number of pigs from two to eight. Their grain storage provided the feed they needed for the increased number of livestock.

  One day, Tommy had received a response from his daughters that they wished to journey to Sydney and find a new life. They also informed him that his sister had passed away. So in 1820 Tommy petitioned Governor Macquarie, to have his daughters, Eliza and Mary Ann Bridget, brought from Dublin.

  In the application following the death of his sister, Tommy asked that enquiries in Dublin be directed to former friends, Mr John Morgan, Patrick Street, Dublin and to Mrs Howarth, silk mercer, of 12 Mill Street, Dublin. Both these streets were in walking distance of Tommy’s former address in Francis Street.

  Meanwhile Barney and Margaret had been pondering ways of finding alternative sources of income – namely, cash. Their farm, in collaboration with Tommy’s, kept them comfortably well fed and reasonably off. However, they were always at the mercy of the weather and the prices they could receive at the market. Invariably whenever they had a good crop so did everyone else and the prices would plunge.

  It occurred to Barney one night, when they were sharing a meal with Bungaree and his people, that an opportunity might exist to improve their circumstances right here at Middle Harbour. Bungaree admired the O’Neil and Kearns’s farm and orchard and thought his people should be able to farm on Middle Head. While Bungaree and his people still occupied th
e Middle Head farm, Bungaree spent more and more of his time ceremonially welcoming visitors to Port Jackson.

  ‘Barney,’ he said, ‘I want my people to grow crops like you two do. It’s important we learn. There is less and less bush tucker available as the white men destroy the bush.’

  ‘We can help you but your mob need to want to manage the crop; otherwise, it will wilt and there will be nothing to eat,’ said Barney. ‘Let me think about it.’

  Margaret and Barney thought Governor Brisbane, who had replaced Macquarie, might appoint Barney to help Bungaree.

  Accordingly in June 1822, Barney wrote a letter to Brisbane seeking to be appointed as an Overseer of Aborigines at Georges Town (Georges Heights, Middle Harbour):

  To Sir Thomas Brisbane K G B Governor of New South Wales

  The Humble Memorial of Barnard Kearns

  Respectively herewith

  That Excellency’s Memorialist a resident in this Colony 23 years and who arrived per ship Friendship, Captain Reid – from his knowledge of assignee Black of this Colony and the desire of Bungaree, a native Chief, that a European should be placed across these natives who reside at George’s Town in the Cove of Sydney to instruct in the various branches of agriculture as well as during their occasional absence to protect the shacks erected there.

  Your Memorialist being well known to the said aborigines is sensible that by this method he would be enabled to make them cultivate the land, thereby afford them provisionment and protection when the inclemency of the weather should impede them out to their accustomed preference.

  Your Excellency a facilitation of this such the enablement whereof are safely at your behest would relieve the present wants of your Petitioner who is struggling with care and diligence to support a wife who has been on crutches since 18 months, and an infant child.