It was one thing to inveigh against the ‘convict filth’, as Father had done. It was another entirely to set out across the seas with these miserable souls for company. The most vicious criminals — murderers and the like — had already departed this world at the end of a rope. I imagine many of the felons who remained, sentenced to terms of seven and fourteen years — some for life — had simply sought desperate remedies for desperate lives. Whatever their crimes, they shared the same sorry fate. Their days and nights were filled with low bass moans, orders from the deck echoing down angled steps, the creaking of timbers, the jangling of chains, the lazy stretching of rope, wails of pain, dying gasps. A convict transport on the open sea sings with a score of hideous voices.
Thereafter my thoughts towards those huddled below deck were ruled more — as in truth they should have been from the outset — by my heart. I observed how the women cared for the children who fell ill with the ship’s motion, and how they suffered when illness spread below decks. Many died on that voyage — far too many.
After the first few months at sea the papists set up a small shrine to the dead — a roughly carved statuette of the Virgin Mary. She stood, I was told, in a wicker basket filled with scraps of paper on which the names of the departed and some lines of scripture had been scrawled. When I asked to go below decks to console them, Macquarie erupted: ‘It is not the done thing, and it is a thing that will not be done.’ He paused and his tone immediately softened. ‘Think my love,’ he went on, ‘of your health! Why, I have already lost …’ and his voice trailed off as his eyes left mine for the memory of hers.
On the journey out I absorbed myself in the journals of our naturalists, explorers and keen-eyed observers — Cook and Banks, Collins and Tench — and those of the French who had taken such a keen interest in New Holland. In the trunk nailed to the floor beside the bed I kept a small collection of novels, both English and French, which I hoped to trade with the ladies of the colony (I would be sorely disappointed in this as so few of them read for entertainment). And then there was my copy of Boswell’s Johnson, which I could always rely upon to nourish me when I hungered for high spirits.
More than once, in the depth of a dark night, Lachlan murmured her name in his sleep. I felt so sad for him. And so helpless. But it was my name that he cried during our raptures.
In the fourth month of the voyage, a fortnight after a break for repairs and fresh provisions in Rio de Janeiro, illness again broke out below decks. This time it spread like a blaze. I lost my appetite and became bilious. In the mirror I looked pale and drawn.
‘You are not yourself,’ said my husband as he tried to interest me in a bowl of thin broth.
‘I am all at sea,’ I quipped.
‘Your smile,’ he said with a grave air, ‘is feeble. But your spirit — strong enough in the circumstances.’
I took to my bed. The next day Lachlan felt my brow, gave a puzzled look, and called for the ship’s surgeon. Dr Crotty was surprisingly hale for a man who kept company with the sick and dying — it was said that he maintained his own pantry. He gave a wet smile, revealing a neat row of small yellow teeth, and informed me with perhaps more sadness than joy that I was pregnant. I sometimes wonder if men of his profession, who see so much suffering, realise how peculiar they have become — how deeply injured — as a consequence.
Crotty seemed blithe to my discomfort when he sat beside me and said, ‘The child, if in fact it survives the voyage, will be born on colonial soil and for that — the better diet, the air — you may be grateful. But let us first get you,’ he patted the sheets, ‘to terra firma. I have delivered three new lives already to the convicts and all’ — at least the smile had the courtesy to subside for want of conviction — ‘were in too short a time food for the fish.’ That he should offer such a tale to a pregnant woman!
I begged Crotty to keep news of my state from my husband for just a few weeks. He obliged by informing Lachlan that my indisposition was caused by the ship’s motion and I would certainly recover in calmer seas. It was well that he did so for I lost that child a few weeks later, shedding all my tears alone. After a deeply unpleasant examination the doctor gave me news from which I would never recover, though my outward health was soon restored. ‘Henceforth you may find that you can conceive,’ he said. ‘But I believe you may find it difficult to carry.’
It was time to tell my husband about our shared misfortune. I wept for the second time in a month, but he, dry-eyed and stoical, said that if he could not produce an heir he could at least leave behind some fine works. I believe the sad news steeled him for that great cause of his. But it unsteadied him, too.
*
By now the long journey was nearing its end. As we passed through new regions, not of land but of atmosphere — the humidity of the Torrid Zone easing off, the breeze quickening now, freshening, a touch even, of icy chill — I felt the anticipation building.
‘Rock ahead,’ came a cry from the crow’s nest late one afternoon.
A group of prisoners was brought on deck for exercise like a catch hauled up from the deep. Piercing the air was a solitary white needle wreathed by gulls wheeling about in a great mist, their distant ululations rolling towards us on the gentle waves. It was a mere shard of rock frosted by the accumulated ages of avian ordure. There was great excitement on the deck and aloft in the shrouds.
I was able, as the only avid reader of our predecessors’ chronicles, to explain all to Macquarie and a few officers of the 73rd Regiment drawn together on the quarterdeck by the excitement.
‘Cook recorded the sea tower in his journals,’ I told the company in the round voice of a town crier. ‘It meant for him what it means for us. Landfall at last. Gentlemen, we have come to the Great South Land!’
Pritchard, of course, was well aware of the significance of this marker; he was busy consulting with the navigator, fixing our position and setting a fresh course north.
The mirrored waves in the late afternoon light seemed to welcome us, and bobbing about in the mild swell were three seals sprouting most gentlemanly whiskers. Their oily black faces stared with some remote and placid wisdom. And then they turned as one seeking the depths, dismissing us from their sight.
I thought at that moment of Noah and the Ark he had built sometime after his five-hundredth year: a wise man he must have been at that improbably advanced age! The Biblical Ark was designed to preserve from the Hebrew god’s wrath every fine thing in the world — two of every kind. Our Convict Ark, by perpetuating all that is sorry and base, seemed to mock the words of Genesis. But perhaps it was, in its own way, a worthy addition to the Biblical theme of redemption — of renewal. I kept these thoughts to myself, for they were too bold to be uttered in that company.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Our last night, when we were forced by poor weather to heave-to outside the Heads, was hard on everyone. There were salty oaths from the sailors and a redoubling of moans from below. So close were we to our destination; almost upon it. A fire had been lit on the more southerly of the Heads to guide us in, a welcoming cannon fired and a flag run up a staff. Here were all the sensations of landfall: the ocean had visibly shallowed, lightened; crying gulls wheeled around the masts; scrags of seaweed drifted out on the swell. There was even a scent of eucalyptus on the air.
But the wind wheeled around to the southeast as we approached the Heads, and it stiffened by the minute. The waves soared to join it, and the sails with their damp muffled beat were trimmed out of fear that the Dromedary, after the loss of so many lives to typhus, dysentery and starvation, might after all this be swept in and smashed to splinters at the base of the great seawall ahead of us.
The decision was made to tack offshore before the storm reached its full strength. I felt as if I had been seated six feet from a table at which dinner had been served, only to find it snatched away.
Overnight the raging storm strode inland on jagged legs of lightning. When dawn broke bright and calm there was a soft breez
e out of the northeast. For the first time in many months I saw the slow, steady rising and falling of ribcages. It was the breathing of men and women who have survived great peril and no longer fear the night ahead.
For its journey from the Heads to the Cove the Dromedary took on a white-haired pilot with a youthful sap and bustle about him, though perhaps his was simply the natural vitality of the unchained and well fed. He rowed towards us in a shallow craft with two solidly built oarsmen, who waited until he scaled the pilot ladder before returning to shore. He introduced himself as Jacob. Pritchard gave him a hearty welcome, wrapping his arm around the man’s shoulders and inviting him below deck for a celebratory tipple. The pilot disappeared for a short while, then took up position beside the helmsman. He directed the Dromedary deftly through the Heads and she sailed downwind across the lovely waterway — a harbour like an outstretched hand. We soon spied, on our left, a town spread thinly over a north-facing cove speared by a small still stream.
I will long remember my first view of that distant shore. Humble, rude, unadorned — despite the loveliness of the setting. And yet ancient. So very old for a New World, while the Old World of recent memory seemed so fresh and green — so young. The mountain range behind the settlement, visible from the deck of the Dromedary, seemed a worn set of molars compared to the stark incisors of Skye.
A good portion of the New World’s ‘poor seed’ — that was Macquarie’s phrase — had gathered to welcome us on the Government wharf.
We arrived under a bright sun. The scented air was soft on the skin when the ship was in motion; painfully oppressive when we had come to rest. Phillip chose this site well. A large ship such as the Dromedary could anchor securely a short distance from the wharf. A regimental band was on hand to greet us. After the anchor had been cast, with that persistent grating rumble of iron links that never failed to set my nerves on edge, the band struck up a creaky rendition of ‘God Save the King’.
Behind the band, clearly visible in the penetrating light, gathered women in trousers; sailors without shoes; would-be dandies in shirts with ruffs and frills, yet lacking the broad-lapelled high-cut coats needed to set them off to best effect. The natives clinging to the edges of the welcoming party were dressed like the dolls of neglectful children, in scraps of clothing that looked to have been found or handed down. The motley sprinkling of canary-yellow-clad convicts towards the rear of the group, dragooned to carry the heavy gear up from the ship, were in appearance much as I’d expected. Their bearing was not. Unbowed, they eyed the world on something like equal terms. One turned to another. There were sly laughs behind cupped hands. In open alliance, they viewed the disembarkation with knowing smiles. What, I asked myself, did they know? The smirks, I would soon discover, were those of anticipation. For we were about to be entertained — and instructed.
A tall thin native dressed in an admiral’s blue and gold regalia — fraying epaulets, gilt buttons picked out by the sun — sprang onto the ship’s deck as if capering at some sport. A face as black as cinders shaded by a preposterous cocked hat. Broad nose, broad mouth.
After the laughter ran its course the visitor declared, calmly, in a voice of some solemnity, ‘Bung-a-ree.’
The native pointed to his chest. Gave a portentous nod.
Softly, compliantly, a few of the sailors murmured, as if bewitched, ‘Bung-a-ree.’
He spread his arms. ‘I am Chief — Chief of the Broken Bay mob,’ he said in a soft fluttering voice that carried effortlessly on the air. ‘The governors, they teach me English. I speak your language; you do not speak mine. I know the secrets. This here,’ he gestured to a wall of eucalyptus rising on the northern shore, ‘my land. This,’ he revolved a full circle with hands outstretched in a gesture of complete dominion, ‘my story.’
I was drawn to the sight of his unshod feet, pink on the underside, long and supple, and as he performed they danced lightly across the deck. He moved beautifully, this native.
‘My people — first mob.’ He knocked his chest with a clenched fist. ‘You’ — the hand was held flat now and thrust towards the audience — ‘second mob. You come late.’
Bungaree pointed towards the south. ‘One edge of the land far away is cold. People coming up from that place wearing possum skins. This way’ — pointing inland now — ‘very hot. From here’ — he swung towards the east — ‘comes the wind that brought you in.’
He paused to straighten his cocked hat, which had begun to tilt unsteadily on his nest of hair during the performance. With this done, he fussed about with his coat and as he opened his mouth once more to speak some wag offered a derisive round of applause.
Unperturbed, the native went on. ‘The law says this: “Shoot the first mob and you will,”’ — he ran a slashing finger across his throat — ‘“hang. If the first mob do the killing”’ — he extended an admonishing finger towards the audience — ‘“they die too.”’
Bungaree allowed a theatrical pause to settle over his audience. His last words were ‘Remember the law!’ The native chief executed a low bow and the moment his gaze slid from the audience to his bare feet the deck erupted in furious activity. Just as swiftly and mysteriously as he arrived the chief vanished over the ship’s side, though not before thrusting a bottle of rum hurriedly into the capacious rear pocket of his admiral’s uniform. A moment later a slender bark canoe slid out from beneath the bowsprit. The native wearing the cocked hat tugged at the water with paddles shaped like pudding stirrers, one in each hand.
I watched him arc across the harbour towards the northern shore a few hundred feet away. He pulled in at a pile of biscuit-coloured boulders from which small campfires sent up twisting pylons in the air.
It felt to me as if he had stepped briefly into the known world to impart a most noble teaching, then retreated behind a veil that concealed from me an unknown — and perhaps unknowable — realm. I longed to draw aside that veil — to fathom Nature’s mysteries. But I cautioned myself to stifle my romantic impulses, and I recalled that the mysterious Bungaree had not, after all, neglected his lower appetites.
CHAPTER EIGHT
My first true companion was the natural world. As a young woman I would ride alone into the hills, buckled and spare, to gaze westward across Loch Linnhe and the Sound of Mull, with the jagged shard of Beinn a’ Bheithir a coronet upon the northern ridgeline. On the heights I was — or felt myself to be — sovereign of a solitary upland domain. My poor parents, compelled to yield to my wild whims, regarded these adventures as the lesser of many evils that could befall a headstrong young woman.
More than once on those russet hills I glimpsed a crown of antlers etched against the broad sky and a buck — motionless, statuesque — regarding me with an insolent air. Solitude, I learned at a young age, offers passage to some mighty realms.
So it was inevitable that my dreams would run to the natural world of New Holland and its famed singularities. This would be my adventure.
My first footfall at the Cove was not, though, as I’d anticipated. In my naiveté I had expected some epiphany the moment I touched solid ground. I was, after all, at the far extremity of the Earth. I would feel some hitherto unfelt emotion; at the very least, have something memorable to say. Instead I stepped onto the wharf, with Macquarie by my side, and promptly sank to my knees. I had been so long at sea, buffeted by waves, that my brain now rebelled at the absence of motion. Macquarie reached for an arm. Out of the crowd dashed a slender young man, very fair with even features, to take the other. I heard gasps. A few marines stepped forward, raising their arms to ensure none in the crowd pressed too close. Macquarie looked up from me to the crowd with a stiff and slightly embarrassed smile.
‘Shall we sit?’ he said in a low voice, barely moving his lips.
‘I am not entirely well,’ I said as I rose. ‘But I suppose I am well enough to continue.’
‘Your colour has returned. It may have been the closeness of the air, the crowd — and the strangeness of the plac
e.’
He made to move on and paused. ‘A moment,’ he said, holding out a hand to steady me. And then, raising himself to his full height he scanned the crowd for the fair-headed young man.
‘You,’ he snapped his fingers. ‘Your name?’
‘Currency,’ the boy replied.
‘Your parents named you Currency,’ Macquarie laughed, turning to the crowd. ‘Why, were they short of cash?’
‘Your Majesty …’
‘I am your governor not your sovereign.’
‘You see, your Governor …’ Currency continued as Macquarie smiled at his feet. Titters rose from the crowd. Guffaws from the soldiers. ‘It’s that my parents, being former convicts, and me being the first born free in our family, they gave me the name that all born in the colony do take. We are the currency. The currency lads and,’ — he rose to the tips of his toes and indicated a group of tall young women — ‘the currency lasses. Anyways, I am called Currency Jones.’
One of the soldiers motioned for us to hurry on, and as we strode forward he said to Macquarie, ‘I am sorry to hasten you, sir. But with the delay at the wharf the first group of felons from the Dromedary is almost upon us. See.’ He pointed to an approaching rowboat. I could make out a burgundy coat, a brown beaverkin, and a woman in a cream dress beneath a striped parasol. ‘The so-called “superior convicts”, sir. The lettered, the wealthy and the skilled.’
‘Is the Architect,’ I inquired, ‘among them?’
‘If there is an architect he will not be among the common convicts,’ answered the soldier. ‘We have here at the Cove a surgeon for healing the sick and a judge to make us honest. But we are badly in need of buildings that will not come down in the next storm.’
*
We are welcomed by the colony’s acting Lieutenant Governor, Joseph Foveaux, a pleasing man with pastel-pink cheeks and a corpulence betraying his abiding weakness. Foveaux introduces the servants, gathered before the verandah. Six well-fed women of varied ages in fresh white pinafores over dresses of plain blue clasp their hands behind their backs and curtsy, smiling shyly. A young dark-haired and fresh-faced ensign with a reserved expression salutes his new governor before bowing to me. A tall butler, with greying centre-parted hair and ironical black eyebrows, stands behind the group and comes forward when introduced by Foveaux. His name is Edward Hawkins. Foveaux then introduces Mrs Ovens, the chief cook, and Miss Ringold, the chamber maid, before explaining to the assembled help that our own servants will come up from the Dromedary by mid-afternoon with our trunks.
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