The Profilist

by Adrian Mitchell

  That was certainly not the case with me. I have had to set about finding my living, and while like any other young man I could readily have earned good wages as a general labourer, that did not appeal. Instead, once I had found myself a suitable lodging, I looked about for somewhere to set up a studio, and found such a place in one of the little lanes and alleyways that are gradually springing up all across the township, short cuts between thoroughfares just as in the ‘old country’, as some of the local people are remembering it—those who do not think of going back. As in the towns at home, so here these back streets attract out-of-the-way activities not considered altogether appropriate to the main traffic, and those who do not particularly seek out public notice. Which is not why I made my choice, though I concede there were adjacent conveniences and obliging company as desired (I am not thinking of the Wesleyan chapel); mine are engaging neighbours.

  My studio is off a respectable street, and not far from where the main business activity appears to have concentrated itself. Having settled on the terms, I hied me to the office of the newspaper, no longer I should hasten to say in a mud cottage but in somewhat improved premises—or possibly I should correct that too, and say it had only one premise. As had we all: to make a living for ourselves. And from such signs as I can see, that is not altogether a sure thing. It also occurs to me that Mother England’s interest in the colony may not be entirely the same as ours.

  I placed an advertisement in the Register, announcing myself to the world, or what passes for it here, thinking that would look most seemly. But in terms of actually bringing myself to the notice of the general public, it might have been just as effective, or even more so, to nail a poster to one of the trees around the town. To save money, or to reach a wider public, notices are fixed to trees here and there about the township. This is the local custom, for those wanting labourers or looking for servants who have suddenly become both independent and invisible, or those hoping to sell off inappropriate equipment they brought out with them—though why such goods would be more suitable for anyone else is an open question. In the absence of notice boards, and with no established market place as yet, certain trees seem to have been selected for this useful role; by which I mean that of course one can nail any information to any tree, but it would not necessarily be one that the people knew to look at. The original proclamation of the colony had been displayed in exactly that way, hammered to the arch of a big old bent gum tree down by the original landing site at Holdfast Bay; I suspect that not too many people have been to look at that either, as it is somewhat out of the way.

  That proclamation happened before it was determined just exactly where the township was to be. Or more precisely, before Governor Hindmarsh accepted the recommendation that it be inland; for he had been firmly opposed to such a selection. Let me say something of the late Governor, late in the sense that he is no longer with us. He was a Navy man through and through; and as his most glorious moments had been on the quarterdeck, he had never really stumped down from that elevation, making him a little difficult to engage in conversation.

  He differed very strongly from the Surveyor-General about where actually everyone was to settle. His preference of course was that he be able to step off his ship and into his new office; and perhaps conversely, that he be able to scuttle quickly right back on board again, should the need arise. As in fact proved the case, in the end. He could see no advantage in carrying goods for several miles inland, especially over such straggling unmade tracks. He had a point, as each of us in our turn has experienced. But in actual fact other discontents underlay this part of the settlement’s inauguration, which should come as no surprise, given the ambitions of so many men.

  Captain Hindmarsh was not shy of being recognised as a decorated hero. He had fought at the Battle of Trafalgar, amongst other famous engagements, and had been over-zealous in imitating his hero, Admiral Nelson, by losing his sight in one eye. I have practised the effect of this. You may try it for yourself, walking about with one eye shut or with a patch over it. You keep on seeing just a bit of your nose on the edge of your field of vision. More to the point, you keep needing to screw your head about, to see what is happening off the point of your shoulder—to see, for example, what your enemies might be doing, if only sneering. For Governor Hindmarsh had his enemies. By his reputation, he all but made a point of it.

  He had come out on the Buffalo with quite an entourage aboard, not just his wife and daughters and servants, but a bevy of officials and a small squad of Marines and of course a good many migrating passengers too; but as well, he had an even more comprehensive farmyard aboard than I had travelled with—mules and pigs and a cow, turkeys and geese, all his own personal property. His dogs had the freedom of the decks and made a perfect nuisance of themselves; and so concerned was the Governor for the wellbeing of his livestock, an admirable husbandman in this respect, that he reduced everybody’s water allocation to ensure his animals did not want. Not all the passengers found that action commendable. The ladies did not care for the bucolic stench, nor for the crowded conditions, nor for Captain Hindmarsh’s temper. The Governor rose to the occasion and remained impervious. Be damned to them.

  His temper was not helped by the galling proximity of an equally impervious gentleman, Mr Fisher, the Resident Commissioner appointed by the South Australian Colonisation Commissioners; the one as suave as the other was choleric, one just as aware of all those capital letters as the other was of naval honours.

  What a bizarre arrangement that was. The South Australian Company and the colonial government. Captain Hindmarsh, accustomed to command without question, was to be hemmed in by the Commissioners’ agent. Mr Fisher had his own authority, his own sealed orders giving him special powers, and there was a great deal of one party making a point of not getting in the other’s way all the long journey from Portsmouth, the ladies carefully twitching aside their flowing skirts, the gentlemen looking out to the sea in opposite directions. It amused Mr Fisher to take up his place on Governor Hindmarsh’s wrong side, so that the Governor could not always see where he was coming from although he could sense the hidden activity. Which is, you would have to think, a decided liability in political life. But that is the legal mind for you. The two whiled away the longueurs of travel by arguing about their respective authority—it had come as something of a shock to the Governor to find that he had serious competition.

  The authorities in London may have thought this strategy would produce an effective set of checks and balances, a very desirable end, given the reported tendency to independent activity by the governors in the other Australian colonies. In fact it did nothing of the kind, or rather it delivered so many checks that the whole colony was paralysed. The council appointed to oversee the everyday affairs of the settlement, to decide on the names of streets, for example, became a venue for continuing those vigorous shipboard exchanges. The two gentlemen in question could agree about nothing. Mr Fisher, pointedly exercising his authority, had refused the Governor permission to use the Commissioner’s bullock cart to carry his effects to where the new settlement was to be, which in part explains his Excellency’s crankiness about its eventual location. Once there, the Governor extended his garden into the park lands, Mr Fisher objected, an anonymous letter appeared in the Register critical of Mr Fisher (the editor just happening to be the Governor’s secretary) and those of Mr Fisher’s party undertook to establish a second, alternative newspaper.

  The Governor suspended the Colonial Secretary and along with him an emigration agent, mostly to show that he could, and to spite the council. He had taken to replacing some of those on the original council by young gentlemen who showed a partiality to any of his daughters; though as there were only three of these he failed to generate a majority. The Commissioner issued a handbill announcing that the agent, Mr Brown, still held authority as he acted for the Colonisation Committee. Captain Hindmarsh issued a proclamation refuting that announcement as stuff and nonsense, and demanding loyalt
y to his own office, meaning by that to himself. So much huffing and puffing, so much excited importance. And so many urgent reports back to London. It was all as earnestly ludicrous as in a novel. This was clearly no way to establish a colony.

  Eventually the Colonial Office acted because it had to, because it had failed to in the first instance. Governor Hindmarsh was recalled, and another was sent out in his place, Governor Gawler, who disapproved of the Surveyor-General, Colonel Light, just as his predecessor had, but for quite a different reason. Colonel Light maintained a mistress. And Colonel Gawler is a pious man, a very teapot of respectability, intent on being well liked of course, by the right sort of people preferably; and just as intent as his predecessor on hunting for a knighthood.

  He did not approve. Rather than employ the original Surveyor-General, rather than countenance his very public private arrangements, the Governor preferred to carry out those duties himself, the public ones, until an appropriate appointment could be made. His has been a valiant if foolhardy resolve. He spends more time out and about than he could have anticipated, which cannot be comfortable, for he damaged his knee in the war with Napoleon. Which evidently is hardly as romantic as Captain Hindmarsh’s eye.

  He has had a further difficulty, in that the Resident Commis­sioner has also been removed from his office, or perhaps it was actually the other way round and the office was removed from the Commissioner. The difficulty here has been compounded by having at close quarters a gentleman formerly accustomed to a certain kind of esteem, and likewise accustomed to arguing with the Governor, now no longer having anything much to do to keep himself from public mischief. Mr Fisher has had more than ample time to attend to a racetrack he has been clearing, using as labourers those recent arrivals who required official assistance. It would be most unseemly to suggest that his concern for them has been anything other than high minded. And there can be no doubt that we merit a Turf Club, given the popular support for his January race meetings, though the horses themselves are such a very mixed lot, some straight off the farm, some shipped bravely from Van Diemen’s Land, some still wild and rangy, having come overland with the droving mobs from New South Wales. Patently there are none here as yet that warrant their owners paying me to paint a likeness.

  The solution of what to do with Mr Fisher is one which sets I believe an unfortunate precedent. He has had to be found something to acknowledge his stature, he must be provided with some apparently meaningful distraction; though he has been giving every impression that he is eminently capable of looking after his own interests and enthusiasms. He has been made the Mayor of Adelaide. That is a convenient arrangement, perhaps even one might suspect an ingenious one. He is said to be the first mayor anywhere in Australia, and it soothes him mightily to be the first of anything in all the land. Pre-eminence rests on him easily.

  I must have come to official attention through my paintings of Adelaide streets, including one or two in which the approach to Government House features very prominently, and which evidently the Governor liked well enough when they were brought to his notice. Or at least I imagine that it was through some such connection that I received an invitation to an official reception, for I would by no means have thought myself among the Government House set, if I may so call them, the Nobs and Snobs of the town. For on the whole the effect of my advertising myself in the newspaper has been a great disappointment. There appears to be very little call for portraits, nor paintings of favoured dogs or horses. In the absence of custom, and with more than sufficient time on my hands, I have been turning my attention to painting a number of street scenes, some of which have been displayed in the window of a music shop, some of which I sent off back to England, to friends and relatives; and some which have been printed in the newspaper.

  I am not altogether well pleased with them myself. There is difficulty in giving any sense of all this turbulence going on at the very centre of the settlement’s arrangements. So much busy jostling and competition, and yet you would never know it from the look of dazzling quietness in the streets—bullocks nodding off in the sun, the residents doffing their hats to the ladies, standing to one side and ceremoniously bowing, horses at a walking pace, having done their dash coming in through the outskirts of the town. All is sunny and sedentary, if not soporific. It looks like every day is Sunday. It misrepresents the actuality.

  And a different problem I see is all those straight lines, which undeniably exist—you don’t have to inspect the town plan to realise that. They are like some kind of grid imposed on what I see as the real landscape of this place; perspective lines of awkward prominence. So that I cannot think that what I have depicted is altogether satisfactory. I have been searching for a way of softening those hard if very proper delineations.

  But apparently the Governor has had no such reservations, or maybe he likes the Sunday look of things. Like his predecessor, he has armed himself with a wife, and a bevy of daughters aspiring to eligibility, and they require to be amused at something more sparkling than a picnic. He has been busy with a new Government residence, of twelve rooms necessarily, though his good lady still speaks of it as a pretty enough cottage. It is one of the Governor’s new public works, far superior of course to the original limestone thatch-roofed barn of a place which his predecessor’s Marines had contrived. From time to time the Governor obliges with public entertainments and issues invitations to those whom he wishes not to offend, to those young enough and enthusiastic enough to amuse his daughters, and to those like myself who cannot fail to disappoint by their awkwardness and inadequacy. Those of the Company’s persuasion and moral convictions tend, like my father, to be uncomfortable with such social engagements as dancing, whether vice-regally ordained or not. In fact, as I look back on him, there was much my father was unhappy about. Or to turn it another way, he was never happier than remembering ‘Thou shalt not’. A man of prohibitions and inhibitions. But I am diverting myself ahead of the official diversion.

  I had of course to borrow a hat for no better purpose than to hand it in, together with a pair of gloves, on arrival. I had to make an appearance after all—clothes maketh the gentry. My name was called, and there was appropriate bowing and scraping, and then there in the ballroom were His Excellency’s daughters all in a tight huddle, which tended to make them somewhat unapproachable, agitated and fanning themselves vigorously, looking about the room and no doubt hoping—ah, forlorn hope!—that Mr Eyre, who is very fond of dancing, would not bother them. I have already observed Mr Eyre about the town. A gaunt beanpole of a man, he steps out through the streets at a furious pace, striding like a pair of ladders. He had won admiration for bringing a herd of cattle and a large flock of sheep overland from New South Wales, and has set up his own saleyard. Stock is now going to be much easier to acquire, and the pasture land around Adelaide can be put to more generous use.

  He has just returned from stalking through the remote recesses of the northern interior, and his reports of that landscape are not encouraging. He is an excessively vertical young gentleman, very nice, if earnest and self-aware. As you would need to be when your head is in danger of knocking the wall candles out of their sconces. You can imagine the difficulty in keeping up with him as he weaves his way through the sets of dancers. He has to keep bobbing his head, to avoid the overhead lighting and decorations—he does so with aplomb, of course, but he progresses like an elongated emu. The only comfortable way to speak with Mr Eyre is to ask him to sit down. And even then, when he has balanced his tea cup on his knee, the wonder is that he can reach so far as to take it up again. I do not compete in the gallant stakes; I am better disposed to hover about the refreshment tables.

  Another who was present was Mr Gilles. Mr Gilles has also previously held a Company office, as the Treasurer of the Colony, and was another whom the current Governor has had to treat very circumspectly; he too came out on board the Buffalo, and had been uniquely loyal to Captain Hindmarsh as well as to the Company. He had a vested interest in both sides
; he wanted to make sure the scheme of settlement worked. But because Colonel Gawler wished to combine all powers and responsibilities under his own office, he had asked for Mr Gilles’s resignation—the Company men were all being put aside, one way or another. However, as Mr Gilles had lent the colony considerable funds from his own wealth, the government was still obliged to him. Indeed, the whisper is that the Governor himself may be indebted to old O.G., as he is known. Certain it is that nothing happens in this colony without Mr Gilles’s nod. It is not a good thing to have men who considered themselves powerful now with more time on their hands.

  Mr Gilles in his first role had been well placed to develop his personal fortune; now he is amassing both land and wealth at a prodigious rate. It is all very well to be philanthropic, as from time to time he undeniably is, but first he is careful to ensure a sufficient basis of wealth from which to dispense his occasional largesse. He has his new silver and lead mine, he is importing sheep from Van Diemen’s Land, and he owns property everywhere. Because lately Wakefield and his followers have begun to turn their attention to New Zealand, the pattern of immigration and land purchase has changed, and O.G. is, so one sees, in exactly the right position to be a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. On this occasion specifically, that means he took up his stand close to the refreshment booth.