Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

  Greenway arrived in Sydney, on the transport General Hewitt in February 1814; his wife and children followed on another ship.

  He commenced work as a colonial architect by designing houses and additions to houses. Greenway first met Macquarie in July 1814 and Macquarie suggested he construct a town hall and courthouse and gave Greenway an instruction book to follow.

  Greenway was so offended by this that he responded with a letter declaring his skills and suggesting his Excellency should utilise the opportunity for a better, more classical design. He stated, ‘. . . it is rather painful to my mind as a professional man to copy a building that has no claim to classical proportion and character.’

  In 1816, Greenway was involved in an incident with Captain Sanderson. He had designed and decorated a series of Masonic aprons for members of the local military Masonic Lodge but had not finished Captain Sanderson’s apron in time for a special event.

  A letter of apology from Greenway angered the Captain who sent for Greenway and attacked him with a horsewhip. Greenway could not defend himself against an officer as he was a convict. He brought a case against Sanderson, won and was awarded damages of five pounds. The main problem was that Greenway was seen as an upstart felon who dared to engage on equal terms with officers. He was never very politically clever or diplomatic.

  Between 1816 and 1818, while still a convict, Greenway was responsible for the design and construction of the Macquarie Lighthouse near The Gap. It was later pulled down and the present replica was built in 1880.

  After the success of this project, he was given his ticket of leave and began acting as Civil Architect and Assistant Engineer responsible to Captain Gill, Inspector of Public Works, on a salary of three shillings a day. He was given a house to live in—in George Street—and went on to build many significant buildings in the new colony.

  Greenway’s buildings included Hyde Park Barracks, Government House stables, the Parramatta Female Factory, St James’ Church, St Matthew’s, Windsor, and St Luke’s, Liverpool. There are still forty-nine buildings in central Sydney attributed to Greenway’s designs. He was given a full pardon by Governor Macquarie in 1819.

  Greenway was an important citizen, but his arrogance made him misjudge his authority. He made many enemies and eventually fell out with Macquarie. He had financial worries and attempted to charge fees for the designs and for the work he had done while employed by Macquarie. He also asked for a land grant and cattle.

  After he was dismissed by the next governor, Thomas Brisbane, in 1822, he continued to follow his profession with little success. Although he got his grant of land, at Maitland, he does not appear to have received the cattle.

  In 1835, he advertised, ‘Francis Howard Greenway, arising from circumstances of a singular nature is induced again to solicit the patronage of his friends and the public.’ In other words, he was destitute.

  His long-suffering wife, Mary, looked after him and their five children and ran a school for young ladies to make ends meet. Governor Macquarie described her as a pleasant and respectable lady.

  After Mary died in 1826, Greenway attempted to sell the house he had been given to live in by Macquarie but the government took back the house saying he had no right to sell it.

  Greenway died at his Maitland property, probably of typhoid in 1837, aged fifty-nine. The exact date of his death is not known. He was buried in East Maitland cemetery on 25 September 1837, but his grave is unmarked.

  JH

  JAMES HARDY VAUX

  Who Was Transported Three Times

  James Hardy Vaux was born in Surrey, England, in 1782, the son of a butler and house steward to George Holme Sumner MP, and was raised by his maternal grandparents who had retired to Shropshire after his grandfather had spent his life working in Fleet Prison as warden.

  James Vaux was apprenticed twice, to a linen draper in Liverpool and a legal firm in Lincoln’s Inn, but was dismissed both times for ‘dissipation’.

  In 1798, he joined the navy and served in the North Sea, but then he deserted and worked for a Covent Garden clothing firm until he became a professional thief and was sentenced at the Old Bailey to transportation for seven years for stealing a handkerchief, valued by the jury at elevenpence so that the accused might escape a capital sentence (one shilling and you were hanged).

  Vaux reached Sydney in December 1801 and worked as a clerk at the Hawkesbury, in Sydney and in Parramatta. He served a term in the road gang for forging Governor King’s signature but ingratiated himself with Samuel Marsden, the Parramatta chaplain and magistrate, who agreed to take him home in the Buffalo in 1807.

  On the trip home Vaux was employed on board in writing King’s log and in teaching his and Marsden’s children but, when his sentence expired, he became insubordinate and was compelled to enlist as a seaman.

  When the ship reached Portsmouth, Vaux deserted and resumed his old activities in London. On 21 July at St Paul’s, Covent Garden, he married Mary Ann Thomas, a prostitute, in the hope that, if he were again transported, she might be allowed as his wife to join him in New South Wales.

  In December, he narrowly escaped a further conviction, this time for stealing a snuffbox but, in February 1809, he was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey under the alias James Lowe for stealing from a jeweller’s shop in Piccadilly.

  This sentence was commuted to transportation for life and he reached Sydney in December 1810. Assigned to a Hawkesbury settler and then appointed deputy-overseer of the town gang in Sydney, he was sentenced in 1811 to twelve months’ hard labour for receiving property stolen from Judge-Advocate Bent.

  He was sent to the Newcastle penal settlement. In January 1814, after returning to Sydney, he was caught while trying to escape aboard the Earl Spencer and was flogged and returned to Newcastle.

  During his previous spell there, Vaux had compiled a slang dictionary for the use of magistrates, and he was now encouraged to write the famous Memoirs of the First Thirty-Two Years of the Life of James Hardy Vaux, a Swindler and Pickpocket; Now Transported for the Second Time, and for Life, to New South Wales.

  Published in London, Vaux received £33 18s 8d in royalties. The Memoirs were republished by John Hunt in 1827 and reprinted in 1829 and 1830. As the first full-length autobiography written in Australia, the book provides a fascinating picture of criminal life in London and of the penal system, while the Vocabulary of the Flash Language, probably the first dictionary compiled in Australia, gives a valuable glossary of London slang. In 1827, the London Magazine described the work as ‘one of the most singular that ever issued from the press’.

  On 3 August 1818 at Newcastle, Vaux married Frances Sharkey, a former Irish convict. The next month, he was allowed to return to Sydney as a clerk. In January 1820, he received a conditional pardon and soon became a clerk in the colonial secretary’s office.

  In April 1827, he married Eleanor Bateman, another Irish convict, although Frances Vaux was still alive. At the end of 1826, Governor Darling dismissed Vaux in accordance with his policy of not employing convicts and ex-convicts as clerks.

  Vaux broke the terms of his conditional pardon and went to Ireland, where, in August 1830 at Dublin, he was convicted once more under the alias James Young, this time for passing forged bank notes.

  He pleaded guilty and, with the cooperation of the bank concerned, his death sentence was commuted to transportation for seven years. On his arrival at Sydney in the Waterloo in May 1831, he was recognised, his previous life sentence was revived and he was sent to Port Macquarie penal settlement.

  In 1837, he was allowed to return to Sydney and became clerk to a wine merchant. In May 1839, he was charged with criminal assault on a girl aged about eight. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, and, although Governor Gipps decided that his life sentence should be reapplied, he was released in 1841 on the recommendation of Chief Justice Dowling and disappeared from history.

  He is the only convict known to have been transported three times to New South Wa
les.

  JH

  CAPTAIN PIPER

  Who Fathered Eighteen Children by Five Different Woman

  Born in 1773 in Ayrshire, Scotland, the son of a doctor, John Piper’s uncle got him a commission in the New South Wales Corps in 1791 and he arrived in Sydney in February 1792, when the settlement was still fighting for its life in the face of starvation.

  He became friendly with John Macarthur, who secured him a land grant of 110 acres (45 hectares) at Parramatta, but in 1793 was sent on duty to Norfolk Island, possibly because of a sexual ‘entanglement’ from which friends were anxious to rescue him.

  In 1795, Piper returned. He left for Scotland in 1797 and returned in 1800, promoted to captain. He acted as MacArthur’s second in his duel with Colonel Patterson in 1801 and apologised and was acquitted at his court-martial in 1802.

  From 1804 to 1810, he was acting commandant on Norfolk Island and so missed the Rum Rebellion. His rule was mild, and he ‘had the good will and respect of everyone, for he had always conducted himself as a Christian and a gentleman’.

  On Norfolk Island, however, he formed an attachment to Mary Ann Shears, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a convict and, when he sailed for Britain on leave in September 1811, he took along Mary Ann, their two little boys and his daughter from an earlier liaison. His personal life caused problems with both his family and his career, but he evidently preferred Mary Ann and resigned from this commission and returned to Sydney in 1814 after being appointed the colony’s naval officer in 1813.

  As the collector of customs duties, excise on spirits and harbour dues, with a percentage on all monies collected, his income exceeded £4000 a year, and he bought the property now known as Vaucluse House. On 10 February 1816, he married Mary Ann by special licence. She had borne him two more sons while they were away and in due course they had nine more children.

  Also in 1816, he was granted 190 acres (77 hectares) of land on Eliza Point, now Point Piper, for the site of his official residence. Here he built Henrietta Villa (also known as the Naval Pavilion) at a cost of £10,000. Extravagantly furnished, it was completed in 1822 and became the scene of many sumptuous entertainments.

  Piper was a close friend of Governor Macquarie, who in 1819 made him a magistrate. In 1825, he was chairman of directors of the Bank of New South Wales, president of the Scots Church committee and, besides Point Piper, he had 475 acres (192 hectares) at Vaucluse, 1130 acres (457 hectares) at Woollahra and Rose Bay, a farm of 295 acres (119 hectares) at Petersham, 700 acres (283 hectares) at Neutral Bay, 80 acres (32 hectares) at Botany Bay, 2000 acres (809 hectares) at Bathurst, 300 acres (121 hectares) in Van Diemen’s Land with various smaller farms, and an acre (0.4 hectares) of city land in George Street.

  In 1825, the new Governor, Ralph Darling, ordered an enquiry into Piper’s administration as naval officer and a deficiency of £12,000 was discovered. The collection of customs had been gravely mismanaged.

  Piper tried to drown himself in the harbour but was rescued by his loyal servants who evidently saw him jump out of a small boat into the harbour and, knowing he could not swim, rushed out to save him.

  In 1826, he mortgaged his property for £20,000 and eventually was forced to sell his Point Piper estate, Vaucluse and city properties, farms and shares in the midst of a financial recession. He sold the lot (a huge chunk of Sydney’s now prestigious eastern suburbs) for only £5170 11s, but his debts to the government and others were paid in full.

  Piper retired with his large family to his Bathurst property, Alloway Bank, where he raised cattle and sheep and started cheese production. He became a magistrate, worked for the Presbyterian Church and patronised horseracing.

  The drought of 1838 forced him to sell Alloway Bank and move to Westbourne, a 202-hectare property beside the Macquarie River. There he died in 1851, and there Mrs Piper lived until her death twenty years later, with her numerous children.

  John Piper, stalwart of the Presbyterian Church who, according to official records, had ‘always conducted himself as a Christian and a gentleman’, fathered eighteen children, thirteen by Mary Ann and five by four other women.

  JH

  BILLY BLUE

  The Old Commodore

  By 1810, a series of rowboat ferrymen had set up businesses to transport people around Sydney Harbour and from one side to the other. The most famous of these was Billy Blue, who was given the name ‘The Old Commodore’ by Governor Macquarie.

  Billy was probably born in Jamaica and he claimed to have served with the British army in the American War of Independence. Quite possibly he was an African–American slave from colonial New York who had been granted his freedom.

  In 1796, Billy was living at Deptford, London, loading ships at the docks and making and selling toffee and chocolate as a sideline. He was convicted of stealing sugar from the docks and sentenced to seven years’ transportation. Described in convict records as ‘a Jamaican Negro sailor aged 29’, he spent four years in the hulks before he was sent to Sydney on the Minorca.

  He had two years of his sentence left when he arrived in December 1801, and was soon working on the harbour with boats and selling oysters. His friendly, eccentric manner and humorous conversation made him popular and he became a ‘character’ in the colony.

  Billy married English-born convict Elizabeth Williams in 1805 at St Philip’s Church and they had six children. Appointed harbour watchman and constable in 1811, he was granted 80 acres (32 hectares) on the north side of the harbour from where he operated his ferry service. The area is still known as Blue’s Point.

  A colourful character in the true Australian meaning of the word, Billy spent a year in prison for smuggling rum in 1818 and lost his position as harbour watchman and constable. He was later also found guilty of harbouring escaped convicts and, on another occasion, manslaughter. A boy who was teasing Billy died after The Old Commodore threw a rock at him. Billy was not goaled for either offence.

  Billy grew vegetables for the Sydney market and he ran his ferry dressed in a blue naval officer’s coat and top hat. He died in 1834 at his North Sydney home. Although he would have been sixty-seven according to convict records, he claimed to be eighty in the 1828 census, which would make him eighty-six when he died. Five of his six children survived him and he has many descendants living in Sydney today.

  THE FLYING PIEMAN

  The Eccentric and Athletic Entrepreneur

  William King was aged twenty-two when he emigrated to Sydney as a free settler in 1829. It is thought he was sent out here by his family because he was quite eccentric.

  King worked as a schoolteacher and baker before becoming our first true sporting entrepreneur. In an effort to sell his pies and pastries, he attempted odd sporting feats and advertised them, on the assumption that a curious crowd at such events would eventually get hungry and buy his wares. Outdoor sporting and entertainment events were rare in the colony in the early decades of the nineteenth century, apart from the odd race meeting and the public executions, which attracted enormous crowds.

  In 1847, King walked 309 kilometres around Maitland racetrack non-stop—a feat that took him forty-six hours and thirty minutes. He walked from Campbelltown to Sydney carrying a dog in less than nine hours, and that is 53 kilometres!

  As well as making a profit from the sale of the pies and cakes, he made a decent amount of money from taking bets on his bizarre feats. He bet that he could beat the mail coach from Sydney to Windsor, and succeeded. Then he beat the Brisbane to Ipswich mail coach by an hour carrying a pole weighing a hundred pounds (45 kilograms).

  He once backed himself to run a mile (1.6 kilometres), walk a mile, wheel a barrow for a mile, pull a gig with a lady in it a half mile, walk backwards half a mile, pick up fifty stones and perform fifty jumps in under an hour.

  So confident was the man who was now known in the colonies as ‘The Flying Pieman’, that he took rest breaks, which took up five minutes and fifteen seconds. It was a close call at the end of the hour, b
ut he managed all those feats and won the bet with forty-five seconds to spare!

  As his athletic abilities faded, he took to using his reputation to attract customers, selling his pies and pastries on the streets of Sydney wearing a top hat decorated with brightly coloured ribbons. Sadly, his eccentricity turned to mental instability and he was sent to the Liverpool asylum, where he died in 1873.

  JH

  SIR HENRY DESPARD

  His Inglorious Career

  Henry Despard was an overbearing martinet whose place in Australian colonial military history was established by two major errors of judgement. He seems to have been the archetypal upper-class twit. His military tactics were decades out of date and his attitude towards the lower classes, other races and lower ranks was mind-bogglingly snobbish and reactionary, even by the standards of his time.

  Born in 1784 in Devon, England, Despard was commissioned as an ensign in the 17th Regiment of Foot in 1799. He saw active service in several campaigns in India between 1808 and 1818, became a brigade major in 1817 and a lieutenant colonel in 1829, and was inspecting officer of the Bristol recruiting district from 1838 to 1842. In 1842 he took command of the 99th Regiment of Foot, stationed in Sydney.

  On 1 June 1845, Despard and two companies of his regiment arrived in Auckland in response to an appeal for assistance by Governor Robert FitzRoy after attacks by Maoris led by Chief Hone Heke. Despard was given the temporary rank of colonel and took command of all British troops in New Zealand. On 8 June he sailed for the Bay of Islands with more than 600 men, the largest British force ever seen in New Zealand. They established a base at the Waimate mission station and began to bombard Ohaeawai, the first Maori pa designed to resist artillery fire. Its hundred-strong garrison was protected by a complex of bunkers and trenches.

  On 1 July, the Maoris made a daring attack, which prompted Despard to attack that afternoon, although no real breach had been made in the stockade, using old-fashioned Napoleonic war tactics with his troops advancing shoulder to shoulder.