Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

  Bryant approached Captain Smit for help and outlined his escape plans to the Dutchman. Sailing and rowing a small open boat to Timor meant a voyage of 5230 kilometres. Smit told Bryant that Captain Bligh had made the journey from Tahiti to Timor in a similar boat and supplied him with a compass, quadrant, two guns, ammunition and detailed charts of the Great Barrier Reef.

  At midnight on the same day that the Waaksamheyd sailed, William and Mary Bryant and their two infant children and seven other convicts rowed out through the heads and turned north.

  They survived storms in which they were lost in ‘mountainous seas’ and encounters with hostile Aborigines who chased them out to sea in large canoes. They navigated the Great Barrier Reef, coming ashore for water and supplies and shelter many times. They crossed the Arafura Sea and finally all made it safely to Koepang, on Timor, after seventy days at sea.

  The Dutch governor treated them well and believed their story about being castaways from a shipwreck until September when Captain Edwards arrived at Koepang with survivors of his crew from the wrecked Pandora and of his captured mutineers from the Bounty. Edwards questioned the fugitives, who confessed. They were taken to the fever-ridden port of Batavia, where both Emanuel and William Bryant died. Three of the others died at sea, but Mary, Charlotte and four surviving convicts were taken to the Cape and transferred to the HMS Gorgon for the final voyage to Britain, on which Charlotte died.

  The press took up the story and James Boswell appealed to the Home Office for clemency. The five were ordered ‘to remain on their former sentences until they should expire’ but Mary Bryant was finally pardoned in May 1793, six weeks after her original sentence had expired. The four other male convicts were released the following November and it is believed one of them later enlisted in the New South Wales Corps and returned to the colony.

  The last that history knows of the resilient Mary Bryant is a letter of thanks received by James Boswell in November 1794 from her home in Cornwall.

  JH

  OUR FIRST FREE SETTLERS

  In 1792, the first organised group of free settlers left Britain to be settled at what was appropriately called Liberty Plains—the area around modern-day Strathfield.

  Lieutenant Governor Grose decided to settle the farmers at Strathfield for the ‘convenience and safety of the travelling public’ moving between the two settlements of Sydney and Parramatta.

  The original group of settlers was made up of three farmers, a baker, a blacksmith, a gardener, a millwright, two women and four children. They arrived as passengers on the Bellona in January 1793 and land grants were formalised in May of the same year. Edward Powell, aged thirty, described as a farmer and fisherman from Lancaster, was given 80 acres, as were Thomas Webb, a gardener, and his wife. Thomas Rose, aged forty, a farmer who arrived with his wife Jane, their four children and another female teenage relative, was given 120 acres.

  Those who were not farmers were given 60 acres, and all the settlers had their passages paid and received tools and implements from the public stores plus two years’ provisions, clothing and the services of assigned convicts as labour. They cleared the land and grew wheat, potatoes and corn. The settlers gave their farms names like Charlotte Farm, Webb’s Endeavour and Dorset Green.

  The settlement at Liberty Plains was soon followed by another immediately to the north and north-west (near modern-day Concord and Homebush) where 25 acres per man was allotted to the officers and non-commissioned officers of the New South Wales Corps and several other citizens.

  Many of these soldiers sold their lots as soon as they were granted, or within the next few years. Many never even saw the land but, eventually, there were about sixty settlers and soldiers farming in the two adjacent areas of Liberty Plains and Concord, most not particularly successfully.

  The name Liberty Plains was obvious; the settlers there had their liberty. Lieutenant Governor Francis Grose named the other settlement Concord after the first battle fought in the American War of Independence in 1794, in which he had fought.

  When Samuel Crane was killed while felling a tree, which fell on him, his 25-acre farm was advertised for sale as having ‘a comfortable hut, four acres planted to corn and half an acre to potatoes’.

  The next governor, John Hunter, was evidently not a fan of the free settlers farming scheme. In 1796, he wrote that, in his four years as governor, only eleven men had migrated as free settlers, eight with families. He described them as ‘not of a high calibre’.

  Hunter complained, in a letter to the Duke of Portland, that the English free settlers arrived in the colony with high expectations based on false reports of permanent government assistance and with no real understanding of the work required to develop the land. His main complaint was that when they were given animals for the purposes of breeding in order to build up flocks and herds, they immediately slaughtered and ate them.

  The Reverend Samuel Marsden visited the area in 1798 and reported dire poverty and very little food being produced. The farmers had run out of seed wheat, which suggests that all efforts to grow a crop had failed or that they had eaten the wheat provided for seed.

  Marsden commented that the settlers had no money to buy any food or goods at all. ‘Should a ship arrive with any articles of consumption,’ he wrote, ‘they can’t raise a single pound in the two districts.’

  The enterprising Blaxland brothers, who migrated to the colony ‘seeking their fortunes’ as free settlers in 1805 bought cheaply many of the land grants that had been given to the officers of the New South Wales Corps and used them to establish the famous Newington estate.

  Liberty Plains was renamed Strathfield in 1885 after the large local property of John Hardie, who called his place Strathfield after the estate given by the king to the Duke of Wellington in 1817.

  JH

  THE MAN THEY COULDN’T HANG

  When I was kid, my uncle used to say when he saw me, ‘Here he is—the man they couldn’t hang—couldn’t find his neck for dirt!’

  I had no idea there really was a ‘man they couldn’t hang’.

  Right up until 1985, you could still be executed for three crimes in New South Wales—treason, setting fire to a naval dockyard and piracy.

  In colonial times, hangings were quite commonplace and provided entertainment for the public. Apart from race meetings and privately organised sporting events, there was not much in the way of outdoor entertainment for the population of Sydney in those days.

  The gallows in Sydney was originally on Pinchgut Island, which was quite a high rock until levelled in the 1850s. Then hangings took place at Parramatta and also at a high spot near the Argyle Cut.

  Later the scaffold was on the corner of Castlereagh and Park Streets, and a hotel next door offered lunch and a good view of the hangings from a balcony. When Darlinghurst Gaol was completed in 1841, it became the venue for hangings until it was closed as a prison in 1907. The last few prisoners hanged in New South Wales were executed at Long Bay Prison.

  In 1803, Joseph Samuel, ‘the man they couldn’t hang’, was sentenced to death for petty theft and aiding in the murder of the constable who chased the four robbers.

  Samuel was a Jewish convict, transported for robbery in 1801. He and three others escaped and robbed the home of a wealthy widow and the constable who chased after them was murdered.

  The gang was soon caught and Samuel confessed to stealing the goods but denied being part of the murder. The others were not convicted but the woman recognised Joseph and he was sentenced to death.

  With another criminal, he was taken in a cart to Parramatta where hundreds gathered to watch the hanging.

  After prayers were said and the nooses were fastened securely around their necks, the cart drove off. This was the common method of hanging at that time, and caused death by slow strangulation.

  The ropes used were made of five-hempen cords designed to hold 450 kilograms for up to five minutes without breaking.

  While the other criminal died b
y strangulation, Samuel’s rope snapped and he dropped to his feet, sprained an ankle and collapsed. The executioner found another rope and repeated the process. Samuel fell from the cart a second time, but the noose slipped and his feet touched the ground.

  As the executioner stood Samuel up to try again, the crowd turned nasty and called for Samuel to be freed. The executioner fastened another five-hempen rope around Samuel’s neck and ordered the cart driven away. The rope snapped, and Joseph Samuel dropped to the ground and fell over as he tried to avoid landing on his sprained ankle.

  Now the crowd was in an uproar. The executioner called a halt to the hanging and the Provost Marshall rode to find Governor King who decided it was a sign from God and granted Joseph Samuel a full reprieve saying, ‘May the grateful remembrance of these events direct his future course.’

  A doctor attended to Joseph’s sprained ankle and he was sent to work in the Hunter coalmines. People said he was never quite ‘right in the attic’ after being hanged three times and, in 1806, he ran away with seven other convicts and stole a boat.

  Joseph Samuel and the other escaped convicts headed out to sea and disappeared in a storm, never to be seen again.

  JH

  WHO CROSSED THE BLUE MOUNTAINS?

  I believe there is good evidence to show that an Irish ex-convict, James Byrne, was the first European to cross the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, though there is also evidence that John Wilson, another ex-convict, crossed the mountains further south well before Byrne and well before the famous trio Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, who get all the credit.

  It is also possible that Lieutenant William Dawes crossed the mountains quite early in the colony’s history, with the help of his Aboriginal friends.

  The official records of the Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth expedition, including the diaries of the explorers, made no mention of the names of the ‘four servants’ who accompanied them.

  The Sydney Gazette only mentioned the expedition briefly at the time and it was not until a hundred years later that the three ‘gentlemen’ are made heroes in history books for school children.

  So, that bit of our ‘history’ seems to have been invented at a time when the historians were looking for heroes, around the time of Australia’s Federation. Convicts were unsuitable as role models, it seems, so the long forgotten expedition by the ‘three gentlemen’ was dusted off and became a feat of great endeavour to inspire school children.

  Five convicts were remunerated for their services in the first two expeditions across the mountains, the one with the ‘three gentlemen’ and the next with surveyor Evans.

  It is possible that ex-convict, James Byrne, was the first man to cross the mountains west of Sydney and later led the three famous ‘explorers’ across. Byrne was born in 1769 in Wicklow, Ireland, and was transported as an ‘Irish rebel’ on the Anne, arriving in Port Jackson on 21 February 1801. Byrne is never mentioned by name in Blaxland’s journal, being referred to only as ‘a man who was used to shooting kangaroos in that country’ and ‘a servant’.

  A document dated February 1814 shows Byrne was paid from the Police Fund for services as a guide to the party who crossed the Blue Mountains and again ‘for services in making discoveries west of the Blue Mountains’, in a document dated 30 April 1814.

  Five other convicts or ex-convicts were paid from the Police Fund for services in ‘making discoveries west of the Blue Mountains’, in a document dated 30 April 1814. They received grants of land in December 1814 for ‘crossing the Blue Mountains’.

  The earlier date of 5 February 1814 for James Byrne, as well as other research, indicates that he was part of the first ‘official’ expedition over the Blue Mountains.

  All five convicts accompanied George Evans on the second expedition.

  James Byrne was granted land at Appin and later moved south with his family to settle at Collector, where he died in 1849.

  JH

  THE AMAZING CAPTAIN SWALLOW

  Hollywood, and even the Australian film industry, have a tendency to repeat the same adventure stories over and over. Robin Hood, Tarzan, stories of the Bounty and Ned Kelly have been told and retold many times. And yet there are true stories from our past that make these seem tame and lame by comparison. Take the story of William Walker, for example, though I am sure Hollywood would prefer a title like ‘The Amazing Captain Swallow’.

  William Walker (also known by the surnames of Brown, Shields, Swallow and Waldron) was born in 1792, in North Shields near Sunderland. He worked on coal boats from the age of fifteen and was press-ganged into the navy at eighteen. He served two years and then fell victim to the Depression and unemployment that followed the Napoleonic Wars. In 1820, he was sentenced at Durham Assizes to seven years’ transportation for stealing a quilt and goods valued at eightpence.

  In those days, the jury decided the value of the stolen goods. This was important, as you could hang for stealing anything valued at one shilling or more. If the jury thought a prisoner didn’t deserve to die, they simply valued the stolen goods at less than a shilling.

  On the way to London to be put aboard the hulks, Walker convinced another prisoner to jump overboard with him. The poor fellow did so, before Walker, and drowned. Then Walker used the diversion to slip over the other side himself and stay afloat using some cork he had found on board. He was picked up by a passing ship and put ashore in London, claiming he was a sailor who had fallen from the rigging.

  After earning some money working as a rigger on the docks, he grew a beard, called himself Brown and returned to Sunderland as a crewman on a collier. He was recognised and arrested, convicted of absconding, sent to the hulks and transported to Van Diemen’s Land on the Malabar in 1821.

  In early 1822, Walker and several other convicts stole a schooner from the Derwent River and escaped. Walker was found living in Sydney as John Shields, posing as a seaman apprenticed to a merchant ship.

  He was placed on board a ship called the Deveron, which was almost wrecked in a huge storm on the way back to Hobart. Walker saved the day by climbing the mast in mountainous seas to cut away the topmast which was broken and fouling the rigging of the ship.

  For attempting to escape, he was sentenced to 150 lashes and transportation to the more brutal penal settlement of Sarah Island, in Macquarie Harbour on the wild west coast of Van Diemen’s Land. The transfer to Sarah Island was cancelled, however, due to his heroism.

  In 1823, Walker somehow stowed away on the Deveron and escaped again, eventually returning to England via Rio de Janeiro. He called himself William Swallow and lived with his wife and two children for six years until his arrest for housebreaking led to a life sentence and return to Van Diemen’s Land, as William Swallow, on the Georgiana.

  William Swallow was put to work on boats for a month and then was part of the crew loading the Georgiana, which had been chartered to take wheat, onions and potatoes to Sydney after unloading the convicts. He was found hiding among the cargo after the ship’s departure was delayed and sentenced to fifty lashes and transportation to Sarah Island, yet again, for ‘absconding from the public works with the intention of escaping’. Walker was flogged but again escaped being sent to Sarah Island by claiming he fell asleep in the hold while loading the ship.

  His luck was about to run out, however, as about this time someone realised who he was and he and another convict were locked in the cells for ‘being runaways and returned under second sentence of transportation’.

  William Walker should have been hanged; it was the mandatory sentence for the crime. Instead, he was put aboard the brig Cyprus to be sent, yet again, to Sarah Island. But it would be two years before he arrived there. While the Cyprus was anchored up in Recherche Bay, the guards were overwhelmed and a chicken coop was used to block the hatchway and keep the other soldiers below decks while the prisoners were freed. The soldiers fired up through the decks but water was poured down on them to make their muskets useless and the convicts secured the ship and told th
e soldiers they would not be harmed if they surrendered their weapons.

  All passengers and crew, along with convicts unwilling to take part in the plan, were conveyed to the shore with a few rations, which took five trips. Apart from two guards who were knocked on the head at the start, no one was hurt and the Cyprus sailed off with eighteen men aboard, leaving forty-four people on the beach at Recherche Bay.

  William Walker sailed the Cyprus to New Zealand and then past Tahiti to Keppel’s Island, where seven convicts left the ship. One man was lost overboard and three others went ashore on islands in the China Sea before the remaining seven finally reached the coast of China.

  There the Cyprus was scuttled and the convicts used the longboat to reach shore where they spun a concocted story that they were survivors of a shipwreck of a ship called the Edward.

  Walker, using the alias Captain Waldron, and three others returned to London after signing on as crew on the Charles Grant. The other three sailed to America on a Danish ship and were never heard of again. Meanwhile, the three who left the Cyprus earlier arrived in Canton and told different versions of the alibi story. Then news arrived from Sydney of the mutiny and one of the survivors confessed.

  The Kellie Castle, a faster ship than the Charles Grant, sailed to London with one of the convicts as a prisoner and arrived six days before the Charles Grant. Three of the others were arrested when the Charles Grant arrived. Swallow escaped on the docks but was later found and stood trial with them.

  Two of the convicts, Davis and Watt, were hanged at Execution Dock (and were probably the last men hanged for piracy in Britain).

  Another of the men who left the ship in the Pacific was later found and hanged in Hobart.

  Swallow somehow convinced the court that he was forced to do as the others ordered and was only an unwilling member of the mutiny. He and the other two were sent back to Hobart and finally arrived at Sarah Island prison in Macquarie Harbour just as the authorities were closing it down.