Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

  He was given a ship, HMS Investigator, which was a converted shallow draught collier, refitted with extra cabins and storage for scientists. She was not in good condition, but she was all that could be spared by a navy preparing for war. Flinders married Ann Chappell, a girl from his hometown, and sailed away several weeks later.

  He charted the southern, eastern and northern coasts of the continent for two years before the fact that the ship was leaking badly forced him to abort his mission in 1803.

  In August 1803, he sailed as a passenger from Port Jackson on HMS Porpoise, hoping to secure a more suitable ship in England to complete the task of mapping the continent. A week out of Sydney, sailing at night in convoy with the passenger ships Cato and Bridgewater, Porpoise hit an uncharted reef in heavy seas 450 kilometres east-north-east of the modern-day town of Gladstone.

  Both the Porpoise and the Cato sank on the reef and the Bridgewater sailed off in the dark, leaving them to their fate. Flinders organised the rescue operation and managed to get ninety-four survivors safely onto a small sandy island within the reef. Determined to preserve discipline, he read aloud the articles of war and had one seaman publicly flogged for disorderly conduct.

  The survivors had tents and food and Flinders saved almost all of his charts, papers and scientific drawings from the wreck. He then took one of the Porpoise’s two six-oared longboats, with an officer and crew, and made his way back to Port Jackson, where he arranged the rescue of all the survivors on the reef.

  Flinders then left for England in the locally built 29-ton schooner Cumberland, which proved almost impossible to sail on the open sea. He therefore decided to seek assistance at Ile-de-France (Mauritius). War had again broken out between England and France, however, and he was imprisoned on the island for over six years. He finally returned to the woman he had married just before sailing in the Investigator nine years and three months after his departure.

  Flinders never did complete the charting of our continent. His health was poor and he was an old man by the age of forty, probably dying of cancer. He spent several years finishing and editing his wonderful and important work, A Voyage to Terra Australis. The first copies were delivered to his home on 18 July 1814. His wife Ann laid the volumes on his bed while he slept and he woke the following day only to touch the books and whisper his last words, ‘My papers’, before he closed his eyes and died.

  Flinders’ wife and daughter lived in poverty on a small pension until 1852 when the governments of the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria, learning of their situation, each voted that a pension of £100 be paid to them. Flinders’ widow died before this took place, but his daughter, Mrs Ann Petrie, wrote:

  it would indeed have cheered her last days to know that my father’s long-neglected services were at length appreciated . . . and the handsome amount of the pension granted will enable me to educate my young son in a manner worthy of the name he bears.

  Her son would become Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie. Born the year the pensions were granted, he was the most celebrated and respected archaeologist of his era and the first professor to hold a chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom. He died in 1942.

  We owe Matthew Flinders the honour of naming our nation. The name ‘Australia’ was popularised by Flinders, who wrote in 1804, ‘I call the whole island Australia’ and he wished to use the name in his published works, but was talked out of it by Sir Joseph Banks.

  Governor Macquarie read Flinders’ comment about the name. He liked the idea and began using the term. By 1901, the name ‘Australia’ was in such common use that there was little debate about the name that should be used when the colonies federated to form our nation.

  JH

  THE BLACK STUMP

  Is there a genuine ‘black stump’?

  Well, there are, or have been, Black Stump hotels or inns at Coolah, Merriwagga and Trunkey Creek. Is one of those locations the site of the ‘real’ black stump?

  The answer is no—not really, there were many ‘black stumps’; they were used to mark survey lines in the nineteenth century. Anywhere beyond the boundaries of the original nineteen counties declared by Governor Ralph Darling and surveyed by John Oxley and Major Thomas Mitchell was technically ‘beyond the black stump’.

  The Manning River was the northern boundary of the nineteen counties, the Liverpool Range was the western boundary and the Clyde River at Bateman’s Bay was the southern boundary. So the nineteen counties were within an area from Kempsey to Bateman’s Bay and the western boundary went as far as the town of Wellington.

  Any town or settlement on the perimeter of the surveyed area could be ‘the black stump’.

  Governor Darling declared that land ‘beyond’ the surveyed nineteen counties was not for settlement. Those who broke the law and settled there were ‘squatters’.

  Governor Bourke allowed land outside the nineteen counties to be taken up after 1836. An inn called The Black Stump Inn was built in the 1860s at the junction of the roads leading to Gunnedah and Coonabarabran, at Coolah.

  The inn later became the Black Stump Wine Saloon and was destroyed by fire in 1908. It was a staging post and stopover point for Cobb & Co and it became a marker by which people gauged their journeys. This helped sustain the term ‘beyond the black stump’, but the term originated with the survey of the nineteen counties.

  In 1887, a group of surveyors arrived on Astro Station near Blackall in Queensland, 1000 kilometres west of Brisbane, and used a stump of blackened petrified wood as a base for their theodolites. The surveyors were there to take longitudinal and latitudinal observations, to be used as part of the accurate mapping of inland Australia.

  So, the country to the west of Blackall was also ‘beyond the black stump’. The stump of petrified wood is now found at a monument near Blackall State School.

  There is also a Black Stump Hotel at Trunkey Creek in New South Wales and a Black Stump lookout and rest stop at Mundubbera in Queensland.

  JH

  FREEMAN COBB

  The Man Who Stayed Three Years

  Freeman Cobb was born in 1830 in Brewster, Massachusetts, USA and, at eighteen, contracted rheumatic fever, which left him permanently lame. This led him to seek employment in an industry that did not require strenuous physical activity or the ability to walk great distances.

  Cobb worked for Adams & Co coaching lines, an outfit which was established during the Californian gold rush.

  In May 1853, aged twenty-three and with an excellent knowledge of the coach and cargo business, he arrived in Melbourne with his associate George Mowton, supposedly to establish a branch of Adams & Co.

  Mowton and Cobb had met some other Americans on the voyage out to the young colony of Victoria. They had all heard that gold had been discovered and opportunities for the coaching business were growing fast. Their new friends all worked for the famous Wells Fargo coach company and were travelling to Victoria with very similar ideas to those of Freeman Cobb.

  So, instead of establishing a new branch of Adams & Co Coaching, Cobb and Mowton joined Swanton, Lamber and Peck, from Wells Fargo, to form Cobb & Co.

  Their average age was only twenty-two, but their enthusiasm and experience counted for a great deal. The company started out only carrying freight, but changed to passenger coaches in January 1854 and began operating daily each way between Bendigo, Castlemaine and Melbourne, except on Sundays.

  Cobb & Co became a part of Australian history, as iconic as Ned Kelly or Don Bradman or Qantas. The coaches of Cobb & Co carried freight and passengers all around Australia until well into the twentieth century.

  But what happened to the founder, the man who gave his name to what became an Aussie institution?

  Well, it seems that Mr Cobb was an opportunist in true American fashion. In May 1856, almost exactly three years after he arrived on Australian soil, Freeman Cobb announced that the business had been sold and he left for America. He returned to Brewster, married his cousin Annette Cobb and they had two
children.

  From 1864 to 1865 he was a senator for Barnstaple County in the Massachusetts State Legislature. In 1871, however, he took his family to South Africa where he formed Cobb & Co Ltd and operated a coach service between Port Elizabeth and the diamond fields at Kimberley.

  The firm failed after several years and Cobb was declared insolvent and died in 1878 at his home in Port Elizabeth.

  JH

  THE LIGHTS OF COBB AND CO

  HENRY LAWSON

  Fire lighted; on the table a meal for sleepy men;

  A lantern in the stable; a jingle now and then;

  The mail-coach looming darkly by light of moon and star;

  The growl of sleepy voices; a candle in the bar;

  A stumble in the passage of folk with wits abroad;

  A swear word from a bedroom, the shout of ‘All aboard!’

  ‘Tchk-tchk! Git up!’ ‘Hold fast, there!’ and down the range we go;

  Five hundred miles of scattered camps will watch for Cobb and Co.

  Old coaching towns already decaying for their sins;

  Uncounted ‘Half-Way Houses’, and scores of ‘Ten-Mile Inns’;

  The riders from the stations by lonely granite peaks;

  The black-boy for the shepherds on sheep and cattle creeks;

  The roaring camps of Gulgong, and many a ‘Digger’s Rest’;

  The diggers on the Lachlan; the huts of Farthest West;

  Some twenty thousand exiles who sailed for weal or woe

  The bravest hearts of twenty lands will wait for Cobb and Co.

  The morning star has vanished, the frost and fog are gone,

  In one of those grand mornings which but on mountains dawn;

  A flask of friendly whisky—each other’s hopes we share—

  And throw our top-coats open to drink the mountain air.

  The roads are rare to travel, and life seems all complete;

  The grind of wheels on gravel, the trot of horses’ feet,

  The trot, trot, trot and canter, as down the spur we go

  The green sweeps to horizons blue that call for Cobb and Co.

  We take a bright girl actress through western dusts and damps,

  To bear the home-world message, and sing for sinful camps,

  To stir our hearts and break them, wild hearts that hope and ache

  (Ah! when she thinks of those days her own must nearly break!)

  Five miles this side the goldfield, a loud, triumphant shout:

  Five hundred cheering diggers have snatched the horses out:

  With ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in chorus, through roaring camps they go

  That cheer for her, and cheer for Home, and cheer for Cobb and Co.

  Three lamps above the ridges and gorges dark and deep,

  A flash on sandstone cuttings where sheer the sidings sweep,

  A flash on shrouded wagons, on water ghastly white;

  Weird bush and scattered remnants of ‘rushes in the night’;

  Across the swollen river a flash beyond the ford:

  Ride hard to warn the driver! He’s drunk or mad, good Lord!

  But on the bank to westward a broad and cheerful glow

  New camps extend across the plains, new routes for Cobb and Co.

  Swift scramble up the siding where teams climb inch by inch;

  Pause, bird-like, on the summit—then breakneck down the pinch;

  By clear ridge-country rivers, and gaps where tracks run high,

  Where waits the lonely horseman, cut clear against the sky;

  Past haunted half-way houses—where convicts made the bricks—

  Scrub-yards and new bark shanties, we dash with five and six;

  Through stringybark and blue-gum, and box and pine we go—

  A hundred miles shall see tonight the lights of Cobb and Co!

  SYDNEY’S FAMOUS FERRIES

  Sydney’s harbour is famous for its ferries and shipyards, but building sturdy seagoing vessels in the colony of New South Wales was a risky business in the convict era. Early governors and colonial administrators were faced with a dilemma as far as shipbuilding was concerned.

  Ships and boats were the only viable means of transport, not only to and from the colony, but also around the colony. Due to the British East India Company’s government-approved monopoly, however, no vessel capable of trading with Asia or the South Seas could be built in the colony. The British East India Company insisted that no Asian trading be undertaken by the new colony. The company feared that the new penal settlement, which was not under their control, would become another British trading post and threaten their very cosy relationship with the Crown (and the Dutch East India Company).

  At first, the two government ships, HMS Sirius and Supply, were used along with the whaleboats, cutters and other small vessels which arrived with the First Fleet. When the last of the First Fleet transports departed in July 1788, the harbour had very few boats of any kind to do the carrying, exploring and guarding necessary for the colony’s existence. This became more apparent eighteen months after arriving, when Governor Phillip decided to set up a second settlement on better farming land at a place he considered more easily defensible than the wide expanses of the harbour. Originally called Rose Hill, this place was generally known from the start as Parramatta.

  This was the main reason that the first substantial vessel was built in the colony. In October 1789, a 12-ton vessel was launched named the Rose Hill Packet. She was designed to use sails, oars or poles to carry stores between the two settlements at Sydney and Parramatta. Round trips took a week to complete.

  The Rose Hill Packet was convict-built and was a rather clumsy barge-like vessel universally known as ‘the Lump’. Her brief life was over by 1800 as, by then, other government vessels had been acquired or built and small private ferries were operating around the harbour and the river, charging fares for passengers and freight.

  Colonial authorities were constantly anxious about escape attempts and sought ways to prevent the possibility of convicts escaping; so in 1791, after the successful escape of the Bryant family and seven other convicts in the government fishing boat, a regulation was introduced prohibiting the building of vessels more than 14 feet (4.3 metres) in length.

  By 1800, quite a few enterprising ferrymen were operating around the harbour. The best known of them was the Negro ex-convict Billy Blue, who wore a naval officer’s coat and hat and was given the name ‘The Old Commodore’ by Governor Macquarie.

  Small ferry companies continued to operate around the harbour until 1861, when the North Shore Ferry Company became Sydney’s first large commercial ferry service. Although less than 1000 people lived on the north shore, the company prospered and, in 1878, it was renamed the North Shore Steam Ferry Company.

  Few Australians realise that, along with the much vaunted Australian inventions we always hear about—rotary clotheslines, motor mowers, cask wine—the double-ended ferry is also an Australian invention.

  It was the North Shore Ferry Co that invented the double-ended propeller-driven ferry in 1868. The company’s captains were tired of turning ferries around in small coves and bays and the increasing use of the harbour for recreation was making the task more dangerous. Someone suggested building two front sections of a steam ferry and joining them together so that only one end operated at a time. The ferries had propellers and a steering deck at either end and the captain merely walked along the deck, changed ends and the ferry never had to turn around.

  Many of Sydney’s early ferries were paddle-steamers, but the double-ended propeller-driven ferries took over the harbour in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The ferries were made at shipyards around the harbour, such as Mort’s Dock where the classic Manly ferries like the Barragoola were built.

  In 1899, most of Sydney’s ferry services amalgamated to form Sydney Ferries Limited, which had become the world’s largest ferry operator by 1932.

  In 1928, the famous Scottish-built ferries Dee Why and
Curl Curl arrived. Although they were identical, the Curl Curl was always slightly faster than her twin sister, in fact she was the fastest ferry ever to operate on the harbour. The grandest ferry of them all, the mighty South Steyne, arrived from Scotland in 1938.

  Seventy metres in length, South Steyne was the world’s largest operational steam ferry. She steamed the 22,000 kilometres from Leith, where she was built, to Australia in 1938 and crossed between Circular Quay and Manly over 100,000 times over her thirty-six-year career, carrying close to 100 million passengers. Unlike most of the great ferries of my childhood, which have been stripped and scuttled to provide homes for fish and adventures for recreational divers, she still exists, as a floating restaurant in Sydney.

  The opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge saw ferry travel drop from 30 million to 13 million passengers a year. The great era of the ferries was over.

  The company struggled on for another twenty years but, but by the time World War II ended, cars were becoming a huge threat to the ferries’ viability and, with the operators facing financial ruin, the New South Wales government intervened and agreed to take over Sydney Ferries Limited in 1951.

  The Port Jackson & Manly Steamship Co was born and services were revised and revamped.

  The famous advertisements encouraging the public to take the ferry to Manly for a day out were a great success. For many years from 1940, government buses all carried ads for the service, telling passengers that Manly was ‘seven miles from Sydney, and a thousand miles from care’.

  Manly had an amusement pier and two swimming beaches, one with a shark-proof net inside the harbour and the famous surf beach just a short stroll away down the Corso. Ferries also serviced Taronga Park Zoo and Luna Park. A ride on a ferry became part of a fun day out.