Perhaps Elizabeth stayed to help while the new baby settled in. Or perhaps Elizabeth was aware that Government House was by far the best vantage point for checking the flag at South Head, the signal that a ship had been sighted. Elizabeth knew that her husband was sailing home—he was due any day. Was it mere coincidence that Governor King had recently ordered a new and taller signal staff to be erected in place of the old one?44 During the first week of June 1805 the signal was indeed made at the South Head. Elizabeth’s long wait was over.
12
The King’s Merinos
Peace has succeeded ungovernable rage, and those who were before ready to annihilate each other are now as friendly in appearances as if their whole lives had been spent in the constant interchange of kind offices.
JOHN MACARTHUR TO A FRIEND IN THE COLONIAL OFFICE, 20 JULY 1805
The reunion on shore was a scene of merry chaos. Elizabeth and John, together again at last, were swept up in a whirl of introductions, unloading and high spirits. Elizabeth could finally embrace her eldest daughter who, having just turned thirteen, was very nearly a young lady. She was accompanied by a governess. Miss Penelope Lucas, aged thirty-nine, had sailed out to New South Wales to further the education of Miss Macarthur and her sister, nine-year-old Miss Mary.
John brought welcome news of their sons: Edward was almost finished at school and would sail home the following year; and John, the second son and quite the prodigy, was thriving in the academic environment of Grove Hall. Some of his mathematics workbooks remain among the Macarthur papers—perhaps his proud father brought them home to show Elizabeth.
John Macarthur, having left the colony in 1801 under the cloud of a pending court martial, returned triumphant in a ship he part-owned, unsubtly named the Argo. Its figurehead was, equally unsubtly, a golden fleece. John Macarthur had brought out with him on the Argo two wool sorters, some skilled tradesmen and their families, a gardener and a number of servants.1 He had also brought seedlings, plants and seeds he had collected in the course of his travels. These included several olive trees from which John, always with an eye to diversifying his income sources, planned to produce and sell oil. One of those olive trees may well be the ancient one that still grows in the garden of Elizabeth Farm.
John introduced Elizabeth to two young gentlemen: his seventeen-year-old nephew Hannibal Macarthur and twenty-year-old Walter Davidson, nephew of Sir Walter Farquhar, who was physician to the Prince of Wales. The sixth child of fourteen, and the eldest son of John’s older brother, Hannibal was keen to make his way in the world—using the networks of kin to give a young man experience in another household and enterprise was a common way to round out a young man’s education.2 Walter Davidson was part of John’s latest set of entrepreneurial plans. En route to England in 1801, John stopped at the Spice Islands (modern-day Indonesia), befriended a young man and played a small role in assisting his career. The young man went on to become the governor of Penang and Mauritius and his father, Sir Walter Farquhar, was suitably impressed and grateful. Upon John’s eventual arrival in London Sir Walter welcomed him and his children into his home and family. His ongoing friendship would prove invaluable to John Macarthur.
While Elizabeth no doubt talked ten to the dozen with her daughter, John proudly oversaw the unloading of a cargo both precious and rare: five Spanish rams and one ewe, sourced directly from the royal flocks at Kew. The true Spanish merino in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the result of hundreds of years of careful breeding and market control. The dry, harsh climate of Spain (and earlier, of North Africa) had led to the selection of an animal able to thrive in those conditions but not in wet and cold England. Much smaller than a modern Australian merino, a fully grown ram then weighed as little as forty-five kilograms and produced a fleece of up to two kilograms. By way of contrast, a twenty-first-century Peppin merino ram can produce up to eighteen kilograms of wool per year.3 But the Spanish merino’s wool, even then, was the finest in the world and the Spanish were careful to guard it. Since the medieval period, Spain had prohibited the export of its sheep and as a result had created the greatest textile monopoly ever seen in world trade.4
Over time, though, Spain’s monopoly became unenforceable and throughout the eighteenth century, merinos were smuggled out by entrepreneurs or presented as gifts by monarchs seeking political favours. By the end of the eighteenth century, Britain was desperate to secure a wool supply for the country’s booming textile manufacturing sector, particularly with the ongoing demand for military uniforms in this period of perpetual wars. Unfortunately though, much of the famous English broadcloth was woven from Spanish wool. Enemy wool. So the promise of wool from the colonies was an opportunity keenly eyed by the manufacturers, despite the extra costs of transport.5
Joseph Banks had been given some merinos in 1785 and 1788, by his scientific peers in France. Then, via an elaborate smuggling operation across the Portuguese border undertaken on behalf of King George III, Banks obtained fourteen Spanish rams and seventy-three ewes, all destined for the king’s Kew estate.6 By August 1804, under Banks’ careful supervision, the king’s flock had grown to the point where a public sale of surplus sheep was held.7 This was where John Macarthur stepped in—and up.
John’s trial for shooting Colonel Paterson had come to nothing, though all the parties, including Governor King, were censured. This affected King’s career but not Macarthur’s, and John seized the opportunity while in England to sell his military commission. Macarthur did not originally sail to England with a view to selling his fleeces, but he took advantage of the circumstances when approached by manufacturers keen for a new, secure source of wool. He happily promised them the world. In July 1803, he published Statement of the Improvement and Progress of the Breed of Fine Woolled Sheep in New South Wales, in which he claimed that within twenty years New South Wales would replace Spain as England’s source of fine wool. By the time he left England, John was, according to himself, virtually the sole facilitator and instigator of wool production in the colony, with the initiatives of any other men (or women) conveniently overlooked. Joseph Banks dismissed Macarthur’s published statement as ‘mere theoretical Speculation’, and in 1804 he tried to dissuade John Macarthur from purchasing any sheep at the king’s auction, publicly pointing out that exporting the animals was illegal.8 Yet John Macarthur was the biggest buyer at the sale, spending £150 to buy himself seven rams and three ewes.
In typical fashion, John had acted first and sorted out the details later. In the following months he obtained from Lord Camden, secretary of state for war and colonies, nothing less than the keys to the kingdom: a treasury warrant permitting export of his latest ovine purchases.9 Gaining access through his new friend Sir Walter Farquhar, John convinced the government that New South Wales could become a crucial source of prime fleece and that he, John Macarthur, was the man to lead the way. So it was that many months and a lengthy sea voyage later, John presented Elizabeth with half a dozen precious sheep as she stood on the shores of Sydney Cove. The sheep, however, were not John’s best surprise.
He carefully unfolded a letter and showed it to Elizabeth: it was from Lord Camden to Governor King granting John Macarthur 5000 acres (2000 hectares) of the best land yet discovered by the colonists, with the promise of 5000 more.10 It was by far the largest grant ever made in the colony11 and its prime location in the Cow Pastures region was no lucky coincidence—John had written in 1803 to his former colleague Lieutenant Waterhouse, the man who had imported the first merinos to Sydney, asking how his sheep had fared in that area. Waterhouse replied very much in the affirmative12 and John obviously pressed his claims to Lord Camden all the more firmly. Under the terms of the grant, the Macarthurs were to be allocated no fewer than thirty convicts, who they were to feed and keep at their own expense, thus saving the government the cost of their keep, an innovation long pushed for by John. Walter Davidson, Sir Walter Farquhar’s nephew, was also to have a grant of 2000 acres (800 hectares), adjacent
to the Macarthurs’ new estate.13 Lord Camden noted the ‘pains which had been taken by John Macarthur Esquire in increasing and improving the breed of sheep in New South Wales’, and pointedly warned Governor King that ‘His Majesty’s Government takes a particular interest in forwarding the objects of this letter. I am therefore persuaded you will do everything in your power to promote its success…’14
King took the hint. ‘Such a communication was not to be disregarded by me,’ wrote King in a private letter to Joseph Banks, and indeed it was not—the Macarthurs now really did have friends in high places. King continued ‘and whether right or wrong, the noble advisor’s motives were of so honourable and public-spirited a nature, that I offered McA my hand who gratefully received it.’15 Despite their previous enmity, Governor King and John Macarthur managed to bury the hatchet, if only in a shallow grave. And John, having won the day, was prepared to be magnanimous in victory. ‘I am happy to say,’ wrote John to Captain Piper, ‘that not a trace of former misunderstanding is now discoverable. Indeed, the Governor is uncommonly kind and obliging.’16 John Macarthur was not immune to the irony of his new-found armistice with the governor. In a letter to one of his new friends in England, the under-secretary of the colonial office, John wrote that Camden’s letter ‘operated like a necromantick spell, and lulled every angry passion to sleep’.17
So, by the time Elizabeth met him on shore back in Sydney, John had gained an important friend, avoided sanction for duelling with his commanding officer, sold his military commission, convinced the British government that the future of New South Wales rested with him, and wangled the purchase of the rare and prized Spanish merinos. There is luck here, certainly, but also a canny ability to spot an opportunity and to capitalise upon it. The Argo was unloaded and refitted to commence whaling in the South Seas. Even now the Macarthurs were careful to spread their risk, and procure income from multiple sources.
After the reunion and introductions, John and Elizabeth Macarthur, Hannibal and Walter, and all their new retainers drove the last weary miles to Parramatta. They arrived home late, long after little William was in bed. William, as an old man, explained to his niece that his usual bedfellow was his sister Mary but on this night his returning eldest sister Elizabeth slipped in beside him. The sleepy boy woke in confusion, thinking Mary was home, and Elizabeth comforted him with kisses and kind words. William was astonished—that was not like Mary at all. Elizabeth kept speaking but William remained confused. ‘The voice is the voice of Mary,’ four-year-old William observed at the time, ‘but the tallness is not the tallness of Mary.’ Presumably William solved the mystery by morning but by then another problem had presented itself to him. A tall man much marked by smallpox had arrived in the house and he was told this unfamiliar man was his father. William was not impressed. ‘You are so ugly,’ he said to John. ‘I don’t like you.’ Happily, John must have persevered to win his son over because during the course of the day William was able to tell him ‘I like you better now’.18
If John was bemused by his youngest son, he was dismayed to find that his colonial sheep were not plentiful as he had expected. In this his naked ambition is obvious: by 1805 there were some 20,000 sheep in the colony, of which almost a quarter belonged to John and Elizabeth.19 John may well have asked some pointed questions, but Elizabeth soon set him straight: without enough working men and shepherds to take care of the f locks, she had been forced to cull.20 John complained to Governor King about the lack of convict labour, and King almost immediately doubled the number assigned to the Macarthur estates, meeting Camden’s request. Those extra workers Elizabeth had needed so badly were signed over to her husband as easy as kiss my hand. Though happy to receive them, it would only be human for Elizabeth to have felt a little sour about it all.
John now began negotiating the location of his new 2000-hectare land grant. Although King was bound to ratify it, the governor delayed as long as he could. The government had more than a thousand head of cattle grazing in the desirable Cow Pastures region, and King feared Macarthur would find some clever way to take possession of them. It is easy to imagine that King’s cattle problem could have been simply solved by relocating the livestock. But without fenced paddocks, there was little to stop the cattle making their way back to the prime grazing land. King asked Macarthur to look for land elsewhere.
John for once did as he was asked. He rode over much of the country to the southwest of the Sydney settlement but apparently could find no pasture that was not too wet for sheep. The Cow Pastures area remained ideal, and Macarthur’s determination to acquire the land was relentless. If Elizabeth played a role in the negotiations, it was only as a publicly silent, supportive partner. By October, King finally allowed John to take the land. Shortly afterwards John Macarthur proposed to catch and tame the government’s surplus bulls—if only he could have the labour of twenty men (victualled at the crown’s expense) and if he could keep one-third of the captured bulls for himself. King managed to hold his temper and politely declined.21
In December 1805, the Macarthurs paused in their expansionary activities to welcome some unusual visitors. Maori chief Te Pahi and his four sons were visiting Sydney from New Zealand and staying with the Kings at Government House for three months. The visitors travelled upriver to Parramatta, where the Sydney Gazette reported they were ‘very hospitably received’ by the Macarthurs. Chief Te Pahi and his sons were particularly impressed to see the processes of cloth and wool manufacture at the female factory in Parramatta. Elizabeth was well accustomed to hosting guests and although she’d never dined with tattooed Maori warriors before, she likely took it all in her stride. The chief and his sons, diplomatic visitors in a strange land, were hardly going to pose more of social challenge than a celebratory meal at the barracks’ mess, full of drunken officers. The New Zealanders stayed with the Macarthurs for ‘three days in a manner highly gratifying’, before returning to stay with the Kings.22
Born and raised beside the docks at Plymouth, John was exposed from an early age to sailors, travellers and ideas from all parts of the globe. But it speaks well of Elizabeth, given her comparatively sheltered upbringing in Bridgerule, that she too was willing to engage with a wide variety of people. Since the arrival of the First Fleet nearly eighteen years earlier, the colony had been home to individuals from around the globe. Elizabeth’s household reflected the cultural diversity of Sydney Town. There is a rumour, for example, that the first Chinese man to live in New South Wales was engaged as a gardener by the Macarthurs.23 As well, a Tahitian youth known as Jem lived with the Macarthurs for some time, and often visited the Reverend Marsden’s house. Marsden was, a decade or so later, astonished to come across Jem in New Zealand, married to a Maori chief’s daughter.24 In 1806 the Macarthurs, who were Anglicans, engaged a Royalist French Catholic tutor for William and James: Gabriel-Louis-Marie Huon, the Chevalier de Kerillieu. Huon de Kerillieu was, until this appointment, a mere private in the New South Wales Corps but he was a regular visitor to Government House and some claimed he was a member of the French royal family.25 For the next three years Huon de Kerillieu instilled in the youngest Macarthur boys the basis of a classical education, a firm understanding of the French language and a life-long respect for the Catholic faith.26 The Macarthur girls remained under the tutelage of their governess, Penelope Lucas. Their education focused on the biblical, rather than the classical, but in later life the girls were described as ‘well educated’ and ‘kind’.27 The Macarthurs, like many other settler families, apparently also took an Aboriginal teen, called Tjedboro, into their household. Elizabeth’s youngest son William would write about him, many years later. Tjedboro’s presence in the Macarthur household is remarkable mainly because of the boy’s father: Pemulwuy.
Pemulwuy was an Aboriginal warrior and cleverman, a Bediagal man from the Botany Bay area.28 It was he who had fatally speared Governor Phillip’s gamekeeper, McIntyre. From 1792 Pemulwuy led intermittent raids on settlers at Prospect, Toongabbie, Geo
rges River, Parramatta, Brickfield Hill and the Hawkesbury River. Civilian administrator David Collins thought him ‘a most active enemy to the settlers, plundering them of their property, and endangering their personal safety’.29 In 1797 Pemulwuy organised a force of more than a hundred warriors and raided farms in the Parramatta district.30 There is no record of Elizabeth Farm being directly attacked. Pemulwuy was shot in 1802 and Governor King—who supposedly held Pemulwuy in some esteem—sent his pickled head to Joseph Banks in England.31 It seems that Pemulwuy simply began dispensing justice according to Aboriginal law. Governor Arthur Phillip, and his predecessors, were also implementing justice, according to British law. 32 The intersection between belief systems was an unbridgeable cataract, with the waters further muddied by those from both sides who disobeyed their own laws. It is also possible Pemulwuy was a father-figure to Tjedboro, rather than his actual father.
But fatherless or not, Tjedboro (or Tedbury, as he was also called) caused some trouble; the records contain hints of raided farms. According the Sydney Gazette of 4 August 1805, Tjedboro was locked up in gaol and given his liberty only after his Aboriginal friends pleaded for his release and vouched for his future good behaviour. It seems that soon after this, John Macarthur took Tjedboro ‘in hand to reclaim him’. Elizabeth yet again welcomed a stranger into her home and treated the youth with kindness—perhaps she believed the charges against him to be false or perhaps, with four boys of her own, she simply found it easy to take in one more. Tjedboro was, initially, ‘quite happy and docile’, but the novelty of living with the Macarthur family soon palled and within a few weeks he ‘took to the woods’ and was not seen for several months.33
Tjedboro did come back to Elizabeth Farm for visits, coming and going as he pleased. He was taught to call John ‘Master’ although, as William happily admits, Tjedboro never participated in any activities which the family might have called work. ‘He used to say he should “like to be as white man” that is civilized that he might be a gentleman; but then the idea of being controlled he could not endure.’ With the two eldest Macarthur sons away in England, Tjedboro (with Elizabeth’s tacit approval) seems to have taken the role of an older brother, with William noting he ‘has often chidden and restrained me in some of my boyish pranks’. However, the ugly assumptions of race were never far from the surface. William goes on to write: ‘No being could be more devotedly attached to another than this poor savage was to us.’34 William was right about Tjedboro’s loyalty—in 1808, during the immediate aftermath of the rebellion against Bligh, Tjedboro arrived one evening at Elizabeth Farm armed to the teeth and prepared, he said, to spear the governor in order to protect John. Tjedboro’s services were not, as it happened, required, and ‘he was given a meal, shown a corner to sleep and advised to go home in the morning with thanks for his goodwill’.35 Two years later Tjedboro was shot and killed by white settlers.36
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