Storyland

by Catherine McKinnon

  Dedication

  For Gary Christian

  Epigraph

  If I wanted a one-sentence definition of human beings, this would do: humans are the animals that believe the stories they tell about themselves. Humans are credulous animals.

  Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Will Martin 1796

  Hawker 1822

  Lola 1900

  Bel 1998

  Nada 2033 & 2717

  Bel 1998

  Lola 1900

  Hawker 1822

  Will Martin 1796

  Maps

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Will Martin

  1796

  My oar stabs the side of the Reliance. We push Tom Thumb away from the ship. Venus is out but the sky is still light. Lieutenant Flinders takes the helm. Mr Bass and I row until we are clear of the ships docked at Sydney Cove and then we boat the oars and hoist sail. Tom Thumb’s sail snaps at the breeze and air-filled we bounce across the water.

  ‘To dare is to do!’ Mr Bass shouts our motto.

  ‘To dare is to do!’ The lieutenant and I reply as if we are one.

  It is Thursday, the twenty-fourth of March, the year 1796. This day we have embarked on our second Tom Thumb sail. Mr Bass and Lieutenant Flinders are charged with locating the mouth of the river that Henry Hacking (a ship pilot who likes to hunt) has discovered inland. Hacking has guessed the mouth to be south of Botany Bay, near Cape Banks. Mr Bass says that if we find that river, and it is deep enough to take large vessels, then our names will be shiny buttons on English coats.

  Seawater sprays across the gunwale. It is the enchanted hour, where blue water glows and the rocky shores and sandy beaches have a yellowish gleam. On the eastern side of the cove I spy the governor’s stone house. Near it, the farmed gardens. On the western side is the hospital, where my friend Na will be sweeping floors. Around the cove, dirt paths snake by houses made of brick, mud, wattle and post, and limed inside and out. Beyond the settlement, it is all forest. The trees have rare and fanciful roots that rise high above the ground. At each step there are fallen trunks, slumped sideways like drunken sailors, or prostrate on the ground; others that are lightning splintered or perished. The foliage is silver-tinged and evergreen. In this land, nature is upended. Birds sing through the night, animals hunt and forage in moonlight.

  Dribbling through the trees and over mud flats, and dividing east of the cove from west, is the Tank Stream. Once it was a pure stream, but now it is fouled by pig dung, food scraps and more, so that our small colony is desperate for clean water. The governor hopes that the river we seek may provide new areas to settle. According to Mr Bass, therein lies the importance of our task.

  We sail on past stony Pinchgut Island. A man stands on the shore. I see a hand rise to wave. Or is it a trick of the eye? Only the wicked are left there. No one on Garden Island. Behind us, the ships moored in the harbour soon disappear. Larboard and starboard is only darkened forest. Indian fires glimmer between the jungle of skeleton trees.

  Our first Tom Thumb, owned by Mr Bass and friends, was taken to Timor on the Nautilus and did not return. The colony’s boat builder, good Mr Paine, clinker built a new Thumb, with steamed frames of spotted gum, red cedar planks, and polished copper fittings. We are kitted with a mast of flooded gum, a linen lugsail, a sweep sail and well-crafted oars. Less than twelve foot, so a small boat to sail in. There is no anchor spare in the colony so our anchor is a lump of rock that the sea has speared a hole through and, under Mr Bass’s instruction, I have threaded it with thick rope. We have only two muskets to contest pirates or cannibals, supplies for ten days, no more, and the danger is great.

  The governor himself tried to dissuade us from the journey.

  ‘We are more than willing,’ Lieutenant Flinders said.

  ‘Good fate does not side with every explorer,’ the governor warned.

  ‘We are confident,’ Mr Bass assured him.

  Still the governor resisted. ‘No,’ he said, his gaze on me. ‘The risk of young lives lost, with so much yet to give, outweighs the cause.’

  ‘Sir!’ Mr Bass stepped forward, his great shape commanding the room as he spoke our motto in Latin, ‘Audere est facere!’

  The governor laughed abruptly and we saw he had relented.

  The water melts into the night sky. Mr Bass tips his head to stargaze. He is almost as long as Thumb. Lieutenant Flinders sits, hand on knee, reading the wind. I button my jacket against the cold, see the beacon flaming on South Head. On this sail I aim to prove my worth. For it is as Mr Bass says: ‘In the new world, a man is what he dares to be, no more, no less.’

  The water goes slap, slap against the side of Thumb. Slap, slap, to dare is to do.

  Near Shark Bay the wind drops. Mr Bass and I get upon the oars and pull to shore. The surf foams and spits as we haul our boat up onto the sand. Mr Bass and the lieutenant stand on the beach and shake hands.

  ‘Mr Bass, congratulations.’

  ‘Lieutenant Flinders, congratulations.’

  They are pleased to have nine days exploring, away from duties on the Reliance, and with no pipe whistling orders.

  The bay is edged by rocky cliffs. Mr Bass and the lieutenant take off to climb the nearest, and soon become inky shapes. The dark sea is furrowed by starlight. Behind me, tall eucalypts stand like bark-coated marines guarding the beach, their leaves tinted by the moon.

  ‘Will, bring my red waistcoat,’ Mr Bass calls.

  Yesterday he gave Hoary Bogarty a bottle for the coat. Hoary Bogarty himself had won it in cards from a convict, who had won it at dice from a marine. I fetch the waistcoat and scale the rock to where they stand. For a tick-tock they slip into their Lincolnshire thees and thous, like Quakers at prayer — Think thee, Mr Bass; Would not thou, Lieutenant Flinders — as though our arrival needs marking. Then, games over, Mr Bass breaks off a tree branch to swat mosquitoes and opens the bottle of spirits he has saved for the occasion.

  Lieutenant Flinders has lost his customary droop. The change is not the trip alone but also Mr Bass’s doing. Many times, on the Reliance, I have been below deck and have spied the lieutenant, on hearing Mr Bass’s boot above, down pen and hurry to greet his friend. On deck, as they pace, the lieutenant’s cheeks begin to shine, as though Mr Bass himself has brought the sun into the day.

  The two now sit on the top of a rock, drinking and talking of the governor’s latest Tank Stream orders, while I go about wooding. In the first order the governor forbade the pulling down of palings or the keeping of pigs near the stream, it being the only fresh water Sydney Cove has and now badly tainted. But all disobeyed that command. The worst offenders? The marines who have huts along the stream. So the governor put out a second order saying that when he gives an order he expects it to be obeyed.

  ‘If I were the governor I would have the marines whipped,’ I say.

  ‘Have I taught you nothing?’ Mr Bass asks.

  ‘The marines are boorish, I will give the boy that,’ the lieutenant says to Mr Bass. ‘But they wield a new sort of power. Whipping would only cause them to rise in revolt.’

  If the lieutenant speaks to me directly, it is usually to give an order. He thinks me dull-witted; a servant to be suffered for the sake of his friend. In time I will show him different. For now, I play my part.

  The lieutenant turns the conversation elsewhere. I set a fire on a flat rock that has a view of the bay. We supped before embarking and, as we intend to sail before sunrise, I stretch out to nap, but with the sea splash, frog croak and insect buzz, napping is all pretence. Mr Bass and Lieut
enant Flinders sit fireside and argue politics.

  ‘You take too many risks mingling with seditionists,’ the lieutenant says.

  Mr Bass pokes at the coals. ‘A risk only for the lily-livered who hang on public opinion.’

  The lieutenant pays the jibe no heed. ‘You made a show by attending Gerrald’s funeral.’

  ‘Never a show to grieve a death,’ snaps Mr Bass.

  I am with the lieutenant on this one, for I did not weep at Mr Gerrald’s funeral. Far from it. In the months before his passing he had often detained Mr Bass and me at his house for hour after insufferable hour, giving speeches about universal manhood suffrage. Mr Bass was there to treat him, and this a kindly act, because Balmain, the colony’s surgeon, refused to medicate what he called ‘that horrid seditionist!’ Mr Bass, whose duties were bound only to those on the Reliance, took Balmain’s place because he has sympathy for those who uphold ideals, claiming it is the mark of a worthy man. Yet, to my mind, the upshot of Mr Gerrald’s universal manhood suffrage was that more men should be like him. Mr Gerrald may have upheld ideals, but he was also a pompous drunkard, and, as we had enough inebriates in Sydney Cove as it was, I wagered my sympathy was not worth giving.

  Mr Bass and the lieutenant get as noisy in their arguing as convicts at rut-time but when their beverage has spiked their drowsiness, they lie down and snore. I drink what is left, no more than a sip, and stretch out, flat on my back on hard rock. I eye the winking sky and listen to the night. Swish, swash, swish, swash.

  The sea never stops its caress of the earth. On land, old-bone branches crack and crash. This place is an upturn of the natural world, each step, new and old together.

  The next morn, with the world still dark, Mr Bass wakes me. An owl hoots. I sand the fire and scramble down to help haul Thumb to the shallows. Mr Bass and the lieutenant are black figures splashing in water. We shove off and jump in, wet feet slapping wood. My eyes do not want to stay open but they must.

  Mr Bass and I pull out of the bay, the moon our guide, then hoist sail. The air is cool. Thumb skips over velvet water towards the twin heads and the wide-open ocean. The South Head burner is flickering. A lone redcoat should be tending it though I spy no one. Once we are through the heads, the breeze drops, paddles us along until dawn, then departs. The sun peeks over watery dunes. Mr Bass and I set to the oars – splish, splash, splish, splash. I know now why sailors say the splash of wood in water is a mariner’s dirge. The never-ending of it. We pull at an even pace. Lieutenant Flinders sits at the helm, watching the coastline. Behind him, the English flag is limp. The lieutenant’s eyes narrow as he flashes his timepiece and compass, scribbling calculations in a book that he keeps wrapped in seal hide. Mr Bass and I are hour hands of a clock, slow and steady; the lieutenant, the seconds darting by.

  The sun fires hot. My arms shake like a fish on a hook. At Mr Bass’s nod we boat the oars.

  ‘Water,’ he commands.

  I roll out the water cask from beneath the thwart. Mr Bass sits side on, fills his cup from the spout, and leans back to drink. In a tick-tock water spurts from his mouth.

  ‘Blasted spoiled!’ he shouts.

  The lieutenant reaches forward, snatches the cup and sips. He too spits it out, then turns on me, red-faced, and with a neck like coiled rope.

  ‘Will, this water has been put in a wine barica!’

  A rush of heat. Silently, I curse Bogarty and his ruddy head, for water held in a wine barica is quickly poisoned. The lieutenant sighs, thinking, no doubt, that his brother would not make such a blunder. Samuel is not a clot but he whines like one. I was chosen for the sail over him, thanks to Mr Bass’s stubbornness.

  ‘Will is as strong as a man, Samuel less so,’ Mr Bass had argued.

  ‘I saw no evidence of strength at Georges River,’ the lieutenant said, referring to our first Tom Thumb sail.

  ‘Were you looking?’ asked Mr Bass, offended on my behalf. He stayed firm and the lieutenant gave way.

  But to be without water is grim. Mr Bass scratches his neck. He is my advocate; I hate to disappoint him.

  Bogarty, yesterday morn, was as slow as a wet whistle because his hip was playing up and because of his rotten head, which he said was not due to drink, as I suggested, but caused by my mouth going pell-mell. I took the barica from his store without my usual look-to. The error is mine.

  ‘Check and recheck all your tasks,’ is what Mr Bass instructed at Portsmouth. One substance should never taint another. Medicines must be stored with care. It is a sin to lose a life through recklessness. These are his commandments, recited again and again.

  I burn with shame and hear the creak of Thumb above the slap of the sea. Then I remember Mr Palmer’s gift. ‘Keep safe, young friend,’ he had said, handing over melons newly plucked from his garden. (Mr Palmer, like Mr Gerrald, was transported from Scotland for his belief in manhood suffrage, only from Palmer’s mouth the term is not only reasoned but followed through with action. Man, boy, even on occasion woman, he treats as his equal.) I scramble to the bow to fetch a melon. Mr Bass eyes me with relief.

  ‘We will search out a stream when we land,’ he says, turning to the lieutenant. ‘It is that fool Bogarty we should punish. The old goat sniffs rum from ten rods away; surely he has the nose for a wine barica.’

  I lay the melon on the thwart. Mr Bass slips his blade along the thick skin, careful as he splits it not to lose any juice. He quarters the melon and we sit in the heat, sucking the moist flesh. We are three, in a small boat on a flat ocean, drifting beneath a forever blue sky.

  ‘Chew the seeds,’ Mr Bass commands. He fills his cup with the poisoned water, splashes the contents over his head and shouts, ‘To dare is to do!’

  This is how he lifts the mood. He fills the cup again, hands it to the lieutenant, who, jolly now, repeats the action. I too take off my hat and pour the spoiled water over my head. For a tick-tock I feel less sore about my mistake but when I glance at the lieutenant, it is clear he has not forgot.

  The lieutenant stores a secret ledger in his memory. Each person has two columns, for and against, and the lieutenant always knows where a person is placed. It is not surprising to hear him tell, in bitter words and months after the event, of some small injustice he has suffered at the hands of another.

  ‘Mind, give that barica a good scrub before we fill it,’ Mr Bass whispers as we take up our oars.

  Mr Bass does not keep ledgers but he does take measure of his fellow man.

  How he does it? I sense that he begins to draw a portrait of a particular fellow in his mind and, at every meeting, he shades the portrait one way, then another. It might take several meetings for a full colouring but, once a portrait is complete, Mr Bass sticks to his opinion. From then on he is loyal to that original conception. The lieutenant is more precise and, for good or bad, his ledger is always open. I imagine my own name in that ledger; my against column is nearly full.

  We pull southward with the sun overhead. The sail flaps. We set taut the line to catch the breeze at south-southeast and steer for shore, skimming across the waves.

  ‘We are sailing at three knots,’ calls the lieutenant, pleased with Thumb’s pace.

  Mr Bass is at the helm, looking west. ‘Is that Cape Banks?’ he shouts.

  Cape Banks is our marker to set course for land and search out our river.

  The lieutenant peers towards shore. ‘Looks more like Hat Hill,’ he calls, hesitation in his voice.

  ‘Surely we have not sailed that far,’ Mr Bass replies. ‘Hat Hill is fifteen leagues from Port Jackson.’

  Cape Banks is a far shorter distance from Sydney Cove than Hat Hill. I first spied Hat Hill on our Reliance voyage to Port Jackson over a year ago.

  ‘There is the hill Captain Cook likened to a hat,’ our master said as we sailed by.

  I stood on deck eyeing Hat Hill for as long as it remained in sight, stirred by the thought that I was sailing the same sea as Cook.

  From that day, all on board call
ed it Hat Hill. We had seen it again only last month, on our return from Norfolk Island.

  I scramble to the bow. Yes, there, to the west, is the hill Master Moore had pointed out.

  ‘Hat Hill it is,’ I call. ‘See the flat top with its slope. No mistaking that.’

  Mr Bass laughs. ‘Matthew, we have overshot the mark!’

  The lieutenant looks at the water. ‘Who would suppose it? The current must be strong.’

  A fierce north wind forces our sail south. Our aim is to find a place to land and search out fresh water before night falls. Clouds race along the coast, shifting from white to grey to black. The sea-swells become frothing giants hungry for our boat. We toss about and must tack for shore even though the cliffs are still forbidding. To the west the sun dips behind the mountain. Darkness arrives in a rush. The wind drops, but the sea is choppy. The early moon tickles the water with light. We are still four miles from land.

  The lieutenant and I pull for a bend in the coast. Soon we can set a fire, roast meat or boil some soup. The promise of supper keeps me alert but, when we near the beach, our disappointment is great for there is white surf gnashing at the sand.

  ‘Landing is out,’ the lieutenant shouts.

  Nothing for it but to boat the oars. The lieutenant and I heave up the stone anchor and tumble it into the sea. The moon catches Mr Bass’s face as he clears the line, but his thoughts are disguised. Stoic is his second name. The lieutenant and I secure the ropes. My belly rattles. There will be no chance to soak the salt from the pork so it is ready for roasting, nor boil soup. No flame to keep us warm, and already I am cold to the bone. The lieutenant and Mr Bass repack our stores for neither is content with the current arrangement. I pull out another melon, place it on the thwart and cut it open. There is naught to add but bread and raw potato. I serve our meagre meal. As we chomp, I eye the stars.

  ‘Mr Bass, what shall we name this place?’ the lieutenant asks, as he sucks on a second piece of melon.

  On our Georges River trip all had been named before we arrived.