Surviving Sydney Cove

by Goldie Alexander

  Heart in my mouth—for I expect all tidings to be bad—I waited to hear him out.

  He settled on a stool in front of me and said, ‘Winston and I have been given orders to return to England on the very first ship that sails home.’

  I took ages to take in what he was saying. Then I wept and wept inconsolably. ‘What will happen to me now?’ I cried at last. ‘I am not allowed to return before I finish my sentence.’

  My Master took my hand in both his large ones. ‘We have learned to love you as dearly as if you were part of our family. We would trust you with our very lives. And we are sure that you have been transported here most unjustly.’ His face fell into deeper lines. ‘But not even Captain Phillip has the power to allow you to return before your sentence is complete.’

  I wept more loudly. My Master glanced at Winston who stared sadly back. He said, ‘Lizzie, do you not have a good friend in Rose Hill?’

  ‘Sir, that I do,’ I said wiping my teary face on my sleeve. ‘I am sure that Sarah is missing me most sorely. Also, when we were on our way to Sydney Cove, I promised the convict woman, Margaret, that I would teach her and Sarah their letters. I would very much like to keep my word.’

  ‘Was not Margaret heavy with child?’

  ‘Indeed she was.’

  My Master’s sigh was heavy. ‘If the baby should happen to be a girl, ask Margaret to call her Emily.’

  My eyes filled once again. ‘Sir, that I will indeed.’

  My Master sighed. ‘They will be very pleased to have you back,’ he decided. So he and Winston waited for me to pull myself together. I did, and then set about preparing potatoes and carrots for our supper.

  Thursday 3rd June

  The wind is cold and fierce. Autumn has vanished and winter is now upon us.

  My household tasks over, I set off towards the storehouse and my favourite place under some red gums that look out to sea.

  I took my quill, ink and book. I had intended writing in my journal. Who should I come upon but Winston? I could see that he had been crying, for his cheeks were pale and his eyes swollen and red.

  I quickly told him about the vision I had of Emily and how happy she had been. I said, ‘Perhaps God does indeed look after the innocent,’ and this seemed to cheer him a little.

  ‘You have been such a true friend,’ he said to me. ‘Surely there is something I can do for you in return? I would like to repay you for all you have done for Emily … Nay, what you have done for all my family.’

  There was a long silence as I considered his offer.

  ‘Indeed there is,’ I replied at last. ‘You will shortly be returning to England …’

  ‘Only if a ship ever arrives to take us home.’

  ‘One must come sooner or later,’ I said firmly, for I refuse to believe that we have been left here to slowly rot and die.

  He pulled a face. ‘I wish I had your hopefulness of spirit.’

  ‘Winston, my favour is this …’ I took a deep breath and held up this journal. ‘Do you recall my reasons for wanting this from you?’

  He nodded, but his eyes flickered and I could see that he did not.

  I said, ‘I would dearly like for you to travel to the west of England. Then to go to the Cotswolds and find the village of Cranham. And once you are there to seek out my brother Edward and then to give this book to him.’

  To my delight and relief he promised to do just this, saying, ‘I will never forget how much Emily enjoyed the onions you so bravely stole for me. I also admired how much you were prepared to risk so you could write to your brother. You can be sure that this journal will arrive most safely in his hands …’

  He was about to say more, when something on the horizon caught his eye. At the very same moment we both heard the echoing boom of a cannon going off.

  We jumped to our feet, both shouting with joy. A cannon boom meant that a sail had been sighted. The Second Fleet had finally arrived!

  The Second Fleet was sailing into Sydney Cove.

  Now we are saved …

  Edward, I write this a little later. You cannot imagine what rejoicing there is in Sydney Cove. But all I can think is … now this journal will come to you. Now you will know that I am still alive, that I have never forgotten you and that, God willing, one day we will be together again.

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  This imaginary diary is based, but only in part, on the real-life story of Elizabeth Hayward. She was the youngest female convict to sail on the First Fleet’s transport ship, the 338-ton Lady Penrhyn. On 19 December 1786, Elizabeth was sent to prison for stealing clothes worth seven shillings. She was sentenced in January 1787 to seven years’ transportation.

  But this is where this diary turns into fiction. The real Elizabeth Hayward was ordered thirty lashes for insolence in 1788. She was sent to Norfolk Island in March 1790 where she bore at least four children. In 1813, she left the island as the wife of Joseph Lowe. It may be her name on the records of St John’s in Launceston: ‘Elizabeth Lowe who died in October 1836 aged sixty-six.’

  Two centuries ago, most people in the British Isles lived with hunger, dirt, disease and poverty as their constant companions. Streets were choked with rubbish and city folk lived in tumbledown tenements. Children from poor families went to work after their sixth birthdays, often in life-threatening jobs such as cleaning chimneys or working the mines. If these children were unlucky enough to be orphaned, they could be bought and sold like slaves.

  Crime was widespread, because conditions were so poor and there was no central police force. Punishments were often out of keeping with the crime. Though many culprits were sentenced to the gallows for housebreaking, stealing food, or maybe even fortune-telling, many were pardoned by the king and instead sent to prison.

  Prisons were privately run. They were dark smelly places where the prisoners had to buy their own food and bedding. Cells were rarely cleaned and had no proper sewerage. Many prisoners died of starvation. Prison fever, which we know as typhus or typhus fever, regularly swept through the cells.

  Another punishment was transportation to America to work on the cotton plantations. However, in 1766 the American colonies declared their independence from Britain. Now prisoners had to be kept at home in overcrowded prisons. The solution was to strip old ships of their rigging and masts and turn them into ‘hulks’. But conditions in those hulks were often worse than in the prisons. Thus the government had to look elsewhere to send their prisoners, and they finally settled on Australia.

  Captain James Cook had brought back good reports of this great southern land. There was straight timber to make masts, hulls and yards. There was also plenty of flax to make ropes and sails. The British were also looking for a base in the Pacific and they wanted to occupy Australia before the French. So the idea of the First Fleet was born.

  Included in this fleet were two naval warships: Sirius and Supply. They would keep a lookout for pirates. Now the British Government set about filling the store-ships—Golden Grove, Fishburn and Borrowdale—with enough supplies to keep the 759 convicts, their Royal Marine guards (some with families) and a few civil officers, until the colony became self-sufficient. The convicts and marines embarked on their ships: the Alexander, Scarborough, Charlotte, Lady Penrhyn, Prince of Wales, and Friendship. These ships arrived at Portsmouth on 16 March 1787. There they waited until the arrival of Captain Arthur Phillip signalled the time for their departure. However, the ships were held up. This trip would be long and complicated, and the government was backward in paying for the necessary provisions. Some convicts had been on board for at least seven months before an outbreak of prison fever hurried things along. Clothing for the women, certain building materials, building tools and ammunition for the muskets had not come on board by the time the ships departed.

  The First Fleet left England on 13 May 1787. They stopped at Tenerife and Rio de Janeiro to replenish food supplies and send the very sick ashore. Because Phillip distributed oranges, very few convicts died of
scurvy during the voyage compared to the numbers that grew ill on later convict fleets. At Table Bay in South Africa, their last port of call, Phillip bought on board many seeds plus 2 bulls, 5 cows, 29 sheep, 19 goats, 14 pigs, 35 ducks, 35 geese, 209 chickens and 5 rabbits.

  The First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay between 18 and 20 January 1788. Botany Bay had been recommended by Captain Cook in 1770 as a possible location for a settlement. But this area lacked enough fresh water, was unsafe for ships, and the soil was too poor for growing crops. So Captain Phillip sailed north, arriving at Port Jackson on 26 January 1788.

  From the start, the settlement was beset with problems. Most of the convicts were city folk and knew little about farming. The soil around Sydney Cove was poor. Instead of ground suitable for growing food and providing grazing, they found hot, dry, infertile country, unsuitable for making the settlement self-sufficient. Everyone, from the convicts to Captain Phillip, was placed on rations.

  Before 1788, about 300 000 Aboriginals lived in Australia. These nomadic people had inhabited the world’s oldest continent for more than 30 000 years and had seen very few Europeans. The people who lived in the Port Jackson area were known as the Eora. Their life was rich in storytelling, music and ceremonies. They fished in the sheltered bays using fishhooks made from shells and lines made of bark. They gathered oysters and shellfish and left empty shells in middens. Until 1788, they were probably happier and healthier than most Europeans.

  Governor Phillip tried hard to befriend the Eora, but the cultures were too different. The Aboriginals soon became fearful of the settlers. The settlers could only accept ownership of any land if it was farmed and they saw the Eora as primitive and uncivilised. Thus both groups quickly learned to distrust the other. Soon diseases such as cholera, smallpox and influenza swept through the native population, killing many and dislocating those that survived.

  While the Aboriginals lived on local plants and fish, the settlers found few of the plants appetising. Nevertheless, the colonists gathered wild spinach and a liquorice flavoured creeper which they used to make tea. The settlers were poor fishermen and had little fishing equipment. Rats, dogs, possums, birds and occasionally kangaroos were used to supplement provisions, but there was too little ammunition for much hunting. Thus, most of their food had to come from the supplies brought with them on the ships. This resulted in their total dependence on a shipping trade that did not include Australia on its route.

  Some convicts, hearing rumours of other settlements nearby and that China was just over the horizon, escaped. Those that managed to survive the rigors of the country returned to the colony and to further punishment.

  Shelter was also a problem. They had very little building material and the government had provided only a very limited supply of tools, and these were of a bad quality. The local trees were huge and the wood hard, so these tools were soon blunt or broken and the building slowed. They had not been able to get extra clothing, and by the time the Second Fleet arrived, convicts and marines alike were dressed in patched and threadbare clothing.

  However, Marine Lieutenant William Dawes was given the task of constructing an observatory in preparation for an anticipated visit by a comet, and this was Australia’s first weather station. Bricks were manufactured in Brickfields. A two-storey brick dwelling was built for the Governor.

  By July 1788, all the ships except the Sirius and Supply had left Botany Bay and the settlement was isolated. On 2 October, the Sirius was sent to Cape Town to purchase provisions. Until its return on 2 May 1789, rations were cut back with the result that work on farming and building was further reduced. During this time the Supply had taken a small contingent of convicts and marines to Norfolk Island to set up another penal colony. This island was more fertile than Sydney Cove and its timber was better. But the surrounding rocky cliffs meant that the timber could not be loaded on the ship for transport to Sydney Cove. Green turtles and mutton birds were found there and the Supply brought some back to supplement the colony’s dwindling food supplies.

  Exploration of the country to the west of Sydney Cove resulted in the location of more fertile land on the Parramatta River. The new settlement was named Rose Hill. Henry Edward Dodd, a freeman who came with Phillip as his personal assistant, and one of the few experienced farmers in the colony, was put in charge of twelve acres. They soon produced good crops of maize, wheat, barley, oats and potatoes. However, lack of transport meant that the harvested crops would not be readily available for Sydney.

  Forty-five children arrived with the First Fleet. By the middle of 1790, eighty-three babies had been born, though twenty-five children had died. Although this seems to be a high number of deaths, it was not a lot for this time. Isabella Rosson established the first school in 1789.

  In February 1790, the Sirius was ordered to go to Cape Town to purchase further supplies. However, this journey was delayed. The Sirius was needed to take more convicts to Norfolk Island in an effort to reduce the strain on the dwindling supplies in Sydney. On 19 February, the Sirius was wrecked off Norfolk Island and the colony was left with just one ship. When the Supply returned in April, it was decided that it should sail to Batavia for more provisions, as the situation was becoming desperate. On 17 April, the Supply set sail, leaving behind some very anxious settlers.

  The two months between the Sirius foundering and the arrival of the Second Fleet was when spirits sank to their lowest ebb, and when this fictional diary takes place.

  The Governor rationed food equally. All received a little flour, rice and salt pork. By now the convicts were too weak, hungry and discouraged to work. Their labour hours had to be cut.

  Though most historical accounts refer to 1788–1790 as the ‘years of famine’, these early settlers were surrounded by food—if only they had known where to look. What they did find wasn’t considered ‘real’ food. Things were not good. But what gives the historian Alan Frost a hint that things might have been a little better than previously suggested, is that some of the women became pregnant.

  On 3 June a ship was sighted. It was the Lady Juliana, a transport with 225 female convicts on board, the first of the ships in the Second Fleet. This was followed on 20 June by the Justinian, which was loaded entirely with provisions for the colony. Rations were immediately increased and the old labour hours restored. More ships arrived carrying convicts. They were often very ill with prison fever and scurvy and died shortly after. Nevertheless, new buildings were planned and large areas of land near Rose Hill were cleared for cultivation.

  Much of early Sydney is buried beneath Sydney Harbour Bridge and Circular Quay Station. The old landing steps and the Tank Stream valley are hidden below the station. For those early settlers, the struggle to keep themselves fed and clothed was momentous. They started to build on the Rocks—the craggy sandstone bluff on the western side of Sydney Cove. Cottages clung to the stone. Some hung dangerously towards the sea. The coast had been stripped of trees and rock to provide ballast for ships, and this gave it a run-down look. The streets were very steep and hard to walk.

  If you had been there at the time, you would have been horrified by the smell of rotting garbage and human excrement by the banks of the Tank Stream and bits of drying flesh from corpses on Gallows Hill. The view away from the sea and from any of its hills was of dark mountains.

  But there were advantages in being here. Though Australia was a wild and lonely place, there were no man-eating animals, the climate was hot in summer and mild in winter, and it was a healthy country for people, animals and plants. It is interesting to note that in the ‘starvation years’ more babies were born and fewer children died than might have resulted if these early settlers had stayed in Britain.

  Though Governor Arthur Phillip sailed home a disappointed man, he managed to administrate this unruly colony in a most even and praiseworthy way. Some of the convicts became wealthy and respected citizens. Certainly these fresh opportunities helped many convicts discard their criminal pasts and prosper in th
is new land.

  About the Author

  GOLDIE ALEXANDER has always wondered what life was like for those early settlers. There are so many questions that are hard for anyone living two hundred years later to answer. For example, what was it like not to have a supply of fresh clean water, proper bedding, sewerage, and power? What was it like to be running out of essentials such as food, soap and candles? What was it like to believe monsters lurked in the bush and gullies, just waiting to spring out at you? How did those early settlers see the Aboriginals? How did the Aboriginals see them? Goldie has always admired the sheer courage it must have taken for those convicts to stay alive.

  Goldie writes for both adults and children. Her children’s novels include Mavis Road Medley, which was short-listed for the 1991 Multicultural Award. She has written a number of books for younger children, plus novels for young adults under the pseudonym of Gerri Lapin. She co-writes with Hazel Edwards, runs writing workshops, and lectures in Creative Writing. My Australian Story: Surviving Sydney Cove is her fourteenth book.

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  First published by Scholastic Australia in 2000.

  This electronic edition published, 2014

  E-PUB/MOBI eISBN: 978-1-925063-98-1

  Text copyright © Goldie Alexander, 2000

  Cover copyright © Scholastic Australia, 2013

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