Tommo and Hawk

by Bryce Courtenay

  Only the Rocks, below the Argyle Cut, remind the curious of what the earlier convict settlement must have been like. It is a chaotic arrangement of mean huts, wooden skillings, slaughter yards, knackeries, cow pens, leather tanners, open sewers, broken fences, rutted streets, one-shilling hells and taverns, all crawling with rats and mangy cats. A hundred yards up from this sprawl, in George Street, the places where people go to drink are known as public houses or pubs, but here in the Rocks, such places are often called taverns, after the age-old tradition of the sea. Sailors drink at taverns when they come ashore and shall do so evermore. In the Rocks, these notorious bloodhouses carry names such as the Black Dog, which is also the name of Leuwin’s schooner, though if there is a connection none I asked knew of it. Here one may also find the Brown Bear, the Whalers’ Arms, the Hit or Miss, the Lord Nelson, the Mermaid, the Erin Go Bragh, the Cat and Fiddle, the Jolly Sailor, the Rose of Australia, the Hero of Waterloo, the Sheer Hulk, the Labour in Vain, the Sailors’ Return and the Help Me Through the World. Tommo, alas, has become a steady visitor to The World Turned Upside Down in Bridge Street.

  If the advantageous effects of the gold strikes may be seen in the upper reaches of George, Pitt and Macquarie Streets, and in the handsome houses of the well-to-do, here at the Rocks the discovery of gold has had quite the opposite effect. A great many working men have left good jobs to seek their fortunes at the diggings at Lambing Flat and Braidwood, amongst others. Most of these hard-luck fossickers find nothing but hard luck, and their women and children are left here without any livelihoods, so that misery, desperation and destitution are everywhere to be seen.

  Many a respectable mother has been forced to resort to the ‘purse between her legs’ to feed her starving children. Some have forsaken their young and for a silver shilling are available in the Argyle Cut for a quick knee-trembler. The streets near the Semicircular Quay are over-run by tiny, barefoot urchins in tatters, begging for halfpennies.

  Others, boys and girls not much beyond the age of seven or eight, become child prostitutes and catamites to the sailors and many a so-called upstanding citizen. Most of these wild children die young. But if a boy should survive long enough to become one of the ‘Sydney lads’, he will be as tough a young specimen as you may find pound-for-pound anywhere in the world.

  Here in the Rocks, the roads and the footpaths are so filthy and in such bad repair that no respectable person would venture down them. This matters little enough to the people who dwell here. They know themselves to be the flotsam of the human race, driven by poverty and despair to this dirty corner of the city. Some say that they are a tribe of their own but I don’t think this is true: drink and poverty do nothing to unite a community. For those already in the clutches of the demon drink, the Rocks is the end of their journey and for those unfortunate enough to be born here, it is the beginning of a hard life.

  There is also a Chinatown bordering the Rocks where large numbers of orientals reside, many of them on their way to and from the goldfields. These ‘celestials’ are treated with a contempt only surpassed by the treatment meted out to the ‘niggers’ or blacks as the Aborigines are called. I have noted that the Aborigines are also referred to in the Sydney Morning Herald as ‘Sable Australians’. But this I believe merely reflects polite society’s need to disguise the contempt it feels for the native Australian.

  Those who live in the Rocks, even the poor whites whose existences are meagre, do not bother to hide their feelings towards the niggers of this squalid place. These poor blacks, who almost without exception dress in discarded rags, are mostly drunk from morning ‘til night. Their women, known in the local parlance as ‘gins’, fight each other when intoxicated, with a screaming and caterwauling that would wake the dead. The men sit bleary-eyed in the dirt, their mangy kangaroo dogs panting beside them and their black bottles and clay pipes close to hand, taking no notice of the women’s battles. Naked, snot-nosed children, with bloated bellies and flies clustering around their dark eyes, scream and dance in agitation as their mothers roll and claw at each other in the dust.

  The gin-fight is so common a spectacle here that the regular denizens of the Rocks pause only a few moments in their passage to watch. It is the visiting sailors who are most amazed by these scenes, often betting on one or another of the women and then, at the end, tossing them a few coins so that they may drown their sorrows at the back door of the nearest tavern, for they are not permitted within.

  I am black myself and know that men call me a nigger. Yet my lot is nowhere near as difficult as that of the Aborigines, who have suffered so much since the coming of the white man to Australia.

  The corruption of the Aboriginal nature which has been brought about with grog is tragic. Each time I see one of their kind near dead from the drink, or one of their gins offering herself to a passing sailor for sixpence, I think sadly of our friend Billy Lanney from the Nankin Maiden. I know him to be a brave, generous and true-spirited man, who faithfully stood by Tommo in Auckland. I also now know him to be the much-loved Billygonequeer of whom Ikey spoke. Yet he too is the lesser man for the drink. But which man is not, black or white? I cannot let myself pass judgment on Billy, nor the sad people I see here, for my own brother is just as much a wretch when he takes solace in his grog-wilderness. Who then can blame the Aborigines for their plight?

  While the Aborigines are abandoned to their fate, efforts are afoot to save the white man from the temptation of the bottle. All over town this past week, I have seen posters telling of a lecture to be given by the Reverend Hannibal Peegsnit at the Congregational Church in Pitt Street this afternoon. His topic is most clearly announced:

  WHERE GOD CAN NO LONGER REACH!

  The death and disaster,

  terrors and tribulations,

  caused by

  the pernicious celestial poppy.

  The Reverend Peegsnit’s special mission is to the drunks and especially the opium addicts of Sydney. And no story is dearer to his heart than that of his own salvation, which has become a tale all too well known in Sydney.

  Peegsnit was educated at Oxford and came to New South Wales as an Anglican cleric. He soon took to the black bottle and sank to the depths of depravity. Cast out by his own synod, he became a dipsomaniac, visited in his delirium by serpents and hobgoblins—rats gnawing at his fingers, toes and nose, and monkeys jabbering into his terrified face, showing their tiny jagged teeth and sharp little claws.

  Peegsnit’s personal epiphany occurred when he lay drunk in the gutter outside the Town Hall on St Crispin’s Day. Christ appeared to him, immediately banishing the simian creatures and assorted pestilences that plagued him, so that his mind was at once restored fully unto him. Then the Lord took his trembling hand and charged him henceforth to administer to drunkards. His Redeemer also warned him specifically of the pernicious influence of the Celestial Empire and ‘the smoke of the scarlet flower, Papaver somniferum, on this Christian colony’. It was miraculous indeed that the Lord Jesus remembered the Latin in his warning against the opium poppy.

  And so the Reverend Peegsnit asked to be returned to the bosom of the Anglican Church. But the Bishop of Sydney, the Very Reverend John Casper, was not convinced of the redemption of their prodigal son and refused. Denied the reversed collar by the Episcopalians, Peegsnit became a preacher in the Congregational Church.

  The Reverend Peegsnit teaches that God’s hands are always stretched out to sinners and especially to drunkards, no matter how wretched. But, he insists, there is one exception to Christ’s ever-present promise of salvation: the opium smoker. I am curious about this man and his popularity, especially among the women of Sydney who see their husbands drunk most nights, and so have come to hear his lecture. When I enter the packed church, Peegsnit is already in full flow.

  ‘We must stop this pernicious oriental influence before it destroys the noble British character!’ he thunders, and expounds on his topic at length.

  I settle myself comfortably against the ba
ck wall, for it is standing room only, and observe a sea of rapt faces drinking in the reverend’s every word. I listen too but find myself wondering about this noble British character of which he so eloquently speaks. It was the English who created the opium trade. Even as the good reverend speaks, British merchants are buying the paste in India and sailing their fast clipper ships to the mouth of the Canton River. There, in the safe harbour of the island of Hong Kong, they exchange the opium for tea leaf which they bring to Britain for export to the colonies. Any Chinese addiction to opium, then, is a direct result of this noble British character and trade!

  What’s more, the colony of New South Wales is a chief beneficiary of the opium trade. The government here gains a tax of ten shillings per pound on its import and places no limit on the amount which may be brought in, despite the fact that the authorities are well able to gauge the amount needed for medicinal purposes. For those in pain, opium is a great blessing and it is called the ‘Angel’s Kiss’ by those whose suffering it alleviates. But it is also called the ‘Devil’s Smoke’ by those poor souls who are addicted to it.

  While I am engaged in these thoughts, the Reverend Peegsnit has, through his fearful oratory, roused his audience to sobbing and strange excitement. Much of his passion focuses on the race whom he holds responsible for the corruption of our society. There is no doubting who they are—in his mind at least.

  ‘The yellow-skinned, slant-eyed Mongolian presents our precious offspring, our sweet daughters and robust sons, with a pipe and a substance which allows them to indulge in an evil clothed in its most hideous form, until the nerves begin to wince and the frame to totter from excessive stimulation!’

  Peegsnit thumps the Bible on the lectern. ‘The Devil’s Smoke renders them shameless and they are overtaken by an immorality which utterly beggars description. These are our beloved sons and daughters who, through opium, impair their mental, moral and physical systems beyond salvation and bring upon themselves the greatest of all vices.’ He stops for breath and looks about him. ‘The vice of indolence!’ Peegsnit pauses again for effect, then repeats himself, thumping the Bible with an indignant fist. ‘The vice of indolence! Once this is acquired, indecency and immorality follow closely in its train!’

  Like the others, I feel myself affected by the Reverend Peegsnit’s oratory. Once again, however, I am forced to consider that if indolence is the most heinous of opium’s consequences, then half of Sydney’s population must already be addicted and beyond recovery, for indolence is an affliction I have observed everywhere about me in ‘European’ Sydney. In contrast to this, the Chinese seem to be very hardworking. How is it, I now ask myself, that they are not also afflicted, if idleness is caused by opium? An article in the Sydney Morning Herald just the other day reported that out of every one hundred Chinamen in the colony, sixty-two are primary producers of wealth. Of every one hundred Europeans, however, only twenty are thus self-employed.

  The thump of the Bible hitting the lectern startles me back to attention. Peegsnit’s lecture has concluded with a bang, and with much relief I walk outside into the sunny day. It is several weeks since Tommo and I arrived in Sydney and, sadly, I already have reason to be preoccupied with the subject of opium and its effects. My little brother has taken up the pipe, and I am in two minds as to what I can do. Tommo is happy enough as a professional gambler in partnership with Mr Sparrow, and I cannot help but feel buoyed that some of Ikey has come back into our lives in this way. It is sentimental of me, I know, especially as I have some misgivings about Mr Sparrow’s intentions as concerns my twin.

  I have been warned that Mr Sparrow is a hard, even dangerous man, and that Tommo will not in the end benefit from the association. But he has taught Tommo much about gambling with the rich, and how to conduct himself in an acceptable manner with such people. This means that at least he is not forced to play with rough sorts in rough situations. These days Tommo is quite the dandy and he bathes and changes his linen twice a week. While he still craves the brandy bottle, Mr Sparrow watches him carefully, with one of his lads always on duty to see that Tommo does not drink during the day. At night, at the card table, he is permitted to imbibe, but only at a level which does not damage his concentration—and this only so he is seen to do his fair share of drinking with the other players.

  As Tommo points out to me, no punter will play cards with him unless he is prepared to go along with the grog shout. It seems nothing is done here in Sydney without the ‘nobbler’—the name used for a portion of spirits. Every merchant keeps a black bottle in his desk drawer to aid in his business with customers.

  Drinking is seen by many as the mark of a man, and is certainly more prevalent than any sign of religion. Within two miles of Semicircular Quay, there are six churches and hundreds of public houses. The clergy may denounce the drinking habits of the citizens at every opportunity, but very few heed their call to higher things. People seem to live only for the present, not the afterlife or the past, for not far away are memories of the rattle of leg irons.

  I am so taken up with thoughts of Tommo that I am almost run down by a carriage as I cross the street away from Peegsnit’s church. I can think of no other place where the streets are in such a state of confusion. This includes London which, at the time of my visit, was said to be the most congested city in the civilised world. Here in Sydney, wheels are all-important. Those who in any other society could not imagine a means of locomotion beyond placing one foot in front of the other, here demand to be transported to their destinations. Such transport is provided by as motley a collection of doddering old horses as you can imagine. Most of these poor nags are long past their appointed hour with the knacker’s yard. Every day I see some poor beast, its ribs sticking out like tent poles, collapsed on the street, with its owner kicking and lashing it in a vain attempt to raise it from the dead.

  Carriages consist of contraptions of every sort, many of them most peculiar in construction, the work of some backyard mechanic. Even dogs are used to draw carts piled high with newspapers. These are led by news boys who dodge in and out of the traffic on the way to their accustomed corners. I feel sure that if cats or rats could be trained to the task, they too would soon enough be put into harness. There is even the story of a retired ship’s captain who harnessed his African ostrich to a milk cart and caused the traffic to come to a tangled standstill as the bird panicked and rushed headlong up George Street on its way to Parramatta.

  The streets here resound with the curses of cab drivers and cart men, who turn the air blue with their invective. Coach horns and rattles blast away and the drivers of bullock drays will even take their whips to other vehicles on the road. Every few minutes some form of accident occurs with its attendant altercation.

  There is talk of a horse-drawn tram commencing next year which will run on tracks from Semicircular Quay down Pitt Street to Redfern Station. Today’s Sydney Morning Herald speculates that once this is established, no Sydneysider with three pennies to jingle in his pocket will have to walk anywhere, bringing about the total collapse of the bootmaker’s trade. It is claimed that the entire mile and three quarters of the journey will take no more than ten minutes.

  The Sydney lads are as wild as the Sydney traffic. I have grown up with the wild youth of Hobart Town who, in concert, may become a dangerous mob but who, individually, lack wiles and nerve. The lads of Sydney are a different kettle of fish altogether. There seem to be two types of physiognomy amongst them. One lot are slim, dark-eyed, olive-complexioned, the other are carrot-topped and blue-eyed, with much accumulated dirt obscuring their freckles. The Sydney lad’s hair—whether ginger or dark—is shiny with grease and falls across his brow, so that he is constantly brushing it away from his eyes. A cabbage-tree hat clings precariously to the back of his head, and from this a snip of black ribbon dangles like a rat’s tail. The knees of his breeches and the elbows of his jacket are always covered in grease. If he is younger than ten years of age, he is likely to be barefoot. If older, he
wears scuffed boots with no hose.

  All are up to no good. The Sydney lad is insolent to everyone, particularly servant girls, police officers and new chums. He pushes and shoves his way along the street, not caring a whit for the small child, dainty female or elderly. He fears no one in authority and has no regard for any man, unless a cricketing hero or a challenger at chuck penny.

  The Sydney lad is no coward and, at the least excuse, he will remove his cabbage-tree hat and greasy jacket, wipe the snot from under his nose with the back of his hand and ‘have a go’. He will often take on someone older and bigger than himself, with a cussing and swearing that would take the paint off the Queen’s mailbox. Should he have a halfpenny to spend, the lad will buy a thin black Mexican cheroot. This he will light immediately upon meeting an acquaintance and then, after taking a single puff and blowing out the smoke in a lofty manner, he will extinguish it so that it may be saved for his next assignation.

  Sydney lads call all their female friends after the ships in which they arrived, hence Susie Blue Wren, Mary York Town, Jenny Memphis, Mary Armageddon. And they refer to all policemen as Israelites after a ship named the Exodus which brought a large consignment of English constables to the colony.

  At the age of ten, the Sydney lad is out in the world on his own. By this time, he believes himself master of his own destiny and a man in all respects, earning good wages by some clandestine means or other, which does not involve manual work. By the age of twelve or thirteen, long before he has the slightest blooming of manly hair upon his grimy cheeks, he has tasted most of the joys and sorrows of existence. Mr Charles Dickens, the English writer, has much lauded the genuine cockney lad, but for shrewdness, effrontery, truculence and the affectations of manhood, the cockney lad pales beside the young gamins of Sydney.