Larrikins, Bush Tales and Other Great Australian Stories

by Graham Seal

  This was Barrington being brief! He was given seven years’ transportation. Even his silver tongue could not save him from this fate.

  By now the artful Barrington had become a celebrity criminal. His gentleman thief image, his clever tongue and ability to wriggle out of prison sentences made him a sensation of the London gossips and the press. The papers embroidered and invented exploits as outrageously as they do today. Even before he was transported to Botany Bay the papers reported his alleged attempt to escape Newgate wearing his female accomplice’s dress. He was also reported to be lamenting that the great Barrington was to be banished to a land where the natives had no pockets for him to pick.

  Little more than a year after his arrival in New South Wales, the pickpocket’s talents and abilities saw him quickly freed, soon to become a superintendent of the convicts he had once laboured among and, later, chief constable of Parramatta. Governor Hunter granted him land and he purchased more, prospering as a farmer and more or less reformed character. Pensioned off the government service in 1800, Barrington’s behaviour became increasingly erratic. He was declared insane and died in 1804.

  But his legend lived on. Like many folk heroes, he was said by some to have lived to a ripe old age. His faked memoirs were frequently reprinted and he featured in newspapers even a century and a half after his death. Barrington was also, inaccurately, credited with some often-quoted lines that have passed into the traditions of transportation and convictism. At the opening of the colony’s first theatre in 1796 he is supposed to have delivered this verse:

  From distant climes o’er widespread seas we come,

  Though not with much eclat or beat of drum.

  True patriots all; for be it understood,

  We left our country for our country’s good.

  Many other stories were told about him, not only in the raffish memoirs he allegedly penned but in folk tradition as well. One yarn had it that there was a party at the home of a wealthy Sydney merchant during Barrington’s time in the colony. The gossip-worthy pickpocket came up as a topic during conversation. The merchant’s wife and hostess of the event firmly proclaimed that she did not believe the outlandish yarns about the smooth-talking Barrington and his thieving skills.

  A couple of days after the party a gentleman called asking to speak with the hostess’s husband. He was away, so the hostess showed off her array of expensive jewels while they waited. But the husband did not return as expected and the man said he would try again another day. As he left, the debonair visitor put his hand in his coat and drew out the hostess’s gold earrings and necklace. He bowed, saying, ‘I think these are yours, madam. Kindly tell your husband that Mr Barrington called.’

  3

  Plains of promise

  Our hearts they were willing, our bodies they were young

  Upon the Plains of Promise we were broken by the sun.

  From Anon., ‘Plains of Promise’

  THE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT of Australia was a series of voyages from the old world to the new. It began with convicts and their gaolers but was soon followed by ships of free migrants searching for a better life, looking to make a fortune or even just planning to spend a few years in the colonies. The vast majority of those who came here before the 1950s were British, bringing their customs and traditions with them. A few of these thrived, many faded and others were adapted to form the basis of a national identity.

  Promising though Australia was for many settlers, their voyages were often hard and tragic.

  ‘I was not expected to survive’

  Many were prepared to risk much, often all, in pursuit of the plains of promise. Ellen Moger arrived in Adelaide in January 1840. She wrote home to her parents after the voyage from England, ‘four months to a day on the Great Deep’:

  Poor little Alfred was the first that died on the 30th of Oct, and on the 8th of Nov, dear Fanny went and three days after, on the 11th, the dead babe was taken from me. I scarcely know how I sustained the shock, though I was certain they could not recover, yet when poor Fanny went it over-powered me and from the weakness of my frame, reduced me to such a low nervous state that, for many weeks, I was not expected to survive. It seems I gave much trouble but knew nothing about it and, though I was quite conscious that the dear baby and Fanny were thrown overboard, I would still persist that the water could not retain them and that they were with me in the berth. I took strange fancies into my head and thought that Mother had said I should have her nice easy chair to sit up in and, if they would only lift me into it, I would soon get well. I had that chair of Mother’s in my ‘mind’s eye’ for many weeks and was continually talking about it.

  Later in the letter she discusses the health of her surviving daughter:

  My dear Emily now seems more precious to us than ever, and I feel very thankful I did not leave her in England. Her health is not as good as formerly, having something Scurvy, the effects of Salt diet. She is also troubled with weak eyes, a complaint exceedingly common in this town, from the great degree of heat, light and dust.

  Ellen Moger’s tragedy was not unique. The poorer assisted-passage emigrants shipped in steerage class, herded together for many months in crowded and often unsanitary conditions, ideal for the incubation and spread of frequently fatal diseases including scarlet fever, measles, typhus and even cholera on some ships. Illness struck children and adults alike, but it was the infants who died in the greatest numbers, often from the less exotic but equally lethal cases of severe diarrhoea.

  In 1839, Sarah Brunskill watched her infant son die of convulsions following acute diarrhoea. Twenty-four hours later, her two-year-old daughter died in an agonising fever so hot that her mother found it painful to touch her.

  ‘She, like her brother, was thrown into the deep about the same time on the Thursday. The Union Jack was thrown over them, and the burial service Performed.’ Sarah thought that they were like ‘two little angels, they looked so beautiful in death’.

  Multiple deaths from disease were not uncommon in the early decades of sailing ship migration. From the 1850s, sanitation and health care improved and mortality rates dropped considerably. Deaths aboard migrant ships fell to a level equal to, or even less than, those on land for adults and older children, though infants remained at great peril. Sarah Brunskill and her husband were among the better-off passengers, though this factor did not spare their children.

  The shipboard experience of some migrants was sometimes as bad as the worst of the convict ships. In some ways it was even more despairing. At least the transports looked forward to little, while the migrants left home full of hope for a new and better life for themselves and their children.

  The town that drowned

  They called it the ‘valley of hope’. The mainly German migrants who came to South Australia from the 1830s wanted land to grow their crops and a place to practise their religious beliefs unhindered. Early arrivals soon found the Barossa region and other suitable places and were followed by families and single men of Lutheran beliefs, establishing settlements and using the housing and agricultural styles that were familiar to them. Of course, they also built churches as the single most important structures in each settlement.

  In 1847–48, the village of Hoffnungsthal was founded. Its settlers included Christian Menzel and Maria Richter with their ten children, the Huf family of six, the Beinkes and the Seelanders, among others. By 1848 they had nearly 400 acres under cultivation and began building a church and looking for a pastor.

  Each year they celebrated the leaving of their homelands and their settling at Hoffnungsthal.

  They were happy people, those dwellers in old Hoffnungsthal. To them this new country looked like the Land of Canaan, for it flowed with milk and honey. In the great old gums the bees had their hives and in very warm weather, the combs overflowed and the honey dropped to the ground. And if anyone was lucky enough to possess a cow or two, he also had milk. So abundant was the feed for the cows, that often, too, these could not retain t
heir milk, and like the honey, it flowed to the ground. There were no fences in those days, the country was open in all directions and the cows were free to wander and seek for themselves the most succulent grasses. In the gullies of the Barossa Ranges, the pasture was sweet and the water in the creeks as clear as crystal.

  For the farmers and tradesmen and their families, this was as close to paradise as they were likely to get this side of the grave. They took to their new country with enthusiasm and the same intensity as they brought to their religious values, growing wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, lentils and potatoes from the seeds they had carefully brought with them. They brought their distinctive dress with them, too, including the black suits the men wore to church and perhaps other religious occasions. They made ‘coffee’ with rye and milk and their cottage gardens supplied many of their wants, along with the bounty of the countryside: wild ducks, white cockatoos and kangaroo. It was reported that the local Aboriginal people were greatly impressed with the efficiency of the German firearms in downing wildlife.

  In other things they followed the ways of their homeland, apparently unaware that they had built on dangerous country. The Peramangk people of the area called the place Yertalla-ngga, meaning ‘flooding land’. Their story is that one of their men, known as Jemmie, warned the newcomers against building in their valley of hope because it was prone to serious flooding. Biblically, they ignored this good advice and after a few years of this happy life:

  Large tracts of bush country had been cleared and the good people were beginning to feel settled and comfortable. But the happiest conditions of life may come to an end very suddenly. It was about the year 1853 in the month of October when the disaster came. It rained heavily and continuously. For a day and a night the rain came down like a deluge. One family had to leave its house during the night and seek refuge beneath a huge boulder on the side of the hill. In the morning a scene of desolation met the gaze of the people as they emerged from their cottages. All the farms and gardens were submerged. The water was already entering the homes and was rising rapidly. In great haste they had to open pens and yards for pigs and cattle to escape. Then was there much weeping among mothers and children and many were asking why the hand of the Lord had thus descended upon them. Had they done anything to offend God? With a little reflection they had to admit that they themselves were to blame for the disaster that had overwhelmed them. The old blacks had warned them that sometimes much water would flow together there where they had built their village, although possibly they had not understood the warning. They had not had much experience of the vagaries of the Australian climate. It was hardly to be expected that God would alter the laws of nature on their account. Their work of clearing the land of timber and brush had made the progress of the flood waters all the more rapid. Before the creeks and gullies had finished emptying out their waters Old Hoffnungsthal was submerged beneath some eight feet of water.

  The valley of hope had become a lake of lapping waters, and there was no way to economically drain it. There was nothing else for the people of Hoffnungsthal to do but to leave their homes, hopes and memories behind and move on to start again. Some founded a new settlement, which they called Neu Hoffnungsthal. Some moved to Victoria, where they established Hochkirch (now Tarrington). Some were so disillusioned that they left Australia altogether and voyaged to America.

  Although the town was no more, the area retained some settlers and gained new ones. Roads, bridges and other improvements still needed to be maintained and developed for the overall infrastructure of the area. In 1883 there were more floods, though with minimal damage. The town’s name was changed to Karrawirra in World War I due to anti-German prejudice, but was restored in 1975.

  Little now remains of old Hoffnungsthal: one or two buildings and the sturdy church, built high on a hill to be closer to God. Over the years, this gradually decayed and its stones were salvaged for other buildings around the region. Today there is not much to see but a few stone heaps.

  Wine and witches

  The sunny Barossa Valley winelands are an unlikely setting for dark mutterings from the age of witchcraft, but tales of occult beliefs and practices lingered there for a very long time. It all began with the migration of the early German settlers. Many of these people were Lutherans or members of other sects with a strong belief in good and evil, which could lead to superstitious behaviour. Locals used to guard against witchcraft by wearing red ribbons around their necks or putting their clothes on inside out, using magic to fight magic.

  The story of the devil coming to the Barossa’s largest hill, Kaiserstuhl, stems from an incident in the very early years of settlement. A group led by Pastor Kavel concluded that this would happen on a certain night. They had a blacksmith forge a mighty chain that would last for 1000 years, and took the chain to the hill with the intention of capturing the devil and locking him away from the world so he could do no more evil. As far as anyone knows, the devil did not make an appearance, but one night the same pastor took a group of his followers to a spot outside Tanunda, where they intended to wait out the end of the world, an event that would destroy what they saw as the debauchery of the settlement. While Tanunda burned, Kavel and his people would enter into paradise in a state of natural grace. Instead, it rained, and the end-of-days enthusiasts had to return home drenched to their beds.

  It is also whispered in local tradition that the occult text known as the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, or known more popularly as The Witches’ Bible, was circulating in the valley, perhaps as early as 1842. Although banned by the Lutheran Church, copies of this work were known to have been secreted by some and also handed on f rom generation to generation in the belief that anyone who owned this book would never be able to die unless it was given to another. If that were not possible, the book might be laid in the coffin along with its last owner. The coffin then had to be dropped to the ground three times in a ritual of farewell and finality.

  This book is said to have contained spells for all manner of magical operations, including hexes. One story has it that a farmer and his wife had an argument one morning. He stamped out to plough and she went huffily off to market to sell the vegetables, hexing him as he went. When she returned at the end of the day, her husband was still standing at the plough, just as he had been when she had left in the morning. The story does not say whether his wife had calmed down enough to release the farmer from the plough.

  Barossa legend is full of tales about wheels falling off or locking up on wagons passing particular houses, cows suddenly losing their milk or hens failing to lay eggs. There were reported incidents of witchcraft in the Barossa as late as 2007 and local landmarks such as The Sanctuary, a grassed rectangle of land with a group of stones at one end, are said to have occult associations.

  Phantoms of the landfall light

  Born in the wake of a maritime tragedy and said to be haunted by several ghosts, the Cape Otway Lighthouse has an intriguing history. The powerful beacon is known as a ‘landfall light’, meaning the first coastal light to be seen by ships at sea. After Bass Strait was opened up as a shorter passage to Victoria in the early nineteenth century, the lighthouse was the first sight that many migrants had of Australia after their long voyage away from home.

  Only the second lighthouse to be built on the mainland, its light first flashed out in 1848. Although there had long been plans to build a light on the Cape, the difficulty of access and cost of construction held the project back until the Cataraqui was wrecked off King Island in September 1845, with the loss of more than 350 lives and a handful of survivors. This was not the first and far from the last tragedy in the hazardous Bass Strait. Public dismay and outrage stirred the government into finally tackling the challenging building project. Even with the help of local Aborigines and plenty of resources, it took the Port Phillip District Superintendent C.J. La Trobe three attempts and a whole year to reach the Cape by land. Then they had to map and build a road. Then they had to build a very large str
ucture, together with buildings to house its keepers. After mammoth efforts by land and sea, the lighthouse was completed and equipped with the latest optical technology in 1848. Every 50 seconds the sperm oil-powered reflectors lit the night sky for three seconds, heralding the arrival of another ship of migrants and making the remainder of their journey as safe as possible.

  The isolation of the Otway light meant that the keepers and their families could receive supplies by boat only twice a year. The little community needed to do everything themselves, including giving birth. Catherine Evans, wife of Assistant Light Keeper William Evans, lost two children at birth during their 22 years at the light. Born in 1867 and 1868, the children’s graves are among the earliest still to be found in the local cemetery.

  This is only one of many sad stories that provide the lighthouse with the right atmosphere for some supernatural traditions. According to another story, the wife of Assistant Light Keeper Richens was driven to mental instability by the isolation and harshness of the life and had to be institutionalised until her death in the 1930s. Her ghost is said to trouble the building in which she once lived, nowadays the café. Known as ‘the Lady in Grey’, she is said to simply appear and join groups of visitors. Some have heard her singing lullabies, together with other physical manifestations of a presence.