The Convict's Daughter

by Kiera Lindsey

  He picked his way over the deep ruts that cut into the town streets and entered one of the better hotels, keen to have a quick ale before taking a turn around the stock yards. No sooner had he put his lips to his glass when a leathery-looking barfly sidled up to him and took it upon himself to tell him how things had been. Kinchela knew better than to leave a man like this one thirsty so he ordered a round for both of them and asked his drinking companion about the immigrant ship that had arrived just before Christmas with Dr Lang’s new labour market on board. ‘Well you know,’ the man said after he had knocked the top off his new ale, ‘the more immigrants we have, the more land we are going to need and the more we had better all watch out.’

  The man recounted a few more stories to Kinchela to prove that the hostilities were as bad as ever. Kinchela listened grimly and eventually mentioned he was keen to know, given the mood, which route would be best up to the Boyne River. The leathery old man darted him a quick look before taking a swig of his drink. ‘You know young Blaxland headed thereabouts a year or so ago, with about 30,000 sheep as well as the Pegg woman and her boys.’ Kinchela nodded. Since they had left in ’47 just about everyone in town had kept an interest in the long slow journey they had taken, pushing slowly through the scrub and rugged parts, sometimes stopping a few weeks here and there to shear the sheep and send the wool back to town. It had taken Blaxland and his team a year or so but eventually they had got as far north as just about anyone before them.

  ‘Well they are set up now,’ Kinchela’s drinking companion said, ‘near a creek of sorts, at a place they’ve called Tirroan. I’ve heard they’ve built themselves a set of blockhouses with plenty of loopholes,’ he wiped the sweat from the back of his neck, ‘so you could take some of their route, I would say, but I’d speak to Petrie first,’ the old man added, ‘word is they’re living in a hornet’s nest and needing to keep their wits about them—day and night.’ The man jiggled his empty glass at Kinchela who shifted uneasily on his heels as he realised he was going to be stuck on the grog with this man for the afternoon. It stood to reason, Kinchela thought as he ordered another pair of ales, that there would be unrest on most of the roads. He might be better off making his own way, he thought, off the beaten track, so to speak.

  Mr Lewis Samuel had not exaggerated the many and varied inconveniences he wished to bring upon Martin Gill. Nor had he overestimated his ability to have these delivered through a host of overt and covert mechanisms. To say Mr Samuel wished to bring pressure upon the life of Martin Gill was putting it lightly. But then again, to say he wanted to destroy the man might have been placing too much weight upon the grave insult he believed he had suffered that particular Sunday afternoon when he had been invited to the Gill household as an honoured guest, only to be subjected to contempt, insult and physical peril. He might have died right there in their uncle’s old dining room, he explained to his brother, Saul, in a state of excitement. It was thanks only to his fine constitution that he did not choke, given the little help he had received from those about him.

  As well as his brother Saul, Lewis Samuel had a host of well-connected friends throughout the colony and those friends had friends, too. It was quite within his remit, indeed the successful businessman considered it his duty, to inform those associates with whom he was most intimate, that there was something rotten in the hotel that nestled down the northern end of Pitt Street. Those, like himself, who had ‘connections’ with that particular establishment best be on their guard, he warned, taking pains to caution a goodly number of his brother’s magisterial colleagues. And every time Mr Samuel recounted this episode to anyone who was prepared to listen, the story became a little more exaggerated. Indeed, it was now going around town that Mrs Gill had tried to poison old Lewis with a rotten leg of beef and Martin Gill had come at his guest with a carving knife—all because the wealthy bachelor had graciously declined their unappetising invitation to engage in matrimonial union with their now infamous daughter, Miss Mary Ann Gill.

  Some part of these rumours had made their way to the auction rooms up on George Street and Alexander Moore was feeling quite unsettled. Mr Samuel’s near-death experience was being recounted from coffee house to shop counter in a certain tone of voice and soon everyone was pretty sure that Martin Gill had set old Samuel up with the hope of addressing two pressing domestic distresses: his disobedient daughter and rapidly mounting debts. Only the deed had come undone when his wife had refused to have a bar of it, one gossip sniggered. Alexander Moore listened to the story and did a good job feigning disinterest, although later he could be found looking about his brother’s stores of luxury and everyday goods with a forlorn expression on his face. He had liked the young Gill girl but could not shake a sinking feeling that Gill had been cooking him up for the same meal. Had he intended to play the two men off against each other, Moore wondered—to auction the girl to the highest bidder, so to speak? The whole thing made him decidedly uncomfortable. The news was also making a number of other men about town scratch their mutton-chops and consider what to do. Deliverymen were now refusing to leave their goods at the hotel kitchen door without direct payment. They had been told they had to have cash in hand, one snivelling fellow explained to a red-faced Mrs Gill, who was clearly running the show while her husband came and went from the hotel as he wished.

  Husband and wife were hardly on speaking terms and Martin Gill had assumed permanent occupation in the second-storey guestroom. While her husband was trying to work out what to do next, Margaret was having unpleasant conversations with the men who came looking for her husband. Margaret had been carefully paring back the family expenses so the hotel could continue, although the number of customers frequenting their establishment these days rarely made up for the running costs. Still, Margaret was determined to keep at it, and was hoping for a few good weeks so they could get on top of the most pressing debts.

  These days Margaret increasingly relied upon her father, who had been doing what he could to put things in place, even as he was fast realising that he was going to get his fingers burnt if he ran about town trying to put out all the fires that his son-in-law had set alight with all his hot and bluster. The fool had rung up considerable debts, and in the current climate it would be impossible to pay them. From what McCormick could glean, just about everyone was having a hard time these days. The country was stuck up with drought and there were fewer boats around the quay—a clear sign that trade was coming to a standstill. No one was in a position to help, even if they wanted to. After a few weeks of careful enquiries, Thomas McCormick suggested to his wife that it might be best for them to move closer in to town, where they could keep an eye on things, at least for a while.

  It didn’t seem possible to get on top of what Margaret considered a great mountain of financial shame, something they could have avoided with a bit of common sense. No wonder then that she looked at her father somewhat askance when he told her they would work it out, one way or the other. ‘There are things that can be done,’ he said, sleeves rolled up and trowel in his hand when she came to visit at the farm and found him down on his knees in the gooseberry patch. Margaret was glad to be somewhere other than the hotel. After all the ill-will there, she found her father’s ambling form an even greater comfort than usual, although she was not entirely sure she wanted to know what solutions he might have in mind for her husband’s debts.

  Their desperate situation took her back to being no more than a girl in Dublin. The things they had had to do then. It made her wince. McCormick sensed her worry for as he fossicked with some string he called out, ‘It will be fine, Margaret, you’ve done naught wrong and we are not in Dublin anymore.’ Margaret gave a half-hearted nod and began weaving the other end of the string amongst the prickly bushes. She wanted to know there would be a way through all of this, but there was a tight dread about her chest she hadn’t known for years. Sure, it was not the same as then. Now she was a mother of six, with Isabella, Harriet, little Thomas and baby Martin all u
nder ten. How she would have kept things going without her father she had no idea, and she thanked Mary Riley in her prayers for keeping an eye on the youngest one since she let Rebecca go.

  ‘What other choice do we have?’ she had exclaimed when Mary Ann came to her with an appalled expression on her face. Rebecca had offered to stay on until they got straight again, but Margaret said no, it wasn’t right. Honestly, she did not know how, let alone when or even if, they would get back on top again, and she didn’t like the thought of owing anyone anything, especially not a servant girl such as she had once been. She knew how they thought and how they might choose to hold it over you if things didn’t work out. Rebecca had been with them some time, true enough, but she was not family, Margaret reminded her eldest children when they spoke to her again about the matter. ‘It is not right for the girl to think she is.’ So the young girl packed her worldly goods into the second-hand carpetbag Margaret gifted her and then Mary Ann and Will accompanied the defeated-looking creature to the Quay. There was a barque ready to sail for Port Phillip where a family had agreed to take her on, thanks in no part to the excellent reference Mary Ann had written on her mother’s behalf.

  But if Rebecca was longing for the comfortable familiarity of the Gills’ domestic arrangement, Martin Gill was not. Nor was he prepared to entertain another moment of doubt. Having inured himself to his wife’s cautions it was now full steam ahead as far as he was concerned. He was feeling decidedly cocksure and chin up about the future. So much so that he was even taking particular delight in walking down George Street, greeting the storeowners who had once been his friends and who now preferred to turn inside when they saw him approaching. All these snubs only added to his defiance. He had absolutely no intention of giving in or going on as he had before. He had a plan, several plans, in fact. Not all the pieces were in place yet, but they would come together, of that he was quite certain.

  After all the months of subterfuge and shadow work, trying to stop the flood of hotel debts and hide them from his wife and the rest of the colony, Martin Gill was strangely relieved that everything was out in the open. As he travelled about town depositing certain items into auction rooms with the hope of making a few extra pounds, he felt curiously light as if he had been released from the burden of trying to be someone other than who and what he really was. ‘Respectability—pah. Family—bah,’ he grumbled contentedly. After the last several months, Martin Gill suddenly didn’t give a tuppenny damn about any of it anymore. It was all other people’s huff and puff, he decided, and, quite frankly, he no longer cared who knew what. Plenty of good men had gone down in the past year. Indeed, he was in the company of some exceedingly prominent colonists.

  Whatever it took Martin Gill was going to come out on top, of that he was sure. It was just a matter of when, he muttered to himself as he made his way back to the hotel, and how. As he walked into the old dining room he nodded to the shipping agent, who was busy selling a couple of middle-aged artisans their berths to San Francisco. And then with surprising clarity it dawned on Gill—of course. He whistled under his breath, marvelling at what had been right under his nose all along. It wouldn’t be too hard to get enough money to buy a passage to California, he chuckled to himself with satisfaction. That would put everything right, he reckoned; well, at least for himself, anyway.

  Rather than follow the more trammelled northern road, Kinchela decided to take the western route and head up through the guts of the country. He had a feeling there would be less trouble that way and he would also be able to break up his journey at some of the stations along the way. He knew he would be safer travelling with others, and had considered getting a few immigrant boys from Dr Lang’s boat to help him fix up the run but the truth of it was Kinchela had a hankering for his own company.

  A while back John had passed one of the Hawkwood leases over to John Walker, a neighbour with a run nearby and one of the few men in the district who wasn’t Irish. Walker’s cows had got fat on the brother’s block and ever since, Walker had been talking about taking on the rest of Hawkwood, when they were ready, of course. Just before their recent spat, James and John had agreed it might be best to make Walker an offer. After their recent falling out, James had decided it was time to get on with things. He had sent John a perfunctory note explaining his intentions and the day before he got on the Moreton Bay steamer he had received a curt reply from his eldest brother: ‘Go ahead with Walker, yrs, John’. So that was that. Once he had sold the last link between himself and his brother, Kinchela could start to think about what to do next.

  He crossed over the spindly bridge that led westward out of town. A few men would have been useful when it came to fixing fences and the like, Kinchela knew, but he couldn’t put aside his desire to see how the country had changed since last autumn and to do so on his own without too much talk. Since the rush of ’45 the northern Downs had been parcelled out so quickly that each time Kinchela travelled back up to Hawkwood there seemed to be a couple of new stations. Mind you, in that short time, just about the same number had disappeared, many of them overnight. That was how it was among the Goonneeburra blacks, Kinchela thought. They had a clever way with fire, and when they didn’t kill your stock or scorch the grass so you had nothing to feed them, the smoke alone could taunt you—whipping up out of nowhere until you could hardly see in front of yourself. You had to have the capital and the stomach, as well as someone watching your back, to make it work in these parts. No doubt that was why most of the northern Downs had been taken by brothers; the Hawkins boys at Boonara, the Archers up at Eidsvold, the Herbert brothers over at Ban Ban and of course, the two Irish lads, Paul and Clement Lawless. All those boys had been determined to stick it out. He and John had been part of that set, indeed, they had been among the first up there and many of the others had come to Hawkwood for advice or a bit of company. But now the Kinchelas were calling it quits. It was hard to see what else could be done really, when the two brothers were hardly on speaking terms and there was so little money. Still it stuck in Kinchela’s gut. All that time and money and not much to show for it, even if he managed to strike a good deal with Walker.

  A day or so out of town, Kinchela stopped at Bull’s Head Inn in Drayton. He filled his pack with salt junk, leatherjacket, a couple of mallets and a box of nails as well as plenty of powder for the muzzle-loader. Next morning he was up at dawn, guiding his mare through the swamplands that lay between him and the northern interior. By late afternoon he was making his way over the ranges, counting the tree stumps that had been chopped a foot or so from the ground so the drays could be dragged over the mountain. He kept going for a day or so, stopping a night at Taabinga and then Ban Ban and from there he took the river systems eastward.

  For him the last stretch to Hawkwood was always the best part of the journey. Giant granite boulders dissolved into sudden deep gorges and gave a pink hue to the country while turning the waters that rushed over these ancient forms a curiously creamy white. There was a sound to the land too, Kinchela thought, as he and Surus picked their way up over the cliff tops, something made from the motion of the rapids and the heat of the place. As he came upon the perimeter of Hawkwood, he recognised the hundreds of thin black-trunked trees punctuating the grass lands; their silver leaves glistening in the heat and giving off a sharp familiar smell. Kinchela rode on, looking about for signs of his stock. But for cattle tracks here and there, the land was curiously empty. He nudged his horse forward, nerves a little on edge. ‘Come on, Surus,’ Kinchela said, perhaps a little more loudly than necessary, ‘let’s find the hut then and see what’s left for us to live on.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Defiance

  Robert Lowe had heard that the Hashemy was due to arrive any week now. He had told Mr Parkes in no uncertain terms that he did not approve of the sort of political campaigning he and his men had been up to. ‘It is one thing during election time,’ he instructed his previous ally curtly, as he stood by his chamber window wondering
how to get rid of his unwelcome visitor. ‘It is, however, quite unacceptable to go about campaigning at other times. It sets a bad example,’ Lowe continued, avoiding eye contact with the nuggetty-looking fellow, who was insisting on maintaining an association despite the obvious discouragement he received from his newly elected representative. ‘Such behaviour invites others to think their opinions are more important than their work and if everyone went about behaving in this manner, Mr Parkes,’ Lowe finished in a querulous tone, ‘where would the colony be?’

  However, Parkes was no longer particularly concerned about Mr Lowe’s condescending airs. In fact, he had decided that such attitudes were evidence that he and his associates were growing in influence. ‘Lowe can like it or lump it,’ he told the large crowd who had come to listen to the Committee Meeting at the Royal Hotel, ‘we are going ahead,’ he finished with a firm nod. Sydney’s former mayor James Wilshire stood up and looked about the room. ‘Thanks to the strenuous efforts of those here today, we can confidently say that all of Sydney is now primed, like a cat before a mouse hole,’ he said with obvious satisfaction. ‘And now, the moment we see that boat come through the Heads,’ he continued, adding a touch of fire to his words, ‘the governor can expect a scene to rival London’s Monster Rally.’ ‘Hear, hear,’ the working men in the crowd cheered. This was exactly the sort of stoush they had been waiting for.

  Kinchela had been on his own at Hawkwood for about four months when the visitor came. During that time there had been one or two scares, but on the whole, he had been able to get on with it. He had had a devil of a time finding the stock. It must have been a difficult season for most of the sheep had gone down to the water and got stuck there. At least that was what he assumed from the sun-dried carcasses he found scattered among the rocks. Half of the cattle were gone too, but he had expected that, although not the sight of them, with their guts ripped open. That was something of a shock. And a warning, he realised.