Chapter 7 - Return to Balmain
Since Archibald had gone away James no longer went to the yard. He was often seen walking slowly and disconsolately around the headland. He was a steady serious lad, but had always been bright and happy before. Clearly he greatly missed his Mum and his younger brother Archie, who had loyally followed him like a puppy. Now without his Dad to share the burden and give direction he was lost. Whenever he saw Mary watching him he would pull himself up, square his shoulders and pretend all was fine. But, once her observation passed, the melancholy returned.
Tom, since Archie’s departure, would occasionally visit the yard, but mostly he left this to John Buller and pottered around at home, carrying his own sadness. After a month of thinking on this and James’ melancholy, one day Mary said to Tom.
“It is time for you to get that young lad, James, out and active. You were a keen sailor on the lochs when first I met you, and you still live for the ships. Why don’t you get an old sail boat and teach the lad how to sail. It will be good for the lad and it will get you out from under my feet. You’re well recovered from your turn and it is time to be more active.”
So next day, after school, Tom collected James and they rowed across to Sydney town. An hour of haggling with a small boat builder saw them with an 18 foot yacht and a selection of canvass. Leaving the row boat in the yard, they hoisted a sail and caught the late afternoon sea breeze as it swept them up the harbour. Soon the boat was heeled over and James was flushed with the exertion of steering, trimming sails and changing tack.
That night he ate the best dinner since his Dad left. From then on it was a regular thing; after school and at weekends they would head off, sometimes out towards the heads, other times up different creeks and inlets. Soon James was a better sailor than old Tom.
It would be Christmas in two weeks. Tom hung a lantern with coloured glass to decorate the front yard, and Mary had been baking Christmas cakes and treats. The children were excited, but missing their Dad, hoping against hope that he would be home for Christmas.
As the hot December afternoon cooled with the sea-breeze, Tom and James set sail for the heads. Soon they were skimming over waves, flushed and laughing for joy.
A mile from the heads, a dark shape came into view, a new sailing ship coming in after a long voyage. Something seemed familiar. Tom looked hard and let out a shout. “Ahoy James, that be the ship your Da left on, tis the ‘Sarah’, back from England. Could it be returned so soon?
“Let’s sail alongside and hail them. Perhaps they have news of your Dad.”
They came close they saw people standing in the bow, straining for a first look at Sydney. Suddenly James let out a shout. “Dad, Dad.”
Tom pulled out his telescope and looked closely. “You’re right my lad. It’s Arch, it’s your father.”
Tom steered their boat in close enough to see clearly while James stood in the bow and waved frantically. Suddenly Arch’s face split into a huge grin. “James, my boy, Tom – how I missed you all.”
Tom shouted out. “Come aboard, we’ll speed you home long before this old lady gets there”. A quick conversation with the captain and next thing Arch was lowered onto the deck of their yacht. They flew across the water, all sails up, racing home. They all talked at once but James was determined to show his sailing skills, trimming sails here, tightening ropes there.
Arch looked with pride at James. “What a fine sailor Tom has made you.”
Rounding Dawes Point it was straight across to Balmain.
Mary often walked to the wharf, bringing Hannah and Alexander, and at times Alison, to meet the boat, looking out for it as it returned in the softness of evening. Today, as she came to the top of the path, all the children walking with her, she spied it rounding the point. She thought, It is early and flying, so much canvass up. She peered intently, her eyes no longer sharp as before.
She said to Alison, “have a good look dearie, seems they have an extra one on board”. Alison stared hard. “Yes three people.” She stared harder, something so familiar, the shape, the movement, the face.
All at once she knew, even though they were little more than dots. It was her Dad, he had come home. “Dad” she screamed pointing to Mary. Her baby brother and sister took up the chant and they raced down to the wharf. It was all they could do to wait until he stepped ashore. They flung themselves, all together, into his arms.
Next day they all went to the ship to collect his luggage and meet his on-board friends and family. Arch had brought out his younger brother William, his wife Isabella and their baby son, just older than Alexander. He also introduced them to a pretty smiling lady in the next cabin, Helen. She was wearing a black dress.
Alison, ever curious, said to her. “Why is your dress black?”
Helen sat down next to Alison and put her arms around her. “Just like you my lovely child. Your Mum died a few months ago. I was coming out to Australia to live with my husband, Colin. But half way here he got very sick and died too. You miss your Mum and I miss my husband. So I wear a black dress to show that, behind my bright smile, I have a sad place.”
Alison took her hand. “I don’t want you to be sad. Perhaps we will both try not to be sad together.”
Helen looked at this little girl of 7 years, with her sheen of bronze-copper coloured hair, and sad, steady eyes. There was something about her, such a wise soul, as if she had lived for a hundred years and seen the worst of what life had to offer. And here she was, offering her comfort.
Soon Helen was a regular guest at their little Balmain House. A month later, one day, Archibald and Helen gathered all the children and sat down with them at the kitchen table.
Archibald said to them, “Helen and I have decided to get married, we wanted to tell you all first”. Hannah, a bouncing three year old gave a bright smile and said. “I want you to be our new Mummy.” Alison gave a shy smile and put one arm through her new Mum’s and one through her Dad’s arm. She was glad for her Dad that he could be happy again, even though the hole where her real Mum had been would never go away.
The only ones less sure were Tom and Mary. It was not that they did not like Helen; she was kind and good for Archibald. It was just they still missed and grieved for Hannah, with her daughter like closeness; and the children had become so much part of their family that they hated any idea of seeing them less.
However life continued on, they still saw the children often. Helen was always polite and friendly, it was just that the spark of their love for Hannah was missing. Two things remained constant, Alison and her love for Tom and especially Mary, and James, as Tom’s sailing companion.
Alison had found a new friend, a small dark scrap of a girl, whose aunt lived in the aboriginal camp near Blackwattle Bay. She called herself Ruthie, and was about Alison’s age but smaller and skinny. Alison met her scouring the rock pools around the point, gathering shellfish to take home. Soon they arranged a regular afternoon rendezvous. Together they explored all the little bays and hillsides, discovering rock caves and treasures, places where only small people like themselves could go.
Twice Ruthie brought her to meet her family. The first time they shared a meal of fresh fish, speared in the harbour, cooked in the fire coals.
Ruthie told Alison how her mother, father, sister and brother, along with her uncle and cousin had all died in the bad flu that had come before, when the white people died too. Now she lived with her aunty, her aunt’s own two children, and her grandfather, a grey haired man called Jimmy. Of more than 30 people who had lived here when Ruthie was little now more than half were gone and her aunt, grandfather and two cousins were all that remained of her own family. She could feel the warmth that this family had for Ruthie, but also the pain of such a loss, even greater than her own. She told them how her mother and brother had died too, and she knew they understood and grieved like her.
After that day it was like they were sisters, two little scraps of humanity who shared their world of memory
and understanding.
She came once more to visit them. It was a special celebration to which she was invited, by the old man, or so Ruthie said. Old Jimmy had speared a kangaroo and there was food enough for a feast for all. As she and Ruthie sat side by side on the ground, eating the roast meat, Jimmy came to sit with Ruthie, his clear favourite. He showed them an old rusted axe and told them how a strong man named Tom McBee, who worked in a ship yard made it for him, and how it was red like the fire, with sparks everywhere, as he made it. Now, after his best kangaroo spear, it was his most valued possession.
Alison was delighted and told Jimmy how Tom lived close to her and was like her own grandfather, the same as Jimmy was with Ruthie.
Jimmy said, “Ruthie tell me she see that Tom McBee, he live near you in big rock house. You tell this to Tom McBee, he good man and I remember dis haxe he make. Maybe one day I bring him nother kangaroo and we have big feast together.”
That night Alison told the story to Tom and her Dad. They roared laughing, till tears ran down their faces, as they remembered. Her Dad told her about the kangaroo Jimmy brought that day and how Jimmy wanted to give it to Tom in return for the axe, but Tom had told him to eat it with his family, as they needed the food more.
Alison was touched Tom’s kindness but made them both promise not to tell any others who might laugh at her new friends.
After this she told Mary and her housekeeper about Ruthie and they would give her small parcels of food; cakes, biscuits, or sometime a piece of bread and cold meat, for their secret picnics.
However, to all the others that lived around there, she said nothing. It was Ruthie’s and her secret, just for them. So many other people seemed unkind to the aborigines, calling them dirty blacks, and cursing them. The thought of someone saying this to little Ruthie filled her with a mixture of shame and rage.
One day together they discovered a small tunnel which led to a cave, around on Ballast Point, a place where the ships gathered large loose rocks along the shoreline for ballast. Only she and Ruthie knew the cave was there, the entrance hidden behind bushes and so narrow that only a child or small adult could enter. A sandstone slab, supported by some crumbling rock, was the roof and there was a dry sandy floor, just wide enough for them to both lie stretched out, side by side. To one side was a small crack, leading up through the rocks, which let in just enough light to see.
This became their own special place, where they stored their discovered treasures, a piece of rope, a small timber chest, a brass bell, an old ships knife and two coloured glass bottles. Here they often would meet to dream, plan and imagine new adventures together.
Archibald resumed his role in the business with John Buller and the business continued to prosper. But, in a way that he could not understand, the Sydney work and his life had lost something from the way it was before. He felt a strange restlessness for something new.
Perhaps it was that he and Helen as yet had no children together. They had thought children would come quickly once they were married, but now more than 2 years had passed and nothing. Their life was good together and Helen had taken the place of mother to his children, though sometimes, deep in the night, he would dream of Hannah and feel an ache for her smile. At times, when he looked at Alison and saw Hannah’s eyes look back, it gave him a jolt, as if Hannah was still there.
Now his brother William and Isabella had a second child, and he loved this new niece and felt a pang that he could not see her grow. William had worked with him in the yard for a short time and at first he and Isabella had shared their small house until they found a place of their own.
However, after a few months, William headed up the coast seeking new opportunities. He found a job in Maitland, the new port for the Hunter River and a good route to the inland, much easier than crossing those sandstone mountains behind Sydney. Maitland kept growing, surrounded by the good farmlands of the Hunter valley.
William kept encouraging Archibald to come and visit them and see this place. Maitland was now the second largest town in all the colonies with more than 7000 people, sitting at the top of the navigable part of the Hunter River. It was the major port supplying settlers moving inland, beyond the mountains.
In 1853, after three years of marriage, Helen discovered she was pregnant. She first knew just after Easter time, but said nothing, to stop raising Archie’s hopes. She knew that for them both a new child would move their own lives on. However, as the cold winter winds came sweeping up the harbour, she could feel it begin to show.
One day Mary came visiting Helen and said, “Let us walk together.”
Mary led her down past the cemetery to the wharf, stopping to place two roses on Hannah and young Archie’s graves as she passed, with just a trace of a tear in her eye.
Coming to the wharf she pulled Helen to sit alongside her on the rough timber jetty. She said, “I know there is new life coming to you. While I cannot see it yet I have felt it for more than a month now. It is good for you and Archie to have your own new shared family. It will help him leave Hannah and the past behind when he holds your new child. It will also bring much joy to James, Alison, Hannah and Alex to have a new baby in the house.
“So it is time for us to become true friends. Nothing can replace my love for Hannah, who was truly the daughter I never had. But, for you and I, that should not come between us. It is in the past. The future is for you and your family. This is something we both care about, so let us become like sisters, or an aunt and niece.”
So a new friendship was begun, and Helen found that Mary’s wisdom and Tom’s gruff humour brought a solid place to her life.
For Archibald too, this new bond of extended family gave him more contentment. When he came home on warm spring and summer afternoons he loved to watch Helen’s swelling belly as she worked around the house. Then, in the evenings, they would all sit together. As Helen stretched out, resting her legs, she would tell them each time the baby moved, and they would all come over to feel it move too. Hannah and Alex were particularly thrilled about the idea of a new brother or sister and even Alison and James were caught up in the excitement.
Sunday afternoons now became family picnics, often with Tom and James loading the sailing boat and others taking a row boat, and crossing to Goat Island or one of the northern harbour headlands. The adults would laze on white sandy beaches, or under the large shady fig trees which grew near the water’s edge, while the children swam in the rock pools or in the shallow waters of sheltered inlets, safe from sharks. Helen would sit with her feet in the cool water to ease their swelling, watching fondly over all her family. Sometimes she and Mary would talk together with a mixture of seriousness and humour about each child; their unrealised potential, funny antics, growing abilities and little weaknesses. Other times Mary would make concoctions and infusions to settle Helen’s nausea, ease her back ache or reduce swelling; using knowledge passed from her old Scottish aunts.
Just before Christmas the baby came, Margaret, they called her, small and not so strong, but otherwise seeming fine. All the children were so happy and begged to hold their tiny sister. They endlessly told her how beautiful she was, with her dark eyes.
Then, just two weeks later, it all went wrong. It started like a gripe, with baby Margaret having a pain, then she cried and cried and would not suck and, almost before they had time to realise, she was cold and weak and then it was over.
So another tiny coffin was laid in a small grave next to the other two, Margaret Rodgers, born December 23rd 1953, died January 10th, 1854.
A profound melancholy settled over the family. The much wanted and loved child had come, but the visit was too short. Now new life was gone, left only was an empty hole in the family. For Archie and Helen their shared loss brought them together, but at the same time it left them restless and dissatisfied with life in Balmain.
In February another letter came from William, expressing his and Isabella’s condolences and encouraging them to come and visit soon. They had now
moved to Newcastle, at the Hunter mouth and business opportunities abounded. William told of its beautiful coastal location and seaside beaches. He wanted them to come, visit and see this new town.
Finally, in the late summer of 1854, Archibald and Helen caught a coastal steamship to Newcastle. Walking around the flat docklands Arch felt strangely at home, perhaps it was the name. As a lad he had worked at its namesake in England’s north, and gained a taste for the world of ships.
For Helen, who had grown close to Isabella on the trip to Australia, she found her renewed presence and friendship a joy.
As the week passed, before the ship returned, Archibald started to look for business opportunities. Coal was to be had in plenty; all around the town were outcrops of it, and pits were being dug to mine it. As well the volume of shipping for freight inland was starting to rival Sydney and ship re-fitters and repairers were few. These few constantly needed to send repairs and bring tools or parts from Sydney, a slow, unproductive business with many delays.
One day a local business man, William Trindall, came to him with a proposition. “I have a haulage business in Maitland which hauls to the inland. However, I see this new town, Newcastle, will soon take over from Maitland as the main Hunter town, because the shallow water up there limits the big boats. With the railway just built between, I can unload here instead of there.
I have a piece of land, just to the side of this town, where my haulage business holds unloaded goods. However I am often being asked to help with repairing ships and bringing goods for ship servicing. But ships is not what I knows, and coming down river to Newcastle takes me away from my work inland. I am a bullocky who knows how to haul across the dry miles. I need those ships to bring me the goods, but fixing them is not my skill. I need a business partner to run the shore operations, receive the goods, store them, send them on to me and fix the ships that come to port.
My proposal is that I give you half this land, on a peppercorn rent, if you will be my shore agent. William tells me that fixing ships and steelwork is what you are good at. So I propose that William here runs my storage yard and you run the ship business and I will look after my teams and their haulage up the valley and to the inland.”
So it was agreed, Rodgers Iron Foundry and Shipwrights would become established on one half of the site and the other half would become a storage yard with sheds for holding the goods in transit. Before they returned to Sydney the deal was sealed on a handshake. They agreed to return to start work on building their new premises inside the month.
Back in Sydney Hannah and Alexander thought the move to Newcastle was a new adventure and James, who had become very attached to Helen, saw the promise of the new business. But Alison was dismayed. She loved their simple Balmain cottage and the stone house of her grandparents, across the way. Most of all she did not want to leave these dear people, who had provided her rock of security and love over all her remembered life. And the idea of saying goodbye to her little black friend, her best friend, Ruthie, was too terrible to think about.
But her Dad was firm. She, his oldest daughter, must come and help with their new life. Finally it was agreed, she would come, but each summer she would return to holiday with Gran Mary and Tom, and in the winter they would come to visit in Newcastle and stay for a month or so.
A few days later the move was made. Arch could not bring himself to sell the little Balmain cottage, Roisin, it held too many memories. So it was placed in the care of Tom and Mary to use as they saw fit. All the family’s goods were loaded on the boat and soon only the empty house remained.
On the last day Alison took her diary from her bedside locker and found a piece of oilskin and an old tin. Carefully, she wrapped her diary in the oilskin and placed it in a tin. Then she took the tin and placed it into a gap in the rocks, at the edge of the hillside, just behind their house where the boulders fell away towards the Sydney shore. She placed a loose rock into the hole, in front of the tin, to hide it. Here it would be safe and dry and, perhaps, she would collect it again one day.
The Old Balmain House Page 10