“Come, don’t be alarmed,” she said in a soft, calm voice. “It is probably just someone hunting dinner.”
But it wasn’t.
In the leaching daylight, men on horseback rustled though the dry undergrowth, the embers of the dying sun behind outlining their silhouettes. There were at least six of them, riding with rifles cocked.
Caroline looked at their unyielding faces and tense bodies, relaxing slightly as they took in the sight of some twenty unprotected girls standing mute before them. Even the plainest female can look inviting in youth and amongst this group there were at least two young pearls: Aileen, an ethereal, dark-haired creature destined to be governess to a squatter’s children; and Kitty, her inverse, a buxom blonde, all character and dimples, wanted as a dairymaid.
A log fell on the fire; sparks spluttered, wood flared. The men, alert for trouble, edged closer. Caroline watched one in profile as he smirked, licked his lips and raised his gun. Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward, maintaining her poise as best she could. “I am Mrs Chisholm,” she said, displaying a confidence more apparent than real.
This, she knew, was a danger unlike any she had ever encountered before, even in India. These girls had placed their faith in her. She had to protect them, whatever it took.
There had been almost forty of them when they had started their journey a little under a week earlier, taking the night steamer up the coast from Sydney to Newcastle. By dawn the boat had turned westwards into the Hunter River as the sun glimmered just above the ocean at their backs. Another few hours had brought them ashore in Morpeth. Stretching after nine hours on board, the girls, travel tired and hungry, looked askance at the small wooden town clustered behind the wharf. Two girls were left there with local women wanting servants to help with chores and children, the rest had walked the three miles to Maitland.
They had stayed three days there at the Mill Street depot, set up by Captain Edward Day, the local magistrate: two rooms, stone walls with a dunny out the back; it was cosy inside with the fire lit. From here a few girls left to work on local farms, a few more stayed with good prospects of finding jobs. Caroline wouldn’t let any go where there was no mistress. Then the rest took to the road again, at daybreak, travelling in empty bullock drays, northwest along the wool track towards Scone and beyond. Some girls rode, others walked; then they swapped so everyone could have a rest, even Caroline. All but the bullock drivers. They stayed in their seats. Big-bellied men with hands the size of tree roots, suitable company for their beasts.
They were travelling in mid-winter but the weather was good, the days cool but smiling bright. The sun glanced off eucalypt leaves, red spider flowers danced amongst the green-grey of the foliage, and red and blue parrots turned upside down to suck nectar from yellow bottlebrush, their raucous chatter cutting through the songs of less showy birds. “Larks, if this be winter,” Kitty had marvelled, “what will happen in spring?”
Come evening, the bullock drivers would seek a safe site just off the track, large enough for both drays to pull into and with room enough for the bullocks to rest and for Caroline and the girls to find shelter away from any wind or storm that might arise in the dark hours. Most nights a fire was lit, tea made and bread and cheese passed about; then, under Caroline’s careful watch, the girls curled up in groups under blankets, weary enough from the long hours of walking and riding to sleep unhindered.
This night would be different.
As though on a signal, the men dismounted, their guns still levelled menacingly. Caroline’s mouth went dry. How do I negotiate with bushrangers? she wondered. Where do I begin? As her brain scrambled, one of the bullock drivers suddenly stepped forward. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple protruding from his fleshy, stubbled neck.
“We don’t have no blunt, nor nuthin’ you’d want,” he mumbled.
The leader, a whippet-like creature, leapt forward: small, not even Caroline’s height, with dark hair, a prominent nose, a scar above his left cheek, and green eyes alight with mischief.
“Are you really Mrs Chisholm?” he asked. “Better for you not to know my name, but if you are Mrs Chisholm, then I’m honoured to meet you, ma’am,” he said with a flamboyant bow.
“Yes sir,” Caroline replied, thinking it best to humour a dangerous man. “Indeed, I am.” Then hoping to garner a little sympathy she added, “I am taking these girls to find work, we’re heading for the New England country.”
His eyes ran appreciatively over the young women standing behind Caroline, grinning and winking at them before bringing his gaze back to Caroline. “A fine brood. Very fine. But none, I think, as winsome as their leader.” Turning to his men, still standing with guns at the ready, he asked: “What say you boys?” They grunted agreement. There was a whistle.
As changeable as he was curious, he was off now on another tack. “It is growing late,” he said. “You will be wanting your rest. You still have many miles to Armidale.” Then calling one of his men over he whispered an order. The man shrugged and disappeared from view. Whilst he waited, the bushranger asked Caroline about her work. Unsure where it was all leading, she told him about her home and her hopes for settling girls like these safely out of harm’s way. She remained on alert, though, wondering what devilry he was planning.
The other man returned carrying a large canvas bag. Rummaging inside, the bushranger pulled out £25. “We’ve had a good few days,” he said, holding the money out to Caroline. “Plucked a few rich birds, we did. You take this, call it a donation.” He laughed. “After all, we have plenty more. Eh, chaps?”
Startled, Caroline stood undecided. Then, as he became agitated and insistent, she took the money. “Good girl,” he said. With one final bow, he was gone, his men dissolving into the gathering darkness behind him.
The girls, the bullock drivers and Caroline stood bemused. It had been real: she was holding the £25 to prove it.
“Larks, if they be bushrangers,” Kitty’s voice sang out, “what will honest men be like?”1
Caroline had originally planned to send groups of girls into the countryside on their own. However, the first time she attempted it, having assembled two bullock drays to carry them, the girls had refused point blank to go. It appeared they were afraid of the unknown, be it bushrangers, strange animals or dangerous insects. With the flexibility and pragmatism that defined her, Caroline sent the bullock drivers away and organised more for the following day, when she made herself available to accompanied them.2
It was the first of many journeys she made travelling with the girls on the wagons or, later, riding her own horse, Captain. Her expeditions went “as far as 300 miles into the far interior, sometimes sleeping at the stations of wealthy settlers, sometimes in the huts of poor emigrants or prisoners; sometimes camping out in the bush, teaching the timid awkward peasantry of England, Scotland and Ireland, Protestants and Roman Catholics, Orangemen and Repealers, how to ‘bush it’.”3 Where possible, Caroline and her charges travelled by the steamers that hugged the coast as far north as Brisbane; most of the costs she outlaid for these journeys were refunded to her by the employers. When travelling overland, she usually sought free rides in bullock drays returning home after taking wool or produce to Sydney to sell. Both small farmers and the wealthy squattocracy supported Caroline — after all she was bringing them the workers they needed to run their properties and their homes.
Travelling inland with her girls meant negotiating the dirt tracks that crisscrossed New South Wales. Caroline’s cavalcades from Sydney ventured out as far as Armidale in the central northwest and along the road to Gundagai on the Murrumbidgee River in the southwest. Today Gundagai is 375 kilometres from Sydney by road — less than five hours drive; in 1842, however, Caroline and her convoy would have spent weeks travelling to get there. It was a rugged, inhospitable land, vastly different to the Old Country. Like the light, the odours were sharp and pungent. Instead of the lush, velvet-green, cultivated and settled land of home, with its farmhouses and villages, the drays wo
und through a seemingly vacant landscape covered by scrub and forests of native trees. There were animals aplenty, including the strange kangaroos that travelled in mobs and the lugubrious wombats that stole out at night, but there was little sign of humanity, European or Indigenous.
When they reached habitation, it was cause for celebration, even if it was only an overnight stay near an isolated, roughly made farmhouse or a country inn. Few of the bush people charged Caroline for accommodation or food. Longer stops were allowed at the various depots that Caroline had arranged for local police magistrates to set up, like the sandstone cottage at Maitland that Caroline’s home rented. It still exists, at 3 Mill Street, East Maitland.4 The depots were dotted in small towns along the routes. (Caroline was to reprise the idea of the depots some thirteen years later, in Victoria.) Either with Caroline or at her behest, thousands of immigrants were moved throughout New South Wales to employment. With the combination of her talent for organisation and the respect that she received, she was able to achieve this huge migration extremely frugally. During the seven years of her work in New South Wales her personal expenses at inns amounted to only £1 18s 6d (about $1700 today), although she did admit to other financial outlays for which she received no remittance, such as clerical fees.5
The nomadic life suited Caroline. From Britain to India and Sydney and then out along the sheep and cattle tracks of Australia, she seems to have been almost constantly on the move. As more and more girls were placed in jobs, along with, later, some hundreds of single men and families, Caroline became something of a celebrity in the towns and byways throughout the bush. There were numerous descriptions of her travels, like this one from her friend, colonial judge and elected parliamentarian Roger Therry (later Sir Roger):
I remember . . . meeting her on the Goulburn road, as early as 5 o’clock in the morning, when the first burst of an Australian spring loads the air with the perfume of the acacias, and the glades of the open forest are clothed in a mantle of bright green . . . Mrs Chisholm herself, wrapped in a loose cloak, was seated on the top of a dray, laden with casks and bales of goods . . . Besides her and around her were seated twelve or fourteen young girls. Alongside of the dray walked about thirty others.6
One of the shelters used regularly by Caroline, at 3 Mill Street, East Maitland, NSW (photo by Athel d’Ombrain, courtesy of the University of Newcastle)
Sir Roger creates a romantic picture, but Caroline was essentially a realist rather than an idealist. Her interest in immigration had certainly been fomented by the bounty girls, but as she delved further into the source of their difficulties she also began to identify the systemic problems that prevented the sort of social cohesion that New South Wales desperately required. She realised that she needed to investigate this further and gather convincing evidence if there was to be any chance of her helping the settlers. So she made the most of her travels through the bush, speaking to everyone, the wealthy squatters, the small farmers and their workers, collecting the stories and thoughts of ordinary men and women, not just regarding their current conditions but also, more saliently, their aspirations for the future.
Back in Sydney, there was still plenty of work to do. Caroline started another employment registry to help single men and families. Each placement contract was still copied in triplicate and fair wages and conditions, such as rations and days off, had to be agreed to by all parties. In each case, Caroline tried to match the immigrant and the employer as carefully as possible. Although she had branched out, the girls still remained Caroline’s main focus. As boats came in, most of the unattached girls were sent to her home. She grew bolder in her fight to save as many as possible. When told that one young and very pretty girl had not come to the home but had instead been taken to the North Shore by a ship’s officer, Caroline hired a boatman to row her over there. Accosting the couple, she threatened the man with exposure to his captain and the press unless he relinquished the girl. He did so. Returning to the Sydney shore with the girl, Caroline offered the boatman his hire. He refused, saying, “You do not know me, ma’am, but I know you; and may my arm wither from the socket if ever I touch money of yours.” Surprised, Caroline asked the man who he was. “Flora’s cousin,” he replied.7
Caroline was, moreover, finally able to take some revenge on the man who had seduced Flora. Whilst his unsuspecting wife was in Caroline’s office questioning a prospective maid, Caroline found the husband wandering around inside the home inspecting the girls. He indicated one pretty female, suggesting to Caroline that she would suit the position. Caroline was firm. “No,” she told him, adding that the girl was too young, too pretty and too inexperienced to be in his house. “His face showed symptoms of apoplexy,” and he asked Caroline what she knew of him. Her reply left him in little doubt: “All that Flora has told me.”8 After that he complained of the heat and left his wife to complete the business. This last of the Flora stories shows just how assured Caroline had become within herself and in her role in Sydney society. A year earlier she had not been brave enough to stand up for what she knew to be right. Now, she not only was able to belittle the perpetrator of Flora’s troubles but, although she did not use any names, also felt secure enough to highlight her story in her first public booklet called Female Immigration Considered, In a Brief Account of the Sydney Immigrants’ Home. She knew that doing so would mean that one man, at least, would henceforth be wary of his actions.
Published in 1842, the pamphlet carried numerous accounts of the girls that Caroline helped, and others that she was unable to protect. In detailing their histories, she turned them from faceless figures into living, breathing creatures. There was the naïve fifteen-year-old orphan who was brought to Caroline by a woman who found her walking the streets. The girl’s rate of pay should have been about three shillings per week, but the mistress who had engaged her off the boat had told her that she didn’t have to work, just walk between two particular streets, where, she was told, a “gentleman is to give me £2”. A ship’s captain asked Caroline to rescue another girl who had been engaged from his boat by a man well known to approach single girls when they first arrived in Sydney; however, in this case Caroline was unable to remove the girl from his home.9
Not everything to do with the home was desperate or immoral; there were lighter moments too, reflecting Caroline’s love of the ridiculous. Unlike many overtly religious people, Caroline also admired personal beauty and acknowledged its attractions. However, she also believed there was a place for everyone, even those less favoured, such as the young girl named “Little Scrub”. She had been given that ignominious sobriquet by her shipmates on the voyage to Sydney, who noted “her hair not combed, her face not washed, and her clothes [looking] as if she had jumped into them”. Little Scrub arrived with some sixty other girls just as Caroline was having difficulty satisfying a somewhat fastidious client. The woman, who had a husband and grown sons, had already sent back three girls, saying they were not suitable as servants. Caroline had just realised the reason for the woman’s dissatisfaction: she was worried that her husband or her sons might take too keen an interest in any new, attractive maid. So, with some delight, Caroline presented Little Scrub for inspection:
The lady looked at the poor girl with a keen and scrutinising eye; her countenance betokened satisfaction. Addressing me, she said, “I will take the girl; I dare say she will turn out a good servant. You will make the agreement for six months. Ah, ’tis safe to have something a little repulsive.” I opened the door, desired the clerk to enter the agreement, and returned to my own room, [where] . . . I indulged in an irresistible fit of laughter.10
Another well-to-do woman from the bush came to Caroline looking for a governess for her younger children. On spying a qualified but very attractive young woman, she immediately chose her. Explaining to Caroline that she had an older son at home who was somewhat wild and she feared that he would make a “foolish match”, she went on: “Tho’ he can neither read or write, he’s uncommonly cute. Now I think,
she’ll tempt him to stay at home; and then, when I see . . . his heart is touched . . . the clergyman shall settle everything, and it will be a good thing for us all, ma’am.” The governess was engaged for one year on a good salary of £16 per annum plus board and keep.11
For many men in the bush, their future was blighted by their lack of female companionship. Unashamedly, Caroline promoted the idea of marriage between her bounty women and rural men. With only a sprinkling of subtlety, probably more related to morality than coyness, she attempted to place suitable females within sight of eligible men, many of whom had asked for her help in providing them with a spouse. In 1845 she wrote: “To supply flockmasters with shepherds is a good work; to supply those shepherds with wives a better. To give the shepherd a good wife is to make a gloomy, miserable hut a cheerful, contented home; to introduce married families into the interior is to make squatters’ stations fit abodes for Christian men.”12 She hammered the point a little harder three years later in London, when writing an open letter to Earl Grey, then Secretary of State for the Colonies: “If Her Majesty’s Government be really desirous of seeing a well-conducted community spring up in these Colonies, the social wants of the people must be considered . . . For all the clergy you can dispatch, all the schoolmasters you can appoint, all the churches you can build, and all the books you can export, will never do much good, without . . . ‘God’s Police’ — wives and little children — good and virtuous women.”13
Caroline’s advocacy of marriage, and her justification for it, were major objects of criticism from twentieth-century feminists. In her notable book, Damned Whores and God’s Police, Anne Summers took issue with the suggestion that “good and virtuous women were the much needed civilizing agents in a rough and ready colonial society”. She described as sexist the notion that such qualities belong only to females, and asked: “Why not encourage their nurturance in men, just as we have fostered in women the belief that no ambition is now beyond them?”14
Caroline Chisholm Page 10