‘Might we survey the property before entering the home?’ I ask Macquarie.
‘But have you quite recovered?’
‘I had lost my land legs after so long at sea,’ I reply. ‘But now, I think, they are found.’
He turns to Foveaux, who indicates that the ensign should lead us. Crudely cut clumps of black hair protrude from the lad’s shako and his tanned face is glossed with youth. His fresh cheeks are full, adorned with a dimple on each side: a pretty boy.
The ensign springs forward with long strides and we follow his lead. Foveaux returns to the residence. A short while later I see him hoisting himself with some difficulty up the steps to the shaded verandah.
At the rear of the plain residence — white, rising to two storeys at the southern end, with a low verandah running along the front — we gaze out across a small vegetable garden. Beyond it folds of partially cleared land plunge towards a larger garden cross-hatched with avenues of plantings. I spy a figure hunched over a pail of water set down between rows of bright corn and leafy cannonballs of cabbage; carrots, too, judging from their feathery tops of forest green. Another figure, to the side of the ploughed and planted earth, stands idly beneath a broad misshapen hat smoking a pipe. A plume of smoke drifts from his shaded face. Beyond them, a fringe of trees along the shoreline and the white rim of a perfect little beach embroidering the harbour’s edge.
It’s then that I notice the famed kangaroo. A large male reclines on a shaded hummock just beyond the Cove.
‘Can we approach?’ I ask the young ensign.
‘By all means. But quietly.’ His voice drops to a whisper. ‘They are — with good reason — extremely wary.’
I have read so much about this creature living on grasses and flowers, with its mournful bleat — that was Cook’s phrase — and its young suckled in a pocket, or pouch, below its belly. Its renown has spread far and wide.
A large group, like a tribe or an extended family, has gathered beneath the shade of a spreading tree with thick palm-shaped leaves. At a sudden movement or drift of scent the largest rises slowly, head turning sharply, ears spinning like semaphores. And he is away, haunches heavy and muscled, bounding as gracefully weightless as anything I have ever seen, the others in his wake.
‘That animal could outpace a greyhound,’ I cry out to the young ensign. ‘It looks to have springs in its haunches.’
‘For all its speed it makes easy prey,’ he replies with a sensitive note threaded into an Irish brogue. ‘Shoot the creature and it looks in death like an overgrown mouse.’
Macquarie, who has been a few paces behind, reaches us. There has been little exercise for him on the Dromedary and his tread is a little laboured, his stride slow.
‘I don’t believe we have met,’ I say to the young man. ‘Lieutenant Governor Foveaux, who it seems has abandoned us to your care, did not bother to introduce us.’
‘There are thousands in the colony and so many cause him trouble, ma’am. I am of no significance. He may have forgotten my name. But it is, as you were kind enough to inquire, Brody. My family hails from Connemara, though I left for Dublin when I was quite young.’
‘I think,’ Macquarie interrupts, ‘that it is time we returned. The high summer weather, by all accounts, is changeable. And even now — look to the north — a bank of cloud begins to darken.’
We double back, encountering some native women along the way. I had seen one or two at the wharf and the dress of this small group seems much the same. They are garbed in rags tied around the waist or draped across the shoulder to help carry an infant or some other burden. Otherwise, they are naked. On one piece of cloth I make out the ghost of a floral pattern.
Two of the younger women, their breasts exposed, nod politely as they pass. ‘How do you do?’ one asks, in imitation of an English lady. And then, before I can reply, the same woman answers. ‘Very well thank you.’
‘It is as if she understands the form though not the meaning of the words,’ I say to Brody.
‘Either that,’ he grins, ‘or they are amusing themselves at our expense. They are very quick witted, these natives. Believe no one who tells you otherwise.’
‘I was very taken with Bungaree, the native chief, who greeted us on the Dromedary,’ I say as I take Macquarie’s arm and stroll on to the residence, the young man dropping back a step or two behind. ‘But I could not discern which elements of the performance were vaudeville and which instructional.’
‘We will see more clearly when we get to know the man,’ Macquarie replies. ‘He is evidently not backward in venturing forward.’
‘The natives are quickly stripped of pride when they abandon their camps for our settlement and our grog,’ offers the ensign. ‘But in their natural setting they are proud and free.’
‘This is what Collins says, too.’
‘Collins is well remembered here, ma’am. And in Van Diemen’s Land.’
‘And the native women … you were saying?’
‘Yes the women, who are much put upon in my view, are models of pluck and tenacity. They will give birth amid much wailing, attended by some of their own sorcerers and, moments later, they rise cradling their infants, dip them once or twice in the shallows, and return to their duties while suckling their bawling offspring.’
There was so much to know.
*
Even now, summoning memories of that strange world from the cold house in Gruline, I recall its terrors quite as much as its pleasures.
It is remarkable how swiftly the colonials, like men on the field of battle inured to the rain of bullets, had adapted to the perils around them. The townsfolk shook out their boots each morning lest spiders had lodged there, drawn by the strong scent into those damp caverns of rotting flesh and leather. The chain gangs attempted to disperse the snakes by pounding the earth with heavy sticks as they moved through forest and grassland. Some vipers, their instinct either protective or aggressive, refused to yield and instead reared up to strike. Many a colonial life has been saved in these situations by a shovel, rake or hoe — or a swift set of feet. In the Sydney Gazette I read how a girl in her teens, the issue of a convict sawyer and a dressmaker, had planted her bare feet onto a large brown serpent inert and coiled in the spring sunshine. The fangs struck at the girl’s thigh and the poison sped to her heart.
The harbour, an enticing blue when not a lifeless grey, had claimed its share of victims. The natives sang to the fish feeding at the rocks and speared them from their slender bark canoes. Many times I saw them fish by moonlight and heard the cry of triumph carry across the laminate waters. I often saw the women wading out to collect oysters. Not the men.
All feared — and at the same time revered — the shark.
Guruwin. Shark.
I learned that name, and many others, from Bungaree.
CHAPTER NINE
The Governor’s residence was dignified enough, for a penitentiary en plein air that had once been perilously close to ruin. A further six weeks without supplies and the colony settled on land claimed by James Cook for George III — perhaps compensation, one day, for that most peculiar monarch’s loss of America — would have perished in its first year. Survival now seemed certain, though little else was guaranteed.
The colonists were wont to use the sentimental phrase ‘mother country’ when referring to the kingdom that dispatched them in chains. And yet there was nothing truly maternal about that unfeeling old crone. While the poor starved, the Prince Regent spent a fortune on champagne and cognac shipped across the Channel. He had, it seems, decided to punish the French for their revolution by drinking from their finest crus.
Macquarie was determined that this colony would take its colours from a different source. He was not a philosopher, was unable to amply express his ideals beyond a few speechifying phrases, sincerely felt though fragmentary, never amounting to so much as an argument. Instead he was a soldier, an administrator — a governor — and he gave ideals concrete form. Equality for m
y husband was not an abstract thing; it was a fine street flanked by parks and gardens open to all, a school for the poor — particularly the poor natives. A grammar school for girls. A second chance. A place where men and women might become what they were meant to be. Build a noble place, and you create a noble race: this, at heart, was his philosophy. He was no radical, though his enemies often supposed him to be. Rather, he was a good Scot. He held some fine improving notions. He had a heart.
The residence, we discovered soon enough, was an incoherent jumble — each successive governor having added his personal touches — atop the crescent-shaped Cove’s eastern rise. The industrious Joseph Foveaux had prepared it for our arrival.
It was Foveaux who managed through sheer force of personality to restore order after the upending of Captain Bligh and the seizing of power by the New South Wales Corps. The soldiers had made rum, the trade in which they enjoyed a monopoly, the colony’s true currency. Foveaux simply stepped between the Rum Corps and Bligh, brushed each one aside, and brokered a peace. It is said that he favoured the rebels; I believe he favoured a return to normalcy. For that is what greeted us.
Foveaux it was who provided a measure of rural elegance with furnishings brought out from London and some gleaming white and blue porcelain pieces from the East. He took evident pride in beautifying Government House for us and, as he led us from room to room, wheezing a little from the effort, he drew our attention to features he expected would please.
In the long dimly lit corridor we were joined by Miss Ringold, a pretty woman with dark, almost black, hair and blue eyes — quite a Russian princess. She took us to our bedchamber at the end of the northern wing as Foveaux held back. It was large and clean, light-filled, though in no way luxurious.
The plain new curtains were sky blue; a nice match for the views of the waterway beyond. Miss Ringold lifted back the bed cover and retreated as I inspected the sheets. They were of coarse muslin, but brilliantly white. Next she motioned to the bedspread, which had been scattered for our arrival with fresh sprigs of eucalyptus blossom, slender grey-green leaves and scarlet flowers enclosing buds of bright yellow. I congratulated her on her good taste. ‘T’were Governor Foveaux’s doing, ma’am,’ she blushed.
Foveaux rejoined us on the wide and low west-facing verandah.
‘So it seems you have been appointed Governor,’ Macquarie said to him in jest.
‘Not at all sir,’ he gave a slight bow. ‘But I do govern in the absence of one. With your long-awaited arrival, I respectfully withdraw to the shadows.’
We followed him inside to the east-facing dining room, sparely decorated and blessed with a fine aspect. ‘The walls here are kept bare,’ he said, planting himself squarely before a large curved bay window. ‘It’s so that the natural glories will not be overwhelmed by the fine arts.’ We looked towards the Government’s kitchen gardens and Farm Cove a short distance beyond.
Retracing our steps, we returned over slightly creaky floorboards to the front of the house.
Foveaux gestured with a plump white hand towards a wide reception room. Off that stood, to the right, an office with a handsome wainscoting of dark timber meeting a bottle green carpet and walls crowded with pictures, some painted in the colony’s earliest years. ‘Here you see drawings of natives clothed like Grecians in white robes,’ Foveaux intoned. ‘They much prefer complete nudity, which is not to say they aren’t greatly amused by our’ — he tugged at his waistcoat — ‘vestments.’ He paused for a laboured intake of breath. ‘And here’ — a foppish twirl of the hand before another picture — ‘are the tangled eucalyptus forests that you would have seen as the Dromedary entered the Heads. The trunks of the most appealing species are lily white. They can seem cadaverous — certainly ghostly. But the shape’ — he caressed the air with a fleshy hand — ‘is very sinuous. Very beautiful.’
Extracting an embroidered kerchief from the pocket of his waistcoat, Foveaux smiled sweetly and mopped his brow. ‘Here is the long-tailed hopping kangaroo, captured in a rare moment of repose. Next to it is a watercolour of a jellyfish, gossamer blue. Remarkable, really. The skill! We have the artist on the French expedition of 1802 to thank. It was a gift to, er,’ — he raised a speculative finger — ‘Governor King.’
The most beautiful room of all was a wood-panelled study behind Macquarie’s office, facing south. The window was large, paned inexpertly with varied depths of glass, and the light seemed to buckle and warp as it poured into the room. Our host said not a word about this feature but merely bowed and threw out an arm. In one corner stood a pianoforte with its lid propped open and a sheaf of music leaning on the keys. Beside it, at a lazy angle, rested a violoncello.
‘I believe,’ he offered, ‘that madam has an ear for music — and some talent for it.’
‘I carried a viola on the Dromedary without once playing it, wary of the corrosive maritime air. And now …’
‘You have the big sister too,’ he beamed.
‘But from where did it come?’ I asked, quite lost for words. ‘All this …’
‘There are a number of fine instruments in the colony,’ he explained. ‘All we lack is the mastery of them. A man with money from the seal trade or the rum monopoly will have a pianoforte shipped out from London and spend half a lifetime admiring it without once troubling the keys. I had merely to requisition one.’
Macquarie shot me the tender look of a parent watching a favoured child unwrap a Christmas present. ‘Already,’ he addressed Foveaux, although I suspect the remark was more for my benefit, ‘I note that there is more culture in the colony than any visitor, knowing its unique composition, would expect.’
‘A salve for the isolation,’ Foveaux returned, clasping his hands behind his back and puffing out his barrel of a belly. ‘The death of a king, a revolution, famine, earthquake — a catastrophe on the scale of Lisbon — and we hear a muffled bulletin six months after the event. A letter, a dispatch: that is all.’ He offered a half-smile, looking now at Macquarie, now me, with pale, watery eyes. ‘We miss much and so long for connection with the world that we look always to the harbour. Much as the farmer looks to the skies, we keep watch for the signals from the flagstaff and the first sign of the sails that tell us we are not forgotten. And as soon as a visitor steps ashore we buttonhole him for news of the world.’
He took a step towards the pianoforte. Stooping a little he tucked one arm behind him, and with the other reached out to touch the inlaid work on the lid. He pressed a padded finger briefly onto the surface, leaving behind a humid impress. ‘Why,’ he went on, ‘the women seize on the first signs of a shift in fashion among the few ladies to venture across the seas. And those with means equal to their aspirations collect leather volumes and porcelain from China — Tang, Sing or Ming dynasties, I’m afraid I’m never sure which. I am no connoisseur of chinoiserie. And, well, as you can see, it is thanks to this desire for connection with the world that fine musical instruments gather dust in some handsome homes like museum pieces until they are procured by a loyal official’ — he tilted his head a little coyly — ‘for a new governor and his musical wife. I had it polished just last week for your arrival.’
Foveaux made to move off, but Macquarie stepped forward. He went to the pianoforte and found middle C. The tone was, to my complete surprise, true. ‘The one great absence — and this is no fault of yours, Foveaux — is that of dignity in the building. But that is easily remedied with the services of an architect. There is one such aboard the Dromedary, I believe.’
‘Indeed, Your Excellency,’ Foveaux replied in a tone as smooth as satin. ‘Word of the Architect’s arrival has reached my ear.’
CHAPTER TEN
I wake, dress, and step into a mild milky morning: my first in this curious New World. The air is sweet, soft, a little cloying. The harbour lies in gradations of shadow yet the sky is ripening quickly as the day comes on. I look up, astonished. A raucous troupe of parakeets, rainbow-plumed, careens through the air at the speed o
f musket shot. Its quarry is a four-square bird of prey with a beak like a dart. The air is momentarily splashed with colour — every colour there ever was. The birds climb, plunge and spin with stiff, rapidly beating wings.
Once beyond reach of its pursuers, the intruder, a robust type of kingfisher whose body resembles a fist with dull feathers thrown upon it, perches on the eave of a cottage adjoining the residence. From there it loosens an ungodly, quite uproarious, chuckle. If I had journeyed seven months under sail to this place of correction, and shipped back the very next morning, I would consider it a venture well worth undertaking for the sound of that laughter alone. But I would aim to distil the joyful sound, and bottle it. Returning home I would uncork it in time of need. There would be no need then for sloe gin or Highland whisky.
A soldier is stationed at the pretty white gate set in the picket fence around the residence. No movement yet so soon after dawn, but a stirring noise abroad: the discordance of a settlement rousing itself, like a village band preparing to play. I rush indoors to tell Macquarie about the sights of the morning. He is already at his bureau, quill poised.
‘Come now,’ I tug playfully at his sleeve.
‘A stroll?’ he asks distractedly, returning to his papers. ‘By all means Elizabeth. But not for me. Be careful, now. Do not stray beyond sight of the guard.’
Mrs. M Page 5