The Clay Dreaming

by Ed Hillyer

  THE AUSTRALASIAN COLONIES.

  The arrival at Portsmouth of his Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh on Friday se’nnight, and the complimentary dinner given to Sir John Young on the following Saturday – very apposite incidents – naturally bring the Australasian colonies under the public notice at home. The Prince, we rejoice to know, has completely recovered from the dangerous wound inflicted on him in New South Wales by the pistol-ball of an assassin.

  We hardly dare contemplate what might have been the state of feeling, from the palace to the rudest hovel, had the dastardly attempt upon the Duke’s life proved effectual. Happily, there is no need that we should do so. The empire has been mercifully spared a great calamity.

  It chances that the colony in which the murderous attempt was made had been presided over during the preceeding six years by Sir John Young, whom, on Saturday last, within a few hours of the arrival of the Duke of Edinburgh, several colonists of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and Tasmania, just now residing in London, entertained at dinner. The presence of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and of Mr. Adderley, M.P., the Under Secretary, on the occasion, will be regarded by the public on both sides of the world as a sufficient assurance that the crime which had nearly cost us one of our Royal Princes has in no way been taken to cast a shade upon the loyalty of the colonists amongst whom it was perpetrated.

  The two incidents thus brought into juxtaposition may serve to fix our thoughts for a moment or two upon our antipodean colonies. We know not that they can be justly said to be looked upon by Englishmen in general with frigid indifference. There are but few families in this country some member of which has not cast in his lot with the people of one or other of Her Majesty’s Australasian possessions, and whose feelings, consequently, are not interested in the well-being of those infant empires. If for the most part, as Sir John Young intimates, Abyssinia is better known to the British mind than Australia, if no great excitement can be got up here over the political crises that happen there, it is yet a mistake to set down these phenomena to any lack of sympathy between the mother country and her daughter. Parents are not necessarily devoid of affection for their children because they do not estimate the joys and sorrows, the red-letter days, and the “black Fridays” of all their juvenile tribe at the same importance as the young ones themselves. We know that nations, like individuals, must bear the yoke in their youth – we hope, not without reason, that early discipline will develop manly qualities – and if we do not make so much fuss over colonial trials as the colonists themselves regard as indispensable to any proof of strong attachment, it is far more owing to pre-occupation by matters to which we are bound to attend than to any conscious neglect of interests which we might and ought but do not attend.

  No statement made by the late Governor of New South Wales will be received with more general satisfaction than that in which he concisely submitted to his audience several indications of the substantial prosperity of this group of British colonies. That they should be more distinguished for energy in business than for political propriety and statesmanlike wisdom is one of the inevitable results of their position. Individual affairs necessarily take precedence of the affairs of the community in new and thinly-peopled territories. There the first law of life is to subdue and replenish the earth, and man’s business is not so much with his fellows as with Nature. But whilst the Australians are making rapid advances in material comfort and even affluence, and by their people’s industry are causing the wilderness to smile, we are not to imagine that they are indifferent to the demands of on the one hand, or the benefits on the other, of well-planned social organisations. At great expense, with unfaltering determination, and not without many personal risks and some loss of life, they have put down that form of brigandage which took the name of bushranging, and have thereby achieved the most indispensible condition of civilisation – the security of life and property. Sir John Young testifies of the colonists that they are a most orderly and law-abiding race. In some respects, indeed, they have the advantage of the mother country. Unrestrained by many of the antique conventionalisms which impede our progress, they have happily solved some problems which continue to puzzle us at home. They have not now to fight the battle of religious equality; they have settled on a broad and permanent basis the question of the education of the people; they have made some considerable advances in regard to the means of a higher intellectual culture; and they are encouraging, and to a gratifying extent have succeeded in establishing, habits of sobriety.

  Where solid advantages like these are possessed by young nations, political struggles, even when intense, can involve no very serious issues; and great latitude may, with comparative harmlessness, be given to party spirit. We who remain at home may catch the echoes of these colonial strifes without any serious alarm as to which way they may chance to be decided. They do not touch the bases of colonial prosperity. A quick succession of Ministerial crises and frequent general elections, which, after all, do not remove existing dead-locks, might be perilous here; but there they do not reach down to the depths of the social system. No doubt, they have their passing inconveniences; but their tendency, in the long run, is to give breadth and power to political experience. And this is precisely the qualification which new self-governing communities stand most in need of.

  Even in regard to political economy, in which our colonists are under the greatest temptation to get astray, we entertain no feeling of concern as to the future. The laws which determine the wealth of nations are sure to vindicate themselves, sooner or later, in countries where thought and speech and action are free; and those laws are better learned by practice than by theory. Of course, there will always be, in Australia as elsewhere, a balance of good and evil. Utopias exist only in the imagination, and will not bear the touch of facts. But, at least, our kinsfolk on the opposite side of the world are to be congratulated, if not envied, as regards their position. The countries of their adoption are in the freshness of manhood. They will bequeath to prosperity a rich inheritance.

  They add strength and grandeur to the empire to which they cling with so enduring an affection. They are spelling out lessons which may be of unanticipated service even to the whole world. The return of the Duke of Edinburgh furnishes us with a fitting opportunity for recognising them as members of the British family. We greet them heartily, and bid them “God speed!”

  EPILOGUE

  THE LAST OF ENGLAND

  ‘The World was all before them, where to choose

  Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.’

  ~ John Milton, Paradise Lost

  The dove had disappeared, not to return again.

  On the 27th of June England declared fresh war with the New Zealand islands.

  Barely two months later and Sarah Larkin set her eyes to the horizon: bright and sunny skies to the east held the promise of a Greater Britain.

  Their tiny craft leapt the waves; they slapped at the underside, increasing large. The nervous passengers sat well in order. Everyone returned their looks to the shores they left behind; all except for the crew – and Sarah.

  There would be no more death – neither sorrow, nor crying – no more pain: the former things had passed away. She looked forward to new heavens and a new earth.

  DeVitt and Moore’s Australian Line of Packet-ship the Parramatta was due to sail from the outflow of the Thames, calling first at Plymouth, and then direct for Sydney. The emigrants had gathered at Blackwall Pier, the masts of sailing vessels loading in the East India Docks towering high above their heads; they awaited there the departure of their ferry for boarding; the main ship, out in the Channel, made ready to receive them.

  Sarah discreetly cast her eye over the huddled bodies, now that all were gathered close in the boat. Aside from a gentleman in incongruous carpet slippers, everybody wore their Sunday best: men in earthen suits of fustian or corduroy, the women pretty in their bright dresses. Even Sarah wore
the finest of her mother’s outdoor garments, the cut adjusted to suit – neither thing dared while Lambert remained alive. Her outfit had been only slightly dirtied by a trip on the railway.

  None of them was rich; anybody wealthy would presumably be joining them on board by other means. Principally intended for the families of stricken shipbuilders and ironworkers, the East-End Emigration and Relief Fund in most instances provided. The colonies of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia likewise assisted, to promote immigration. Sarah did not consider herself above charity, so long as it had no direct connection to the Church. According to Aboriginal notions of a Supreme Being, man and God lived independently of each other; and it seemed a fine arrangement.

  Her roving eye fell on the bo’sun, a strapping figure with a ruddy, tanned face. Turned a certain way, and beheld in a certain light, he could be mistaken for Sergeant Padraig Tubridy out of Leman-street Police Station; the fellow compared favourably with that kind-hearted rogue, as few men could. She had never enquired, on that June afternoon, as to whether or not the sergeant was married – a question flitting across her mind on many an occasion since. He was, no doubt, and had a dozen children at least to show for it: he had looked the sort. Many an Irishman made this same trip that she now undertook. Maybe somewhere on that wide continent such a one, a real man, as good, waited for her.

  The bo’sun caught her looking and tipped a wink.

  The steward, taking register, called out to the pale creature seated close to the prow, staring fixedly out to sea. ‘And you, ma’am,’ he shouted above the sounding furrows, ‘what is your name?’

  Realising that she was addressed, the young woman pinked and turned. ‘My name…?’ Buffeted by the stiff sea-breezes, her hand reached up to clear her face of loose threads of hair. ‘Larkin,’ she said, ‘Miss Sarah Larkin.’

  Sarah looked beyond the steward at the cliffs of her homeland fading from view. The hot sun created a heat haze, but also lit the long coastline as a streak of silver, cut through it like a slash. Above soared the sky, a coalescent dome of deep blue, colour never so pure when seen from inland.

  Nineveh was laid waste, and none bemoaned her. The dark history Sarah had dealt with went beyond black. She had seen men that were as phantoms, and phantoms that were as men: it was a waking dream, a living nightmare written in dust, dissolving now.

  Emancipist and free object, her purpose held:

  ‘To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

  Of all the western stars, until I die.’

  Sarah dearly wished to witness the happy Aboriginal freedom she had read about, that tonic simplicity, even as it disappeared from view.

  Governor Eyre’s recommendation of sympathy and benevolence, to ‘succour, teach and improve’, felt worthy of the attempt. Not a mission, as such – she knew better than that now, thanks to Brippoki. Rather, on behalf of people so little known and very greatly misunderstood, she would convey their message to the colonists, so that the lives of the forgotten might not be so easily forgot. In some regard she might help mitigate those evils which the occupation and possession of their country so unnecessarily inflicted. She would devote herself to redress of those compound wrongs, even if it took her lifetime.

  She prayed to blue heaven, so spacious: ‘Keep ye judgement, and do justice.’

  Coming to, their craft had more than passed the halfway point; the other passengers now sat facing in her direction. Most looked more than a little daunted, others confident. The older ones just looked sad. Sarah also turned. The ocean crossing could not frighten her with its dangers. She had prospects.

  The bo’sun, shouting, pointed out their ship now in sight, a white sail fixed among the scattering seagulls. He swivelled his body around, to squint in raw appreciation of their passions, insolently favouring those females among the party he figured unmarried, and calling them every one his ‘pretty butterflies’.

  Blithe to their heaving progress, Sarah laid a palm to the cool brass of her mother’s formidable sea-chest. She only took what could fit within it, and no more. Her former life, disassembled, could never again recover its shape, and deliberately so.

  She brought with her Druce’s manuscript. Even after everything he had gone through, Druce still clung to hope, to his faith: by hook and by crook she would see him get his wish, and be returned to New Zealand.

  Deep in the pocket of her dress, she firmly grasped hold of the carving – like a charm – that Brippoki had gifted her in his final days. Everything ahead would look new and strange, but already her journey felt a homecoming.

  ‘The Parramatta, ladies and gentlemen. A splendid new frigate-built ship, she is,’ the steward advertised. ‘A1 tip-top, only thirteen years old, John Williams her commander. This fine vessel has a full poop, unusually large cabins for first class accommodation, with desirable opportunities for a few second cabin passengers,’ meaning themselves, ‘and will carry on board an experienced surgeon.’

  A few people gulped at that.

  ‘Once on board,’ the steward advised, ‘I will be coming around to collect the bedding-money. Please have ready your fees of one pound, or ten shillings for each child…’ he smiled ‘…further to the terms of your freight or passage.’

  Coming close, they could now quite clearly see the white letters painted across the stern of the much larger vessel.

  A large woman at the back raised her voice high above the roar of the billows. ‘Parramatta,’ she asked, ‘is that a word?’

  ‘Yes,’ shouted back the steward, ‘the name is taken from the earliest pioneer settlement, in the days of the First Fleet…now the second town in that colony, about fourteen miles distant from Sydney. Other towns include Windsor, Liverpool, Campbell Town, and Newcastle.’ He found that listing familiar sounds lent his passengers comfort.

  ‘’Afore that,’ rumbled the bo’sun; slyly, and speaking less formally, ‘it were a local Aboriginal word.’

  ‘Does it have any meaning?’ someone close to him asked.

  ‘Yes, it do,’ he affirmed. ‘It means “head of the water”.’

  The steward carried on in singing Australia’s praises, but Sarah paid him no heed. Their small boat was turning, and in another few minutes would be coming up alongside.

  ‘Don’t look so gloomy, my lovely!’ the bo’sun said. He spoke to her directly. ‘We s’ll be there before you know it.’

  That word, gloom…

  Sarah turned her face aside, looking further out to sea. She followed in the footsteps of a traveller from a timeless land. He lives there, still.

  Turning back, she returned the bo’sun’s gaze; smiling, quite openly.

  Later, if he was fortunate, he might even hear her laugh.

  ‘Like the Egyptians and Ancient Hebrews

  We were oppressed under Logan’s yoke

  Till a native black lying there in ambush

  Did give our tyrant his mortal stroke.

  My fellow prisoners be exhilarated

  That all such monsters such a death may find

  And when from bondage we are liberated

  Our former sufferings shall fade from mind’

  ~ ‘Moreton Bay’, traditional

  Nyuntu Anangu Tjukurpa Wiltja Nga Palya Nga.

  ‘Your Aboriginal dreamtime home. Wish you peace.’

  Acknowledgements

  In no particular order (you’re all first): David Kendall, Corinne Pearlman, Andreja Brulc, James Hollands, Simon and Susan D’Souza, Kim Neville-Harman, Ravi Mirchandani, Frank Wynne, Woodrow Phoenix, Jason Pratt, Lilian Hillyer, Eddie and Annie and, bah, even Hayley Campbell, Sean Morris, Cathal Coughlan, Faithless, Shriekback, Robin June, Aaron Cometbus, Peter Ackroyd, Ed Wood and Simon Campbell of Waterstone’s Quarterly and all at Pleasant Studio, Margaret Curd, the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Hawthornden posse (Kate Rhodes, Leslie Brody, Carolin Window, Shelley Leedahl, Janne Moller), Arvon folk (Jan Woolf, Kay Stopforth, Jo Hurst, Xanthe Wells, Gill Farrer-Halls, Stephanie Hunter,
John Thynne, Hardish Virk, Ioana Sandi, Lindsay Clarke, Adam Thorpe), Ivor Watkins and John Rennie at East End Life, Peter O’Shaughnessy, Graeme Inson and Russel Ward for The Restless Years, Peter Sculthorpe, John Greenway, John Nicholson (London Revisited Walks and Talks), Tim Mars (‘Approaches to Doom’), Donald Payne (aka James Vance Marshall), Professor Stephen Hopper (Kew), Joanna Latham (KANYINI), Ray Newton (Wapping Trust), Madge Darby, Brian Nicholson, Thames Lighterman Eric Small, David Kemp and Molly Potts (Malling Society), Mr Madgerly (West Kent Hunt), Margaret Friday (Dreadnought Librarian, site tour of former Infirmary of the Royal Naval Hospital), Lorraine Finch (very helpful guide within the Chapel and Painted Hall at the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich), National Maritime Museum Curator of Paintings Roger Quarm, Neil Rhind MBE (‘Thomas Noble’s Blackheath’), Clare Nelson, head of Research and Development at Trinity College of Music (‘The Greenwich Pensioner’ by Dibdin), the British Library, the Newspaper Library, Colindale, Tower Hamlets Local History Library (Christopher Lloyd and Malcolm Barr-Hamilton), Public Record Office, National Maritime Museum Library, Wellcome Institute, Docklands Museum, Greenwich Local History Library, National Library of New South Wales (Martin Beckett, Microfilms Librarian, Original Materials Branch; Jennifer Broomhead, Intellectual Property and Copyright Librarian; and latterly, Julie Wood and Kevin Leamon), all residents at No.89 Great Russell Street; and, last but certainly not least, all at Myriad – Candida Lacey, for keeping faith; Vicky Blunden, for endurance and pollarding; Linda McQueen, for her interest, insight, and scary mind. My sincere apologies to anyone that I might have forgotten.