‘Take care of your eyes,’ he told her as they danced. ‘Do knitting, not close sewing.’ He’d heard Mother say that to her. ‘I’ll send you ribbons for your hair,’ he added.
The moon set but they kept dancing and drinking, talking and singing, lit only by the stars and the lantern. It felt like a wedding but, with the song of farewell that Uncle Cander sang, which made Mother cry, it was like a wake too. There was no thought of bedtime, because they were waiting for the sun to rise, after which time he would be going. It felt so strange and wonderful.
Many of their friends were still there at daybreak, and Mother made tea and porridge for them all. McBean got impatient, stamping around in the cold of the yard, flustering the hens till his wife told him to have respect for the feelings of the family. Eliza heard her say, ‘They’re grieving – their boy’s going.’ Inside, Mother packed William’s willow trunk again, counting the shirts and the socks and the comforters, all with tears. Gently, Father got her to her feet.
‘Come, Mother, the box is packed. We’ll walk down to the road, to wait for McBean’s cart.’
They were solemn as they walked down the hill to the Cooks-town road. The Canders came out of their house and waved, even though they had farewelled William the night before. They waved back, feeling strange in their stomachs, a hollowness which was not from a lack of food. The morning was cold and the wind bitter. The paddocks across the road were green, the hedgerow with the same hole it had always had, the road muddy, the old dog gently wagging her tail. But to William it all looked clearer, more detailed, sharper, as if it was a new place he had never seen before.
As they reached the road, they saw a man from McBean’s regiment bringing the cart along. Sergeant McBean was an army man, a great friend of Father’s. He was making up the convoy to accompany William as far as Toome.
Mother began hanging on William’s neck, kissing his face. ‘My boy, my boy,’ she said, ‘you look like a child to me. I know you’re a man, but . . .’ It was not like his mother to talk like this, and William knew it was from her sadness. ‘You was my only fair-haired one. You’re my youngest boy.’
‘You’re the best of mams,’ he said, feeling her sadness and his own bubbling up. He put his arms around her and hugged her tight, smelling that warm, familiar smell of his dear mother.
‘Going, going, going . . .’
As the cart drew up, William kissed his mother again. Her heart was breaking. He felt it, but he could not suppress his appetite to be going. He kissed Father, and hugged Eleanor and Joseph, and held John close. And they saw John had tears in his eyes. William embraced Robert, big, tall, dark Robert, who said something into his ear that made him laugh, which lifted their spirits a little.
‘God bless you, my dear son,’ said Father, and kissed him on both cheeks.
William kissed Ann Jane and Mary, but when he came to kiss Eliza his heart beat fast and he felt his own tears. He put his arms around her and lifted her off the ground.
‘I’ll be missing you every day, every moment,’ Eliza said.
‘I’ll be writing.’ But William knew the letters which came from James in America were different from James being home in Ireland.
‘Remember me,’ she said.
‘I’ll remember taking you up the hill on my back. I’ll remember you killing those rats in the barn, fierce as a boy.’ He was leaving – leaving Lizey, who was always at his heels.
‘I pray to God that I might see you again in this world.’
‘Of course you will,’ he said. ‘In this life.’ This life, he thought, with a strange sense he could say it so cool. This life – where he wouldn’t know what each day might bring; this life he would make for himself, not have made for him.
‘Six years,’ said Mother. ‘Don’t forget the six years.’ They all had tears on their faces now, as William climbed into the cart with Sergeant McBean, and John and Father lifted up his willow trunk. ‘There’s six comforters in it,’ Mother called.
William felt the cold in his lungs and the wet road slippery under the cart as it moved off. Eliza ran after it for a distance, waving, before stopping in the middle of the road. The family were behind her, waving too, and William watched intently until they disappeared. He imagined all of them walking back up the hill to the house, Eliza and Mother holding hands.
* * *
The emigration depot in England was a place the like of which William had never imagined: a huge building with three storeys, each higher than the house at Knockaleery. All of the people who were going on the ship were living there for some weeks, being organised, so they were told, as they would be on the ship.
‘Cleanliness,’ the officer said, ‘is most particular on the ship. And cleanliness is therefore the rule on the ship. And cleanliness, it come from orderliness, and orderliness come from the rules, and the rules, they come from the Emigration Board, and I is here to impart them to you.’
‘I never been in a place so noisy and big,’ said James Brown. ‘When we went to the church in Belfast long ago, it was big, but not so big as this.’ James was a solemn fellow, and somewhat inclined to stand on his dignity, considering his own dignity to be rather more than William’s, since he was older. But, with the newness of everything, William was glad indeed to have one person who was familiar with the things of home.
Each day there was hot coffee, bread and butter, then meat and potato – much more than they had ever had at home. William had grown tall the last few years, but there had never been enough food to grow him outwards, so his mother said. He was still like a boy in that way. Now, he thought, he’d grow both ways.
The single males learned to clean their quarters, each day scrubbing the wooden floor and beating their clothes fiercely. Many were Irish, but most were English. Some William judged to be sad fellows who barely had any curiosity about where they were going, while others were full of speculation and plans.
William listened carefully to those who seemed to know about New South Wales. He learned that the town of Sydney was a big place, but a rough place, considering the convicts and the black fellows there. Some of the other passengers had relatives in the colony, but even from them it was hard to get a sense of the town.
Eventually they were put on a lighter down the river to their ship, which was called the Cornwall. William and James got berths together with the other Irish, there being about thirty single Irishmen, from all parts and of all ages, crammed in the second deck. William had learned that here it was a very different matter being Irish, a lesser thing, although to him it seemed that the Irish were more cheerful than the English, and more grateful too. He hated the way the English spoke of the Irish disdainfully. In the face of this disdain, the usual divisions between Catholics and Protestants, which were part of life at home, hardly mattered here.
It was early morning when they set sail out into the open sea, and William went out on deck with James Brown and others to watch. There was a stiff breeze, full of salt, and the great sails filled with wind. The land receded further and further into the distance until it was just a speck, and then nothing at all. Some marked its disappearance with considerable chatter, competing amongst themselves to hold on to the sight of it the longest. Others, like William, who stood at the rail, were silent. It was then, in the vastness of the ocean, no land to be seen, that he finally felt he had left the place where he was born and had lived all his life. All around was the sea, so blue and deep, stretching every way to the horizon, so far. And they were upon it, carried by the wind, with the rhythmic slap of the waves against the ship. And he was setting forth on the largest adventure of his life, to the other side of this great globe.
He thought of the globe he had once seen a man bring through Cookstown on its way to a landlord past the Kildress River. The carter had thought to make himself a little extra profit by displaying it as he went. The globe had seemed a fine thing then, but now William almost felt like laughing at the thought of it, so different was it sailing upon the wide o
pen sea.
* * *
The voyage was quite unlike William’s imaginings. There was crowding, with many bodies together, foul smells and sickness, weevily flour, bacon with maggots. But even so, there was more food than they’d ever had at home, so he lost the feeling of always having an empty belly.
And the noise, ten times more than in the depot – not just the people, but the ship, creaking and groaning like a live animal, and the wind, sometimes screeching, sometimes a steady whine. Some people complained and hated the strangeness of life on the ship, but William loved it.
The ocean was a great thing, always changing, as was the sky above. William had never seen such violent storms, with torrents of rain and lightning across the sky. Then there were days of calm, when the air felt almost too hot and still to breathe. There were two deaths, three births and exotic foreign ports, which the little world of the ship embraced. Sunday was church, like at home, but here it was under the great sky. Other days there was dancing and music on deck, two Irish fiddlers contesting with each other to prove themselves the best. William learned many new dances and he loved the freedom of it, dancing with the other fellows and girls on this ship in the middle of the great sea.
William saw a poor woman weeping on deck for her dead babe, when a few days before it had been a healthy, fat thing. It had sickened and died very suddenly, and had then been put out the surgeon’s window. The captain spoke to the mother very kindly, but she was always weeping about the little one in the sea, as if it was still a living thing. She had another child, just four, who seemed to have caught its mother’s sadness.
‘Come on, little one,’ said William to the child one morning. ‘Come walk with me.’ At first, he couldn’t persuade the child, but he got a whistle from one of the sailors and taught the child a tune on it. After that, the child accompanied him every morning. William always thought of Knockaleery Farm on this walk, for he had often strolled with his father when he was small. And with thoughts of Father and the farm, it brought to mind the rest of his family, and he wondered what they were doing at that precise moment, and if they were thinking of him, as he was of them. With this feeling, which was empty and sad, he was glad of the child’s company.
A teacher set up a school for those that could not read and write, and his wife took the children. But somehow the Irish were not liked, or at least felt they were not liked, and they complained. The captain decided that the Irish should be taught by their own, so those that could read and write were set to teaching the rest. James and William were amongst the teachers. William felt himself to have the knack of it, and it was here he became friends with Michael O’Connell, who had never been to school, but was about the same age as himself. Michael was quiet and thoughtful, and they talked like brothers.
‘There’s eight children in my family,’ William told him. ‘And my mother and father. They farm at Knockaleery, which is in County Tyrone.’
‘I’m from Donegal,’ Michael told William. ‘There were eight in my family also, but the rest is all dead from starvation, my mother and father too.’
William knew that the famine had been worse in the south, and to the west in Donegal. He had heard many terrible stories of people thrown off their land and left to starve, which created a great bitterness against the landlords, almost all of whom were English. Michael had black circles of sadness under his eyes. He spoke Gaelic to the other Irish, which William understood, but never had cause to speak.
‘I’ll wager I can teach you to read by the end of the voyage,’ said William.
‘What’ll you wager me?’
‘A glass of whisky when we get into port.’
‘That’s not much of a wager.’
‘You’ll learn to read and write as well. It’s a fine wager.’
During the ten weeks of the voyage, William swapped two of the comforters his mother had knitted for a pack of fine playing cards. He drank his father’s whisky and lost his book of common prayer. All in all, it was a smaller bundle than he’d started with.
The end of the voyage came with the sailors counting down the days. And then William, James and Michael were standing on deck as the Cornwall came through the great heads of Sydney harbour. Excitedly they pointed things out to each other – barracks by the shore, a farm amid the forest, some grand houses, some poor ones, cattle and a group of black men. Nowhere did they see the famed kangaroo that the cabin boy had spoke of, nor the gangs of convicts. William stared at the shores as they sailed up the harbour. The smell of the air, the height of the sky, the grey trees and the great rocks on the shore were very different from Ireland, quite foreign and strange. What would life be here? What would he make of it?
The wharf was crowded and noisy. There were people meeting the ship, waving to those on deck, hands erecting the gangway, and officers of the customs, smart in their uniforms with braid on the collars. It was hot and steamy, the sky a deep blue, the acrid smell of Sydney town on the breeze. They could see the town beyond, straggling up the hill. To the west, houses dotted the steep cliff, with warehouses nestling at the bottom. A clerk of the government came aboard, took the ship’s passenger list and one by one called the passengers.
‘William Irwin,’ the clerk called eventually.
‘I’ll wait for you on the wharf,’ William shouted back to Michael, as he pushed through the crowd.
The clerk began to recite from his sheet. ‘Calling – farm labourer; native place – Kildress and County Tyrone; parents’ names – Joseph and Ann.’
William nodded but the clerk took no notice. ‘Place of residence – Kildress; religion – C of E; read and write; relations in colony – none!’ He looked William up and down. ‘State of bodily health and usefulness – good enough, son. And no complaints respecting treatment aboard ship, I hope. Off you go.’
* * *
December 2, 1849
Dear Son, it may be we never will meet on earth, but I trust we will meet in heaven above the starry frame. O Dear son, let it be your constant study to prepere to meet your god and I trust it shall be my study. Mother and all the Familey joins me in these few lines. John and Robert is douing well and verey attentive to work. Butter is 10 pence and may God bless you.
Joseph Irwin to his Dear Son Willam Irwin
Write forthwith
* * *
At Knockaleery they all thought of William. He was everywhere in their minds, everywhere he used to be but nowhere, as Eliza said.
‘Like a wake, gone on forever,’ Mother said to Father. ‘My dear, dear son.’
Eliza remembered Father reading about the ships in the newspapers when all was rushing to America and Canaday at the time of the famine. Coffin ships they called them, with all their Irish dead thrown over the side, no decent burial in the earth. Thousands had died in the famine and many died fleeing from it. Father told her that things had changed, but these ships haunted her dreams as they waited for a letter telling them of William’s safe landing.
‘I’ll check the post each time I’m in Cookstown for market,’ said Father. There was a room in the inn at Cookstown where he could read the English papers, and he paid particular attention to the shipping news, in case of a disaster. But there was no news.
‘Father, Father!’ It was five months after William had left when Joseph and Eleanor came running up the lane from Tattykeel, waving a letter. ‘From William, Father! From the colony!’ Mother started crying, and Eliza and Ann Jane were sent out to fetch Father from the Canders’ place. When he returned, all the Canders crowded into the kitchen too, as Father unsealed the letter.
‘It’s William’s hand! Dated 28 February 1850. He’s arrived. They were well fed on the voyage although the salt meat went green.’
‘“It is a hot brown country and I have seen some black natives and a kangaroo in the distance,”’ read Father. ‘He sends us all kind love and blessings.’
‘Praise be to God he’s safe,’ said Mother, and cried more, so Mary put her arms round her to comfort
her.
‘I’ll be on the boat soon,’ said Robert. ‘To join brother William.’
‘Or maybe myself and Mary,’ said Ann Jane.
‘Not too soon,’ said Father.
But Robert persisted in the argument, despite the Canders being there. ‘You’re less in consideration of me,’ he said. ‘I should have had precedence, being older than William.’
‘Your time will come,’ said Father, ‘if you work steady and do as you’re asked to do.’
The letter was read many times. When the Canders went home, other neighbours arrived. The Canders came again, bringing old Uncle Cander and his armchair, and even the McGowans from below Kildress River came to hear the letter. It was much pondered over and thought about.
‘If it comes good – this New South Wales – maybe we’ll all emigrate,’ Father told Eliza one day after milking. ‘And if we pay McCrea what we owe him, two pounds per head isn’t so much, although we won’t say so to Mother, on account of her being nervous of the ocean.’
Eliza dreamed of crossing the ocean. She dreamed of seeing a black man and she wondered about the kangaroo in the distance. It stretched her mind so much that sometimes William came right into her dreams. She thought he came, knowing how much she missed him.
‘In this life, Lizey,’ he said. ‘In this life.’
CHAPTER 3
Later in his life, when William looked back on his first year in the colony, he could see he had been young and inexperienced and had not known how to make his way in the world. At the time, newly arrived, he felt most frustrated and sometimes frightened that he would fail in this new life for which he had such high hopes. He knew he must learn the ways of the new world, but he could not see the way forward, nor did he know how much he still had the old ways of Knockaleery.
At first, he and James Brown and Michael O’Connell had lodged together, in a small room in the Rocks, which was the cheapest lodging in town. The room was full of fleas, bedbugs and more tiny, crawling creatures than Irish boys had ever seen in their lives, but on the other hand the landlady, who was Irish herself, fed them bread and meat and vegetables in quantities greater than these newly arrived boys had ever before enjoyed. James, who had worked at Knockaleery Mill, soon found himself a job in a mill. He was used to handling money, so it did not slip through his fingers as did Michael’s and William’s, who had found work labouring on the wharves, for they had also found places where they could drink, smoke and play cards with a freedom they had not felt previously.
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