Henry Kitchen was also scathing in his criticism of the South Head stone. He described it to Commissioner Bigge in 1821 as ‘extremely bad’, yet rather contradictorily thought ‘there might have been procured a sufficient quantity of excellent stone not far from the spot on which this building is erected’.9
During his own appearance before the commission, Greenway was asked if the stone used ‘will resist the effect of the Sea air & climate’. Early signs of weathering had obviously appeared; Greenway replied with an air of hasty optimism that ‘by the plan adopted lately of coating it with oil, I think it will’. The nature of the treatment with linseed oil and whether it was at all successful, are not known.
Because of the friable stone and the extreme exposure of the site, Greenway claimed to have made detailed adjustments to his design. ‘I … laid down my plan’, he recalled, ‘guarding against every evil consequence, as far as I could, from using such materials’.10 The larger the stone blocks and the fewer the mortar joints, the more resistant to erosion the walls were likely to be. The massive basement blocks were cut six feet by three, joggled into place and secured with iron cramps. And the stones for the tower were not much smaller at four feet long by two and a half feet deep. All were to be bedded ‘in the best lime and sand mortar that could be obtained’.
Manoeuvring such large blocks required the assistance of a mechanical device Greenway described as a ‘Crab’. Unfortunately, there was no such contraption to hand in the colony. But undeterred, and at ‘great Trouble’ he claimed to have made a model of his crab, and then, presumably with the assistance of a blacksmith, built the actual machine, ‘which [was] carried up the Building … struggling through every obstacle’.11
Yet rather than the crumbling stone, the salt-laden corrosive air or the massive blocks that at any moment might crush Greenway’s mechanical ingenuity, it was those he dismissed as ignorant of his genius who posed the greatest threat to his monument. Some were deliberately countermanding his authority – in Greenway’s eyes acts that were tantamount to plotting against him. He often took offence when not consulted or accorded the deference he deemed to be demanded by his position.
In his 1819 letter to Druitt, Greenway cursed the ‘insulting treatment … respecting the Crab’, whereby:
A Man who had been a short time in the Colony supported no doubt by many as wise as himself persuades you that he could produce one much better when every Obstacle is then artificially thrown in the way of finishing my Machine according to the Model and by underhand means spoiled [it] when made …
‘With official sanction’, Ellis quipped, ‘someone apparently has sought to steal this infant of Mr Greenway’s brain and – in vain – to remould it nearer to the heart’s desire of villainy’.12
Greenway lamented a lack of skilled labour available for work on the tower. ‘I had to make masons’, he recounted in The Australian in March 1825, ‘as there were not above two or three in government employ who even pretended to call themselves masons’. He gathered around him a group of ‘ten or twelve young men’ and proceeded to instruct them in the mason’s ancient craft. But the old masons would have none of it, and in ‘their peculiar style objected to part with their secrets of masonry, how to handle their level, plum-rule [sic], trowel, hammer or chisel’.13
Such obstructiveness would inevitably see work on the light-house slow, so Greenway tried to cajole the masons into cooperation:
I had therefore to hold out to them a promise of liberty if they would not interfere; and at the same time a threat if they obstructed my operations [in] any way, that they never would get their liberty, and would be required to go down to South-head, away from their Sydney work, all of them; this had the desired effect …14
Somewhat disingenuously, Greenway also claimed to detest ‘the flogging system as then injudiciously practised’. He preferred instead to offer his workers a ‘fair opportunity of earning in an honest way something to buy a few necessaries … [T]he men should not be exposed to flagellation by dozens for the mere complaint of an interested overseer or superintendent who perhaps deserved it more than they did’. Maybe Greenway had witnessed too much cruelty through his passage from Bristol Newgate to the breezy cliffs of South Head to fail to identify with those in his charge. Motivation and reward would become important issues for him. But in truth, his concern for the integrity of the convict’s back probably had as much to do with gathering a pool of skilled labour to serve his needs as it did with compassion.
In any case, Greenway’s crusade was never likely to gain much favour with those in authority, for as Ellis remarked wryly: ‘the only necessary which appealed to most of the workers was rum; and rum, though it is a powerful anodyne, is rarely a stimulant to morning-after industry’.15 Neither Gill, nor his ‘overseer or superintendent’, and certainly not Greenway, had any authority in matters of summary corporal punishment. The governor alone could order floggings without trial, and as Gill stated in his answers to the Bigge Commission: ‘In a few solitary [salutary?] instances [Governor Macquarie] ordered Convicts to be punished, and those only where it was absolutely necessary … for the sake of example’.
As a product of his time, Macquarie was no stranger to harsh discipline, or to executions, but for the most part he enjoyed a reputation for restraint when it came to the punishment of convicts. He decreed that magistrates should show a similar degree of compassion, and wherever possible resort to more ‘psychological’ punishments such as solitary confinement, time in the stocks or membership of one of the gaol work gangs.
Two weeks after his March 1825 letter in The Australian, Greenway again muttered in his own peculiarly abstruse manner about corporal punishment and ‘my wish to make use of preventatives at South Head, to counteract the various evils complained of in the various Government gangs’. It seemed that there was only Greenway to kick against the pricks, ‘completely opposed and circumvented by persons prejudiced and interested in following the old system’. Disregarded and even laughed at, he felt that:
it was useless … to beg them to look into themselves, and to ask them how they would like their feelings to be so lacerated with their backs, without any hope of reward! No, all their noble feelings were blunted by avarice, and the system was followed in spite of any other consideration.16
In Greenway’s opinion, the Macquarie Tower and the government stables (commenced in 1817; see chapter 15) ‘ought to have satisfied this humane Government of the folly of holding the lash over an Englishman’s back in terrorem, without giving due encouragement for honest exertion’. As with all of Greenway’s appearances in the Sydney papers long after the last roofing slate was fixed, his motives are obscure. It seems that in his outpourings of concern for the convicts’ hides he was also proffering a veiled excuse for the protracted delays on these two projects. In his opinion, the exercise of a little humanity might have resulted in willing and faster workers. Perhaps the remoteness of the South Head site did hide the occasional barbarity, unremarkable in convict Sydney and not admitted to by Gill, but where Greenway’s undoubted concern for the convicts’ raw backs gave way to the preservation of his own skin is impossible to judge.
For some, the rigours of the tower and the tempting remoteness of South Head led literally to throwing their lives to the wind. On the night of 12 September 1816, two convicts labouring at the tower absconded. Along with 11 of their predominantly Irish fellows, stonemasons Thomas McGrath and Nicholas Russell ‘seized and Piratically carried off ’ merchant Simeon Lord’s brig Trial from her anchorage near the Sow and Pigs Reef close to Watsons Bay.17 Four months later a wreck was discovered at Trial Bay, as the site came to be known, 50 miles north of Port Macquarie. Soldiers searching the area found no trace of the convicts, crew or passengers.
At South Head, Greenway would inspect progress twice a week, travelling from Sydney on occasion by boat, and exerting himself, he claimed, ‘at the risk of my Life’. In between his visits a sergeant of the 46th Regiment appointed by Gill
superintended the work.
On one of his South Head inspections, Greenway found a ‘Plumber … patching like a Tinker some of the Copper joints’. His preferred workers – ‘Standish & Ewers, Persons I knew could do it well’ – were not to be found on site. Greenway continued in his litany of complaint to Druitt:
It had already been too much injured by the Interference of Persons who knew nothing of the nature of my profession. – Notwithstanding which this Plumber was sent back and in direct opposition to my request began again his Tinker work … how can I go on a Building & do my Duty exposed to such Treatment [?]18
Whatever the true causes of the delay at South Head, Greenway’s estimate of completion had obviously always been too optimistic. In April 1817, Macquarie wrote in his journal:
I went by water this morning to the South Head to see the Tower – the foundation of which I saw laid this day Nine Months [ago] – which was the time then limited by Mr. Greenway for its final completion, but which a long series of tempestuous rainy weather combined with other Causes have unavoidably retarded. – The Tower is now 33 Feet High from the Ground – which leaves 32 feet yet to complete. – The work is excellent hitherto – and Mr. Greenway says the whole will now be completed in Four Months from this date.19
A week before this visit to South Head, Macquarie had finally decided to write to Bathurst announcing a building that had been under construction for the best part of a year: ‘A Light House and Tower at the South Head … (a Building which is much required and essentially Necessary in the now Increased Commerce of the Colony) is about half finished …’20
In the same despatch, Macquarie also took the opportunity – more than a year after the fact – of announcing Greenway’s appointment as acting civil architect. Again, the delay was telling. Macquarie reminded his lordship that: ‘From the want of a Scientific person to plan and Superintend the Construction of all Governm’t Public Buildings, most of them have hitherto been very badly planned, and still worse executed’. He acquainted Bathurst with Greenway’s convict status and Arthur Phillip’s recommendation, then announced that:
I have availed Myself of his Skill and Scientific Knowledge as a Civil Architect … This Man is extremely Useful, and has already rendered very essential Service to Government … I therefore respectfully Solicit Your Lordship’s Confirmation of this new Office and of the small Salary annexed to it …
Macquarie may have thought that such an announcement, made in the same breath as that of a substantial public building, would reassure Bathurst of the need of such an ‘extremely Useful’ person as Greenway. If so, he would in time be robbed of such hopes.
A further eight months on, Macquarie again justified the building activity on South Head to Bathurst, almost as if he had forgotten its previous announcement. Buried among a host of reports, he stated that:
A Light House being greatly wanted for the Use, Safety and direction of Shipping, Trading to and from this Port, I have lately had a Very Elegant and Strong Stone Tower and Light House Erected at the South Head of Port Jackson, a Plan and Elevation of which I intend sending to Your Lordship by the present Conveyance.21
But with the lighthouse a fait accompli like the hospital, and for the time being lying far beyond Whitehall’s censure, Macquarie admitted to slow progress, with the ‘Lantern … not quite finished, owing to the Want of the Plate Glass, which was ordered from England last Year’.
While the Macquarie Tower was to provide a vital navigational aid and barracks for a small military garrison, it was also intended for another, far less defensible purpose, one the governor dared not share with their lordships in London. Never mind that there was insufficient space for the troops on Greenway’s plan; half the tower’s accommodation was to be dedicated as a place of pleasure for the exclusive use of Macquarie and his guests out on a day’s sightseeing excursion to the entrance to Port Jackson.
Within the splendid snugness of Greenway’s domed ‘Governor’s Room’, Macquarie and his guests could rest from their journey or shelter from the wind and weather while gazing westwards down the harbour or east to the Pacific horizon. The tower itself, then the tallest structure in the colony, afforded a view of incomparable splendour up and down the coast, with its imposing cliffs and embroidered hem of golden sand and brilliant surf. As James Broadbent and Joy Hughes observed, the building was as much a prospect tower as it was a legitimate port facility.22
Early on Tuesday 16 December, four days after his latest despatch to Bathurst, the governor set out in eager anticipation on the journey to South Head, there to breakfast and inspect the completed stonework of the tower. Elizabeth Macquarie and a group of friends that included Lieutenant Governor James Erskine, emancipist surgeon Dr William Redfern and his wife Sarah, plus a gathering of children, all accompanied Macquarie on the government barge. The guest of honour was to be Captain John Gill, soon to return home. The party lingered for some time at the tower, soothed by the warm summer-morning breeze. They climbed Greenway’s deftly designed geometrical stone stair and revelled in the grand prospect from the top.
The party also viewed inscriptions freshly cut in the building’s west and south façades:
THIS BUILDING INTENDED FOR THE DOUBLE PURPOSE OF A LIGHT HOUSE AND BARRACK IS NAMED MACQUARIE TOWER IN HONOUR OF THE FOUNDER. THE WORK WAS COMMENCED IN 1816 AND COMPLETED IN 1817. L. MACQUARIE ESQ. GOVERNOR. THIS TOWER MEASURING 76 FEET IN HEIGHT WAS DESIGNED AND EXECUTED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF CAPTAIN JOHN GILL ACTING ENGINEER.23
FRANCIS HOWARD GREENWAY CIVIL ARCHITECT had been inadvertently omitted from the inscriptions but Macquarie was well pleased with the ‘noble edifice’, as he described it, and rewarded its architect accordingly: ‘This being altogether a very interesting day – and an auspicious one, I presented Mr Greenway, the government architect, his emancipation dated this day, it being delivered to him at Macquarie Tower this morning before breakfast’.24
The day’s activities were not over, however. As one edifice neared completion, two more would soon be commenced. The party ‘returned home by water stopping at Bennelong’s Point where the ceremony was performed of laying the foundation stone of the new fort … which was to be named Fort Macquarie’. From Bennelong Point it was but a short distance to the Government Domain, where at 3 pm Macquarie again wielded his trowel and laid the foundation stone of the stables for a planned new Government House. Macquarie’s confidence now swelled to bravado as his building plans gathered pace. A dire warning of the previous January from Bathurst, whereby the governor ‘incurred a heavy responsibility’ if such projects did not meet with the ‘Sanction of the Treasury’, seems to have been laid to rest with a sweep of the viceroy’s hardworking ceremonial trowel.25
From the stables site it was back to Government House, where the day’s guests dined with the Macquaries. In honour of the departing engineer, Macquarie ‘gave all the mechanics and labourers of government holidays tomorrow and ordered some grog to be given to the stone masons and brick layers’.
Following those heady celebrations, nearly a year went by before the light shone from South Head. The lamp mechanism and light room had finally arrived from England, and on 30 November 1818 a reassuring revolving beam was cast 21 nautical miles out to sea from South Head.
Metaphorically speaking, the light was very dim by the time its beam reached London, with Whitehall’s initial reaction equivocal at best. In August 1818, Bathurst wrote to Macquarie that he was not ‘disposed to object to the Building of the Light House’. And while ‘less indispensable’ than convict barracks, a female factory at Parramatta or churches, he conceded it was ‘required by the increased and increasing Trade of the Colony’. But despite convict labour being used in the tower’s construction, it was the ‘disposal of so large a Sum … without the previous Sanction of the Government at Home’ that displeased Bathurst. He continued, rebuking the governor and telling him exactly who was boss. He reminded Macquarie that those in Whitehall were the ‘proper Judges of the Objects to w
hich the disposal of Means of the Colony should be applied’.26 The Macquarie Tower was destined not to shine as a beacon of good judgment on the gathering turbulence between London and Sydney.
In April 1820, Major Druitt was directed ‘to send a competent Stone Cutter … to Macquarie Tower, to add Mr. Greenway’s name to the Inscription already cut’. What were coyly described as ‘the two Necessaries’ (toilets) were to be ‘completed as soon as possible’, and in addition it seems that the walls of the tower were already in need of repointing. Cracks had appeared and Druitt was instructed that the ‘openings … in the Wall … be filled up with good Mortar’.27 Neither Greenway’s tower-topping frieze nor his bas-reliefs were added, but an ornamental fence was built some time around 1820, bringing the project to completion four years after Macquarie had laid the foundation stone.
Perhaps the fence was a trifling indulgence, but it soon became one of the many hurdles over which Mr Bigge made Macquarie jump. One wonders what the good commissioner might have made of Greenway’s ‘four winds in alto relievo’ had they come to fly around the tower, their sandstone drapery metaphorically aflapping. As part of a lengthy rebuke of Macquarie’s building program, Bigge criticised the ‘Expensive finishing of the Tower & Lighthouse, [and the] expensive Railing enclosing it, at a time when wood and paint were scarce & dear’. But more tellingly, the hubristic gesture of Macquarie’s inscription, chiselled into the soft sandstone for all to see, was a ‘practical contradiction … afforded … by the entire want of accommodation for Troops in the inside’.28
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