I gaze back at the wide bay as we pull out through the entrance. Will I ever see this sight again? The sail flaps in the breeze and we head for Port Jackson.
At sunset we are in Sydney Cove, clapping the shoulders of friends on board the Reliance. Our excitement is so great that we must report to the governor at once. We climb down to Thumb, pull to the dock and hurry to the governor’s house.
He is in the garden listening to an owl.
‘I am pleased to see you,’ he says to Mr Bass and the lieutenant. Then he turns to me. ‘Young Will,’ he says.
He shakes my hand and his grip is firm.
‘A drink is in order,’ he says, but by the colour of his nose he has had several already.
The governor leads the way into the house. We all follow, but at the door Mr Bass turns to me. ‘You must want to see your friends,’ he says.
‘No, sir,’ I say.
The governor and the lieutenant are walking down the hallway.
Mr Bass goes to ruffle my hair then thinks better of it and folds his arms.
‘Go. Enjoy yourself, Will. I must report our adventures but you have earned the night off.’
Mr Bass turns away, thinking he has done me a favour but it is not the favour I wished for.
I walk away from the governor’s house and stride along the shore, kicking stones.
The sky is clear and the half-moon is bright. I search for Na at the campfires near the Tank Stream. Drunken wretches singing lewd songs. A man facedown in the dirt. No Na.
Na would have seen Thumb come in, I am sure of it.
I scout along the edge of the stream, cross it, and then go along to the hospital. Buckley, the surgeon’s mate, is outside smoking a pipe. His dogs bark as I arrive. Na is not there.
‘Na has your dog with him,’ says Buckley.
I search down along the shore but Na and my dog, George the Fourth – that is kept at Mr Palmer’s place, Palmer’s gift to me – are nowhere to be seen.
I climb around the cliff to an outcrop of rocks and shrubs. Last spring Na and I came here to watch the chicks of a honeyeater. The chicks are long gone, but the nest is still here as if waiting for new occupants. I sit on a rock ledge.
If I were born into a tribe like Na, what I would have to do to be a man is have my tooth pulled. Is not my journey, in a small boat, facing wild seas and treacherous cannibals, equal to tooth pulling?
They will be toasting at the governor’s. There will be a fire blazing and they will tell the story of our journey.
I lie on the rock and eye the water slapping the shore. Now I am a man, and a man is his story told. I say this out loud, but only the nightjar answers.
Maps
Author’s note
Storyland is a work of fiction but certain characters and situations have been inspired by documented events. I have stayed true to history and geography whenever doing so served the story, but when it did not, I have used my imagination.
I first came across William Martin when reading Miriam Estensen’s The Life of Matthew Flinders (2003). In the late eighteenth century, it was common for boys as young as eleven to be employed on ships. Martin was thirteen when he first stepped on board the Reliance to become George Bass’s servant and loblolly boy; he had only just turned fifteen when he took the second Tom Thumb journey in March 1796. (The first journey, on a different Tom Thumb, took place during the previous year, when Flinders, Bass and Martin sailed to Georges River.) Flinders wrote down a narrative of this second exploration trip, and his version of the tale has been recounted by others ever since. In the Flinders account, Dilba is presented as having malicious intentions towards the Europeans. This controversial point of view, persuasively put by Flinders, occurs in most of the retellings. In fact Flinders wrote two versions of the journey. Historians suggest that the longer journal version, which includes the meetings that took place at Red Point and later at Canoe Rivulet, titled Narrative of Tom Thumb’s cruize to Canoe Rivulet, was written in the year following the exploration trip. After Flinders died, the manuscript was passed down through his family and eventually edited by Keith Bowden, and published in 1985. The second account (a remodelling of the first) appears in the introduction to A Voyage to Terra Australis ([1814] 1966), which Flinders wrote at the end of his career, after his return to England from his Investigator explorations. Flinders was, by the time he wrote the second account, a mature man, and this second version reflects his change in status from a young second lieutenant to a respected captain, explorer and navigator. The 1796 narrative in Storyland closely follows the first Flinders nonfiction account, but imagines it from Will Martin’s perspective.
Many people have sought to pinpoint the locations where Flinders, Bass and Martin landed. For those who have an interest, see Earliest Illawarra by its explorers and pioneers (1966) edited by W.G. McDonald. McDonald suggests Barn Cove might be Bulli Beach, or Woonona Beach; the Tom Thumb dumping might have occurred south of Towradgi Point; Saddle Point is Red Point; Hat Hill is Mount Kembla; Canoe Rivulet is the entrance to Lake Illawarra; Providential Cove is Wattamolla.
In 1822, on Captain Richard Brooks’s farm at Exmouth, an Aboriginal woman was shot and then mauled by dogs, after she and others had picked corn from a field. A convict, Seth Hawker, who worked for Brooks, was tried for murder and acquitted. I read about this tragic event in Michael Organ’s A Documentary History of the Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines: 1770-1850 (1990). The evidence presented in the trial transcripts is chilling. The woman who was killed was not named either at the trial or in the covering newspaper reports. The trial Judge Advocate suggested the deed had been unfortunate, but was validated by the need to protect Captain Brooks’s property. Quite early on, as I was thinking about how to narrate such a disturbing tale, I had a conversation with local poet and elder, Aunty Barbara Nicholson. Among other things, we talked about stories and ownership. It was this conversation that made me realise how important it might be to portray the events from Hawker’s perspective.
When researching Storyland, I’d often spend the mornings reading books and articles about the future of the planet, and in the afternoons, I’d visit libraries and pour through old historical records, personal accounts, letters, diaries, maps and newspaper archives. I discovered the changing use of the land around Lake Illawarra. At the time when Lola begins her narration, there were many small farms operating on what was then called the Five Islands Estate, and in the nearby Dapto area, there were at least two dairies run by Chinese immigrants. Milk, cheese and butter were an important part of the regional industry. The railway had arrived in the last breath of the nineteenth century, and life began to alter for locals. For a heartbeat, butter from the region was exported to London, and there was talk of deepening Lake Illawarra so that it could harbour ships. This was also the period when Australian women were seeking their right to vote (gained in 1895 in South Australia and 1902 in New South Wales). Lola’s narrative isn’t about voting, but women were beginning to fight for their rights, and a little of that impetus finds its way into her story.
During the year that Bel recounts her tale, 1998, an ancient skeleton was found at McCauley’s Beach, Sandon Point, discovered after a storm. A couple of years later an Aboriginal Tent Embassy was set up there, and there has been a long running battle since, between some of the residents and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy representatives.
Thinking about the near and far future has always interested me. Roy Stanton provides a compelling perspective in Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilisation (2015). Stanton recounts how, as an American soldier serving in Iraq, he learnt (from a Samurai manual written in the eighteenth century) to meditate daily on death. Stanton suggests that in our time of climate instability such a practice might be useful for everyone. An understanding of what the future might hold for us as a species can help us plan for it, forewarned is forearmed. Yet the future, as Will Martin says, is unmade, and the potential for surprise, ever-presen
t.
Indigenous language and historical sources
As Lieutenant Watkin Tench observed, Europeans often misunderstood the meaning of Aboriginal words. In his journal, Tench writes, ‘We had lived almost three years at Port Jackson … before we knew that the word bèeal, signified “no,” and not “good,” in which latter sense we had always used it without suspecting that we were wrong; and even without being corrected by those with whom we talked daily.’ The Aboriginal words and their meanings used in Storyland are representations of what the Europeans may have understood at the time. Where there is discrepancy among historical sources for a particular language group I’ve chosen the word that seemed appropriate to the knowledge of the character. Resources for this novel were numerous and wide-ranging but important for language were An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales: with remarks on the Disposition, Customs, Manners, &c. of the Native Inhabitants of that Country, vol. 1 ([1798] 1971) by David Collins and The Notebooks of William Dawes, available at www.williamdawes.org. For knowledge specific to the Dharawal people I continually went to A Documentary History of the Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines: 1770-1850 (1990) edited by Michael Organ; Dharawal: The story of the Dharawal speaking people of Southern Sydney, a collaborative work by Les Bursill, Mary Jacobs, artist Deborah Lennis, Dharawal Elder Aunty Beryl Timbery-Beller and Dharawal spokesperson Merv Ryan (2007); Murni Dhungang Jirra: Living in the Illawarra, compiled and written by Sue Wesson (2005). Always close at hand was the thorough and illuminating The World of the First Australians: Aboriginal Traditional Life: Past and Present, by Ronald and Catherine Berndt (1999).
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the Elouera and Wadi Wadi (also Wodi Wodi) people of Dharawal Country. The Aboriginal Elders of this land, past, present and future, hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Indigenous Australia.
In getting this book to publication my heartfelt thanks go to publisher Catherine Milne for her generosity, intelligence and vigilant editorial oversight and input. Without Catherine this would be a different book, and one I’d be less happy with. Likewise, thanks to Nicola Robinson, for her detailed and comprehensive editing (and for posing great questions); to the HarperCollins team, especially Jaki Arthur, Lara Wallace, Tom Wilson and Lucy Bennett; and to Bronwyn Sweeney for proofreading. I am most grateful to my literary agent, Jo Butler, from The Cameron Creswell Agency, for her excellent advice on all things book related and for her care and thoughtfulness, and also to Sophie Hamley who first championed this novel.
Thank you to Gary Christian for reading drafts, offering suggestions, and keeping an eye on the ‘bullshit factor’, and to Aunty Barbara Nicholson for reading, local knowledge, and for generous advice both early on in the process and nearing completion. Many thanks also to Julianne Schultz, John Tague, Susan Hornbeck, Jerath Head, from Griffith Review, to Brian Johns, Jacqueline Blanchard and Cate Kennedy who selected Will Martin in 2015 for Griffith Review: Tall Tales Short – The Novella Project III, to CAL, and to Aviva Tuffield, who was the guest editor. A thank you must also go to Gillian Dooley, founding general editor of Transnational Literature, who first published the ‘Will Martin’ story online in 2011.
My appreciation goes to Flinders University for supporting this project, most especially to Julie Holledge, for her inspiration and wisdom and to Mary Moore and Jonathan Bollen. I also owe a debt to those Illawarra locals –– Ed Dion, Jade Kennedy, Roy (Dootch) Kennedy, Nikki Harris, Beth Harris, Lotte Latukefu and Dorothy O’Keefe –– who made themselves available for interviews and chats about past and current events.
Many thanks to University of Wollongong writers and researchers who read the manuscript or contributed to discussions about it: in particular Shady Cosgrove and Luke Johnson (both pitched in with terrific comments); Wenche Ommundsen and Cathy Cole (both provided concise overviews); Joshua Lobb, Jan Wright, and Sharon Athanasios. For the research and writing retreats and for ongoing discussions on all things writerly and ecological I cherish time spent with colleagues from both the Material Ecologies (MECO) research network, steered by Su Ballard, and the Centre for Cultures, Texts, and Creative Industries (CTC), directed by Sue Turnbull. I am also most grateful to the University of Wollongong for supporting ongoing research for this novel, especially the encouragement and advice provided by Sarah Miller, Amanda Lawson and Vera Mackie. Also thanks to James Phelan for discussions related to the work and for his own writings on unreliable narrators.
I am greatly indebted to the historians and researchers who have written about the Illawarra, especially Michael Organ, Carol Speechley, and Peter Charles Gibson, and the many local writers, both Indigenous and non-indigenous, who have shared their stories with the public. While writing and researching, much time was spent at the Mitchell Library, New South Wales, the State Library of New South Wales, the University of Wollongong Library, the Wollongong City Libraries, the Flinders University Library, and the State Library of South Australia. I am grateful to the many excellent librarians who work at these institutions.
Many friends kindly read drafts of the novel and gave opinions, advice and support and these include: Sue Walker, Charmaine Moldridge, Rachel Healy, Alan John, Karen Norris, David Carlin, Linda Mickleborough, Melissa Reeves, Sue Temby, Merrilyn Temby, Bea Christian, Robin Hopf, Shaar Christian, Peter Kelly, and Nelly Flannery. The writing of this book was made easier by those who offered or shared peaceful homes in meditative locations: Ruth Nicholas, David Goode, Georgie Goode, Hugo Goode; Peter Barge and Kinchem Hegedus; John and Anne McKinnon; Janne and Gerald Coughlin; Brigid Kennedy and Michael McConnell; Susie and James Fitzpatrick. Also thanks to Friederike Krishnabhakdi-Vasilakis and the South Coast Writers Centre for support, and to Jenny Kemp for her 2016 writer’s workshop and Clare Grant for organizing it.
Thanks to my family but most especially my parents, Des McKinnon and Dawn McKinnon, for inspiring a love of stories and instilling an ongoing fascination with what makes people tick.
About the Author
CATHERINE McKINNON lives in rural New South Wales with her husband, sculptor and painter Gary Christian. She grew up in South Australia, studied at Flinders University, then worked as a theatre director and playwright. In 2006 she won the Australian Women’s Weekly/Penguin Books Award for her short story Haley and the Sea. Her novel, The Nearly Happy Family, was published by Penguin in 2008, and in 2015 she was a co-winner of the Griffith Review: Tall Tales Short — The Novella Project 111. Her plays have been performed nationally and her short stories, reviews and articles have appeared in Transnational Literature, Text Journal, RealTime and Narrative. She teaches performance and creative writing at the University of Wollongong and is currently working on her third novel.
Copyright
Fourth Estate
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First published in Australia in 2017
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Copyright © Catherine McKinnon 2017
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
McKinnon, Catherine, author.
Storyland / Catherine McKinnon.
Historical fiction.
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Cover images: Illustrations by Darren Holt; images by shutterstock.com
Maps by Map Illustrations
Storyland Page 29