“Soon I’ll have a home for you. You’ll have the house of your dreams. This will be our last move.” And wisely she held her tongue for she’d followed her husband for twenty years or more and he always moved on.
With his young sons working with him he was ready for the months and months of clearing. Then stocking the land and, after that, fencing. Then drafting, washing, scouring which had laid down the framework for Bywong, whilst Elizabeth and the younger children had remained in Sydney.
Living under canvas, spending the days with axe and shovel, riding for many miles, he returned to the city whenever he could but distances were great and there was always so much to do.
“You’ll take us back next time,” she’d finally insisted.
“One day, my love. Soon I shall have a roof to put over our heads, then we will talk about it some more. Till then you and the girls stay up here.”
Just as with their other properties, land and livestock were their real asset. ‘Put everything on four legs’ was the advice for any man striving for his living. But, like so many successful squatters, the women remained in the city while the men worked on the property. Putting that roof over their heads came second in importance and many of the dwellings thereabouts were as simple as the gunyahs of the Canberri and Ngunawal.
Sheets of bark stripped from the trees and laced to the timber frame with greenhide straps formed the walls of that first Bywong. The woven lattice of wood strips was daubed with a sticky mixture of chopped-up straw, sand, and even dung. At one end of the hut a stout door opened to the outdoors and at the other end an enormous fireplace and chimney filled the whole wall.
‘Too soon, far too soon,” he grumbled when he finally brought them down from Sydney.
“No matter, we shall all be together.” For Elizabeth had finally insisted that they travelled down to Bywong with him. “That is the most important thing. I’ve been living the life of a widow and the girls never see you and their brothers. What kind of an existence is that?”
“Well, I warned you, our home is not ready. All you’ll have is a roof over your heads and draughts everywhere. The boys and I will manage under canvas again.”
But Elizabeth cried out with delight when she saw the simple dwelling. “Put up a rail, Richard. We’ll need to have some curtains round the beds, and look at that fireplace!”
That first night as the wind howled outside the entire family squeezed in around the great hearth for warmth. Richard had wedged a stout iron upright into the stones; from the equally stout welded arm that stretched out over the flames a chain hung down. Many a kettle and pan steamed above the fire during the oncoming months.
So began a makeshift period when, for the first time in many months, they shared their life and rejoiced at being together again.
Elizabeth never complained. She maintained that the gaps in the wall through which the wind whistled, the leaks in the roof and the beaten earth floor were scant price to pay for having her husband and family around her once more.
Even if visits to the privy proved an ordeal—spiders and lizards and once or twice even a snake sheltered under its roof—and hours spent over a hot tub in the wash house were almost too long and too hot to bear, Elizabeth delighted in her latest abode.
In this new Eden, she declared, they would construct their home together and it would be a haven for every one of them. The fortunes of the Guise family had prospered from their keeping together so far and that must continue until the youngest ones were ready to make their own way.
Next, Richard fenced off nearly half an acre around the home and under her discerning eye the planting began. Apples, pears, damsons, apricots, and then an experiment or two, an orange and a persimmon. As the saplings took root she and Job set about planting the vegetables. Strong and eager to please, he’d dug and furrowed and hammered in the stakes for the peas, the frames for the beans and when he’d finished that to her satisfaction, she was ready to make her secret dream come true.
Roses! She brought back some climbers on one of her rare visits to Goulburn and soon had them trained up against the walls of the kitchen.
Once the paddocks were fenced and the flocks thriving and the men had some time to spare the final Bywong could be constructed.
The old daub and wattle home became the kitchen for the new house which very slowly emerged nearby. A path connected the kitchen to the home. Cooking was kept at a distance, for fire remained the most serious threat to those living in remote places.
This new Bywong had a verandah six foot wide all round. They’d dug the post holes two foot deep for the outside and for the inside too, marking off the rooms. Battens still held down the bark roof, but boards an inch thick had taken the place of the mud flooring. A house built to last! A home as sturdy as its owners, a dwelling which looked to the future, with shuttered windows and two fireplaces and chimneys. Later, when times changed, the house changed too, with a glazed window or two and then a shingle roof.
All the while the life of the property accumulated around the ever-growing house. The dairy, the store and stables, all gradually made up the home that was Bywong.
Change became the order of the day as the years rolled by and time transformed the new dwelling into a rambling homestead. Lathe and plaster now covered the inside walls, all was rendered and whitewashed. Calico lined the ceiling and daylight twinkled in through the window glass. Now an outhouse-roof extended on all four sides to shelter the verandah hugging the house. Visitors slept there, plants and settles lined the walls. A herbaceous border, just as spoken of in the ladies’ journals from across the sea, bloomed all the way to the gate. And roses, cuttings struck from the twining mass around the old kitchen, rambled on to the verandah and trailed along the windowsills, filling the night air with their scent.
Blinds excluded the western sun, old barrels and boxes were transformed into chairs, and every item that could be made was quickly put into use. With the passageway between kitchen and house covered against the elements, only the privy remained as it always had been - down near the orchard.
Grand-père’s gaze followed the young woman as she moved about the room, exchanging a few words here, laughing with another one there, making sure everyone had all that they wanted. How true that love can transform. Mary Ann had grown from that leggy hoyden of a girl, impetuous and wild, to become this poised young woman. A perfect marriage, and yet… and yet Grand-père did not feel quite at ease. Never once had he exchanged more than a few pleasantries with George. This newcomer to the family was invariably smiling and polite but never joined in the easy chatter of the Guise clan. He kept his own counsel, did not take part in the cut and thrust of conversation or the occasional argument. Well, why should he, Grand-père asked himself - the Guise family have always stayed close to each other. Once that big family had argued, laughed, agreed, disagreed throughout the days, and even now, reduced as it was, everyone spoke up, said their piece and liked a good discussion. Perhaps being on his own, maybe an only child, would make such gatherings quite daunting for George.
Grand-père was wrong. Nothing daunted George. He did not care to join the family in their animated discussions because, even if he had gained entry to their world, he had no particular interest in it. George Brownlow lived in an animal world.
His entire working life had been spent amongst those who laboured on the land. Though not born to the countryside he’d passed so much time amongst shepherds, herdsmen and labourers that he knew no other way to earn his daily bread and preferred their company.
Grand-père and Elizabeth Lintott had been nearer the truth than they imagined when they’d speculated about his parentage. In this land of opposites, when a thief could become a landowner, a murderer a respected citizen and many a lady of loose morals find herself sought after for the marriage bed, in this mixing pot of ‘class, colour and creed’ there were in fact many fortunate turnarounds of fate that saved a poor soul from disaster.
Back in the old country, back in thos
e cold northern cities crammed with the workless, homeless and hopeless tide of humanity swept up by the changing times, many a girl chose prostitution rather than starvation.
And what did it bring? Disgrace? Well, by then most were past bothering. The lively young face and body became ravaged with the effort of that lifestyle and the diseases brought with it, until the spectre of destitution beckoned the way to the workhouse.
Even in this new world the same obstacles littered the path of the unwary girl, but there were also opportunities which had been undreamt of in the backstreets of Seven Dials and the docklands of the Thames. Men outnumbered women by three to one and the possession of a female to keep the home fires burning, cook the food and mend the clothes was a luxury never to be attained by many.
Indeed George’s mother had earned her living upon her back but that had not ruined her future. Those same talents could also bring security. An old husband, pockets adequately lined, vittles in the larder, a roof overhead proved a blessing. A home for herself and her baby son presented a life-saving option which no penniless girl would turn down.
And just as surely as apes evolved into human beings so, by slow steps up the ladder of opportunity, those humans could climb up and better themselves.
Untutored and unfettered by tradition, her son launched himself in his mid-teens into the ready market of this burgeoning world. A lively lad, full of strength and energy, he soon exchanged the city streets for sunburnt, windswept country inland where labour was always needed.
For twenty years he’d known no other existence. Twenty years is a long time in a man’s life; by then many a man has a wife and children to support. Amid the demands of domestic life he’d lose his momentum and settle for the rented shack, the demanding landlord and mouths forever crying to be fed. But if George had inherited nothing else from his mother he had been endowed with a shrewd instinct for survival, and at over thirty remained unencumbered.
When he had first come to Gundaroo drought still desiccated the land. Tempted to move on, he looked again at the barren acres and shrewdly observed a greater opportunity by staying in the area. Many of the wealthier squatters faced a dilemma: should they leave their ruined properties or weather out the bad times, hope for the creeks to run and the lake to fill again?
George looked at the dead tree stumps in the expanse of dried-out lake bed, he took note of the middens and the rock paintings and realised this freak of nature must have happened before, and the old owners of the land had survived. Throughout history the lake would have filled and emptied. So, when bullock carts and drays headed back to the city, when carriages disappeared in a cloud of dust, George offered his services to a succession of dejected landowners. He would oversee their properties and they could depend upon him.
No longer quite a servant but certainly not one of the employer’s class, he learnt to exist without companionship. Not accepted in the drawing room and regarded with suspicion amongst the labourers, he trod a lonely path.
George took his pleasure wherever it was offered, he made no promises and resolutely remained free of attachments. He realised a good reputation was worth more than any fleeting profit so eschewed all opportunities to gain by stealth and rendered to his employers their dues. His reputation as a trusted employee grew, in those remote acreages any man who could be relied upon to watch over a property being worth his weight in gold, so many a harassed squatter maintained. From sunup to sundown he laboured, his sole recreation being a visit to the racetrack.
From the dropping of the first lamb, to the stowing away of the last bale of hay, he lived by the rhythms of the land. Waking to the complaints of the wattle birds and the first seeping light of dawn, turning in at the end of each day to the last cries of the jackass and the wonga pigeon’s lullaby.
Not for him the fol-de-rol of the parlour and the verandah. His possessions had been few: a horse, the clothes on his back, a few spare garments and a prized pair of Blucher boots, a couple of blankets, an almanack and a silver timepiece given by a grateful employer. No pies or pastry for his table; instead, the daily damper, a hunk of cheese, and meat whenever he killed a beast.
When a wealthy landowner invited him to hunt, to join the chase with the pack of newly imported hounds and run the dingoes to destruction, he declined. For a while they’d relish his company, he knew that too well, but after the hurly-burly of the hunt and the back-slapping and the camaraderie of equals came to pass, he would have to make his way back to his lonely hut.
Harrowing, sowing, reaping, shearing, fencing and a myriad of tasks made up the substance of his days, and his nights were untroubled by the luxury of dreams as he fell exhausted onto his mattress. Dreams were for weaklings and there was nothing weak about him. Anyone who considered he would always be a faithful servant would have made a great mistake because, if he did not have dreams, he had ambition.
He was determined one day to own a property of his own. Listening all the while to tales of disaster offset by success he watched as the acreages of men bankrupted by drought or death came up for sale. He weighed up the pros and cons of every property that came on the market. Did it have reliable water? Had the flocks suffered from the dreaded catarrh? Would the land be fertile or would it be barren?
Dingo-like he circled and watched and waited. Sensing the conditions around him, sniffing the air for that whiff of corruption or the healthy odour of success. For in all his years upon the land he’d learnt as much from animals as other human beings.
George Brownlow knew more about farming than many of the men he worked for. Perhaps that unknown man who’d lain one night with an easy woman had been a farmer, perhaps the genes had been passed on. Despite being born into a city slum he was a farmer through and through. A farmer without a farm.
But wealthy squatters ruled the day. Around the Limestone Plains and further afield men settled with their army and navy pensions, grants were given, mortgages freely extended to such upright citizens. He’d looked away when his employers’ sons came down from the city and went out hunting and picnicking and sitting upon the verandah of the homestead supping their ale.
They had their lives, he had his. He was lucky to have his own horse, his hut and a steady wage. Enough for a man. But not quite. The years bring their own changes and as the decades started to add up he glimpsed the future, a trifle disquieting.
In another ten years would he still be sitting at his rough hewn table eating mutton and damper and drinking flat beer? On another property maybe, but his lot would be the same wherever he went.
One table, one chair, a narrow bunk, four walls enclosing silence.
Ten years after that infirmity might take hold. Would he end his days chopping wood, fetching and carrying and stumbling from one charitable handout to another?
That glimpse returned at random moments. Waking to the profound quiet of his hut, smelling the meat going off in the meat-safe, wondering whether he could be bothered to make some damper.
One of these moments of solitude had descended on him several years ago as he stood in the main street of Gundaroo.
He’d been a newcomer and as he watched old Job driving the Guise’s trap down the main street with Mary Ann chattering beside him and bags and bundles of purchases stacked up around them he’d suddenly felt completely alone.
He knew nothing of the Guise family but what he saw was a comfortable, settled life and suddenly it became infinitely desirable.
As he watched he did not realise that he also was being watched.
CHAPTER 11
“The Good Lord helps them as helps themselves,” Mary O’Rourke leant her elbows on the table. Her neck spilled out in a series of folds under the double chin resting on her ample hands.
“Ma!”
“Time was when I looked every bit like you does now. A man could put his two hands round me waist, he could, and many did. But time’s runnin’ out, it is. Half a dozen years’ll make a mint of difference and then where’ll you be? Takin’ in the washing
like me.”
“Heard all this before, Ma.” Brigid gathered her skirt as she rose to go.
“An’ you’ll hear it again, my girl. Maybe I ain’t schooled, neither is you, but you’ve got a head on your shoulders and now’s the time to use it, not going off in a huff ’cos he’s wed another. What did you expect? Men looks after themselves, they do. Well, you only got to look at Mick and Seamus, selfish buggers, but then that’s where we come in. We look after ourselves too, don’t we. I always says, look after number one first.”
“Well, it ain’t done you too much good, has it, Ma?” Brigid glanced round at the beaten dirt floor, the rough table, two chairs, several wooden boxes serving as extra seats - and the torn curtain, separating the room from the sleeping area.
“Ain’t done nothing for you, I’d say.” She scoffed and got up to leave.
“Sit down, you silly little bitch. You ain’t heard half yet. Mopin’ away like a wet week.”
Brigid sighed. Her mother had the latent power of a bushfire, consuming all that stood in its way. Her small eyes glittered and her lips were drawn thin and tight as she motioned the girl to sit down again.
“I’d not have been endin’ me days down by this stinking creek if I’d played me cards right. That’s what I’m telling you. You thought he’d ask you, didn’t you? You reckon you’d a chance of a good match but you never listened to me, did you? He’s looking after number one, that Brownlow. Looking after number one and doin’ very nicely, thank you. And that’s where you come in. ’Stead of flouncing off in a pet, ’tis time to make some plans.”
Brigid regarded her mother with something akin to faint interest.
“We only got one thing on our side in this life, my girl. Others have property and families and all that sort of thing, but we only got one thing. We’ve got one thing in our favour, and it’s the most important thing in all the world.”
“What’s that, Ma?”
“We’re sittin’ on it!” The woman leant back and laughed, her great hams of arms quivered and shook, her hair flopped over her face and she laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.
The Hanging of Mary Ann Page 13