But this was just a small part of the larger festivities planned by the city. All major public buildings and many private structures would be outlined in electric light bulbs. On the General Post Office, the official centre of the city, ‘AUSTRALIA’S GREETINGS’ would be writ large in lights. Roads were to be lit up, as well as statues, and even trees; ‘the giant fig tree in front of the old Education building will be spangled with hundreds of coloured lights’. And so on and so on. Some feared that the power supply would not be able to cope with such extravagance and that there would be a catastrophic blackout in the middle of the celebrations.
At 11.37 a.m. on the appointed day, the gleaming armada steamed through the heads to a tumultuous welcome, as pleasure craft and official vessels rushed out to greet them.
Prime Minister Deakin was effusive:
Australians will receive the men who man these splendid battleships with unbounded enthusiasm, not only the gallant tars, but also those gallant artisans who toil in the hidden caverns of these 16 monsters of the deep. Our welcome is enthusiastic, not because of the giant strength of the great Republic, but be cause it is a nation of kinsmen, and kinsmen we are proud of.
He went on to talk of the fleet, and America, as a mighty force for peace, progress and freedom in the world.
In this grand mission they do not stand alone. There is another great flag waving beside the Stars and Stripes, the flag that once waved over our ancestors and still flies over us—the Union Jack of our beloved motherland—the flag that’s braved a thousand years, the battle and the breeze.
It is claimed that over half a million Sydneysiders went to watch the fleet sail in, or over 80 per cent of the total population of the city at that time. This unlikely number would have meant that only those too young, to old or too infirm didn’t participate. Nevertheless, it’s undoubted that the crowds were the largest in Australian history to that time and it is thought that most people in Sydney had seen the fleet.
And the fleet had seen them. After a few days partying the sailors were beginning to wilt. One is said to have stretched out on a park bench with this sign above him:
Yes, I am delighted with the Australian people.
Yes, I think your park is the finest in the world.
I am very tired and would like to go to sleep.
After the clamour of Sydney, the Americans sailed on to Melbourne where they spent another week in celebrations. The Sydney Morning Herald, naturally, reported that Melbourne’s decorations were ‘No comparison with Sydney’. But as in Sydney, the crowds that turned out to welcome the Americans were larger than those to celebrate Federation in 1901.
At the end of Fleet Week, as they called it in Melbourne, there was a ‘great state luncheon’ and yet another march, and then on a dull and misty morning most of the fleet sailed for Albany in Western Australia. Although Adelaide was not due for a visit from the fleet, much to the city’s annoyance, there was a little satisfaction: under the heading ‘The best laid schemes of mice and men . . .’, Adelaide’s The Register exulted in telling the story of a distressed supply ship in the fleet needing to put in to port at Semaphore due to foul weather. It was not much, but it was better than missing out entirely on what was possibly the greatest popular celebration in Australian history.
Although the fleet arrived at Albany on another wet and grey day, the event was described as ‘a brilliant scene’ in the local press. Despite the rain there were yet more marches, and the fleet spent the better part of a week taking on coal and enjoying the breathless hospitality of the small community. On 20 September, the fleet steamed past Rottnest Island en route for Manila, giving the residents of Fremantle a last long loving look at the ‘majestic array’ of American sea power. Signals and despatches were exchanged, in accordance with naval etiquette, and then they were gone.
Effusive editorials on the significance of the visit ran on in the press for weeks. According to one writer, the object lesson of the fleet’s visit was clear:
The welcome of the American Fleet to Australia was founded, as stated, upon pure racial love and affection; and all future relationship in the officers of the Atlantic or Pacific, should be one, indivisible and eternal. The Australians were not carried away with thoughts of republicanism by the presence of what has been termed the ‘Great White Fleet.’
This attitude was borne of the widely held fear of invasion from the north by the ‘yellow peril’, and offers one reason for the enthusiasm for the visiting Americans. Many saw the American fleet as their potential saviours should the country be attacked from Asia. It was not until the armada reached Australia that it was called the Great White Fleet.
Whatever the reason, there’s no doubt enthusiasm for the fleet’s visit seemed boundless at the time. Composers penned florid songs, poets extolled, and patriots thundered at the relative greatness of American and British navies. Journalists considered the implications of an Australian–American alliance and politicians decreed holidays. The Americans were generally impressed with Australia, if a little exhausted by it. A considerable number of sailors did not go back to their ships.
The fleet returned to its American starting point in February 1909. Nothing quite like the size and excitement of this naval carnival has been seen in Australia since.
THE MIGRANT LORD
In the mid 1920s a British Member of Parliament and son of the Earl of Bathurst voyaged to Australia on a migrant ship. Under the assumed name George Bott, Lord Apsley travelled third class in a cramped cabin with a group of British migrant men. His wife Lady Viola Apsley travelled first class on the same ship for one section of the voyage, planning to join up with her husband again in Australia.
When this unusual journey came to the attention of the Australian press in May 1925 they naturally wanted to know why Lord Apsley had decided to travel so humbly. He told them that in the course of his work as a parliamentary secretary, he had been privy to allegations in parliament that immigrants to Australia found no work and suffered ‘brutal’ treatment at the hands of the locals. Though these instances were likely atypical due to extenuating circumstances, he nevertheless ‘wanted to take [his] chance with other fellows and see how the ordinarily experienced “Pommy” got on when he landed and what happened to him’ so he registered on board ‘as an ex hunt servant with no agricultural experience’.
When George Bott landed he reported to the immigration bureau, as did all migrants. He was given a job on a Gippsland farm at 20 shillings a week and his keep.
After 10 days on that farm I moved up into the Mallee, where I worked for a farmer who had taken up a block of virgin country three years ago at 8/6 an acre, and converted it into a farm with a nice homestead. There were 300 acres under crop (there will be 400 the next year), two dams, 50 sheep, two cows, two pigs, and poultry. The farmer had fenced all his land with sheep-proof fencing, put up a windmill and installed a telephone. Though, he had been offered £4 an acre he and his wife, both English, were too fond of it to sell.
George worked on this industrious farm for three weeks and ‘was sorry to leave’.
The temporarily working-class lord was keen to point out that immigrants who drifted back to Melbourne ‘and hang about trying to discourage others and beg money from them are mostly those who do not want work and never should have come here, and those willing but never taught to look after themselves, cannot cook, cannot mend, or even wash their own clothes, and are quite helpless’. Wherever he went in Australia ‘as an unknown and nameless stranger’ he had met with ‘kindness and goodwill from every class of people in town and country’.
After reassuming his true identity, Lord Apsley lived at the state government house in Melbourne. After ‘restocking his wardrobe’, he was due to talk with migration officials and to call on the prime minister. He then continued his journey to Darwin where he had arranged to tour the far north-west in a newly designed British half-track vehicle that was billed to ‘revolutionise transport both for military, and civilian use in d
esert country’.
The no-nonsense, roll-up-your-sleeves Lord Apsley was frequently interviewed and spoke publicly about his views, inspiring a lively debate in the Australian press about the virtues and vices of assisted migration. With his supportive wife he published a book of ‘ripping yarns’ about his unique journey titled The Amateur Settlers, which gave advice to intending migrants.
But their adventures didn’t end there. He and Lady Apsley later lived under the assumed names of Mr and Mrs James with group settlers in Western Australia to gain further on-the-ground experience for their investigations. The ‘groupers’, as they were known, were British migrants assisted to settle the state’s southwest wilderness through the state government’s Group Settlement Scheme. Even this early in the program’s existence, it was showing signs of strain.
Mr and Mrs James spent two weeks with their group. She minded the house as did all the wives. He joined the men as part of the communal workforce, felling the forests and using gelignite to clear stumps from the land.
Of their experience, Viola Apsley subsequently wrote that ‘the best equipment for a woman to take to Australia is grit, common sense, adaptability and a touch of the saving grace of humour. Capital or brains are not so necessary.’ Lord Apsley wrote:
I believe Australia must have a rosy future. She has much more to offer the average person than this country has at the present time. My final impression is that though no one should leave England who has a happy home in this country, to all those who have no prospects inn the Old Country and nothing of their own but healthy minds and bodies, Australia offers a happy Home and a Future of their own making.
Apsley claimed that the disastrous group settlement scheme had a ‘romantic side’ similar to Saxon England. This would have been a surprise to the many disillusioned groupers. Even before the migrant lord and lady arrived to find out for themselves what it was all about, significant numbers had already walked off their unviable plots of rock and jarrah. Many more would walk off after the amateur settlers went home and no new settlements were established after 1928.
6
JOURNEYS OF THE HEART
Pray Sir be good enough to let my husband know you have had a letter from me, and beg him to take care of my dear children.
Mary Talbot, transported convict, 1791
THE LADY ON THE SAND
The slight figure boarding Louis de Freycinet’s Uranie would hardly have attracted a second glance. Ship’s boys as young as ten were not uncommon in the early nineteenth century. But this ‘boy’ was the beautiful wife of the captain dressed as a man. The year was 1817 and 23-year-old Rose and 35-year-old Louis had just married. It was a truly romantic marriage for love. Rose was a commoner and de Freycinet an aristocrat. So hopelessly in love were the couple that they could not bear to be separated and Louis broke every rule of the French navy to have her with him on what they knew would be a very long journey.
De Freycinet needed to modify his ship to cater for a female passenger and it was not long before word of the unauthorised passenger made it ashore, causing great official consternation. But by then Uranie had sailed. The story delighted the French public and the de Freycinets became celebrities in their absence. The authorities decided to allow the romantic duo to proceed. They were bound for the great south land via the Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius on a round-the-world voyage of scientific discovery.
A year after leaving France the expedition anchored in Shark Bay (Western Australia) to conduct scientific observations and map the area. But Rose’s husband also had some unfinished business in this part of the great south land. In 1802, de Freycinet had been with the Baudin expedition when they discovered the beaten-out dinner plate left there by Willem de Vlamingh to mark his visit to the unknown south land in 1697. De Freycinet and other officers had wanted Baudin to remove the plate and take it back to France for posterity. But Baudin had refused. De Freycinet had sworn that he would one day return and take the plate, so that it wouldn’t be ‘swallowed up by the sands, or else run the risk of being taken away and destroyed by some careless sailor’:
I felt that its correct place was in one of these great scientific depositories which offer to the historian such rich and precious documents. I planned, therefore, to place it in the collections of the Academie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres de L’Institut de France.
He duly retrieved the plate and conveyed it to the academy, where it immediately disappeared. It was not seen again until 1940 when it was found in a box of old junk in the basement of the academy.
Rose kept a journal of her travels, recounting the sights she saw and the adventures she experienced with her husband. She also wrote many letters home. Her first view of New Holland, as the west coast of Australia was known at the time, did not impress her. She saw a ‘low and arid coast’ with ‘nothing in the sight to ease our minds, for we knew we would find no water in this miserable land’. She would later go ashore with Louis and spend a few nights under canvas but the ‘stay on land was not a pleasant one . . . the country being entirely devoid of trees and vegetation’. In the cooler parts of the day she collected shells and read in her tent.
On one of these trips off the ship, Rose went ashore in a small boat but was unable to land because the water was too shallow. A couple of sailors had to carry the captain’s wife to the beach in all her finery. When they reached the sand a group of ten or so Aborigines approached, making strong signals for the intruders to return to their ship. ‘I was afraid, and would willingly have hidden myself,’ she wrote home. But the Aborigines retreated, leaving Rose, Louis and some officers to picnic on the beach beneath a canvas shade they had brought from the ship along with the food. This they supplemented with some local oysters ‘far tastier than all those I had, sitting at a table in comfort, in Paris’.
What the people of the region might have made of this strange scene is not recorded. They may have thought that the strangers picnicking on their beach—Rose in her fashionable finery and the sailors in their colourful uniforms—did not present a very serious threat. In any case, just a few days later, friendly contact with the Aborigines was established when they exchanged some of their weapons in return for tin and glass trinkets.
The French sailed north to Timor, then to the Maluku Islands, the Caroline Islands, the Mariana Islands and Hawaii, then the Sandwich Islands, before again heading south. In November 1819, they arrived in the growing colony at Port Jackson. Here the de Freycinets were welcomed enthusiastically. The governor sent a military band to play them along the river as they travelled inland to meet him at his Parramatta residence. There were endless parties and the French were provided with a house and facilities to pursue their scientific work. But on their first night in the house they were robbed of their silver service, table linen, the servants’ clothing and other items. Rose wrote home: ‘You know the purpose of this colony and what sort of people are to be found here in plenty; you will therefore not be astonished at this misdeed: might one not say it is roguery’s classic shore.’
Rose departed on the Uranie on Christmas morning. Aboard were two Merino rams, adding to the black swans and emus they had already collected on their journey. Also aboard was a convict stowaway suffering the effects of too much Christmas cheer. He was handed over to the pilot but when they got out to sea another ten escapees were found. They joined the crew as the ship set a course for the Falkland Islands in search of an abandoned French settlement.
Here the Uranie was wrecked, though the expeditioners managed to save their notes and around half of their samples. They eventually made it back to France where Louis was court-martialled for losing his ship. He was cleared of the charge and ultimately feted for his scientific achievements. Rose and Louis were a celebrated couple until Rose died of cholera in 1832. Louis died in 1841. The de Vlamingh plate they retrieved was gifted back to Australia in 1947.
PLEADING THE BELLY
Young Mary Talbot came to London from Ireland with her stonemason h
usband and at least one child in about 1787. There her husband suffered a work accident that left him unable to provide for his family. With no other means of support, Mary became a thief. In February 1788, aged 22, she was caught stealing a bolt of printed cotton valued at 17 shillings. Her defence at the Old Bailey was that she had been drunk at the time and had mistakenly picked up the material. Witnesses refuted this tale and she was sentenced to seven years’ transportation to New South Wales, then barely established.
Later that year she was taken from prison and placed aboard the convict transport Lady Juliana with her baby. In company with some other convicts Mary managed to escape. She went into hiding but was recognised, apprehended and tried again in January 1790. She claimed her escape was motivated by the lack of nutrition aboard the ship, making her unable to feed her baby. Found guilty of returning from a sentence of transportation she was sentenced to death. It was then discovered that Mary was pregnant, enabling her to ‘plead the belly’, a common-law practice that allowed her execution to be delayed until after the birth. As was often the case in these situations, Mary’s death sentence was eventually commuted to transportation for life.
In court, Mary said that she would prefer to die rather than leave her three children: they were the reason she had escaped from the Lady Juliana in the first place. She was cautioned that her death sentence could still be reinstated but she continued to cry out for death. She had to be taken from the court in convulsions. While in prison she continued to bewail her fate but to no avail: she was eventually transported without her children and without the chance to farewell her husband. Among other female convicts, some with children, she embarked for Australia aboard the Mary Ann in February 1791. Mary described the voyage in a letter to a friend who had tried to have her transported together with her family to America. Her graphic letter was sent from the Cape Verde Islands on 29 March 1791:
Great Australian Journeys Page 14