Great Australian Journeys

by Seal, Graham;

  We sailed from Portsmouth the 23rd of February, with the wind much against us, and were so much in danger, that we feared we should have shared the fate of a ship which was lost within sight of us.

  Our good Captain very kindly dropped anchor at the Nase, but did not stop more than one night, and sailed for the Downs, where we sent our pilot on shore. On the 25th and 26th, along the Coast, we had a violent storm, which lasted 24 hours; during every moment of its continuance we expected to perish, and were washed out of our beds between decks, while the sea-sickness and the groans and shrieks of so many unhappy wretches, made the situation we were in truly distressing; for there were 138 women and five children; two of the latter born after we sailed, and one only died on our passage hither, where we remain no longer than is necessary to repair the ship and taken in water.

  The Mary Ann arrived in Sydney just 143 days after leaving England, a speedy passage. But despite her hopes for reprieve and to be reunited with her children, the forlorn mother and wife died only seven weeks later and was buried on 28 August 1791. The fate of her husband and children is unknown.

  MY HEART IS STILL UNCHANGED

  ‘My heart is still unchanged’: these were the words of John Nicol as he recounted his life story in the harsh Edinburgh winter of 1822. A self-described ‘child of chance’, his heart still belonged to the convict Sarah Whitlam and the child she bore him aboard a convict transport bound for Port Jackson more than thirty years before. ‘What is become of her, whether she is dead or alive, I know not.’

  John Nicol led an adventurous life in the 35 years before he became steward aboard a convict transport in 1789. He had sailed in whalers, fought in sea battles and visited many ports in many counties. He had also found time to learn the cooper’s trade. Eventually, the wandering life his soul craved led him to join the crew of the Lady Juliana—the same ship young Mary Talbot had escaped the previous year—which was then bearing 200 women to penal servitude in New South Wales. It was to be a long voyage from the River Thames, but there were compensations:

  When we were fairly out to sea, every man on board took a wife from among the convicts, they nothing loath. The girl with whom I lived, for I was as bad in this point as the others, was named Sarah Whitlam. She was a native of Lincoln, a girl of a modest reserved turn, as kind and true a creature as ever lived. I courted her for a week and upwards, and would have married her on the spot had there been a clergyman on board.

  According to Sarah, she had been ‘banished for a mantle she had borrowed from an acquaintance. Her friend prosecuted her for stealing it, and she was transported for seven years.’ This all mattered not to John. Even before he knew her story, he was entranced:

  I had fixed my fancy upon her from the moment I knocked the rivet out of her irons upon my anvil, and as firmly resolved to bring her back to England when her time was out, my lawful wife, as ever I did intend anything in my life. She bore me a son in our voyage out.

  And a long voyage it was. South to Tenerife, an extended stay in Rio, another layover in the Cape of Good Hope. Some of the convict women proved difficult to manage. An incorrigible few were imprisoned and occasionally whipped. There was a fire, a miscarriage and antics too many to recount in the 364 days the Lady Juliana took to reach Port Jackson.

  On their safe arrival, Nicol’s impression of the south land was good, though he saw little of the place: ‘It is a fine country and everything thrives well in it,’ he wrote. He was employed in revictualling the ship for the return voyage though ‘any moments I could spare I gave them to Sarah’.

  John and Sarah’s time ashore together with their son, also named John, seemed too short. ‘The days flew on eagles’ wings, for we dreaded the hour of separation which at length arrived.’ Nicol offered to forfeit his wages to stay with his beloved, but the captain needed him and he was taken aboard ‘not without the aid of the military’. Nicol would have spirited Sarah back aboard the Lady Juliana if he had been able. But in the end he had to sail for China without her.

  He was deeply troubled by the separation: ‘Everything brought her endearing manners to my recollection.’ He worried about the company in which she was forced to remain: ‘to leave her exposed to temptation in the very worst company the world could produce was too much to think of with composure’. But there was some comfort in the knowledge she kept his Bible in which they had written both their names. When he returned to England he planned to go back to Australia with enough money to somehow buy Sarah’s freedom. Eventually he shipped out aboard a whaler, intending to return to Port Jackson.

  While at sea his ship encountered a vessel bound from New South Wales with an escaped convict aboard. Incredibly, the escapee had news of Sarah. She had left the colony for Mumbai, then known as Bombay. But the convict had no news of their son. Nicol was plunged into despair. ‘My love for her revived stronger at this time than any other since I left her. I even gave her praise for leaving . . . She did so to be out of bad company, my mind would whisper.’

  Recovering his spirits, Nicol decided to make for India. He joined a Portuguese ship returning to Europe. After many delays he finally returned to England, hoping to add to the money from his whaling trip and planning to find Sarah.

  While eluding the press gangs, which at that time were forcing men to fight in the Royal Navy, Nicol travelled to Lincoln to visit Sarah’s parents. But they knew even less of their daughter’s travels than he and so the wanderer went back to sea. Four years after leaving Port Jackson he landed in Batavia, modern-day Jakarta, still trying to reach Sarah’s last-known destination in India. No ship was bound in that direction.

  Time heals all wounds, goes the proverb, and the years of separation were beginning to cool John Nicol’s affections. ‘Indeed,’ he wrote, ‘I must confess, I did not feel the same anguish now I had endured before.’ He reasoned that she must have cared little about him if she simply left the colony without writing to him, or even to her parents. He would try to find word of her once more in Lincoln, and then would return to Scotland and settle down. But on the way he was finally caught by a press gang and spent the next seven years fighting the French.

  He was eventually released from service, considerably richer but now with ‘the thoughts of Sarah . . . fad[ing] into a distant pleasing dream’. His strong passion ‘was now softened into a curiosity to know what had become of her’. But again, no one in Lincoln had any news of her and as he ‘was now too old to undertake any love pilgrimages’ Nicol returned to a city he no longer knew and in which none knew him. He wandered around the country, eventually marrying a cousin and becoming a successful tradesman.

  At the outbreak of the Napoleonic wars, the navy once again needed bodies and Nicol was forced to sell up and move to the country to avoid the press gangs once more. Eventually Napoleon was defeated in 1815 and it was safe to return to Edinburgh where, yet again, much was changed. His skills were little in demand. His wife died a few years later and he was reduced to near penury. The old mariner had no family or friends and could not obtain a pension from the navy. By the time he told his tale he was living on a few potatoes and ‘coffee’ made from toast scrapings. He was too proud to beg. He ended his story thus: ‘I have been a wanderer and a child of chance all my days, and now only look for the time when I shall enter my last ship, and be anchored with a green turf upon my breast, and I care not how soon the command may be given.’

  And Sarah? The day after John Nicol sailed out of Sydney Cove she married another convict. With him and her two children she did set sail for Bombay in 1796 but what became of her after that nobody knows.

  FOOTSTEPS OF THE SAINT

  The ancient religious tradition of pilgrimage is as popular today as ever. Believers band together to retrace the steps of a religious figure or to visit a site of special significance. There are many pilgrimages in Australia, though the most trodden paths are probably those concerned with Australia’s only officially recognised saint, Sister Mary MacKillop.

  Mary Mac
Killop’s life and work were certainly inspiring and continue to provide a spiritual and practical example to many today. There are a number of local pilgrimages based on the life of St Mary MacKillop, including visits to The Rocks in Sydney, the town of Penola in South Australia and Brisbane. There are also pilgrimages to Rotarua and Auckland in New Zealand, where she also established schools. But the major event is the annual National Pilgrimage, known as ‘In the Footsteps of Mary MacKillop’. The Sisters of Saint Joseph organise and accompany the eleven-day pilgrimage, which covers significant sites in South Australia and New South Wales.

  Mary MacKillop was the first child of Alexander McKillop and Flora McKillop nee MacDonald, born in Fitzroy in 1842. (She later changed the original spelling of her surname.) Mary and her seven brothers and sisters had an unstable childhood, moving often and struggling to get by. Mary became the chief provider for the family and began work as a clerk at the age of fourteen. Four years later, in 1860, she moved to Penola in South Australia to work as a governess, where she met Father Julian Tension-Woods. They shared a strong Roman Catholic faith and a concern for educating the young at a time when schooling was difficult for poorer people in the bush to access. Woods wanted to found a new order to address these and other issues and at the age of 24, Mary became the head of St Joseph’s School in Penola.

  She had begun wearing a black dress, as a symbol of her commitment to her faith and a practical reflection of the poverty and simplicity which would become the basis of the order she would lead. In 1867, Mary became Mother Superior of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Holy Cross. The order had just funded a new school building, and operated by a set of rules that emphasised service and poverty. The MacKillop approach to education was revolutionary at the time: the school was open to all who wished to learn, whether they could afford to pay or not. The sisters also ministered to the poor, sick and the weak and, remarkably for the period, were responsible for having a child-abusing priest returned to Ireland from rural South Australia in 1870.

  In 1869, Mary and a group of sisters moved to Brisbane to further develop the order and her radical approach to education, which was a great success. But there was trouble back in South Australia, where she returned in 1871. The order’s practice of poverty, which neccessitated begging in the streets, was seen by some as inappropriate. There were also rows about doctrine. Mary’s fierce independence brought her into frequent conflict with the church hierarchy. A commission of inquiry was established and the recommendations it drew clashed with most of Mary MacKillop’s beliefs and practices. She was unwilling to accept them and was excommunicated—apparently invalidly—in September 1871, though this dire edict was lifted five months later. Schools were closed and the order itself came close to being shut down.

  To save her order, Mary travelled to the Vatican to seek official approval. Upon reaching Rome in 1873 she met Pope Pius IX. Despite her earlier excommunication, she returned to Australia in 1874 with the necessary approval to continue, though under the original rules set by Tenison-Woods, a condition which led to an unresolved disagreement between her and the Father. Mary was also continually embroiled in battles for control of her order. But the work continued and by the early 1890s 300 sisters of St Joseph were teaching and ministering to the poor throughout Australia and New Zealand.

  Mary MacKillop died in 1909, following a tumultuous life of faith and service. Her reported last words were typical of her life and approach:

  Whatever troubles may be before you, accept them cheerfully, remembering Whom you are trying to follow. Do not be afraid. Love one another, bear with one another, and let charity guide you in all your life.

  She was already a legend in her own time and the Archbishop of Sydney who attended at her death is said to have extolled her saintliness. Her achievements were widely recognised and admired far beyond the Catholic church. A long campaign for official recognition—or canonisation—of her life and work resulted in her canonisation on 17 October 2010 in Rome as Saint Mary of the Cross. She is Australia’s first and only saint recognised by the Catholic church. Her example continues to inspire the work of the Sisters of St Joseph and many others, regardless of their beliefs.

  Stories about her include the hardened murderer moved to prayer on seeing tears stream down from Mary’s eyes. She sat with the dying at their request, shared her food with the hungry and tended the sick. One of her best-known sayings was, ‘Never see a need without doing something about it.’

  Mary MacKillop’s legend lives on in many aspects of Australian life, in the form of scholarships, and organisations for charity, health and education. Many Australians will still recall being taught and disciplined by the Brown Joeys, so-called for their distinctive brown habit. There is even a rose and a hotel named after her. The eighth of August is Saint Mary MacKillop’s feast day.

  AN AUSTRALIAN LADY TRAVELS

  On New Year’s Day in 1892, an ‘Australian lady’ left London’s Tilbury Docks on a mail boat Oroya bound for ‘the sunny South’. She had a female companion and they were to be joined by their two gentlemen when their ship reached Naples.

  This was to be no hardship voyage. The first luncheon was chicken and champagne. This was followed at four o’clock with afternoon tea and ‘a very special cake from Buszard’s’. By 6 p.m. it was nearly dark and they were thinking about getting ready for dinner

  when there came a sudden shock a tremendous crash, bang, a commotion on dock, and a general stampede. ‘Whatever is it? Are we going down? Has the end of the world come?’ asked a timid old lady. ‘Someone got the influenza, mum,’ replied a flippant steward.

  I ran up hastily, and there saw a small schooner ‘impaled’ on our steamer, and falling into the sea below were several terrified-looking seamen. Others were struggling to get up, and were aided by willing hands from the Oroya. Eventually the five sailors were safely taken on board, but alas the poor Danish captain was drowned. He was seen to run below to his little cabin probably thinking he would try to save some of his small belongings, but the attempt was fatal to him, and we never saw him again though his cries were heard once. One of the officers wanted to go after him, but fortunately was not allowed to, for if he had what with the darkness and the confusion he would surely have been drowned.

  The Danish ship had been carrying coal to France, and operating without navigation lights. The captain had been the only married man aboard and the passengers on the Oroya took up a subscription for the survivors and the dead captain’s family.

  Continuing their journey, they docked at Gibraltar and the ladies ‘had a very jolly drive across into Spain’, where they purchased souvenirs ‘more curious than beautiful’. And so on to Naples, the passage eased by games of patience, whist, chess and ‘a little music’. In Naples they were ‘glad to find the boys waiting for us on the pier’, where they were

  beset with the usual crowd of fascinating-looking foreigners beseeching us to buy flowers, corals, cameos, all of which we sturdily refused at first, though it always ended by giving in and getting some of everything before we got back to our ship. The vendors came down so in their prices, that we felt we had driven a good bargain this time, only to find, alas, that our tortoiseshell combs were bone, our coral necklaces wood, our cameos false, and our jewellery set in brass and tin.

  At Port Said, they went ashore and rode through the town on donkeys, ‘half the population scampering at our heels, and all laughing and chatting and gesticulating at once. One of the Arabs wanted to buy Miss Sydney, and offered £200 for her on the spot. We asked him if he had not got a wife, and he said, “Yes, beauty lady, but only two; I want many more.”’

  On the next leg, the passengers formed an amusement committee and were entertained by a magician and each other’s talents as singers. A fancy dress ball was planned ‘and great was the planning and numerous the secret meetings held for the purpose of a good surprise in the shape of something novel in fancy dress’.

  It was ‘a frightfully hot morning’ when the
y reached the next port of Colombo, in what is now Sri Lanka but was then known as Ceylon. ‘The coolies were swarming up the gangways with bags of coal, looking like so many black gnomes.’ Then:

  We, and most of the others, went on shore, where we had rickshaw rides all over the place, a trip by rail to Mount Lavinia, and on our return a bath and cool drinks at the Grand Oriental Hotel, that abode of luxury and lemon squashes, long lounges, and cool verandahs. Such a luncheon, too, with punkkas waving and corks popping, curry that only an Indian cook can turn out, and fruit and flowers of tropical hue on all the tables.

  On the way back to the boat, they were ‘amused to see numbers of little natives who had evidently been converted by the good nuns, and who wore for sole costume a little scapular suspended round each dusky neck’:

  On the ship some of the men throw sixpences into the sea, and the little blackfellows dived from the ship, and even from the boats above, bringing up the money in their mouths.

  But once more there was tragedy:

  One of their number was drowned almost before our eyes in a catamaran, which was upset near the shore. No one seemed to care much; even his relations lifted him up carelessly and bore him home stoically, returning to finish, bartering with us before the ship departed.