At this point one of the mutineers, William Popjoy or Pobjoy, dived off the Cyrpus and swam across to join the castaways. He was one of a group who tried to walk through the bush to seek rescue. They managed to swim across the Huon River, but were forced to turn back after being threatened by Aborigines, or so they claimed.
Among the bedraggled castaways on the beach was an ingenious convict named Morgan, who fashioned a crude craft known as a coracle from the few natural materials and personal belongings at hand. Accompanied by Popjoy, he paddled across the sometimes treacherous D’Entrecasteux Channel to alert a sailing ship, the Orelia, which rescued the castaways. Back in Hobart, Carew was court-martialled for losing control of the ship, although ultimately acquitted, while Popjoy became a local hero. He was given a pardon and worked his passage to London.
In the meantime, the eighteen convicts aboard the Cyprus, led by William Swallow, sailed boldly into the Pacific Ocean in search of freedom. They sailed to New Zealand and then spent six weeks at Niuatoputapu in what is now the island nation of Tonga. They had lost one man overboard and seven of the crew decided to stay on the island. Ten men then put to sea in the Cyprus once again.
Despite a dearth of experience as navigators they managed to reach the Chinese city of Canton, now Guangzhou, in February 1830. There, three more went ashore and left the crew. The remaining mutineers decided to scuttle the Cyprus and take to the ship’s lifeboat, with the aim of pretending they were shipwrecked sailors. The authorities in Canton believed them and the convicts now all came ashore and scattered. While most of the remaining crew elected to remain in Canton, some went to America, never to be heard from again. Swallow and three others sailed aboard a British ship bound for London.
While they were in transit to Europe, news of the mutiny on the Cyprus reached Canton and one of the convicts who had remained there confessed to the crime. A fast ship carried the news to England and when Swallow and his accomplices arrived there six days later the authorities were waiting. Swallow managed to escape but was later recaptured. He told convincing lies about how the other convicts had forced him to sail the Cyprus, but Popjoy was now in London and prepared to testify against them.
Two of Swallow’s accomplices were hanged but he escaped the noose and was sentenced to transportation for life. He again sailed to Van Diemen’s Land and arrived at the destination of his original voyage, Macquarie Harbour, two years late. He would die in penal servitude in another notorious prison, Port Arthur.
The sensational story of the mutiny and subsequent voyage of the Cyprus inspired convicts to compose admiring ballads. The famous Frank the Poet aka Francis MacNamara composed a well-remembered poem that vividly put across the convict’s point of view:
Come all you sons of Freedom, a chorus join with me,
I’ll sing a song of heroes, and glorious liberty.
Some lads condemned from England sail’d to Van Diemen’s Shore,
Their Country, friends and parents, perhaps never to see more.
When landed in this colony to different Masters went,
For trifling offences, t’Hobart Town gaol were sent,
A second sentence being incurr’d we were order’d for to be
Sent to Macquarie Harbour, that place of tyranny.
The hardships we’d to undergo, are matters of record,
But who believes the convict, or who regards his word?
For starv’d and flogg’d and punish’d, deprived of all redress,
The Bush our only refuge, with death to end distress.
Hundreds of us were shot down, for daring to be free,
Numbers caught and banished, to life-long slavery.
Brave Swallow, Watt and Davis, were in our noble band
Determin’d at the first slant, to quit Van Diemen’s Land.
March’d down in chains and guarded, on the Cyprus brig convey’d
The topsails being hoisted, the anchor being weighed.
The wind it blew Sou’Sou’West and on we went straightaway,
Till we found ourselves wind-bound, in gloomy Recherche Bay.
’Twas August eighteen twenty nine, with thirty one on board,
Lieutenant Carew left the Brig, and soon we passed the word
The Doctor too was absent, the soldiers off their guard,
A better opportunity could never have occur’d.
Confin’d within a dismal hole, we soon contriv’d a plan,
To capture now the Cyprus, or perish every man.
But thirteen turn’d faint-hearted and begg’d to go ashore,
So eighteen boys rush’d daring, and took the Brig and store.
We first address’d the soldiers ‘for liberty we crave,
Give up your arms this instant, or the sea will be your grave,
By tyranny we’ve been oppress’d, by your Colonial laws,
But we’ll bid adieu to slavery, or die in freedom’s cause.’
We next drove off the Skipper, who came to help his crew,
Then gave three cheers for liberty, ’twas answer’d cheerly too.
We brought the sailors from below, and row’d them to the land
Likewise the wife and children of Carew in command.
Supplies of food and water, we gave the vanquish’d crew,
Returning good for evil, as we’d been taught to do.
We mounted guard with Watch and Ward, then haul’d the boat aboard,
We elected William Swallow, and obey’d our Captain’s word.
The Morn broke bright the Wind was fair, we headed for the sea
With one more cheer for those on shore and glorious liberty.
For Navigating smartly Bill Swallow was the man,
Who laid a course out neatly to take us to Japan.
Then sound your golden trumpets, play on your tuneful notes,
The Cyprus brig is sailing, how proudly now she floats.
May fortune help the Noble lads, and keep them ever free
From Gags, and Cats, and Chains, and Traps, and Cruel Tyranny.
Even as late as the 1960s, an elderly Tasmanian could sing a version of this ballad to a visiting folklorist and it can still occasionally be heard today performed by revival folksingers. It ends with the defiant lines:
Play on your golden trumpets boys and sound your cheerful notes
The Cyprus Brig’s on the ocean boys by justice does she float.
THE GREAT TREK
German Lutherans, many from Prussia, settled the Barossa Valley of South Australia from the 1840s onwards. Generally they did well, despite floods and other natural disasters. But the promise of greener grass and better farming conditions elsewhere in the country always beckoned. In 1852, a group of seven families of mainly Wendish (Slavic–German) background loaded their belongings into eleven brightly painted and canvas-covered wagons and set out for pastures new, beginning a journey over 500 kilometres south to Portland Bay in Victoria. Horses and bullocks drew the wagons. The group of 51 men, women and children herded 52 head of cattle, as well as chaff for the horses, sacks of flour on which they also slept, a ‘tucker bin’ of food on which they sat and a poultry coop at the back of the wagon.
This wagon train made a great impression on its travels, guided across the country by a bushman and budding scientist named Wilhelm Blandowski. After four weeks slowly creaking south, they arrived at Portland Bay, where the local children ran behind the wagons chanting ‘German, German!’ The pioneering Henty family (see chapter 1) welcomed the new settlers, partly because many locals had left to seek their fortunes at new gold diggings. Eventually the newcomers were able to buy the large blocks of land available in the area and subdivide them among the families.
A decade or so later, another group of Germans set out from the Barossa Valley to distant horizons, although this time they were pushed by unhappy circumstances rather than drawn by the promise of better ones. The rich yields of the Barossa farming lands had begun to fade. Many of the farms were too small to be economi
cally viable and there was a series of droughts, diseases and poor harvests throughout the 1860s that reduced many to near penury.
There was also a traditional practice that contributed to these problems. It was the custom among the Wendish for the eldest son to leave home at maturity and seek his own fortune and for the younger son to inherit the farm in return for looking after his aged parents. The families in those days were very large, leaving many children with dismal prospects. Quite simply, they needed more land.
At first single families, and then small groups, began to depart. In October 1868, eight families left in covered wagons from the town of Ebenezer in the Barossa Valley, bound for the area that would eventually become Walla Walla in New South Wales, a journey of 1000 kilometres. They sent chaff for their horses and the heavier farm equipment ahead by paddle steamer up the Murray River. They travelled along the Murray to Albury, then north to their destination, arriving after six weeks of rolling across the country, camping out, with regular prayer and worship.
This group was later followed by others leaving the Barossa for the same reasons. Settlements grouped around Lutheran churches grew up along the path of the Great Trek, as this movement became known, and by the 1880s much of the area around Walla Walla was said to be purely German settlements. Despite the many German pioneers in the region, the broader composition of the local population did not foster the same close-knit religious and community contact as had flourished in the Barossa. Nevertheless the German culture lived on in its transplanted home through Lutheran worship, German street names and spoken language.
During World War I the loyalty of the German-speaking population was questioned and four members were interned. Anti-German suspicions were revived during World War II and some Lutheran pastors were monitored by the authorities.
Today in Walla Walla, visitors can see a replica wagon, such as was used on the Great Trek, as well as the grand Zion Lutheran church, built in 1924 with seating for 600 people.
THE LONGEST DROVE
Epic cattle drives across the continent are an important but often overlooked aspect of Australian history. In 1872, some four hundred bullocks were shifted 2500 kilometres from Charters Towers to Palmerston, as Darwin was then known, by D’Arcy Wentworth Uhr. A year later, the man who would become the bushranger Captain Starlight shifted a stolen mob of cattle through tough country between Queensland and South Australia. In the early 1880s, the famous Durack family walked 7500 cattle from southwest Queensland to the Ord River. Often considered the greatest of the drovers, Nat ‘Bluey’ Buchanan moved some 20,000 head from Queensland to the Victoria Downs Station in the Northern Territory between the late 1870s and the early 1880s.
These were—and remain—celebrated feats of pioneering. But the longest drove of all began in March 1883 when a group of Scottish–Australian families struck out for barely known country almost 6000 kilometres away from where they were living in various parts of New South Wales. Family tradition tells the story like this.
Discoveries of fine pastureland in the remote north-west during the late 1870s attracted the interest of the related MacDonald and McKenzie families. One hundred square miles at the junction of the Margaret and Fitzroy rivers in the Northern Territory was secured for 25 pounds (around $20,000 in today’s value). The plan was for the McKenzies to put up the finance and for the MacDonalds to do most of the work overlanding the stock from New South Wales through Queensland to the Gulf of Carpentaria, then across to their lease in the Kimberley.
Preparations for the journey were lengthy and thorough. The women of the families made large amounts of preserved food and an intensive build-up of equipment was supervised by the men. The food was stored in heavy airtight steel ship lockers, loaded aboard two sturdy bullock wagons, along with almost everything else that might be needed for a journey they calculated would take more than two years.
They set out from Tuena, between Bathurst and Goulburn, bound for their promised land in north-west Australia. The pioneers planned to travel north through Queensland, passing through Charleville, Winton and Burketown to Limmen Bight River on the western coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria. They would turn west across the top end to Katherine then south-west to the station, which was known as Fossil Downs, named for the many ancient bones lying around the area.
The drive included 670 head of cattle and 86 horses, as well as 32 bullocks to haul two wagons and a pack of dogs. The men and stock plodded through Orange to Dubbo, picking up more family members and others to act as assistant drovers as they went. Keeping such a large mob together was a constant problem and there were personality clashes among the strong-willed men in the group. Sometimes they made ten miles a day, following the feed and water available as they went. South of Brewarrina, the Barwon River was running a banker and the whole expedition had to be floated or dragged across.
Furthermore, the whole drove was an expensive business. Terse letters were frequently sent back home with requests for large amounts of money. They were taxed at the Queensland border and as they moved further north local graziers were hostile to the amount of feed the large travelling mob consumed.
At Winton they had to wait for rain in the north. Tensions between the leader Charlie MacDonald and Donald McKenzie reached breaking point. Donald left the drove, wearing out three horses on the almost 2000 kilometre ride back home.
It was not until the rains came in September 1884 that the remaining group could struggle north again. Now, in the wet, the gulf country sucked them into its bogs and the men contracted fevers. Aborigines harassed the cattle, threatening their food resources, and crocodiles feasted on calves. They made it to Limmen Bight River, down to just one wagon and with the men and stock all badly knocked around.
It was 1886 before they reached the Roper River in what is now the Northern Territory. Here, Charlie McDonald became so ill he had to be taken to Darwin by horse and from there shipped back home via Sydney. Willie and Dan MacDonald, with Charles and George Hall, pushed on to the Ord River in Western Australia’s Kimberley region. Here, just three hundred or so kilometres from their goal, Willie MacDonald also had to be sent home with fever. Employee Joe Edmonds was left in charge with riders to ‘camp’ the cattle until the return of the MacDonalds. Floods held them up and so the restive Edmonds decided to push on to Fossil Downs with the assistance of a local Aboriginal guide.
They left the remaining wagon and most of the supplies in charge of the cook at the Ord River camp. Now much more mobile, they pushed the reduced mob on to their destination at the land grant at the Margaret and Fitzroy Rivers, arriving in July 1886. The MacDonalds, McKenzies and their assistants had travelled more than five and a half thousand kilometres over three years and four months. The rich pastures of Fossil Downs were theirs, together with the 327 cattle and 13 horses that had survived the arduous trip. It was the longest drove in history.
Back home, the MacDonalds and McKenzies were ecstatic at the good news and Joe Edmonds became an instant family hero for accomplishing the almost impossible task. There was feasting and merriment at Tuena and Joe was feted for his pivotal role in pushing the drove on that last difficult leg. But it soon turned out that his real name was not Edmonds and that he was in fact wanted by the authorities. Fortunately his crimes were relatively minor and the McKenzie’s managed to use their influence to have the charges quashed.
But paradise had its drawbacks. While the cattle did well on the rich land, it was a long way to take the stock to market. The venture did not turn a profit until the discovery of gold at Kalgoorlie provided a more accessible, if still distant, market for their cattle. The MacDonalds gradually bought out the McKenzie shares. By 1915, Dan MacDonald, one of the original drovers, ended up as the sole owner of Fossil Downs. He later joined with the legendary cattleman Sir Sydney Kidman in a partnership that ended in 1928 when Fossil Downs was auctioned. Donald ‘Dan’ MacDonald purchased it back and the extensive property remained in the family for many more years.
Epic cattle
drives are not just triumphs of the past. In June 2013, the largest single purchase of cattle in Australian history began moving from Western Queensland to the Riverina in New South Wales: 18,000 head were pushed from drought-ridden Winton and Longreach to better pastures in New South Wales. But the drive struck the worst drought year in recent history and, like the MacDonald and McKenzie’s before, it had to follow the feed wherever it could be found. Unlike MacDonald and McKenzie, it was not required to pay tax at the Queensland border.
THE LAST RIDE
The man who wrote the poem below blew his brains out on Melbourne’s Brighton Beach the day it was published. His name was Adam Lindsay Gordon and it was June 1870.
After an indifferent childhood and youth, the nineteen-year-old Gordon migrated from England to Adelaide in 1853. Although his father secured him an officer’s commission in the South Australian mounted police, Gordon enlisted as a trooper, a rank and role that suited his interest in horses. He then became an itinerant horse breaker and established a reputation as a daring horseman. He was elected to the South Australian parliament in 1865 but after two years returned to his main interests of horse racing, speculating and writing verse, providing for his family mainly by winning horse races and other equine activities.
Gordon had expected to inherit his family state in Scotland, but when this did not transpire he became heavily indebted. With no money to pay the printer for his fourth book of verse, Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes, Gordon succumbed to despair and took his life. His popular reputation and legend grew rapidly after his death and he was accorded the honour of a plaque and statue in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner.
Great Australian Journeys Page 23