Hell's Gates

by Paul Collins

  Australia is famous for having among its 760 known species of reptiles the most venomous snakes in the world. Only two of these are to be found in the south-west of Tasmania: the white-lipped whip snake and the Tasmanian tiger snake, both of whose venom is highly toxic. However, the men were also close to the border of the range of the lowland copperhead, another deadly species found in central, eastern and northern Tasmania. The Navarre Plains is a place where you are likely to encounter snakes, including the copperhead.

  Terry Reid and Geoff Law think that it is most likely that Travers was bitten by a tiger snake.The Tasmanian sub-species can grow up to 2 metres (6 feet) or more in length, and manifest considerable colour variation from black to brown, yellow or cream. The predominant colour in the south-west is jet-black, which is an adaptation to its environment that allows the snake to absorb light and heat more effectively in the cold, wet climate. Tiger snakes love frog-infested swamps, although they also eat birds, lizards and small mammals. While its bite is potentially fatal, the tiger snake is well down the evolutionary scale and its fangs are small and underdeveloped. Thus the venom is not injected efficiently into the limb, much of it being lost on the skin surface. Today if the bite is dealt with quickly with the antivenenes that have been available since the 1920s, survival is likely, especially when the victim is an adult. No such antitoxins were available in 1822.

  The bite of the tiger snake has a neurotoxic effect and can cause a range of reactions, but usually the first symptom is a massive frontal headache. Vomiting can quickly follow, and the victim lapses in and out of consciousness. The poison flows through the lymphatic system and the nerves controlling the heart and lungs can be adversely affected. It can also cause paralysis and respiratory failure. Bleeding often occurs from both nose and ears, blood clots occasionally form and a heart attack can result. In the Knopwood narrative, Travers is convinced that he is dying – a reasonable supposition given the symptoms – and he exhorts Greenhill to leave him behind. He appeals to their friendship: ‘That as they had been companions for so long a time both in days of prosperity as well as in the present days of adversity, where they had always communicated to each other . . . on every subject and had entrusted each other with the most guarded secrets . . . He trusted and hoped that they [Greenhill and Pearce] would not delay time in waiting for him, but to proceed on their journey and leave him where he was that he might have an opportunity of making peace with his Maker’. Despite being very moved by Travers’s heroic speech, Greenhill refuses to leave him, convinced that he would recover.Travers soon becomes delirious, although he is ‘apprehensive that Pearce would instil into the mind of Greenhill the thought of murdering him’, a not unreasonable fear. In response, in an unusual show of emotion, Greenhill tells his mate that ‘he would never think of leaving him’, that he would carry him all the way, if necessary, because the tie of affection between them was so strong.

  So Greenhill and Pearce wait with Travers for five days. It was the correct decision because rest is the best way to deal with tiger-snake bites. Eventually Greenhill felt that Travers had recovered sufficiently for them to proceed. So they set off again, Greenhill and Pearce half-carrying, half-dragging Travers, whose foot was very swollen. They crossed another mountain range, probably the Wentworth Hills, and on the eastern side they came to a large river, the Nive. Travers, as we have seen, was a non-swimmer, so Greenhill swam across carrying the axe and Pearce crossed with the scraps of Mather’s flesh that remained. They then cut a long wattle pole and pulled Travers across, camping on the east bank of the Nive River that night. Now in flatter, much more open forest country, they struggled on for two more days eastward from the Nive.

  At this stage the inflammation in Travers’s foot was turning black, a sign that gangrene was setting in. Pearce states that on the second night after crossing the river,Travers, who was now in great pain, said again that it would be better for them to abandon him and go on. When the sick man eventually fell asleep, Pearce and Greenhill went off to get some wood for the fire and discussed what they were going to do. According to Pearce it was Greenhill who took the initiative again. He now comes across as appallingly objective and callous about the fate of his friend. The narrative claims that Greenhill said, ‘Pearce, it is of no use being detained any longer by Travers, and we will serve him as the rest’. According to the Cuthbertson narrative, Pearce refused to play any part in this murder, but in the Knopwood account ‘they unanimously agreed to act by him as they had done by the other two’ – actually three, if you count Dalton.

  When they returned to the camp fire, Travers was awake because of the pain, and he begged them to kill him and be done with it. Soon afterwards he fell into a deep sleep. ‘One of them took the axe [most likely Pearce] being driven by the greatest distress and hunger and gave him a blow to the head which soon terminated his life.’ Pearce had no doubt that if the tiger snake had not intervened, it would have been he who would have been killed at this time to provide food for the other two. Despite his earlier callousness, Greenhill ‘was much affected by this horrid scene and stood quite motionless to see one who had been his companion . . . compelled to be slaughtered as food’. They cut Travers’s throat and dissected his body, cooked parts of it on the fire and ate them. ‘Having appeased their appetite they lay themselves down to sleep.’

  For two days Greenhill and Pearce remained where they were and did nothing ‘but gorge themselves on the carcass and sleep’. They then took as much of the body as they could carry and continued on ‘through a very fine country’. Throughout the journey Greenhill had used the sun and moon to maintain an easterly direction, and now they were confident that they were somewhere near the settled districts, or at least close to an isolated stock run.

  From this point the Cuthbertson narrative becomes increasingly sparse in detail, whereas the Knopwood account becomes almost lost in minutiae and editorialising, although in my view maintaining more verisimilitude.The Knopwood text describes a dramatic and increasingly tense interaction between Greenhill and Pearce as they run out of food again and begin to eye each other off as a source of sustenance. By this stage they were probably somewhere west–north-west of the present-day town of Ouse. If this is correct they were actually 16 to 18 kilometres (10 to 12 miles) from the nearest isolated sheep run.

  The place that they were trying to reach, the ‘summit of their hope’, as Pearce calls it, was Table Mountain, a 1095-metre (3350-foot) peak immediately south of Lake Crescent, and at the southern end of the tiers that border the central mountain plateau of the island. This was about 40 kilometres (about 24 miles) east–north-east from where they were, but they did not know that. Pearce knew the Table Mountain area because he had ranged through this country after absconding from his assignment and before being sent to Macquarie Harbour. He knew that there were Irish convicts around that region who would help them. But Table Mountain proved peculiarly difficult to find, probably because by this stage they were unable to think straight and maintain a steady direction. Throughout this period the Aborigines would have continued their observation of the two white escapees.

  Pearce says they left the place where they had slaughtered Travers, protesting to each other ‘the greatest fidelity and friendship, and as they had always travelled by the sun or moon they were confident that they could not be very far from some settlement or stock run’. But despite finding some very good country, any traces of white settlement or even of sheep or cattle runs proved elusive. Pearce then reported that he and Greenhill saw smoke, which turned out to be coming from an Aboriginal camp. He says that knowing that the Aborigines usually have freshly caught game, they decided to charge into the camp brandishing the axe and a large stick, flaying anyone who got in their way. Pearce boasts that the two of them chased off forty to fifty men, women and children, then destroyed the Aborigines’ spears and made off as quickly as possible, ‘for although these natives are not cannibals, there has been several instances of people being barbarously murd
ered by them in several parts of the The Transit of Hell colony’. Pearce claims that a few days later they repeated the performance with another group of between eighteen and twenty Aborigines.

  These stories of attacks by two half-starved white men on large groups of Aborigines seem most unlikely and were almost certainly invented by Pearce. The clans and warriors of the Big River tribe would not have tolerated such behaviour.

  Knowing their home ranges well, the Aborigines would have had no trouble quietly observing the activities of a couple of escaped convicts wandering directionlessly through them. Aborigines were constantly astonished at what they considered the gross ignorance of Europeans.They saw the whites not only as violent people, but also as amazingly stupid when it came to surviving in what they experienced as a plentiful land. The Big River people did not perceive Pearce and Greenhill as a threat, or else they would have been killed, quickly and efficiently. Given the way in which the Tasmanian Aborigines were being dispossessed of their land and abused by well-armed settlers, they would have felt justified in giving short shrift to two half-crazed escapees encroaching their hunting grounds. The most that the two of them probably ever did was to scavenge some remnants of food from abandoned Aboriginal camps, or search for small reptiles, or even look for edible grubs under fallen trees or by tearing off rotten bark.They were perhaps inspired by the yellow-tailed black cockatoos, which tore bark from trees in an attempt to find the larvae of the wood-boring insects that lived underneath.

  Their state was accurately described by Pearce when he says that the two of them ‘were terribly reduced in strength and their constitutions dreadfully impaired by the fatigues of this distressing journey. Being exposed to the night dews and cold, they being nearly naked and quite barefoot, their flesh was dreadfully lacerated and torn by the rocks and briars, [with] ulcers showing themselves in several parts of their bodies’. More and more the journey seemed endless. They were probably not making much headway and wandering around in circles. Also as the days went by they became increasingly suspicious of each other, with a dreadful hopelessness setting in and psychologically sapping the little energy they had left. Greenhill always kept the axe in his possession, which made Pearce wary and edgy. They kept their distance from each other during the day and at night Pearce always made a fire ‘at such a distance from Greenhill as he considered far enough to prevent an attack that might be made by him’. Greenhill always slept with the axe under his head. Pearce became more fearful than ever. He seldom slept. ‘I acted with the greatest precaution never trusting myself near him particularly at night.’

  One night they were both pretending to be asleep when Pearce realised that Greenhill was getting ready to attack him. ‘I immediately rose as though out of a slumber, [pretending] I had not perceived him.’ Greenhill backed off and Pearce reflected that he was lucky he was not really asleep, or else he would have shared the same fate as the other men. So he says he resolved to try to give Greenhill the slip. But this was easier said than done in the country through which they were now travelling. Pearce then decided that he had to get the axe and kill Greenhill in self-defence. He says that they continued along,‘watching each other’. He also claims that Greenhill made several attempts to kill him during this period, but ‘I always guarded against such attempts’.

  In the end this cat-and-mouse game became a test of who could stay awake the longest. It was Pearce who had the staying power. ‘One evening while he was asleep I crept slyly to the brush where he lay and took the axe from under his head, gave him a severe blow on the head which deprived him of his life’. It was as simple as that. He was alone and safe from his companions at last. Pearce bluntly told Cuthbertson that after killing Greenhill ‘I cut off part of his thigh and arm which I took with me, and went on for several days until I had ate it all’.

  But he had still not found Table Mountain. He was soon starving again and struggled on for several more days, when he was lucky enough to catch two ducks which he ate raw. But the end of the journey was near. ‘On the seventh day after leaving Greenhill while travelling through a large marsh I was suddenly surprised at hearing the noise of a flock of sheep, I could not believe my ears.’

  He had not exactly arrived at Table Mountain, the ‘summit of his hope’, but as it turned out he was about 30 kilometres (about 18½ miles) to the south-west of it. Not bad, given that he had been walking through some of the most difficult country in the world for at least forty-nine days. Pearce’s feat in surviving such a journey, by whatever means, was remarkable.

  Pearce’s time of freedom started at that moment at the end of his trek from the harbour. He had been walking for so long that he had lost all sense of time and direction and he feared that he would never get to Table Mountain. It was a hot day and he was in a large, flat, marshy, open plain, bordered on either side by stunted trees with pale cream trunks. His figure was gaunt, his beard long, his whole body covered with cuts, sores and festering wounds. He was hungry again, as it was about four days since he had caught and eaten the ducks. At this stage he felt he was going batty because he had this feeling that someone was always watching him. The feeling had first come upon him after he killed and ate Greenhill, and over the last days and nights he had become absolutely convinced that there was always somebody observing his every move. Several times he had screamed, ‘Come out you bastard and face me’, but no one appeared and all he ever heard was the echo of his own voice.

  When he suddenly heard the familiar plaintive bleating of the sheep from over in the trees, he started to shake and felt like crying. Somehow, he had made it to the settled districts. He had beaten all that the bastards had thrown at him, and he had got through to where other white men lived.

  It did not take him long to find the sheep. At one end, the marshy plain narrowed into a rocky crevice. Beyond that the ground dropped away sharply down a forested hill to a river in a deep, narrow valley. He had always been good at herding sheep; he had once got into a fight because some stupid cove had said it was because he had a lot in common with them! He positioned himself so that he could corral the sheep into the rocky crevice. Despite his hunger, he slowly manoeuvred the mob into place. When frightened, sheep tend to crowd in together, and then jump on and over the top of each other. He quickly spotted a large, well-fed one and grabbed it.The animal was smart enough to turn away from the area into which he had herded the flock, and it dragged him twenty or thirty yards over rocks toward the wooded hillside down to the river. In the end he had to let the sheep go because he was badly cut and bruised. He had also bashed his head severely on an overhanging rock as he tried to stand up to get a better grip on the animal.

  He lay where he fell until the pain cleared a little, and then slowly dragged himself to his feet again. Most of the herd were still standing close by. Sheep are such stupid buggers, he thought, so he tried again to drive a group of them back into the crevice. He cornered about a dozen of them, and grabbed a lamb, dragged it aside, quickly slit its throat and carved it up.The other sheep had scattered in the nearby undergrowth.

  He had hardly started eating when he heard the noise of dogs. He looked up, and a man appeared from behind him and held a musket to his head. With a strong Irish accent he said, ‘Leave the bloody sheep alone, you bastard, or I’ll blow yer brains out! I’ve been tryin’ to find this mob all day, and now, by God, you’ve frightened ’em off again.’

  Looking up at the man Pearce realised that it was one of the McGuire brothers. Pearce smiled and said, ‘I’ll help you find ’em, Paddy.’

  McGuire recognised Pearce’s voice immediately. He dropped the musket.‘Well, fuck me, if it isn’t me ol’ pal, Alex Pearce.What are you doin’ here, me lad? Last I heard you was at Sarah’s Island. What’s wrong wit ya? You look shockin’.’

  As quickly as he could Pearce told McGuire the story of the escape, and of the trek across the wilderness. He did not say what had happened to the others.

  McGuire took pity on him and assured him that he wo
uld look after him. There was some honour, after all, among thieves. They slowly walked to Paddy’s nearby hut at Mosquito’s Creek close to the high plains, crossing both the Ouse and Shannon rivers on the way. McGuire explained to him that while he was officially assigned to a drunken idiot, George Salter, who had a run nearby on the Derwent River, he had actually been hired out to that mean bastard Tom Triffett, whose sheep Pearce had cornered. His brother, Michael McGuire, was also assigned to Salter and he was still at the Dunrobin run looking after Salter’s sheep.

  When they got to the hut, Paddy McGuire nursed him as best as he could. It took Pearce some time to get used to ordinary food again, and all he did for several days was sleep and eat. He stayed five days with Paddy, who treated him very kindly, and once he was able to walk he moved on again, as there was always the danger that an unexpected visitor might arrive who recognised him.

  Supplied with provisions by McGuire, he headed south, following the narrow valley of the Ouse River to its junction with the Derwent. Near here he stayed for another eleven days with Mick, Paddy’s brother. Once he was restored to full health at Mick’s hut, he moved on to his own secret hut, which he had built while he had last been on the run. From there he could range right across the country, knowing the lay of the land exactly. He stayed in his own place for seven days and then returned to Mick McGuire’s while Mick was away in Hobart Town.

  Late on the second night at Mick’s he heard a repeated whistle from outside the hut.When he went out to investigate he found two armed men with several kangaroo dogs.They thought he was a military spy of some sort and threatened to kill him. Eventually he was able to persuade them that he was who he said he was. As he suspected, the men were also escaped convicts on the run.Their names were Ralph Churton and William Davis.The long and the short of it was that he threw in his lot with them. His experience on the run was that he was always better off with a couple of others than on his own. He stayed with them for about seven weeks. Once they had nearly been caught by a party of soldiers from the 48th Regiment when they were droving 180 stolen sheep. They just managed to escape, but they had to abandon the sheep and all their belongings.