The Rum Rebellion

by Libby Gleeson

  It has been such a hot, still day. When I lie down to sleep I will see ahead of me the golden stalks and feel in me the rhythm of walking and cutting and gathering. It will go on all day, all week.

  Sunday 18th December

  This evening, after the O’Farrells had left, I was sitting under the tree with Ellen. She was rubbing my tired shoulders with a little fat and emu oil when a dark shape appeared in the half-light. I felt her stiffen and I caught my breath, waiting to see if this was someone intent on robbing us or causing us harm.

  ‘It is me,’ called the figure. ‘Jim.’

  Ellen started to laugh and called to him, ‘I thought you were an Indian or one of those escaped convicts, set on harming us.’

  ‘Well, I sort of am,’ he said, ‘an old convict—but not intent on harm.’ He came and sat down near us and told us of what had prompted him to leave.

  ‘It was Arthur,’ he said. ‘He told us that he knew that your Uncle was going to go to gaol and that if we wanted to get away no-one was going to look too hard for us. He would not tell us who his contact was, but he made it sound like he knew what he was talking about. It was his idea to take the cattle. I went with them, just thinking what it would be like to be free but he is a mean terror of a man and he was the one who said where we were going and what we would do.

  ‘I got to thinking. I have only six more months till my ticket-of-leave. Six more months. I was stupid to listen to him. Ebenezer never argued with him but I did a couple of times and he got so wild I thought he would knock my head from my shoulders. He said he would. So I took off. Two days ago when we were nearly at the junction of the rivers. I have walked nonstop to get here.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’ said Sarah.

  ‘Only Indian food. I thought of breaking into a house but then I thought that would go against me if I were caught and I might suffer as I have done in time past. So it has just been berries and I took peaches from a place past O’Farrell’s.’

  Ellen went inside to get him something.

  Dog was lying across my feet.

  ‘What happened to Dog?’ I said.

  ‘Arthur,’ said Jim. ‘The dog would not stop barking and I could not see properly in the dark but Arthur swung at him with his boot and then there was no more sound.’

  He ate then and I told him everything that had happened.

  ‘I will work on the harvest. I will work like a Trojan if you will put in a good word when your Uncle returns.’

  ‘Done,’ I said, and I settled back to watch him eating like a man possessed.

  Monday 19th December

  Jim has been as good as his word. He works as hard as two or three men. As we walk along the row I grasp five or six heads to cut with the sickle and then after I do that four or five times I have a sheaf. Jim’s huge arms hold six times that and he moves so quickly along the row. Today, Daniel O’Farrell said he would not come tomorrow, as there is no need of him now Jim has returned. I do hope Kitty keeps coming though.

  Tuesday 20th December

  A long day spent stacking the last sheaves of wheat. Jim finished cutting the last of the rows and Kitty, Georgie and I walked behind gathering everything up into great piles. My leg gave me no trouble at all today. Tomorrow we will harness one of the bullocks to the cart and bring the wheat to the threshing shed.

  When we returned tonight my Aunt was up from her bed. She says she has been up all day today. She is clearly still weak and cannot work but she listened to William and Eliza read this morning and said her fever has subsided.

  She has written to my Uncle to tell him that the harvest has finished and that the threshing will begin. She has told him something of each of the children—their play and the great assistance they have been as we all work together. She is worried that he will not be able to keep the food that Mr Lewin brings to him, nor keep clean in that terrible place.

  Wednesday 21st December

  Mr Lewin is here. He came this morning with letters from my Uncle, and he plans to stay and paint for two days. There is a letter for each one of us—even John who would probably eat his if we gave it to him. Everything his little hands can reach becomes food.

  Dear Davy,

  I have thought much of you and your situation since I am forced to be idle here. I remember what a quiet, pale lad you were when you arrived and now I am struck by how grown and how responsible you have become. In those early days I feared that you would not find our new country to your liking and that the sadness you felt at your Parents’ death would turn to bitterness. I believe, and I hope I am right, that this is not the case.

  Thank you for the help you are providing your Aunt and the children in this time of trouble. Without you their situation would be far worse and my circumstance here unbearable.

  I hope you are able to understand why I have taken the position that I have. I was raised, as I hope were you, to believe that a man must follow his conscience. Captain Macarthur and his ilk believe the Colony is best served when they increase their personal fortunes. I believe it is best served when honest farming men are encouraged to work hard for themselves and for the common good. They deserve a just return for their labour.

  The time will come when those who perpetrated this Rebellion must return to England and face the consequences. I pray that day will come soon.

  This sad time will pass and we will be together again.

  Your loving Uncle,

  George Suttor

  Thursday 22nd December

  Mr Lewin is busy all day. He sits at the edge of the creek and is painting the flowers and grasses that grow on the bank. He said his bird book is so beautiful that now he wants to make one of the flowering plants.

  Sometimes he starts with little sketches and puts colour on them and then he judges them to be not quite right and he discards them and begins again. Already he has given some of these to me. He showed me how to mix the colours and I helped him with one tiny flower. Its leaves are a beautiful blue-green. I have an idea for something special.

  Tonight we must all write to Uncle George. Georgie and Eliza can compose their own letters but they and I must also write for Thomas, William and Sarah. Mr Lewin will deliver these for us.

  Friday 23rd December

  It is raining today. Ellen is making mince pies. How different it was last year when I first arrived. My Aunt was well and my Uncle would come in from his work and hoist a child on his shoulder and greet her with a whiskery kiss. Now she sits here, listening as Eliza reads the story of the first Christmas and stumbles over words such as ‘Bethlehem’ and ‘Judea’. I know her mind is with my Uncle. How can it be Christmas without him?

  Saturday 24th December

  We are to share Christmas lunch with all the families of the area. Mr McDougall and Mr Smith are to be released this evening and will be home on Christmas Eve. This time, the O’Farrells are to eat with us too. Only my Uncle will be absent. The older ones understand but William and Thomas ask each day when he will return.

  Every evening for the past few days I have gone down to Jim’s hut and I have taken the wooden animals that my Father made me. Together we are making similar ones as gifts.

  At moments such as this I cannot believe Jim is a convict. At first I wanted to ask him why he was transported and why he wears the scars of the lash upon his back. Now it does not seem important. Dog lies at my feet as I scratch at the wood with my knife. I fear my Kangaroo looks like a Bushrat but Jim says that Thomas will not mind.

  I have four figures finished and two more to do. I wish Uncle George were here to help.

  Christmas Day, 1808

  I have looked back at what I wrote last year. Then I did not know Kitty and Patrick and their family and I had no idea that the year would bring such events. After the church service that Mr McDougall conducted in the absence of any Reverend, we again lay on the banks of the creek and ate our fill. If my Uncle had been there it would have been perfect.

  My Kangaroos were a great success. No-one sai
d they looked like rats and Thomas and William immediately lined them up in the grass to play.

  After lunch, when the youngest children fell asleep and the adults rested in the shade, talking quietly with each other, Kitty and I went back up to the house.

  ‘I have a present for you,’ I said.

  I reached into my sea chest and took out a flat parcel I had wrapped and stored between the pages of A Pilgrim’s Progress.

  She sat on the floor and looked at it. ‘I have never had a wrapped-up present before,’ she said. Then she untied the string and lifted the paper so it did not crush. A flower painting of delicate pink buds on stems with blue-green leaves lay in her lap.

  ‘It is from Mr Lewin,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said softly. ‘It is by me. My first ever, and it is for you.’

  ‘It is beautiful, Davy, beautiful. I have never owned anything so beautiful.’

  She held it out in front of her and I saw that my leaves truly matched her eyes. Those eyes then turned to me and they were filled with tears. I swear, if Georgie had not come bursting in I would have kissed her on the spot.

  Saturday 31st December

  New Year’s Eve again and Georgie, Jim and I lay in the shallows of the creek after our hoeing was done. We do it so often now that I do not flinch when the water strikes my face. Georgie even dives under the water like a fish and brings up shiny coloured stones from the bottom. Perhaps, in time, I too will do this.

  Sunday 1st January 1809

  The New Year begins but my log is almost finished. Am I a ship about to anchor? I have only three remaining pages. Some months ago, I was afraid that without my log I would become distressed. Recording in this book was truly as the Surgeon said—as necessary as taking medicine for an illness.

  But that cannot be the case now. When I look back over my words in the early days they are foreign to me—not as foreign as the language of the Indians, but it is hard to believe that they were my own thoughts and feelings. There is no room to record the next few weeks, and my birthday which Aunt Sarah says we must celebrate with gifts and cakes and some joy even though my Uncle will be absent.

  Nor will I mark the passing of twelve months from the moment of the Rebellion for there is a matter of great importance still to happen. I must wait and record it when the time comes.

  31st March 1809

  Great importance indeed!

  We are in Sydney again, with Mr Lewin, but not because my Uncle has been released. For that we must wait a little longer. Something of almost equal significance is happening today, something to bring us all great happiness and we are to witness it. I shall take my pen and this log with me and enter the events as they happen.

  Now we are gathered on the South Head. There is a great party of us: my Aunt Sarah and all the children, the Smiths and the McDougalls are here, the O’Farrells, Mr Lewin and Mr Caley and more friends of theirs. There are others whom I do not know but still they are here for celebration. It is like Christmas and only my Uncle is absent.

  There is beautiful sunshine and we eat plum cake and the children roll on the grass and everyone is happy. Even my Aunt is smiling. It is John Bligh’s birthday, and he claps his hands and laughs and tears open the gifts that some of the people have given him. But it is not only his birthday that has brought us here.

  ‘Write what a glorious day this is,’ Mr Lewin bows extravagantly in front of me. He has discarded his coat and has rolled up his sleeves. He and Mr McDougall raise their glasses in a toast, and so I do.

  ‘A sail, a sail,’ calls John McDougall and we all stop our talking and turn down the harbour to where a ship, the Admiral Gambier with full rigging, is coming slowly towards the opening to the Pacific Ocean. On board that ship is John Macarthur, and Major Johnston is with him. They are going back to England to trial and a new Governor will soon be with us.

  Our merry band is given to cheering and cries of ‘Hip Hip Hooray!’ fly across the water.

  ‘Good riddance,’ calls Daniel O’Farrell, and his cry is echoed many times over.

  The ship draws nearer and we can see the sailors on deck and working the rigging. The figure in the Crow’s Nest waves and we all wave back. Our company falls silent. We stare as the ship passes us and begins to rock on the rougher white caps of the open sea. We cannot believe that he is gone.

  Kitty is beside me. She and her family are returning to their farm tonight. We will follow in a few more days.

  She points to a young woman who is talking to John McDougall. ‘They are getting married, and taking up land on the Hawkesbury,’ she says.

  I watch the couple. John has his head bent so close to hers that his brown hair almost catches in the strings of her bonnet.

  ‘I know,’ I say even though I did not.

  ‘When you are a man, Davy Bellamy,’ she says, ‘I am going to marry you.’

  ‘I may not ask you,’ I say and I feel a warm scarlet glow rise up over my neck and face.

  ‘You will,’ she says and she flashes those blue, green eyes and then rolls, laughing, down the grassy slope to where the children are playing.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  In 1808 New South Wales had been a prison colony for twenty years. Sydney and Parramatta were small towns on the edge of vast bushland. Their buildings were small, the roads were dusty in dry weather and muddy in wet, there were almost no shops, there was no running water and communication was very poor. Letters to London took between five and seven months.

  The population was largely convicts, ex-convicts and the soldiers of the New South Wales Regiment. A very small group of free settlers lived in the town and the farming community around the Hawkesbury River and the Hills District north of Parramatta.

  The Aboriginal population suffered terribly as the new settlers encroached upon their lands. Many died from introduced diseases such as measles and smallpox. Those who survived were driven from their country as farmers and their crops and stock took up land. Aboriginal communities lost access to their hunting grounds and to the rivers where they had caught fish, eels, tortoise and platypus. Throughout the 1790s and until 1802, in the region north and west of Parramatta, there was effectively a state of war. Families such as the Suttors were part of the great injustice on the Dharug people, the original inhabitants of the region of Western Sydney.

  The early Governors of the colony were naval men, accustomed to commanding fleets of ships. Their orders were to raise food crops and livestock so that after two years the colony would be self-sufficient. To achieve this, each officer was given a small amount of land to cultivate. Convicts whose term had expired were granted thirty acres of land and free settlers were granted much larger amounts. In the beginning, much time and effort went into constructing buildings.

  Very few of the convicts had farming experience and many crops failed in the different conditions of the new land. It was felt that more free settlers were needed to produce food.

  A conflict quickly arose. Should the colony be developed with small farms, worked by free settlers and a few convict labourers, or should a smaller number of free men have very large farms with many convicts assigned to them? These wealthy landowners would also play an important role in developing trade with Europe, India and America.

  Governor Bligh was a firm supporter of the small farmers. His attempts to limit the power of the wealthy and of the officers in the New South Wales Regiment led to the rebellion of 1808. The events were very much as Davy describes them. The soldiers and the wealthy settlers were led by Major George Johnston and Captain John Macarthur. Strong opposition to the rebellion was voiced by many of the small farmers, including George Suttor.

  George Suttor was a free settler. He had been sponsored by Joseph Banks and came to the colony in 1800 to establish himself as a small farmer and nurseryman. He brought with him his wife and son and his family grew rapidly in the next eight years.

  George believed in the vision that Governor Bligh had for the new land. He also felt that the colony nee
ded to move from being a prison to a community where free men had the same rights as they did in England. That did not mean a democratically elected parliament. It meant trial by a jury of other free men—not soldiers, not women and not Aboriginals. It meant limiting the power of the military.

  In those early, disorganised years there was no single system of money in the colony. You could receive your wages or the payment for your maize crop in goods—food or farm tools. The most common payment was in rum—alcohol—and every writer of the period talks of the drunkenness of the population.

  The officers bought rum off the trading ships at one price and then sold it to others in the colony for much, much more. They made such high profits that every Governor did his best to control the trade. Men like John Macarthur fought against the Governors to maintain their wealth and power.

  News of the rebellion took months to reach England, and a new Governor, Lachlan Macquarie, was not appointed until May 1809. He arrived in Sydney on 28 December of that year.

  He carried instructions to restore Governor Bligh for one day then to send him back to England. He was also to arrest Major Johnston and send him to England for trial before a court martial. He was to arrest and try John Macarthur before a criminal court in Sydney. But Johnston and Macarthur had sailed for England on 31 March 1809, on the Admiral Gambier.

  Meanwhile Governor Bligh had spent most of 1808 imprisoned at Government House. Arrangements were made for him to return to England in March 1809, but instead Bligh ordered the ship he was travelling on to sail south to Hobart. Perhaps he hoped to receive support from the officers in that colony or from a British warship. Such help never came and he returned to Sydney ten days after Macquarie’s arrival.