Outback Station

by Aaron Fletcher

  "Hiram Baxter has been a foreman for a year," Bethune said, justifying the recommendation. "He's been very diligent in his duties, and there isn't a mark against him on his record. In addition, I think it would be in the best interests of the colony to grant him a pardon."

  "The best interests of the colony?"

  "Yes, Excellency. Baxter is a skilled, experienced shipwright. He's been in contact with James Underwood, the emancipist who owns the shipyard here in Sydney, and Underwood has offered to hire him. Baxter would make a much greater contribution to the economy of the colony by working in his craft than he does as a foreman at Newcastle."

  The governor pursed his lips, pondering a moment longer, then nodded and put the paper aside. "Very well, I'll grant the pardon. It'll be another log on the fire that's cooking my goose in London, but one more won't make that much difference. Even though Baxter has a good record, I give much more weight to your recommendation, Lieutenant Bethune."

  "I'm very gratified by your confidence, Excellency."

  "You've more than earned my confidence," the governor replied, reaching for the report on activities at Newcastle. "In every respect, you've done much better than your predecessor. Also, you haven't had any workers killed in accidents. I had a very difficult time convincing the officer who was there before you that our task is to reform convicts, not kill them."

  "I very narrowly avoided having several men killed two weeks ago," Oliver admitted candidly. "There was a cave-in at the mine that trapped several men and almost smothered them, but one of the convicts kept his wits about him and got the men out. The shoring was faulty, and as it turned out, the man who saved the others is an engineer. His name is David Kerrick, and he's seeing to the shoring throughout the mine now."

  "An engineer?" the governor mused, interested. "What is his offense and term of sentence?"

  "He was sentenced to hang for murder, then it was commuted to transportation for life. However," Oliver added as the governor frowned, "in Kerrick's records, I found some basis for what he did. It seems that a man named Wesley Hammond was making free with Kerrick's wife while Kerrick was away on a construction project. When he came home, Kerrick caught Hammond with his wife."

  Governor Macquarie sighed, nodding in understanding. "Yes, that puts it in a different light, doesn't it? Kerrick must have had the help of many friends to get a sentence for murder commuted to transportation."

  "Judging from the records, there was influence on both sides. Hammond's father, Sir Leland Hammond, is a Yorkshire squire and apparently did his best to see that Kerrick was hanged. On the other hand, Kerrick had been the principal engineer on several projects in York, and he had recommendations for clemency from the aldermen and the mayor."

  The governor nodded, stroking his chin. "That must have been a close inning, but it turned out well. There is a Nevil Hammond here in Sydney, a lawyer. I wonder if he's related to the Yorkshire Hammonds."

  "I've no idea, Excellency, because I'm not acquainted with the man. The name isn't all that common, though, so it seems likely."

  "Yes, that's true. What sort of man is Kerrick?"

  "Not one to trifle with, because he's knocked heads among the convicts from time to time. However, he bothers no one when he's left alone, and he's more considerate of the men who work for him than most. All in all, I regard him as the best foreman at Newcastle."

  "Well, that sounds very favorable, and I could make good use of that man here, Lieutenant. I have ample laborers and sufficient craftsmen for construction work, but only one man more or less qualified to oversee an entire project. That's my architect, who isn't the best of supervisors, and we have several works in progress. An experienced engineer should be able to oversee the construction of a building."

  The lieutenant smiled wryly. "I'm sure he could, but it appears that I've talked myself out of a good foreman, Excellency."

  "No more than you did with Baxter," the governor pointed out. "Kerrick will be of greater advantage to the colony if he can get a building completed here, and in a better position to help himself. I reward good work, and I might consider a ticket-of-leave or a conditional pardon for him. He can never leave Australia, but he could make the best of his situation here."

  "It isn't my concern, of course," Oliver said hesitantly, "but if that lawyer in Sydney is related to the Yorkshire Hammonds, he would undoubtedly hear about it and be very angry if Kerrick were given his freedom. And if Hammond has friends in London, he could cause trouble."

  "I'm sure he has friends in London, because he's from there, and he moved here with his family only some months ago. However, my duty is to administer justice, not to provide people with revenge. I can look forward to having Kerrick here very shortly, then?''

  "Yes, Excellency. When I return to Newcastle, I'll send him on the next vessel."

  The governor nodded in satisfaction, the discussion moving on to other subjects. As they talked, Oliver's thoughts were divided between the conversation and wondering if he would find letters from his family and friends waiting for him when he went to the postal office. He wistfully hoped he would, and that they would contain encouraging news about his chances of being transferred to a regiment in India or Africa.

  On a rainy, windy afternoon a week later, David Kerrick arrived in Sydney on a trading barque that shuttled between ports in New Zealand and Australia. While other convicts at outlying locations tried to get sent to the capitol, it didn't matter to him. One place was the same as any other. But from what he had been told, he would be kept busy here, which was what he wanted. Work occupied his mind and made him weary so he could sleep through the long, lonely nights.

  His belongings rolled in his blanket and slung over his back, he went ashore in a boat with part of the crew, who talked in eager anticipation about going to the Pissmire. With rain dripping from eaves and the streets muddy, only a few people moved about the town. Having spent a few weeks in a chain gang immediately after his arrival, he was familiar with Sydney. So ignoring the rain soaking into his clothes, David made his way toward the convict compound.

  At the dingy, cluttered compound office, the illiterate guard on duty passed David's travel authorization to the convict clerk. The clerk read it, smiling ironically. "Not only is he in browns, but he's here at the governor's personal command, Corporal Atkins," the man commented. "Perhaps we have a peer of the realm amongst us now."

  "Aye, I noticed the fine carriage he came here in," the guard grunted sourly. "What's his name, and what's he to do?"

  "David Kerrick, and there's an order from the commandant on him," the clerk replied, rummaging through papers on a table. He separated one, looking at it. "Here it is. He's to go to Parramatta and work for Francis Greenway. That's the one who got a pardon from the governor as soon as he came here because he knows how to build churches and such."

  The guard nodded and motioned impatiently. "I know who Greenway is. Write him out a pass to Parramatta and be quick about it."

  Taking a piece of paper and a pen, the clerk wrote out the travel credential in an awkward scrawl, then handed it to the guard. As the guard examined it closely, exercising his petty authority, the clerk stood out of his line of view and grimaced at him derisively.

  "Go eat in the cookhouse," the guard told David, handing him the paper, "then find a cot in the barracks. Tomorrow, take the road up the river, and you'll come to Parramatta. Show this to somebody in the cookhouse before you leave, and they'll give you some tucker to carry along. It'll take you a good part of the day to get there on foot."

  "The assembly," the clerk reminded the guard as David turned away and started to leave the office.

  "Aye, that's right," the guard said. "All convicts are to assemble in the courtyard at sunrise tomorrow. We probably won't have a sunrise because of the weather, but be there anyway."

  "What's the purpose of the assembly?" David asked.

  "You'll find out soon enough," the guard replied brusquely as the clerk grinned knowingly. "Just be the
re."

  David left the office and went through the wind and rain to join the convicts crowding into the noisy, dirty cookhouse. Receiving a slice of stale bread and a piece of boiled, unsalted fish, he sat down at a table. While eating, he heard others talking about the assembly. Two convicts who had fled into the wilderness had become bushrangers, preying on travelers and isolated farms. Having been captured, they were to be hanged the next morning, and all convicts in Sydney were to observe the hanging as a warning to any who might be tempted to try the same thing.

  In one of the littered, grimy wings of the decrepit barracks, David found an empty cot, a rough board attached to the wall. During his few weeks of living in the hut at Newcastle, he had become gratefully accustomed to solitude in a place he had kept clean which made the stench and congestion of these barracks seem even worse. After sleeping fitfully through the night, he was awakened by guards who entered the barracks before dawn, shouting for everyone to assemble in the courtyard.

  Light rain was still falling as David went out into the darkness and toward the courtyard at the side of the compound with the other men. Away from the shelter of the buildings, the drizzle swept across the courtyard ahead of the gusty, icy wind, and the convicts shivered and cursed resentfully. As a gray, gloomy dawn broke, the guards moved about and shouted, arranging the convicts in ranks and ordering them to be silent.

  Across the courtyard was a wooden triangle, its apex turned down, where convicts were tied to be lashed. Near it was a gallows, the two nooses hanging from the crossbeam swaying in the wind. As he waited, David reflected that as an object lesson, the assembly utterly failed its intended purpose as many of the convicts looked forward to the hanging as entertainment.

  A few minutes later, a procession came from the guardhouse, led by two drummers beating a marching tattoo, followed by the commandant and a clergyman. Behind them were the two prisoners and guards. One of the prisoners was sullenly defiant, trying to shrug away from the guards gripping his arms, while the other one wept and sagged on his feet as the guards dragged him.

  At the gallows, the drums fell silent as the guards escorted the convicts up the steps. The guards centered the men on the trap doors under the nooses, and the weeping prisoner flinched from the rope as the wind brushed it against him. The clergyman mounted the steps and took out his prayer book as he stood beside the sobbing man. He put a hand on the man's shoulder, his voice inaudible to David as he read from the book.

  As the clergyman moved toward the other convict, the man turned and spat at him. Pocketing his prayer book, the clergyman descended the steps. Standing at the foot of the gallows, the commandant spoke to the convict who was weeping, and the man shook his head as he sobbed. The commandant then spoke to the other convict.

  "Aye, I have some last words," the man snarled. "To bloody hell with all of you, with the bleeding governor leading the flaming parade and you bringing up the arse of it, where you bloody belong."

  With the wind ruffling the tassels on his epaulettes, the commandant turned away and motioned to the guards. They fitted cloth bags over the convicts' heads, tying them around the neck, then put the nooses in place and filed down the steps. One of the guards stood at the lever on the side of the gallows, his hand on it as he looked at the commandant.

  The drums boomed into a steady roll, the sound rising and falling in the eddying wind. As the commandant motioned, the drums abruptly fell silent and the guard jerked the lever down. The two convicts plummeted, the trap doors opening under them. The ropes snapped taut, and the two men bounced as their necks broke with loud cracks that sounded like wood breaking. They wriggled and jerked convulsively, then became motionless.

  As he left the courtyard in the crowd of convicts, David heard some of the men laughing and discussing other hangings they had seen that had been more entertaining, the hanged men having taken longer to die. Others were silent, their mood matching his.

  After he ate in the cookhouse, he showed his travel authorization to a convict cook who brought him a piece of bread and two boiled potatoes.

  When he reached the road to Parramatta at the edge of town, the wind and rain diminished. A few minutes later, the rain stopped entirely, the wind dying away to a breeze, and by the time David was a mile from the town, the clouds were breaking up. It became a bright, cheerful winter day, the sun warm enough to dry his clothes.

  During the first hour of his walk, David noticed that houses were scattered along the road which teemed with people on foot, riders, and carts taking produce to Sydney. Then the houses were left behind, replaced by farms set back in the fields, and the traffic thinned out. After a while, David was the only one on the road as it wound through open forest near the Parramatta River.

  At noon, he stopped in a grove beside the river to eat. It was a pleasant, rustic scene among the ancient eucalyptuses with mounds of bark at their bases and strings of half-shed bark hanging from them. Overhead, the cries of parrots darting through the trees blended with the chatter of pipits and swallows. A few yards away through the silvery boles of the trees, the river was wide and placid, mirroring overhanging branches.

  After he ate, David sat and rested for a few minutes. In the solitude of the grove, he felt almost content, at peace with himself and the world. It was an unusual mood for him, but his sorrow and troubles seemed to be very distant for once.

  The feeling ended as he took out his watch. Looking at his former wife's portrait, he yearned to cast the watch into the river and banish her from his life, but cutting off one of his arms would have been easier. His love for her remained a vital part of him, even though it was like a devouring cancer. He put away the watch and picked up his blanket roll, then returned to the road, resuming his trek.

  With farms and small sheep stations scattered around it, Parramatta was a bustling hamlet of several hundred people with shady avenues of tidy houses set around a cobblestone street of shops. The buildings in the convict compound on the north side of the village were characteristically drab and shabby. As he went toward them, he saw a very large, two-story stone building in the early stages of construction a short distance from the compound.

  Between the barracks and cookhouse was a long, low building, divided into individual rooms, which the guard at the compound office pointed out as the foreman's quarters. He told David to take the end room and then report to Francis Greenway at the building under construction. David left his belongings in the room and went to the construction site.

  The frame of the immense building had been completed, along with part of the roof, and masons were laying lower courses of stone. David looked around as he went through the gaping entrance, seeing that some flooring was in place, as well as beams for partitions. With the roof still incomplete, the rain of the past few days had drenched the interior.

  As saws rasped and hammers resounded, David made his way past carpenters and their helpers to a ladder serving as a staircase. Francis Greenway was on the second floor, his suit and cravat standing out among the men in canary woolens as he pored over the building plans on a workbench. In his early forties, the architect was a short, portly man with thinning hair and a sparse, stringy beard and mustache.

  He had a nervous, artistic temperament, his normal expression an anxious frown. As they exchanged greetings, Francis appeared to be relieved that David had arrived, but impatient because of the interruption of his work. While he eagerly wanted help, Francis seemed reluctant to entrust part of the work to anyone else. He showed David the building plans, questioning him closely about the work he had done before.

  "Several bridges," David told the architect, "with spans up to a hundred feet. I built breakwaters and stone piers at Hull and aqueducts at Leeds. I also did several projects in York, including a new waterworks, but I didn't see the waterworks through to completion."

  "But no large public buildings?" Francis mused doubtfully.

  "No, but this seems straightforward enough," David replied, looking at the plans. "Apparently it'
s going to be a barracks."

  The architect nodded, explaining that it would house six hundred convicts. He told David that the number of variously skilled craftsmen working on the building was more than adequate. In addition, a large number of the convicts at the Parramatta compound had been allocated to the project as laborers.

  "However," he added, "it's supposed to be finished by next summer, but it's far behind schedule. In addition to this, I have other buildings under construction and I'm constantly shuttling back and forth between here and Sydney. But most of my problems are with this building."

  "There's much to be done before it'll be finished," David commented, looking around, "and work always proceeds more slowly during winter."

  "Indeed," Francis agreed. "The rain during the past few days has been dreadful, and I'm very concerned about these beams."

  "Well, they're seasoned hardwood, and they haven't come to any harm yet. If the roof is finished before more rain comes, the beams should dry without warping or cracking."

  "I hope so," Francis sighed worriedly, putting the plans into a portfolio. "If the completion of this building is delayed even more, the governor will be very dissatisfied. I'll go around the site with you and point out the particulars."

  As they walked, the architect explained details of the work, as well as talked about himself. He said he had been falsely accused of forging a signature on a building contract in Bath, then had suffered the additional misfortune of having a perfidious judge at his trial. Upon receiving a pardon after arriving in Australia, he had brought his wife and children and lived in a comfortable house in Sydney.

  It was similar to what David had heard from others of professional status, many of whom claimed innocence of any wrongdoing. In contrast, petty criminals often attempted to portray themselves as worse than they were, trying to impress others. In both instances, he believed the truth usually lay somewhere in the middle with very few cases of misplaced justice and the truly innocent convicted.