‘Things will get worse before they get better,’ Bronzewing agreed.
‘Do you believe that? That things will get better?’ Jardi stabbed the knife in the dirt at his feet. ‘What will you tell Lycett when he asks you about the burning? And what will he do when we burn again? My father will not be stopped and I fear there will be trouble.’
Bronzewing spat out the soggy grass stem. ‘I know.’
Chapter 5
1837 August – en route to Parramatta
‘Told her not to go I did, but these young things never listen. Do you listen, dear? It’s important to listen to your elders.’ Kate nodded politely to the talkative woman, one of five travelling companions since joining the Sydney coach at Ashfield, and held onto the timber surround that was all that separated her and Mrs Allen from the road below. Dust spun up from beneath the carriage wheels, the grit clouding the stone road as it grew small in the distance. At any minute Kate expected to be jolted from the rear outside seat to land with a thud on the road. The wide stone thoroughfare of Parramatta Road may have been considered quicker than taking a boat down the safer Parramatta River but it had been a rough journey.
‘You’ll be right, love,’ one of the male travellers called from the carriage roof where he was perched between baggage.
Kate was unsure whether he alluded to the roughness of the journey or the chance of attack by either natives, highwaymen or both. Apparently such incidents happened frequently, a fact that was confirmed by the driver who’d warned them to keep an eye out. The man who’d called to her kept a musket in hand. Kate had spent most of the trip looking at the thick bush they passed through, her stomach knotted by nerves.
‘So I says to her,’ Mrs Allen continued, ‘you go then. Pack yourself up and head to Sydney Town, but if you end up with some down-at-heel soldier or sailor with nothing to show for himself except a toothy smile and a mile of promises, don’t come running back to me. Looked at me, she did. Told me to mind me own business. My own daughter. She’ll end up with a bastard, she will, and the poor little blighter will be found on the streets wandering with the rest of the homeless urchins and be taken to one of them orphanages.’ Mrs Allen blew her nose loudly into a handkerchief, and then coughed up a mess of something from the back of her throat and spat the globule over the side of the moving carriage.
Apart from a few other drays and wagons, the majority of the traffic was confined to the hostelries located at intervals along the Sydney to Parramatta road. These rest stops serviced many travellers, but with spring soon to arrive, shorn wool was already being brought to market. Kate was intrigued by the many settlers with drayloads of wool, who were talking animatedly to buyers on the side of the road. One such merchant cut a slash in a bale as Kate’s carriage rolled past and, pulling free a handful of wool, examined it carefully then spoke animatedly to the man next to him. The settler frowned, shook his head and made a show of moving on.
A row of timber cottages, each with a waft of chimney smoke lingering in the sky, suggested they neared their destination. Drays of cut wood and carts of lime fought for space with those walking; men, women and children, convicts and free settlers. Those with horses, well-to-do settlers and the military skirted past the traffic, giving little time for people to move aside. A gang of convicts were repairing part of the road, carrying stones back and forth under the watchful gaze of the military. None of the men looked up when the carriage rolled past.
‘Parramatta!’ the driver yelled, stringing the word out so that all could hear.
‘Home at last.’ Mrs Allen nudged Kate in the arm and pointed to the north. A glimpse of the town appeared through the trees. Open land, pretty in its gentle undulations, folded inwards to Parramatta proper, with its carefully laid-out streets and the spires of a church. ‘Mr Howell’s wind and watermill. I always feel better when I see them sails.’
The wind and watermill featured picturesquely in the foreground, the four long arms of the windmill rising up from the banks of the Parramatta River as if standing protectively over the town.
‘I’ve heard it on good authority that Mrs Elizabeth Howell is involved in the business. A woman, with a family to rear and all. She helped birth my Margery’s boy, she did.’
The horses slowed and the carriage came to a rolling stop. Kate stepped stiffly down. For a moment it was as if she still moved and she leant against the coach for balance, as her travelling companion bustled past.
‘You’ll get your land legs soon enough, lass,’ the older woman called. ‘Parched, I am, and in need of a feed. They keep a good table inside. Come join me.’
‘Thank you but I’m not hungry,’ Kate lied. Tugging at her bonnet, she watched the woman enter the inn and then sheltered from the morning sun beneath the bark-roofed verandah. Kate was wind-blown, her bottom hurt from the hard seat and her skin felt tight from the sun, but she refused to show her discomfort as the Reverend stepped from the interior of the carriage. An extra shilling to travel inside was not forthcoming for her journey. He dusted off his clothes and, barely acknowledging her presence, waited as travelling trunks and bags were unloaded. The postman exchanged the brown leather pouch slung over his shoulders for a bag of mail for Sydney with his Parramatta counterpart and then joined the other passengers inside the inn.
Return passengers for Sydney were already milling about the staging post as horses were unhitched and led away to be watered and four fresh ones brought forward. Sweat from both man and beast mingled in the air as the Reverend waited some ten feet from where Kate stood. She would have dearly loved something cool to drink and a tasty bite to eat, but with no coin to her name she contented herself with the chunk of bread Madge had pressed into her hand on leaving. She bit into the hard dough, chewing slowly. There was barely enough spittle in her mouth to moisten the bread but she was grateful for it. Kate had not looked behind as the rickety dray trundled away from the Reverend’s farm, even though they’d lined up to see her leaving; Madge, the new girl in the kitchen and the old Welsh gardener.
Wiping crumbs from her face, Kate rewrapped the portion of bread and tucked it into her mother’s empty drawstring bag. Lesley Carter had been dead this past month, however Kate’s decision to leave the Reverend was made the day following her burial. At times her resolve had weakened. To throw away the known for the unknown, to tempt the fates was a steadying thought. For his part the Reverend, having expressed his anger, simply stopped talking to her. The school was closed. He sent the children to plead with her. Young Thomas Prescott gave her a hangman’s stare. The lad was to be sent away to learn a trade, indentured to a wheel-wright. Even Madge expressed her disbelief at Kate’s decision, growing sullen and bitter as the departure date grew nearer. Better the devil you know, were her words of advice.
Kate hadn’t known a person’s heart could hurt so much. Although she and her mother had grown apart, her death had struck her forcibly. Kate missed her with every breath she took. In the grief that stalked the hours following her mother’s death, she did consider staying with the Reverend, in putting the children’s needs before her own, in assuming her mother’s role. Yet Kate only saw two roads that could be taken: abide by her decision to leave and start a new life, whatever that may be, or remain where she was and live as a hypocrite, an impossibility after all she’d said and thought about her mother’s arrangement with Reverend Horsley. And yet as she waited outside the inn, with strangers milling about, Kate felt more than uneasy. Had she made the right decision?
‘Be on yer guard all of youse travelling to Syd-e-ney. We might be in this fancy carriage but there are bushrangers and natives on the Parramatta Road and they’re not afraid of showing themselves, if you know what I mean.’ The driver hitched his trousers up. ‘We’ll be leaving in thirty minutes. So look sharp, the lot of you.’
A dray pulled up behind the carriage and the driver, a narrow-headed man with a thick beard and bandy legs, scanned the people outside the inn before picking the Reverend out of the crowd. He jump
ed from the dray. ‘You be ’im that’s going to Mr Kable’s farm then, Father?’ His Irish accent was thick and rough.
‘I am not a priest, I’m Reverend Horsley, but yes, my companion and I are –’
‘Well then, let’s get you loaded. They don’t normally send a dray but considering it’s the likes of you, Father.’
Kate took one look at the Reverend’s sour face and did her best not to laugh.
The Reverend sighed, beckoned to Kate and soon they were sitting on a hard bench seat behind the driver, Kate’s grand mother’s travelling trunk and the Reverend’s bag stored in the rear of the dray.
‘I’ll take you the scenic route, Father. I’d be appreciative if you keep that pistol of yours at the ready.’
The Reverend rested the flintlock on his thigh.
The dray passed a roadside inn where a group of men stood in a ring, cheering partially dressed Aboriginals. The dark men weaved about the circle, their legs unsteady, clearly drunk. Two of them were fighting, and the men were taking bets and enjoying the sport. The men called out coo-ee, one making a lurid remark about what he could do for her if Kate had a mind for a bit of sport. Her eyes grew to the size of organ stops, and she blushed and turned away. The Reverend, his knobbly knees bumping against hers, too close for comfort, clucked his tongue disapprovingly. The two-seater dray, seemingly springless, with a pair of headstrong horses that were a poor substitute for the set of four Cleveland Bays who’d pulled them so efficiently to Parramatta, clattered across the road and then veered right.
Around the curve of the road the white walls of the Governor’s residence gradually appeared. The building rose from atop a hill, its symmetrical lines softened by the surrounding manicured grounds. Kate watched the ruling seat of the colony until timber obscured its beauty. Far from feeling she was in the centre of life, the further they travelled from Parramatta, the more ill at ease she became.
The Reverend’s cottage may have been isolated but at least there she’d been between Sydney and Parramatta. This road they travelled led them away from the bustle of civilisation, towards the mountains and lands she’d never seen. Kate thought of Mrs Allen, of her daughter Margery and the windmill and bakery. Maybe she should have enquired as to the possibility of work in Parramatta. Maybe Mrs Allen could have helped her. The dray bumped and jolted them at every step. A chill afternoon breeze wound down from the distant mountains.
‘Stop fidgeting, Kate,’ the Reverend complained.
‘It’s the bumps,’ she told him, noting that he seemed intent on sitting right in the middle of the seat. ‘Could you move over a little please?’ She could feel her hipbone growing bruised where it lodged against the dray’s timber side.
‘You can always get out and walk,’ the driver called over his shoulder. ‘Four miles to go.’
The Reverend patted his whiskers. ‘A little late to be complaining now, Kate.’
At one stage Kate thought it possible that the Reverend may well throw her out on the street, when she finally and most adamantly refused his offer of employment. Instead he’d come to her with the offer of finding Kate suitable employ. It was quite unexpected and even Madge expressed wonderment. Nonetheless theirs was not an amicable parting, although Kate was grateful for the lengths the Reverend had gone to in finding her a suitable position. There were few alternatives available to a single, educated young woman. Marriage remained the only other option but it was an unappealing alternative. She still remembered the night she’d seen her mother and the Reverend together. To be with a man, in such a way, well, she didn’t think herself possible of ever forming such a union, nor marrying, and she would never do either without love. So here she was, in a quaking dray, nervously awaiting the moment when she’d meet her new employer.
Apprehension grew as the miles increased. Kate’s life had been restricted to the cottage and the schoolhouse, and the weekly trip to the markets with her mother, only six miles’ walk from where they lived. Hers was the life of a fringe dweller, forever perched on the outskirts of Sydney, and though she lived in an area surrounded by bush, the Reverend’s holding was still far removed from the wilds that spread out to and over the blue hills beyond. This was a new world where great expanses of grassland were punctuated by towering trees and scant houses. ‘Is there a village over there?’ Smoke was visible in the distance.
‘That be Toongabbe,’ the Irishman was quick to answer. ‘The settlers are doing well for themselves over there. There’s water-a-plenty in the crick there, some say too much. It can flood something terrible further up. Three miles to go.’
The dray trundled roughly over the ground. They were at least a mile from the last dwelling they’d seen and still the carriage headed inland. The wheels clanked and squeaked continuously. Kate grasped the worn edge of the timber seat as the driver somehow managed to hit every hole and crack that lay in their path. She tucked at the hair which had fallen loose from the cap beneath her hat and rubbed at grit-filled eyes.
‘Two miles to go, miss,’ the driver encouraged. ‘I’ll be thinking you’ll be pleased to stretch your legs after today.’ Lifting a flask he took a long gulp. The smell of rum grew strong. ‘What about you, Father? A swig to warm you from your head to your toes? Makes a man hearty, it does.’
‘No, thank you.’ The Reverend sat stiff-backed, his black garb contrasting with pale skin and much attended to whiskers running down the length of his face. Kate could smell sweat mixed with the stink of pipe smoke. Indeed the Reverend’s odour came closer to surpassing that of the rum-belching driver.
The dray turned from the road and followed a path rutted by wheel tracks. The boning in the seams of her bodice pinched at her sides and waist as Kate blotted out the scene in the schoolhouse the day of her mother’s passing. Even now she caught the Reverend glaring at her at times. There was dislike in his hard stare, undisguised annoyance, but often-times Kate also glimpsed familiarity in the tilt of his head, in the way he addressed her. It reminded Kate of the way he’d been with her mother.
‘It is a pity you have made this choice, Kate. The world is a harsh place for a single woman.’
‘I thank you for the efforts you have gone to on my behalf, Reverend.’
‘You are fortunate. Mr Jonas Kable is one of the leading men of the colony.’
It was not surprising that the Reverend had gone to the trouble of escorting her personally to the Kable farm. He’d told Kate that Mr Kable had grown rich on the back of supplying wheat to the colony, and sheep and cattle added to an already handsome income. Reverend Horsley was one for making the best of his connections and a cousin of the Kables had been instrumental in obtaining a place for Kate in their household. She gathered the Reverend now hoped for continued association, an endowment perhaps, for his place of worship was in much need of repairs. Kate imagined a yearly stipend to add to his earnings would do much to ensure his continuing comfort.
‘You are learned enough to fulfil the role of companion to Mrs Kable, although I fear your musical accomplishments are somewhat lacking.’
‘Less than a mile now.’ The driver pointed to a tree. The bark was marked by deep scarring, which extended some eight feet in length, its width reaching across the breadth of the trunk.
‘A native canoe, I would imagine,’ the Reverend explained.
Kate’s eyes widened. ‘Natives here?’
‘Well, of course. What did you think, that we’d wiped them out? Yes, well your mother was prone to such moments of female ignorance. May her soul rest in peace. Amen.’
Kate looked to the hills. The building of a road across the range had been completed over twenty years ago. During that time settlers had moved further westward, and the local Aboriginals fought and had apparently been brought to heel. ‘I thought most had moved further out beyond the mountains.’
‘A people should know when they’re conquered,’ was the Reverend’s oblique reply. ‘Count yourself lucky, Kate. The mountains are a buffer from the vast wilds on the other s
ide.’
The thought of all that immeasurable space stretching towards a setting sun intrigued Kate. ‘What’s out there?’
‘Natives, escaped convicts, bushrangers. I pity a man who must travel to the beyonds.’
Kate could only be grateful that the Kable farm lay within the boundaries of civilised society.
They crossed a narrow gully at a snail’s pace. A trickle of water ran across a pile of smooth rocks, which jolted the dray sideways, nearly throwing Kate to the floor. The Reverend tutted as Kate straightened her skirts. The queasy sensation in her stomach grew. She was beginning to feel short of breath. Ten years had passed since her father’s death and now her life was to be changed yet again, and always it was death that so utterly altered the threads of her life.
The dray bounced dangerously from left to right before resuming a steady gait. A number of timber buildings were visible through the trees, houses for convicts, a farrier’s workshop and, beyond this clutch of outbuildings, the dome of a smokehouse. The white-washed walls of a sturdy home appeared amidst scattered trees. Smoke curled from the stone chimney and cattle and sheep were scattered about the park-like surrounds. There were shepherds tending to the livestock and further afield wheat swayed beneath a winter breeze. The Kables, as free settlers, had been assigned numerous convicts and as the carriage mounted the slight hill these men became more distinctive in their waistcoats of yellow and grey cloth, coarse woollen jackets and pants.
‘Mr Jonas Kable keeps a fine table. I believe Governor Macquarie was a guest in the early days. Of course since then any person of import seeks to break bread with the family although Mrs Kable is more inclined to entertainments in their Sydney residence.’
Wild Lands Page 7