And while other confectioners were selling their stores of raisins and dried fruits, it was painfully apparent that there would be no Twelfth Night cake for the Gills this year, nor for the villain who remained holed up at the farm out on the Punchbowl road. Since Robert and Georgina Lowe were set to make an ‘immediate departure for Europe’ they were also likely to be denied certain festive extravagances. They had put their ‘unique and charming’ property up for public auction and this ‘enchanting seaside residence’ with its ‘extensive and romantic grounds’ was attracting considerable interest from those who wanted to see if what had been described in The Herald was real. Much to the Lowes’ disdain all sorts of colonists were trekking out to their property, inspired, no doubt, by the paper’s fanciful encouragement. ‘Let the visitor seek out the beauties of its palms and flowers—rendered like unto a fairy land by its sparkling waterfall and sylvan scenery’, the advertisement for the auction enthused. ‘Let him climb the hills’ and ‘take in the splendid views, which meet the gaze at every turn’ and they will not fail to be ‘enraptured by it!’ Well, no wonder it looked like Lowe’s land was going to fetch a good price.
‘Indeed,’ thought Martin Gill, casting an eye over a purloined copy of the news-sheet. He had been growing increasingly tetchy over the past fortnight or so as he had been fending for himself from McCormick’s vegetable garden and waiting for his son. He had assumed Will would return promptly with good news about his forthcoming passage out of Sydney. But several days had gone by and then a week and then another and still there was no sign of Will. ‘What to do?’, Gill wondered as he stomped about the wretched garden now fast going to seed.
Throughout this time Mary Ann kept close to her mother and made sure that she was at hand whenever the older woman needed assistance. It was clear to everyone, however, that the eldest Gill girl was suffering. On the one hand the seventeen year old was still savouring the few, fleeting moments she and Kinchela had snatched together before the Howden sailed, but then, on the other hand, she was also fuming with frustration about how her glorious promise of a better future had been dashed—yet again—by her father. Her resentment was unbridled, and this time it was shared by all in the Kent Street cottage.
But if Mary Ann and William were filled with despair and bitterness, this resignation was not shared by their grandparents. Instead, each night Thomas McCormick and Mary Riley stepped out onto the patch of green behind the cottage for their evening walk and used their time together to talk freely about how they might improve the current circumstances. McCormick had also seen the extravagant advertisement for Robert Lowe’s property and it had given him an idea. The various goods Margaret had rescued from the hotel coupled with the sale of the Punchbowl farm might just give them enough to lease another city hotel, McCormick suggested to Mary Riley one evening, but they would need to sell, not lease, the old farm. A new hotel would get Margaret back on her feet, he was sure, but they must put the lease under his name, Mary Riley cautioned, so the creditors could not come after Margaret. McCormick had a feeling they could make it work. ‘The two eldest can look through the papers and keep an eye out for an establishment that’s been on the market a while,’ McCormick explained to Margaret the following night. ‘We need something that the owners want off their hands and then,’ he said sounding pleased with himself, ‘and then, we will be back in business.’ Margaret looked at him sceptically. ‘Come now girl,’ McCormick finished, ‘the people of Sydney won’t give a tuppenny damn about your debts when they’re scoffing down your turtle soup.’
Despite their current disdain for the news-sheets, Mary Ann and Will took to scouring the papers for the sort of establishment their grandfather had described. ‘It needs to be just as grand as the Pitt Street hotel,’ he advised, ‘only way to put a stop to all the rumours,’ he added shrewdly. The same day McCormick took their salvaged possessions to an auction room far enough out of town to not yet be tainted by Sydney gossip. He planned to head out to the Punchbowl farm the following day and asked Will to come along and help him spruce up the place before it went on sale. Will swallowed and nodded.
Grandfather and grandson arrived at the Punchbowl farm the following morning, their cart loaded with rakes and hoes and spades. McCormick grabbed a heavy-looking spade when he thought he spied a person disappearing into the garden shed. He pushed the old shed door and looked about. There, crouching under the rough bench was his son-in-law, bare-footed and in a filthy shirt without a collar. Straight away McCormick fired into a rage and before he knew it, he had thrust his spade up against Martin Gill’s throat. The pair were locked in that position—glaring at one another—with McCormick towering over the diminutive Dubliner when Will appeared at the door. His grandfather drew back a little and lowered the spade. ‘You’ll leave this place now, you vermin,’ McCormick growled, ‘or I shall create such a hell for you, you will wish you’d ne’er left Dublin.’
Will’s disgust for his father was now mingled with guilt about his family’s situation and it made him particularly agitated. He stepped forward with a wild look in his eye. ‘I am ashamed to know you sir,’ the young man spat on the ground at his father’s bare feet, ‘ashamed to call you my father.’ Martin Gill gave his son a contemptuous look and tried to push past him. But Will blocked his path, and when Gill made no effort to move, the young man put both hands on his father’s shoulders and shoved him hard to his knees. For the longest moment the three men were locked in this position with Martin Gill muttering curses at both men as they stood over him, arms crossed, refusing to let him leave. Eventually, however, McCormick and then Will stepped back so that his father could struggle to his feet. Martin Gill was a filthy mess but no sooner had he put his hand on the handle of the shed door than he turned back to his son and sneered, ‘Well my boy,’ he said, ‘now you have decided where you stand—why don’t you tell your grandfather who is paying for you and your sister to get to California?’ And with that the one-time hotelier slammed the door and disappeared.
It was an awkward afternoon out at the Punchbowl farm and grandfather and grandson worked in silence. When it was time to head back to town the two men rode together in the cart without exchanging a word between them. When, however, they were on the outskirts of town McCormick asked his grandson to explain himself. The fifteen year old did so in an anxious rush, describing how he had wanted to put everything together for Mary Ann and his mother, adding several times that he had nothing to do with the ‘vile notice’ in the newspaper. His grandfather listened, keeping his eyes on the path as he gave the matter his consideration.
The following morning as Mary Ann was toasting bread at the kitchen fire and Mary Riley was ordering Thomas and his younger sister into their day clothes, McCormick made a series of raps on the table to motion the family to hush. ‘Now look,’ he started. Will felt the colour drain from his face dreading that his terrible allegiance with his father was about to be exposed. ‘We know we have been worse off before and that we’ve a habit of coming out on top,’ he acknowledged his daughter with a nod. ‘I can’t see the point of us all being cramped up in this hot little room for the rest of our lives.’ The young children stopped their play. ‘I want your eldest two out of here,’ he said firmly to Margaret, ‘you know—getting forward with things that might well make it better for us all in the long run,’ he continued, ‘and in the meanwhile I am sure we will make do together.’
Mary Ann glanced over at Will, who had been leaning forward on his chair with his head between his hands. She was not quite sure what was going on. She watched her brother lift his head and look up—first at his grandfather and then his mother before turning to look directly at her. ‘Young Will has shown a certain flair for fixing things,’ McCormick said, tossing his grandson a quick look, ‘even if he has done so in a most unusual manner.’ McCormick considered Mary Ann. ‘But for all the trouble they have both given us, I still think we should let the two of them have their heads and see if they can’t make their own way fo
r a while.’ Then he added gruffly, ‘Heaven knows, Margaret, it might be the only way we’ll get some peace.’
Margaret furrowed her brow and sniffed uncertainly as the old tailor continued. ‘I want to see them off to California—with all our blessings—that way they will be back soon enough with great big nuggets of gold for all of us.’ Mary Riley watched Margaret play with the rim of her tea cup as she considered her father’s words. Will and Mary Ann looked at one another, not sure if they should believe what they had heard. ‘As for your wretched husband,’ McCormick finished, ‘I am of the opinion that there will be no more trouble from him, so I think it is high time we all start making our way in the world once more.’
Thomas McCormick had spoken just in time: it was a desperate rush to get the two eldest children prepared. Margaret and Mary Riley fussed about collecting shoe brushes and linen bags, packing these and a set of carefully wrapped silver servers from the old hotel into a trunk. After several frantic hours, Mary Ann and Will were packed and the entire family bustled into a coach and headed down to Circular Quay. No one wanted to be left out. Mary Riley and Margaret both took a child on their laps, Mary Ann held Isabella on hers while Thomas insisted on taking his own place on the bench next to William.
They should have boarded a day earlier, they were told by the churlish master who stood at the bottom of the gangway, checking his shipping list. They were in time, though only just. Next minute one of the crew, a large South Sea Islander, took their trunk and carried it up the gangway. And then there they all were—Mary Ann and William Gill standing before the American brig, with their four younger siblings, their grandparents and their mother. The family stood about awkwardly until Mary Riley came forward and put a small tin of something for seasickness in William’s pocket. Then Mary Ann reached out and folded her mother’s hand inside her own and two of the younger children grabbed at Mary Ann’s skirts. ‘No more fuss,’ McCormick growled as he brought his two grandchildren into a rough embrace. ‘We will be seeing you both for Christmas in a few years,’ he said rubbing his large hands together. ‘Just mind yourself,’ he patted them both, ‘and make sure you bring back plenty of gold.’ One of the crew called out it was time to go. The young woman and her brother exchanged a quick look and then made their way towards the boat, only once daring to glance back to where their family was standing on the dock.
First light. Friday 7 December 1849. Mary Ann and Will were both on deck to witness the Sabine catch the early tide and push out onto the harbour, then beyond the Heads where both would be travelling further than they had before. The morning had a sharp breeze to it, but otherwise all was still and dark. As the town slowly emerged from the night shadows, Mary Ann began to pick out some movement along the quay—men already about their work, some lugging lengths of wood, others rolling barrels from ship to warehouse.
This was the town she had lived in all her life. She knew the stench of the Tank Stream in high summer and the way her clothes turned wet with sweat when she ran errands during the day. She knew the taste of the air—something like fetid fruit mixed with grit and the stench of the nearby factories. Soap, candles and tanneries. The heavy sweetness of the hotel kitchen and how it had clung to her clothes for as long as she could remember. Sounds too. Not only the distant hiss of the factories but also the male voices in the front bar—rising and falling as tempers flared and jokes were told. All the shop owners and people about town. The click and whirr of carriage wheels. And of course, the horses—the clink of their bridles and that warm grassy smell.
From here, however, everything looked different. Mary Ann watched the morning lift over the factories and warehouses and then the weatherboards and brick buildings further up town. It all seemed curiously small from the deck of the Sabine and it made Mary Ann feel queasy. She cast about for a few familiar things. The windmills she had watched from her window and the line of gumtrees which curved around the harbour. Coaches, like old Somerville’s, already lined along the street, waiting for passengers, she thought. And, of course, Pitt Street, rising in a slope away from the quay before it disappeared into town. Next moment, Mary Ann heard the heavy clunk and clatter of the second anchor being hauled up. The crew began calling to one another, and then the boat began to slip away.
As the vessel pushed further out of the harbour, William craned his neck over the other passengers milling about the deck. He wanted to be the first to see the Heads, to point them out to his sister. But then he stopped in shock. It could have been a play of the light, he thought, so he shut his eyes and opened them again. But there was no doubt to it—standing just apart from the rest of the passengers, hands shoved in his trouser pockets and chin set at a determined angle. His father. He looked quite dapper, Will noted, and certainly better groomed than the bedraggled creature he had encountered in his grandfather’s shed a few weeks ago. ‘So he found a way to slip through the officials after all,’ Will thought, with just a little admiration. But then he remembered his sister and looked about anxiously, keen to warn her about their fellow passenger.
But, at the moment Mary Ann was nowhere close at hand. As the brig pushed into the Harbour she had begun walking towards the stern, eager to catch a last look at her hometown. She had been walking in that direction when a flickering shimmer of reflected sunlight had caught her eye. It was coming from the rise of Pitt Street, she was sure. So she moved quickly along the boat, all the while scanning the hill and chasing the light, straining for a final glimpse of the sudden blaze that she was certain she had seen coming from a certain window on the third floor of their old hotel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The High Seas
That first class, fast-sailing American brig, the Sabine, was about half the size of the Lady Howden, but this allowed it to travel quickly through the unpredictable waters of the Tasman and arrive at the North Cape of New Zealand less than ten days after Mary Ann and William Gill left Sydney in the company of their ubiquitous father. The Sabine sailed into the vast whaling cove at the most northern tip of New Zealand and anchored next to a Hobart vessel named the Eliza, which had arrived only a few days earlier. The crew on board Mary Ann’s vessel had made a previous journey to ‘Gold Land’ and were full of stories about the new ‘Emporium’. Bell’s had recently published a lively piece about the ‘Latest from California per brig Sabine’ detailing all sorts of tempting facts. And days before the brig’s departure Bell’s had also enjoyed recounting how two crewmembers had come to grief after flashing glimmers of gold around one of the rougher hotels in the Rocks.
As the Sabine lay anchored beneath those jagged New Zealand cliffs, Captain McLeod of the Eliza came on board with even more interesting news. He and his crew had been at Mangonui—just a day or two away—where they had discovered three men and two schoolgirls who had been abandoned by a party of pirates who gave them no more than a brace of muskets and a few bags of flour and sugar. Thanks to the assistance of several ‘friendly Maori’ the rescued party were now safely on board the Eliza, McLeod reassured his audience, but the ‘piratically seized vessel’ previously known as the Helen was still at large and said to be heading for California.
This news created considerable trepidation among the passengers and their crew, although it did not deter them from their journey—for a day or so later the Sabine weighed anchor and set a north-west course towards San Francisco Bay. Seventeen-year-old Mary Ann and her fifteen-year-old brother were now sailing across the Tasman and into the Pacific, watching the colours of the water change and feeling the winds lift and shift as the summer temperatures became increasingly tropical. It took the two a little time to grow accustomed to the slow pace of ship life as well as days at sea without sighting land. However, the proximity of forty-two other passengers on board was not so different from their childhood experience in their parents’ various hotels. There were also familiar faces on board and all sorts of conversations to be had about gold and California, so Mary Ann and Will soon began to enjoy their first tast
e of freedom even if this was marred by the presence of Martin Gill, who preferred, for the time being, to keep his distance from his eldest children.
Thanks to poor winds the Sabine’s journey through the South Pacific was slow going and after several weeks of a listless sail the enterprising Captain Barmore decided to make port at Upolu in Samoa to replenish supplies. Brother and sister were on deck to notice how the steady slope of volcanic rock rose out of the crystalline waters of the ocean and then formed a series of cliffs and ridges that disappeared into low-lying cloud. They marvelled at the great cliffs of weathered olivine basalt and how they jutted out at wild angles before melting into dense green foliage. The shallows before them were scattered with azure lagoons and light blue reefs and the Sabine carefully navigated its way through these before anchoring at the mouth of the Vaisigano River. There the passengers were rowed to shore and Mary Ann and Will set foot upon land for the first time since leaving Sydney more than a month ago.
Together, the young colonists walked the broad sandy walkways of that village where the British Consul George Pritchard had recently established himself with his family. Both brother and sister were familiar with the Samoan sailors around Circular Quay, but had never seen a Samoan woman in her native-dress let alone the domed huts that sheltered the 300 or so inhabitants of that small village. The tropical sights and smells were intriguing to them both, but not so for Martin Gill who could still remember his convict ship stopping at some such place on his voyage to New South Wales in 1820.
Captain Barmore dedicated two days to resupplying the ship. Even then, he and his two partners were keen to press on with the voyage to California, as every extra day in port added to the cost of feeding their forty-five passengers. Having considered the weather the ship’s pilot recommended that the crew and passengers ‘spend another day or two with the kanakas at the bowling alley’ waiting for the right breeze, but the Captain and his partners were determined to set their Baltimore clipper upon its course. And so, on 26 January 1850 a boat was sent out to tow the Sabine past the shallows, where a dead calm had stirred up a shore-based rip which was strong enough, the pilot suspected, to drag the boat leeward. He again advised against proceeding, but once more the Captain insisted it was time to leave. Indeed, he and his partners were now so determined, that after several hours of waiting unsuccessfully for the boat to take the winds, they requested another vessel tow the Sabine out to sea.
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