by Terry Smyth
In Australia, oceans away from all this carnage, confusion and despair, smaller life-and-death dramas are being acted out. In what is still a frontier society, the public is fascinated by the exploits of bushrangers, vacillating between hero-worship and outrage. The 1860s were the halcyon days of the Australian bushranger. It’s as though the bush and the byways are alive with outlaws, all bound and determined to blast their way into folklore.
The murderous and deranged ‘Mad Dan’ Morgan is terrorising southern New South Wales and northern Victoria, robbing coaches and pastoral stations, shooting and killing anyone who gets in his way. From the Hunter Valley north to Queensland and west as far as Bourke, Captain Thunderbolt is carrying out daring robberies of mail coaches, travellers, inns, stores and stations, yet has never shot or killed anyone. In the western and southern districts of New South Wales, Ben Hall and his gang are kings of the road, bailing up travellers and gold escorts, and raiding towns and homesteads. Like Thunderbolt, Ben Hall has never killed anyone, but tomorrow, January 26, one of his gang will gun down a policeman in the New South Wales village of Collector, tarnishing Hall’s Robin Hood image.
And at Avenel, a tiny settlement 80 miles (130km) north of Melbourne, a seven-year-old boy, son of the local publican, sets off for school as usual. But for reasons unknown, he diverts from the usual path. Instead of crossing the creek by the bridge near his father’s hotel, he follows a track leading to a large tree that has fallen across the creek, close to the schoolhouse.
Like other local children, Dick Shelton has probably crossed on the log many times before. On this day, however, the creek below it is rushing and roiling after heavy rain. Dick has hardly taken a step when his hat blows off. Instinctively, he reaches for it and in doing so loses his balance and falls into the water. Dick cannot swim.
Swept away and failing fast, Dick seems fated to drown when another boy, walking along the opposite bank, spots him, dives in and swims to him. With difficulty, the boy manages to drag Dick onto the bank, where both sit awhile, heaving with exhaustion and relief before making their way, wet and bedraggled, to the Royal Mail Hotel.
Dick’s 10-year-old saviour is an instant local hero, and Dick’s grateful parents, Esau and Elizabeth Shelton, present him with a trophy and a green silk sash. The boy treasures the sash, and will be wearing it years later when his own fate takes a dire turn.
The boy’s name is Ned Kelly.
Chapter 3
Welcome strangers
In Sydney, it’s Anniversary Day, a celebration of the arrival 77 years ago of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788. Events marking the occasion include a regatta on the harbour, a cricket match, a variety of excursions and amusements for the public, and a chance to gawk at the inmates of the Hyde Park Asylum, all regaled in festive frippery whether they like it or not.
The Sydney Morning Herald, never missing a chance to take a backhanded swipe at the rival colony south of the border, opines, ‘In celebrating this Anniversary we have the satisfaction to know that transportation [of convicts to Australia] – a great source of discord between England and the colonies – is virtually abolished, and all the miseries which have resulted from it are thus in a fair way of abatement. The elementary character of the colonies is probably far less diverse than their history would imply. We suspect, for example, that in Victoria a greater number are to be found who were formerly in bonds than are gathered in any other section of Australia.’1
In Melbourne, where the anniversary later to be renamed Australia Day is studiously ignored, John Egan, publican of The Wild Duck, has offered a £10 reward leading to the conviction of the rogue who stole his ‘slightly flea-bitten’ thoroughbred grey mare.2 The publican’s chances of gaining public attention to his plight today are slight indeed. Today, all the talk in town is of the Confederate warship that arrived yesterday afternoon.
Throughout the day, the ship is besieged by Melburnians coming alongside in steamers, yachts and rowboats, begging to be allowed aboard. All are refused except for a few set to leave port that day, including two officers of the Royal Navy.
Annie Baxter Dawbin, the wife of a British Army officer posted to Melbourne, writes in her diary, ‘I went out to Mrs Armytage’s soon after breakfast and sat there for some time, but came back for lunch, as I had to go to Sandridge to see the Confederate man-of-war Shenandoah – the late famous Sea King. I remained some time there, but the weather proved too stormy, and Captain Waddell sent a message on shore to say it would be unsafe to go.’3
Escaping the crowds, the Shenandoah officers go ashore, where they find fate has brought them to a place much like, yet at the same time alien to their homeland. This is a British colony named after an invisible monarch: a queen and empress who, since the death four years earlier of her beloved husband, Prince Albert, has shut herself away in Balmoral Castle, wallowing in what her private secretary Charles Grey has described as ‘constant and ever increasing grief’.4 Those close to the Queen fear she is not so much mad with grief as just plain mad. Parliamentarians have called for her to abdicate, and the people say she is dead to them.
Following the Australian convention of naming towns and geographical features after mediocre British politicians, the colony’s capital city is named for William Lamb, Lord Melbourne. Melbourne was Queen Victoria’s first prime minister, and the young Queen had quite a crush on him, hanging off his every word and, in her private time, drawing portraits of him in her sketch book. Victoria was much influenced by Melbourne, although it’s not known whether or not she shared his view that the poor were not worth bothering with and were best left alone or that Lord Shaftesbury’s efforts to ban child labour were a waste of time. He also distrusted newfangled contraptions of any kind, disliked railways and hated the Irish.5
For all that, his lordship is best remembered as the cuckolded husband of Lady Caroline Lamb, the mistress of Lord Byron, and for whipping orphan girls taken into his household, supposedly as an act of charity.6
The rebels have booked into Scott’s Hotel, laid aside their swords, and are walking the streets of the capital, suitably impressed by its wide streets, grand houses, fine carriages and handsome public buildings.
Much is comfortably familiar. They see women in the high-brimmed ‘spoon’ bonnets fashionable in the South. It being high summer, many wear bonnets made of straw and woven horsehair, elaborately trimmed with laces and wide ribbons. Others wear their hair in gathered nets. The belles of Melbourne promenade in bell-shaped dresses with tiny waists. Underneath are crinolines – whalebone or steel cages that create the bell shape of the petticoats and dress. Beneath all that is a whalebone and fabric corset hooked or buttoned tightly at the front to make the waist look smaller. The women here, like those of the South, are veritable ironclads.
The Confederates note that many men here wear trousers in the American style, sporting a narrow waistband with a strap and buckle at the back, some with braces, some without. Despite the summer heat, gentlemen of quality strut about in frock coat and waistcoat with pocket watch, silk cravat or bow tie, top hat and walking cane.
This being a town the gold rush built, miners are a common sight. They go about in shirts and neckerchiefs, high boots and wide-brimmed hats, wearing trousers held up with a belt, braces or rope. Of the diggers on the streets, some – clearly down on their luck – are in threadbare clothes. Others, more fortunate, are almost as fashionably clad as city toffs, gold being the great leveller of class – at least until the money runs out.
Most women wear their hair curled and waved by mechanical contraptions worn overnight. Men mostly wear their hair long, with big moustaches, sideburns or beards. A few, presumably Yankees or Yankee sympathisers, sport a beard but no moustache, like Abraham Lincoln.
The Southerners see no black faces on the streets of Melbourne. They know there are no slaves here – not this far south, anyway – but where are the natives they have heard so much about? Where are the Aborigines?
Had they a
sked why, they would have recognised clear parallels between the treatment of, and attitudes towards the native peoples of Australia and those of North America. White colonisers on both continents share a belief that Anglo-Saxons are innately superior to indigenous races, and are thus ordained by divine providence to spread throughout the land, displacing or erasing native populations. White Americans call it ‘Manifest Destiny’. White Australians, echoing the ideals of Victorian England, call it ‘Progress’ – with a capital P – and are equally as convinced that in the path of Christian civilisation the fate of so-called inferior races is subjugation or extermination. Resistance is futile.
It is generally supposed that indigenous peoples are doomed to extinction. It’s accepted as scientific fact – simply survival of the fittest – and thus it is the duty of the white race to ensure these lesser mortals pass into the fossil record as painlessly as possible and with a minimum of fuss.
In Australia, the notion of what the poet Rudyard Kipling would later call the ‘white man’s burden’ underlines official policies of Protection – again with a capital P. Discrimination disguised as paternal concern, it is used to justify the forced relocation of peoples to isolated reserves where they are denied basic freedoms and their culture is ruthlessly suppressed, supposedly for their own good.
Typical of the hypocrisy of the age is an opinion piece, in a Melbourne newspaper, on the 1865 report of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines. The board has total control over the lives of Victoria’s Aborigines, including the power to forcibly remove children from their families to be taught the white man’s ways.
It begins: ‘The condition of the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent is a subject full of interest to their white successors,’ and goes on to commend ‘the humanity and good feeling of the colonists in their treatment of the small remnant which still exists of these once numerous races of Victorian natives.
‘On the whole, the report does not speak of any marked improvement in the condition of the blacks. As a general rule they are comfortable and healthy, but in their moral state they show they are but slightly reclaimed from savagery.’
The article concludes that ‘the large majority’ of Aborigines – the ‘majority’ presumably being those who had survived half a century of decimation through disease, dislocation and murder – are ‘beyond the power of improvement’.
‘It seems, indeed, that the race only shows a tendency to improvement in those branches of it which are nearest extinction.’7
Melbourne, founded in 1835, has grown rapidly since the discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851. Now, in 1865, its population has overtaken that of Sydney, and, thanks to the flow of gold, the city boasts streets studded with grand civic buildings, and inner suburbs linked by boulevards and gardens. To its proud inhabitants it is Eldorado Down Under.
In 1865, Victoria has been an independent colony for only 14 years. Previously, it was part of New South Wales, which originally covered two-thirds of the continent. The colonies differ in origin, wealth and stages of development; jealousies are rife and rivalry is intense.
In 1851, when Victoria separated from New South Wales, the border between the adjoining colonies was determined to be the top of the south bank of the Murray River. This meant that none of the river was in Victoria, yet the Murray is wont to change its course now and then, as rivers tend to do, and has been the cause of sometimes bitter disputes ever since, even threats of war.
Victoria and New South Wales cannot even agree on the gauge of railway tracks. People travelling between the colonies have to change trains at the border because Victorian tracks are wider than New South Wales tracks. Travellers also have to undergo customs and baggage checks at the border, with each side enforcing differing rules on what you can and can’t bring in. Merchants are frustrated by the different tariffs and customs duties imposed, making trade between the colonies slow and often uneconomical.
Despite all those difficulties, talk of federation falls on deaf ears. No colony is willing to surrender its legislative rights. While there are no guns aimed across the Murray River, the defence of states’ rights is as fierce as in America, and the Confederates would find the arguments eerily familiar. New South Wales, calling for tariffs on manufactured goods to be scrapped, supports free trade. Victoria, believing the colony should be self-sufficient, champions protectionism.
The dispute reminds the Confederates that back home, before the war, when the North pressed for tariffs as protection against foreign imports, the South reacted angrily, asking why the South should pay more for goods to the advantage of the North. The labels adopted by the opposing political camps in Australia – Free Trader and Protectionist – are familiar to American ears, having been coined by Southern slaveholders.
Particularly familiar is an ongoing dispute over the tax on tea. The import duty on tea charged by Victoria is sixpence a pound, whereas New South Wales and South Australia charge only half that amount. There have been no protests in the style of the Boston Tea Party, however. Duty-dodging Victorian traders send tea from Melbourne to Adelaide, then ship it down the Murray River to Melbourne. In other words, Victorians are smuggling Victorian tea into Victoria.
In their light grey uniforms, with gold braid, gilt buttons, and blue silk shoulder strap with a single star, the rebels turn heads as they stroll down Collins Street, with its imposing architecture, past the Town Hall; along Little Collins Street, where wigged and gowned lawyers flit between bars and chambers; up lively Bourke Street, with music halls such as the Alhambra Dance Hall and the Haymarket Theatre one of several theatres. In the foyer of the Haymarket, in the days to come, the Confederates will often gather to meet local ladies and discover that flattery will get them everywhere.
At the nearby Theatre Royal, tonight is ‘positively the last night’ of the ‘burlesque extravaganza’ King Turko the Terrible, followed by the musical farce A Loan of a Lover, and concluding the evening’s entertainment with the ‘very laughable farce’, A Ghost in Spite of Himself.
When it comes to light-hearted diversions, distractions from the serious business of waging war, and dalliances of a romantic nature, the welcome strangers are spoilt for choice.
Back at Scott’s Hotel, the drink flows freely and it’s not too long before most of the rebel officers are three sheets to the wind. Surgeon Lining, for one, already feeling no pain, accepts an invitation to a party, staggers back to Scott’s at around 11pm and falls into bed.
During one drinking session at Scott’s, an American merchant – a Northerner whose girth is exceeded only by his self-regard – is overheard by the Confederates calling them ‘a damned set of piratical scoundrels’. One of the rebels calmly gets up from his seat, grabs the merchant by the nose, leads him to the door and kicks him in the arse, sending him tumbling down the stairs. Reporting the incident with obvious glee, the Creswick & Clunes Advertiser comments, ‘It may be presumed that the Northerner retired, like the generals of his country, solely for strategic reasons, for it is reported that he did not offer any resistance against his forcible expulsion. And yet it is singular that a citizen of the mighty Union, about – as he was wont to say – to annex Canada and Ireland, should allow himself to be so used by a “damned pirate”.’8
While the ship’s officers are being duchessed by Melbourne’s quality folk, and throwing fat Yankees downstairs, her sailors and marines are sampling the city’s flesh-pots. There are prostitutes on almost every corner, catering for all tastes, and brothels on most city streets, ranging from the upscale – such as Mother Fraser’s opulent bordello on Stephens Street – to humble parlours in dank laneways.
On Bourke Street – with its all-night bars, dance halls with wall-to-wall girls, and hotels renting rooms by the hour – pimps, touts and spruikers compete for the patronage of thirsty and sex-starved sailors. The Southerners have seen nothing like this since New Orleans’ French Quarter, and, readily led into temptation, they make the most of it.
Chapter 4
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br /> Other men’s battles
William Kenyon is casting a weather eye down the columns of classified ads in Friday’s paper when, between an ad for quarry-men and stonebreakers, and one placed by a young man seeking ‘a situation, early hours preferred’, he spies an intriguing notice.
It reads, ‘Wanted, two or three respectable young men to be generally useful to travel up new country, apply personally to Mr Powell, No 125 Flinders Lane east, between 9 and 10 or 12 and 1 today.’1
Kenyon, born in the seaside village of Rye, south of Melbourne, but now living in the city, is 21 years old, at a loose end and craving adventure. A volunteer member of the Victorian Naval Brigade – a reservist unit supplementing the colony’s permanent navy – he has been trained in artillery and infantry drill, ashore and afloat, but has never ventured further than Port Phillip Heads. He decides to go and see what Mr Powell has to offer.
Across Hobson’s Bay, in Williamstown, Samuel Crook makes the same decision. Crook, better known as ‘Little Sam’, is a local waterfront character; an archetypal seadog. He has modest lodgings in Waterman’s Row, but when home from the sea can usually be found propping up the bar at the Pier Hotel or down on the steamboat jetty, spinning rollicking seafaring yarns to anyone who’ll listen.
Kenyon and Crook have no way of knowing, of course, that the door to a run-down boarding house at 125 Flinders Lane opens into peril and infamy or that not merely ‘two or three respectable young men’ but many more men of various ages and repute share their curiosity.
Melbourne sailor Thomas Strong is one. Sandridge stevedore John Collins is another. Also from Sandridge come waterman James McLaren, bootmaker William Green and fireman Thomas McLean. They are joined, from Williamstown, by shipwright John Kilgower and carpenter John James; from suburban Melbourne by seamen James McLaren and John Spring; by David Alexander; by many more from parts unknown; and by one mysterious character who will be the last man to die in the service of the Confederacy.