Authors: Keneally Thomas
Breeding ewes, 3 years old … 4720
Ditto, 2 years old … 5540
Three-year-old wethers … 3803
Ditto, two-year-old … 4758
Ewe lambs, 11 months old … 6400
Wether lambs, ditto … 5857
Rams … 200
Total … 31 278’
My profits for the previous year (half of which went, of course, to Messers Barley and Batchelor), read:
‘To the sale of 150 700 lbs of wool, at mean price of 10 pence ha’penny in the grease … £6630
To the sale of 3700 three-year-old wethers, at 10 shillings each … … £1850
Total … £8480’
I had as always, being a fellow enchanted by figures, to resist their fascination, lest their imitation of solidity induce me to make silly choices.
Despite Barley’s charming yearly invitations, I did not go to Sydney to lord it, to rent or buy a good house, and present myself at the front doors of tailors’ establishments. I had returned all wool profits into buying new livestock and supplying an increasing number of shepherds from the convict depots of Sydney and Goulburn, as advertised in the
Government Gazette
which Finnerty now brought to me by wagon.
For I needed in my third year to employ, besides Long, Clancy, Presscart and O’Dallow, some two dozen shepherds and hutkeepers. Yet I was proud no one could accuse me of prodigality. As I set off with the wool that third October, with the two Nugan Ganway wagons I now owned and some five others rented from Goulburn and groaning with fleece, I was very proud of those wary instincts inherited from my mother, who simply could not understand rashness. I soon found I was no perfect member of that earth-wide Communion of Saints of whom I was a distantly placed member.
For there is a confession which must be made here in this personal journal, in the hope that such frankness might constitute a decent act of repentance. I had always known I must keep myself separate from the native women if I were to set a mark for my men to imitate, yet I fancied that it did not constitute much of a hardship. My energies were bent to my flocks, and my main discourse with the Moth people, whose tribal name I discovered from inquiry in Sydney was Ngarigo, had been aimed not at sociability for its own sake but at impressing on them the concept that Saxon Merino sheep were not
animal nullius
, game to be slaughtered like the kangaroo or the possum. Yet I had noticed that many of their younger women were in extraordinary ways handsome, their handsomeness enhanced by their air of extreme ancientness, not of their persons but of their manners. I was always given pause, by their innocence – and also by thoughts as to which of these daughters of Eve carried in them Shegog’s appalling disease, and to which others it had spread. That infection, if acquired, could unfit me for the eventual fullness of decent manhood utterly.
Now I found that, as my father had once said, commenting – to my mother’s disapproval – on a parishioner of the Anglican Church in Ross, moral pride is itself a good preparation for crime.
At our meeting that third October at the town of Black Huts, Barley
had ordered some splendid French brandy. My load of wool, already sold to Barley, was securely fastened on my wagons in the dusk outside the Dangling Man Hotel. A sense of the wholeness of the world had entered my head through the good price Barley had offered – 10 pence ha’penny a pound – and the angelic, limitless hope that figure held out.
Barley, being both my co-seller and my buyer, given that he had a share in the wool, was in lively spirits and in his company one felt uniquely blessed, that Athens and Rome were as nothing beside the Black Huts, and though Mycaenas and Horace may have been friends, their friendship was not quite at the peak as the friendship between Bettany and Barley.
‘Even, my friend Bettany,’ Barley said, ‘within confines of frail flesh, a chap could not help but stand on his hind legs on such a night in such a market, and howl at moon for glory!’
I remember too Barley’s paleness by lamplight. ‘If wife were here,’ he told me sincerely, ‘she would have wisely counselled me to more modest intake.’ Suddenly he was gone, and I was alone, wrapped in the golden blanket of my own senses and comfortable in what felt like hero-hood. A bare-headed young woman, one of a set of girls who made themselves accommodating to both the men who sold the wool and those who purchased it, approached me now. Her auburn hair was somewhat tousled and she had knowing eyes. She sat and asked could she take a dram of the brandy, and since two-thirds of our third bottle of the evening lay undrunk, I permitted her. ‘I’ll pour for myself,’ she told me, ‘since ye seem a little distray.’ I found this greatly amusing, and she put out her hand and said. ‘Ye’re a poor child unused to bein’ squiffy. Ain’t it so?’
She asked me then, straight out, did I like trolls named Cecily, since Cecily was her name. I remember assuring her that I particularly admired that name. I launched into encomiums in its honour. Then, inevitably, she asked me what I considered time spent with a Cecily might cost. Did I think it might be worth 10 shillings? Man of business even in my cups, I beat her down to a mere crown.
The next morning I was of course in hell, but towards afternoon I began to feel that I might at some remote time live and breathe and have moral being. I met Barley at one stage in the corridor, where his freckles showed up on preternatural pallor. ‘I leave for Sydney this afternoon, dear Bettany. Will you not come this year and lave yourself in harbour?’
I assured him that I would visit him one year, but I felt unworthy of his hearth, of any urbane hearth.
‘I needed my dear wife to act as rudder in my folly.’ His pronunciation – ‘rooder’ – and his woeful face restored me momentarily to laughter, but it did not last. For distraction that forenoon I sat in the parlour, and waited to gather myself for my own departure by doing a little book work in my journal on the glittering price received per pound, and the more I wrote and made those lifeless figures, the more I was convinced that what I clearly needed was a wife and helpmeet. Land and a flock were no longer adequate.
I returned to Nugan Ganway, and tried to lose myself in work at that slacker, summer time of year. All that season I expected some pernicious display to break out in my flesh as punishment for my sportive, drunken night with the woman at the Black Huts. No sign of the disease presented itself though. Accursed Cecily, whom I had for some minutes or hours mistaken for a creature of splendour, was a woman to be praised in that regard.
And on some days Miss Phoebe Finlay in adult form, a being of inexact, fair features, returned to my mind as my possible and fated spouse. At others, riding out to check on my out-stations, I would find myself dismissing this child-bride from my head and making a stern pledge to attend the Squatters’ Ball the next January.
As if to reproach me and mock my need, a compelling missive reached me, by way of Finnerty’s wagon.
Genève,
May 24 of Anno Domini 1838
Dear Mr Bettany,
I am normally prevented by reasons of propriety from writing to anyone other than my family. I write to you in horror at the concept of you which my father seems to promote in his letters to me, and I hope that you do not suffer from these slanders where you are. Since I know them to be false, they therefore make me truer. I look forward on my return to New South Wales to taking my own direction and to making independent choices. If our compact stands, I am still prepared to be your wife, for I retain a true affection. I shall see you in your distant station, and enjoy the prospect.
Yours sincerely,
Phoebe Finlay
PS: Do not answer this, as I will not be allowed to receive it.
I thought, this is not like the letter her father read to me. This had a levelly determined tone, and a certain restraint: ‘true affection’ was invoked, a relatively modest emotion. I considered writing to her anyhow and asking her on the basis of her obvious maturity of attitude to refrain from such letters. But then I thought, would she use any letter of mine as a stick to enrage her dangerous father?
I was secure that between Phoebe and me lay oceans and continents of other men, English clergymen, soldiers, scholars, ships’ officers, merchants, gentlemen farmers. I was content to see how her ‘true affection’ would last these contacts. And yet with one side of my mind I relished her letter, and hoped that she would appear one day, an ivory woman amongst my leathered men.
There was at this season a considerable time to daydream. Long and I were engaged in the practice – though Long’s thoughts seemed too sombre ever to be called by that sunny title ‘daydream’ – one dusk in our homestead at the heart of wild pastures, not yet stricken with the first frost, when he put his mug of tea down, stood up and told me a party of horsemen, out of our sight from here, were bearing down on the Murrumbidgee stream which lay below our hill, and approaching our homestead. He had a remarkable set of senses and yet I doubted what he said. A party? Parties had no reason to come to Nugan Ganway.
I considered drawing out my carbine and ball cartridges which lay under my lath bed. Long waved a lean hand in the blue light. ‘It could be the county hunt,’ he said, and his mouth cracked open in silent laughter. Yet we both felt a reclusive annoyance at being intruded upon. We walked without arms out of the boulder-clad basin in which our house stood, and by the stockyard Clancy, O’Dallow and Presscart had also gathered, frowning. We beheld, coming down the opposing slope to the river, a group of six mounted men, one of whom resembled a figure stumbled into Nugan Ganway from a European opera. He was mounted on a beautiful grey, almost silver in that light, and wore a shining pillbox hat, a brilliant green jacket of a military cut, blue trousers, and gleaming boots suited to a Napoleonic cavalry charge. My fellows, in red flannel shirts and breeches, gazed on him with disbelief. This leader of the mounted party flew gallantly across the Murrumbidgee, throwing splashes up into the brilliant dusk light. The other riders, though trying to keep up to him, were more reluctant to make the show of it which he had. As they came up the slope to the higher ground, we saw that the chief figure was accompanied by four convict constables in blue jackets
and canvas pants, and a black trooper in a blue coat, his bare feet poking comfortably out of his stirrups.
They drew up and tethered their horses to the stockyard rails, in which Hobbes and Long’s horse, Dingo, reacted to their arrival with as much bad grace and suspicion as did Long and I. The Napoleonic man had swung from his saddle with much vigour. Now, his boot leather squeaking and slapping, he marched with equal flourish towards our party.
‘Sir, sir,’ he cried out to me earnestly as he advanced. ‘Are you aware of the new
Land Occupation Act
?’ Long and I smiled at each other.
What a conversationalist!
Long’s glance pronounced.
‘May I present myself, Captain Richard Peske, with a final “e”. I am newly appointed Land Commissioner for this district under the Act.’
I felt uneasy at once, but Long and I fraternally maintained our indolent bush postures. ‘I was not sure we had the honour to possess a Land Commissioner,’ I said.
He strained for augustness behind his lightly freckled cheeks. ‘Indeed you didn’t, sir. I am the first one appointed to this south-west region below Braidwood. Superlative country, count myself very fortunate, I do. Now, sir, I do possess your name, but I confess it is in my journal in the saddlebag and it has slipped my mind. It is painful for me to tell you, sir, that your occupation of this country is illicit, and that you must abandon this area. It may be that your flocks are forfeit – I shall have to consult the Chief Superintendent on that matter.’
Surrounded by my huge acreage I did not at once feel panic. I told him he could not expect me to take him seriously.
‘That is a common response,’ he admitted. ‘But I think that if you consult the new Act, you will find that I possess authorities only slightly less – in these matters – than a Roman emperor.’
‘You can be sure I’ll consult the Act. I also have powerful partners.’
‘Well …’ he whacked his fine moleskin trousers with the pair of leather gloves he had taken off while speaking, ‘partners don’t signify in this business. If you ride south from here in the direction of the Port Phillip Pass, you will come to a sharp little pass named by that Polish gentleman Lhotsky as Dainer’s Gap. Do you happen ever to have been there?’
I had visited it looking for the Moth people after Shegog’s murder. ‘I have been that far once or twice,’ I said.
‘Well, we have been up there and are coming from there now. We find, as Mr Treloar told us, there is a native cairn on one side and two trees blazed by him six months before you ever visited this place.’
‘Ah, that’s where Mr Treloar has been. For I have never sighted him. However, from what I’ve heard he was pleased to have me to settle this area, since he himself could obviously not afford to stock this tableland.’
‘He has not said that to me,’ said Captain Peske, cool in a blithe sort of way. ‘He has appealed to me to give him a licence over this area, and I have no reason, on the grounds of the marks he has made to the south, to deny it. He is rather chagrined, I have to say, at the small number of cattle you returned to him after your muster.’
‘I was scrupulous, for God’s sake. I can show you my books.’
How I protested! I had stocked this land, kept peace with the natives, kept my servants in good order.
‘Did anyone tell you to invest in this land?’ asked Peske. ‘I don’t mean Treloar’s questionable overseer. I mean anyone with any authority?’
‘I told you. Treloar. Not that he has any ultimate authority. The chief authority was the custom of the land beyond the limits. The divine vacancy of the place was the authorisation, and I stocked that vacancy.’
Peske looked at me from under knotted brows, as if he were up to my tricks. ‘Sir, sir, sir. These matters have already been settled in most areas of the country, and only your distance from the seat of administration has allowed you such a good run. Now I can’t answer for what Mr Treloar might have said to you, but in any case, Mr Treloar is of an altered mind. And he has previously marked and blazed this particular quarter of the earth.’