Prison Ship (13 page)

Richard joined me out in the sunshine. I could hardly keep the grin from my face. He seemed in good spirits too. As soon as we could talk I told him what had happened.

‘Me too, me too!' he laughed, no longer needing to conceal his delight. ‘Thank heavens. I couldn't have borne it if they'd not done this for you too.'

I told him about James Lyons. ‘Mine was called Randall,' said Richard. ‘Older man than yours. Big stout fellow. Obviously keen on his spirits.'

‘How much did you have to give him?'

Richard paused. ‘He took a guinea. I told him it was all I had. The fool!'

He wasn't so pleased when I told him James had only taken seven shillings from me. But he soon cheered up.

‘I think I'm going to like this place,' he said as we neared the Navy office.

Richard and I were greeted warmly in the Navy office, and immediately set to work repairing and maintaining the colony's vessels. ‘You won't be doing any sailing, boys,' said an officer tartly. ‘We don't want you sailing off over the horizon on your own.'

As convicts, we were expected to work from daylight until three o'clock in the afternoon, Monday to Friday. Six hours on a Saturday. Sunday off. In return we were given a ration of food, clothes and paid a small sum of money. After our day's work we could make more
money hiring ourselves out to free settler and emancipists, as the ex-convicts were called.

With our wages we were to find lodgings. Before we were separated, Doctor Daniel suggested we three find a place together.

‘What's happened to Johnny Onions?' I asked, when we met up later that afternoon.

‘Saw him being marched off by a parson and his wife,' said Dan. ‘Let's hope they have better luck with him than we did.'

I felt relieved of a burden. I didn't like Johnny, but would not have wanted to abandon him here. I hoped the parson was a good man and that he would not beat the boy too severely when his household goods started to go missing.

We went down to the Rocks, a ramshackle part of town facing over the bay, and made enquiries in the Sailor's Arms. The landlady introduced us to one of her customers who swiftly agreed to rent us a two-room house with a small garden close to the hospital where Dan was to work. It was a humble dwelling, with a thatched roof and walls of hardened clay. But it would be enough to keep the weather out and provide us with more space and privacy than we ever had on a Navy ship. Doctor Daniel had one room, Richard and I the other. Up the road from us was a windmill. That night the sound of its flapping sails reminded me of life aboard a ship.

The paths in this part of town were too narrow for a horse and cart, and the buildings stood among dead and dying tree stumps, hastily cleared when the Rocks were first settled. The houses snaked along rock ledges and into any nook or cranny where there was a flat surface large enough to place down posts and build walls and a roof.

Along with the pub there was a bakery and other shops. There was also a ramshackle prison, recently built on the same spot as a prison which had been burned to the ground. Some of the locals had turned their own houses into little shops or drinking dens. Close to the bay were market stalls selling fruit and vegetables. The Rocks was full of people trying to make a living, honest or otherwise.

Further down from the Rocks at the southern end of the bay were government stores and houses. Here flags fluttered over barracks, a school and a church. A small shipyard nestled at the water's edge, the skeleton of a hull propped up on the slipway, waiting for its strakes to be hammered in. Here too were the grander houses and gardens of senior officers and government officials. The Governor's house sat at the top of a hill, looking down on the town. Further to the south, towards the outskirts of Sydney, were neatly laid out houses for soldiers with families.

It took twenty minutes to walk from the northern tip
of the Rocks to the edge of town, where there were farms and fields of cultivated land. Thick green forest lurked beyond. Here also was a road leading to Parramatta, another settlement further west.

We may have been free to walk around but the threat of retribution hung heavy in the air. Floggings were frequent and our overseers were the marines and an army division called the New South Wales Corps. By the side of the Parramatta road were two sets of gallows, often with bodies left to twist in the wind. Further away from town, I heard, fear of rebellion led masters to punish the convicts who worked for them more harshly. Any answering back or neglect of duty would result in twenty-five or fifty lashes with the cat. The cats here were crueller instruments than those used in the Navy. ‘Six foot long with nine knots in each tail,' one convict told us. ‘Each one tipped with wax. Horrible things. You can hear a man being whipped half a mile away. Stand nearby on a windy day and flesh and blood'll fly in your face.'

But along with the daily threat of punishment, there was also some hope for a better life. Those who behaved well, and showed themselves to be reformed, could prosper. All our fellow residents on the Rocks were convicts or ex-convicts, and many of them owned the house they had built there and the little patch of land that went with it.

‘It's a funny business here, isn't it?' mused Richard, after we'd been in our new home a couple of days. ‘We could just choose a patch here and put up a hut. No one to buy land off. We'd just build and have it. Imagine that – from condemned men to men of property in less than a year. Not quite the punishment the Navy had in mind.'

Being able to build your own hut was not all Sydney had to offer. We heard stories of men on the earliest fleets who had come over as convicts and now had their own thriving farms.

On our first Sunday off Richard and I set off to explore our new domain. Close to the western edge of town we spied the most extraordinary creature I had ever seen bounding through the fields. It had a face quite like a dog, but with large, pointed ears. Its trunk had two short limbs, like arms, and it stood upright on two huge and powerful hind legs. These it used with fantastic effect to bounce, rather than run, at great speed. As it leaped forward it used its long thick tail as a kind of balance to the upper part of its body.

‘Look, it's got a head half way down its body,' I shouted. It did too. A smaller head poked out of its belly.

‘What on earth is it?' said Richard. It was easily the same height as the two of us, although its small mouth suggested it would not be dangerous to man. It saw us
and backed away, so we moved under cover to watch it some more.

‘It's just had a baby!' yelled Richard. Sure enough, as we watched, a miniature version of the creature tumbled out of its mother's stomach and bounded around.

‘That doesn't look like any new-born I've ever seen,' I said.

We watched with open-mouthed fascination. As the infant bounced around, the mother lay flat on the ground, resting her head on one of her front paws. Shortly after, a stray dog from the town approached and began to threaten the baby. At once it bounced back to its mother and got back in the same way it had come out.

The mother turned aggressively towards the dog and advanced. The mutt growled angrily and would not back down. As it crouched to leap forward, the mother spun its heavy tail round and delivered an almighty blow to the dog, which fell at once to the ground. The creature bound off, and it was several minutes before the dog regained strength enough to limp away.

‘That, my dear boys, is a kangaroo,' said Doctor Dan, when we told him about it. ‘What you saw coming out of it was a kangaroo cub. She carries it around in a sort of pouch. It's not new born at all. Might have been six months old. Aren't they marvellous?'

These wonders did not cease. The skies and trees were filled with birds of amazingly bright plumage. These, as
a sort, were called parrots, and individually, according to Doctor Dan, there were lories, cockatoos and parakeets. Despite their beauty, the cockatoos were particularly hated by the farmers, because they would descend as a flock on a ripe crop of wheat and destroy it.

These were far from being the strangest birds on the territory. One, called an emu, was comical in appearance. Lacking the grace of the other creatures we had seen, it had a huge body of shaggy, dirty feathers shaped like a mound of earth, and long skinny legs. Its head protruded from a scrawny neck and was covered in bright blue feathers. Its wings were tiny and seemed of no use. It made up for its flightless state by running at great speed. Richard had heard the meat tasted like beef.

Some of the new animals looked as lovable as kittens or puppies. There was one kind of bear-like creature called a koala. It was no bigger than a small dog, though much rounder and grey in colour. These animals squatted silently in trees with their babies on their backs.

Not all the animals around here were so appealing. Our sleep was often interrupted by the cries of birds or other tree dwellers. Some, called possums, kept us awake with their strange laughter, which sounded like a consumptive old man clearing his throat. They seemed to be calling to each other, for when one started, another would reply from some distance away.

Insects plagued us. Flies descended every time we
brought out food to eat. Every night we would search our hut to drive out mosquitoes before we could settle down to sleep. Almost always we missed one, and I would wake to hear the detestable creature buzzing near my ear.

The hours we had been given to work seemed long, but we soon discovered we were rarely expected to keep to them. We'd be given daily tasks – decks to be caulked, sails repaired, rigging tarred. If we worked hard, we could be finished by late morning. We usually ended up having our dinner in the Sailor's Arms. James Lyons was often there and after we'd bought each other several drinks I couldn't help but ask him, ‘Why did you only take seven shillings from me? I would have given you that ring.'

‘I know, but you would have soon found out how much less other men paid and then you would have been my enemy for life. It's a small place is Sydney. You're shorter than me now, but you won't be forever. I'm a scribe Sam, and not much of a fighter. It doesn't do to tussle with fellows who spend their life hauling up sails or anchors, or heaving timber. Most of us government clerks have never lifted anything heavier than a goose-feather quill. We have an easy life, so why ruin it by making enemies? Besides, thieves' honour and all that. We're all in the same boat.'

James had a logic about him that intrigued me. He had a sharp mind and was forever on the lookout for some way to fleece his masters. But he was clever enough to know how far he should go. It was a lesson he had learned the hard way.

‘I was apprenticed as a clerk to my uncle, who was a lawyer in Norwich. We used to siphon off a few guineas from old ladies who leave their estates to the church. One day we got greedy. My uncle danced on the end of a rope. I was sent here. Silly, weren't we?' He looked wistful. ‘Still, it's an easy life. Just keep your nose clean, keep your tongue still when you're shouted at by soldiers or government officers, and for heaven's sake don't hit one of them. Do that and you'll find yourself lashed on the triangle then packed off to the country to work in an iron gang.'

I didn't know what he meant.

‘They clap you in irons, eight men all linked together. Then you spend your days clearing bush or chopping down trees. Everyone off the boats gets a chance to prove they're decent sorts, but if you do something that upsets them, then the authorities come down on you like a ton of hot bricks.

‘You and your pal Richard are bright boys,' he went on. ‘You could get a job with the clerks if you asked. It's an easy life and we're always short of them that can read and write.'

I said I'd think about it. But I liked my work in the Navy office and I felt uneasy with the little fiddles of the clerks. They were likeable rogues, but I wanted to do an honest job.

We went to the Sailor's Arms almost every day to meet with James and soon got to know his friends there. They were not the sort of people my father would have approved of. James liked his company rough, and would often buy drinks for the most dangerous-looking men in the pub.

‘Pays to be on the right side of the worst ones,' he whispered.

One night we got to talking with some of them about Captain Bligh and the
Bounty
mutiny. They thought the crew should have killed Bligh rather than set him adrift in an open boat. ‘That Fletcher Christian was a bleedin' nancy,' said Edward Bean, who was one of my close neighbours. ‘If they'd slit the throats of all the men that didn't side with 'em, they'd have stood a better chance of getting away with it.'

Bean was a frightening fellow at the best of times. I was amazed at his ability to hold such hatred for someone he had never met. ‘That bastard Bligh, I know his type. If he ever comes my way, I'll run him through soon as look at him.'