To Plough Van Diemen's Land

by

Kev Richardson

“I swear, Bridie, the people in this Sydney Cove hail from every county in Britain.”

Their languages jangled in Mary Rohan’s ears like discordant music.

“Lilting Irish, roupy Scots and throaty Welsh, apart from English in its countless accents. Just listen, will yer?”

But Bridie pointed to a particular spot on the wharves.

“’Tis glad I am, Mary, it’s not here we’re stayin’. Look at them poor wretches, so many chains that they weigh more’n their bodies, I reckon.”

“Hobart will be no different.”

The good ship Canada was moored in Sydney Cove by a cluster of rocks a tar called the improbable name of Pinchgut. The town was bigger than Mary expected, yet had no idea what had given her a measure in the first place.

Half the women off Canada were being unloaded in this town. The rest were for Hobart.

Many ships rode at anchor in the huge harbour of white, sandy beaches and the strangest forest ever, green in a fashion, yet not the verdant green of sacred Erin.

‘Drab’ is a fit word for it, no life to it; it’s a tired, lazy green. And forests of it stretch as far as a body can see in every direction. Oh, how I’d love to climb the rigging, see the view from there. I don’t fancy the climb, o’ course, but to be so high would be exciting—watching the gulls screeching in their incessant swoops illustrates such an enviable sense of freedom. And they have a good view, of course.

She felt inspired by all she could see about her.

“But so many redcoats, Mary, everywhere one looks!”

Mary was far happier watching the freedom of the gulls and the sunlight glistening on the water, but the mention of redcoats brought her mind back to the other reality of her being there. There was always a catch in every breath back home, of course, when a redcoat platoon rode into an Irish village. Who this time? would flash through every frightened mind. Troopers seemed always presage to wailing and screaming as husbands and sons were marched off.

Which thought brought her mind back to Crooked Connor.

During the voyage she had thought much on both the likelihood and the unlikelihood of coming across him in this land. ‘Botany Bay,’ she had learned since starting the voyage, during which there were many occasions for chatting with the crew when on deck for exercise each day, was a general term applied to the entire land. It was the particular place where the First Fleet with the first white people to ever settle came, just south of Sydney Town, only to find there was no arable soil or fresh water. So two other sites were chosen, Sydney Harbour being one and Norfolk Island the other. Then some years later, Van Diemen’s Land.

The Sydney settlement has already been fragmented into several districts, so the likelihood of finding Connor, even if he indeed was shipped here, is already remote.

But Bridie again interrupted Mary’s meandering mind...

“Happy I’ll be when ashore, to feel solid ground under me feet.”

“Not happy am I though, Bridie, that we’ve more sailin’ first. Havin’ got this far, I’m anxious to have it done with. I’m no sailor.”

“They say ’tis but a week to Hobart and all the way is close to shore.”

Mary had made close friends with none of the women aboard, not for want of being unsociable, but because for all her years, she’d found no comfort in others’ problems.

Scant satisfaction helping them find solutions, for in the main none are to be found. There’s simply no way out of the Irish problem. and it will ever be so while people let politics rule emotions, people like Connor.

It was not that she didn’t share the fear all the Irish people lived in; it was that she realised there was nowt she could do about it. She had vision enough to realise there could be no change during her lifetime, so why not accept the way of things?

She harboured no ambition of martyrdom.

And without book learning, how can any woman, in a country oppressed, expect aught but be somebody’s drudge?

So she had kept to herself since leaving, rather than be dragged into the politics that brought to most families only more miseries to heap on old.

Every woman aboard, comely or shrew, had wailed and sobbed during the journey as if lamentations might change their situation. Mary regretted finding herself seven years a prisoner yet had no more wish to burden her disappointment on others than she cared to shoulder theirs. Bridie had been a good substitute for company, however, a woman aware that Mary wouldn’t let her too close. So it had proved a safe friendship, because neither could know the chance of staying close...

...and that’s been good enough reason for not getting close now!

“I wonder the prospects for findin’ husbands,” had been a question persistently asked aboard, one to always prompt a plethora of answers.

“They say there’s several men to every woman. Maybe it’ll be a choice that we’re given.”

“More likely they’ll herd us straight to church to take the next in line.”

“They got no church. No real church. These people is all English and Scots.”

“Well, I won’t be marryin’ in one o’ their churches, to live the rest o’ me life in sin.”

Mary wondered how many of those voicing such opinions already had a husband. She felt beyond the age, or stage, in life, of being agog about romance, so had little time for the topic. Those more deserving of sympathy, in her book, were those leaving bairns behind, likely never to see them again.

There are many, I know, who can’t seem to live without a man, hold a fundamental need to be both bedded and protected. But I’m happily past the dreaming stage, content now to leave being wooed to coquettes. Protection isn’t something so easily dismissed, however—simply the inequality of numbers in this land lends emphasis to that. Yet I’d like to have children, so can’t afford to wait my seven years of sentence before following that road—which adds up to getting married, I guess—which certainly means a husband. But I’ll simply wait and see.

She smiled.

“At least, Bridie, we won’t be in the situation of every peasant wife in Ireland, in danger of a husband being overnight whisked away. Given the chance to choose, however, I’m ready to settle for a man not too radical and not too political. If Botany Bay has such, he’ll suit me well enough.”

“But he still won’t be proper Christian.”

“Mmm. The prison padre kept sayin’ how marriage to any man not received into the Papal bosom will mean our children will be bastards. But what can we do if there is only one church?”

“I reckon this is why we hear so many sobs at night.”

“Yet there bein’ no real church, Bridie, nor any priest to marry us, will be but only one of our problems in this land. I’m not going to let that one bother me too much.”

A tar touched her elbow. It was the chippy, his face engraved deeper with lines of living than any etching he carved in the call of duty, she’d often thought, who had for whatever reason, taken a fatherly interest in her. He pointed out Elizabeth Henrietta furling the last of her sails.

“She plies Sydney, Launceston, Hobart regular, lassie. Just back from Hobart she is, and she’ll need but a day to provision. Then yer’ll be off.”

A tiny ship, thought Mary, her mind again on the tossing and pitching.

Yet while she didn’t look forward to the journey, she was thankful it would be short. Not so for her chippy friend, returning to Ireland. She would never understand how a man could choose risking the dreadful dangers of a life at sea.

Yet at least he knows his future better than any of us can perceive.

~ * ~

Mark Ashby Bunker’s prospect of a lifetime of deprivation and penance continued a heavy pressure during his three months on Justitia, a thundercloud threatening to burst with unimaginable horrors to engulf him in timeless purgatory. He could never but believe he was ill done by, unjustly dealt terrible retribution for so trivial a slip.

And whilst the horrors of hulk life proved a sentence in itself, he survived the conditions by clutching the only straw of hope he had, the challenge that he would somehow, someday, not only be recognised, but even envied, for rising above the ignominy of his present sorry state.

So maybe Mark Ashby Bunker was beginning his life of servitude with a more positive attitude than contemporaries?

He at least recognised his challenge. It was the only straw he had.

And he was lucky to be assigned to Lady Castlereagh. She was not only a new ship but the first especially fitted out for transportation. She had no walls below decks, only cells of iron grill for maximum ventilation, and separate cells provided opportunity for convicts to be graded, ruly from unruly, boys from lechers.

On her maiden voyage, she brought Mark and three hundred fellow lags non‑stop to Sydney in half the time of the First Fleet’s journey. Four months after setting course down-channel, she unloaded some in Sydney Harbour before sailing south to Hobart.

And by the time Mark arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, his strength of purpose was fortified by the belief that he could achieve his challenge by cultivating a shrewdness based on truer values than held in his hapless past. With a life sentence, he could not look forward to again being a free man, so resolved to work towards a day when he could at least command respect—a challenge indeed for a lag, as everyone already in the colonies realised.

During the journey, he and fellow convicts were instructed in the assignment system. Whilst many variations depended on circumstance, it was basically that on arrival they were parcelled out as labourers, rather than be a cost on government stores. Prospective employers had access to ship surgeon’s records before opting for eyeball assessment and undertook to feed and clothe their lags with the right to inflict punishment if they failed to perform.

Unlike early convicts who worked for the government, now most were employed by settlers. Charles Cox of Clarence Plains was a came‑free settler, and Mark found him not too demanding a taskmaster, tough but fair.

And in the course of neighbourly fraternisation he met Ben and Sarah Briscoe.

During his first year in the district, he came to know them passably well.

~ * ~

Mary’s further week at sea proved less fearful than expected, and the approach to Hobart was as impressive as she’d found Sydney Harbour.

She wondered if all ports in this vast continent were as magnificent. The dominance of Mount Wellington impacted like a bastion on a castle wall; and broad vistas on every side, as they plied upriver, aroused a hypnotic mood. All was scenically beautiful. There was chill in the air, the mountain capped with snow, despite the sun shone brightly, shimmering on the water, glistening on the sandy beaches, glancing off the mountaintop.

Seagulls screeched, wheeling in circle after circle, inspecting the intruders before darting off to resume fishing. She could not but feel more positive about the fears that had dogged her since setting sail.

Van Diemen’s Land will be no Utopia. What prison could? Yet surely there is no more delightful part of the world outside Ireland, if this first sight is a sample. At least if I’m in prison for any length of time, and if that prison is like Belfast as prisons everywhere likely are, I’ll know that just beyond the bolted doors, beauty beckons—and that will give heart and hope to those inside.

Hobart was a tiny town, hunched on the river inside a cove. Behind it, tentacles of habitation stretched along ridges. Yet as Elizabeth Henrietta furled sail, approaching the jetty, Mary could see the docks were as busy as Sydney Town’s.

A line was rowed out and the little ship hauled in with practised efficiency.

The women were not manacled for disembarking, and she felt herself tingling as she crossed the plank. For the first time in months she was to stand on solid ground, no longer having to concentrate on tired muscles struggling to keep her body balanced. Women already ashore were standing feet apart, flexing knees, enjoying the sensation.

A smile parted her lips as she followed, conscious of a tingling on the querulous nature of what fate, now arrived, would be meted out to them. Was it dare-devilment to feel she was facing life as a ‘thing’ rather than a person, felon rather than free?

Maybe coping with such a situation is like rolling with life as the ship had to roll with the ocean?

And so pondering, she followed up a stack of boxes into a cart, where a redcoat quickly brought her to felon reality by pushing her into a squat, admonishing all to keep backsides on the floor or risk chains for a week.

At the prison they were quickly behind the bolted doors she’d pictured, in conditions no better than the poorest she’d expected.

“It’s dry and warm,” she chided those who complained. “It’s here I’d rather be than still shivering in the musty stench o’ Dublin Gaol.”

Clerks asked names, ages, acquired skills, and informed there would be no delay contracting them out on assignment.

“Prospective masters are already in town to make selections,” they were told.