Son of Gurrewa: Soul of Australia, #2

By Kev Richardson

Children of Australia's founding convicts grow up in a unique environment. On the one hand, convicts labour in chains under lash-wielding redcoats while on the other, immigrant farmers strive to carve out a living, reluctant convicts their only available labour.

Adam seeks his father knowing only that he 'went bush' to live with Aborigines. Kept from him was that his father, a convict bolter, was killed by redcoats in a frontier skirmish.

The sorry hand of fate most-times visits only hardship on a developing community yet occasionally some pawns in the game of life find Lady Luc lends a hand. The odds, for Adam, fall a little each way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613093436

Book preview

Preface

Dear Reader,

Gurrewa told of Australia’s white settlement through the eyes of a convict lad learning about life, people and values. It was the first publication to tell the terrible truths of Australia’s convict history from the convict point of view, since Marcus Clarke’s renowned For the Term of His Natural Life published in 1870.

Since then, in fact right up until 1988 when Australia celebrated its Bicentenary, the education of Australians had been clouded in half-truths. Telling what really happened would have brought only shame on the authorities of the time. Gurrewa was my way of emptying the vacuum cleaner with which modern Australians are at last cleaning under that carpet of concealment.

~ * ~

Son of Gurrewa highlights the truths of how the convict stigma influenced the social structure through the next generation...the story of a young man questioning, then discovering, values essential to finding meaningful satisfaction in the unique social climate of a prison society. Its telling paints the lives and experiences of real, significant people in that generation of Australia’s history.

Adam is a representation of many children of First Fleet Convicts, typical of those who, sometimes through a lucky break, oft-times by dogged endeavour, clambered out of the tight confines of the convict stigma to hold heads high, as free settlers began to arrive, in a society forever in a flux of changing attitudes.

The only licence taken in respect of the many true characters in this history, each of the governors in turn, military officers and characters such as the scoundrel Macarthur on the one hand and the John Oxleys and Wm Charles Wentworths on the other, is dialogue ascribed to them. All incidents in which they are involved are retold from archival records of their lives and achievements.

I hope you enjoy this tale. It is a romp in its way, yet it is factual in respect of the colonial history and denizens of New South Wales in the early 1800s.

For readers who have not read Gurrewa, let me satisfy your curiosity...the name was given to Adam’s father, a First Fleet convict, by the Aborigines who succoured him after escaping from oppression in Sydney Cove. Gurrewa was the native word for Australia’s white cockatoo with the significant yellow comb on its head.

My goal in writing the story of his son is to tell the history of Australia’s second generation...how people lived and contributed to Australia earning its title of Lucky Country and Land of Opportunity. I have tried to make it a fitting sequel to the success Gurrewa achieved (Award Winner in the Eppies, 2003).

I hope you find it so.

Kev Richardson

Book One

Adam the Boy (1790-1810)

‘Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:

Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

And one by one back in the Closet lays.

Stanza XLIX, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

One

Sydney Cove, 1797

Your father will never be dead while you’re alive, young man.

Meg stood hands ahip. Her lips smiled, but her heart sighed.

Young Adam held his grin, the same his father wore in the mind picture she most cherished. Her boy was seven now, near eight years since his father’s bolt, the living image of him, from the fair curly hair to the blue eyes and already promising to be as tall. To Meg, however, those memories of her Adam still seemed like yesterday.

She vividly recalled the happy grin her Adam wore when in their tryst making love. The crest of that hill by the settlement had been built on since those trysts, as had been most of the Sydney Town foreshore. On her return from Norfolk Island, she had made a nostalgic search of The Rocks area, looking for the site of those happy romps, only to find it all changed.

My life has changed too, since then. And nor can the old one return.

Growing up so closely in his father’s image, however, young Adam kept the memory very much alive...Far better to remember him this way, than my final glimpse left me with.

She trembled again at the memory of William knocking on her door, asking her to come with him to identify the body the redcoats had brought in. She had sensed right off that it was going to be her Adam. Mary had sought Meg the previous evening, telling her the surgeon would be coming to fetch her on the morrow.

Unlikely it will be him, though, Will Balmain told her when he called. Two years is a long time for any bolter to live with the blacks. I told Mary that, when she said he looked like the bolter who fathered her friend’s child.

It had been her Adam, of course, though not easily recognizable with hair roughly chopped, the start of a beard growing, the heavily tanned skin, the bodily scars that she guessed should be expected, him living in the bush all that time. Seeing him in that state was indeed a wretched experience.

Yet it at least confirmed that he wasn’t killed by the blacks as everyone thought.

But you’ll never know about that discovery, my lad, she now softly told the boy as she cuddled him.

What’s discovery?

Something that nobody knew about up until now. Like finding a new river, or the new friends we’ve made since returning from Norfolk Island.

It still galled her that they had insisted her Adam, being a bolter, must be buried in an unmarked grave. Without ceremony, only her thoughts saw him on his way to the next world, so if little Adam were to grow knowing his father had been so buried, he would want to know why.

And nothing to make him feel proud would be told him...far better he should grow up not knowing!

When she later posed the problem to William, he agreed to the secret.

He, most of all, best understands how I feel about it.

Later experience, however, taught her that it would be best to give him the truth, yet explained in ways that left clear paths to family love.

~ * ~

A new day’s dawn always had Adam tingling with excitement, expectation of new adventures, new experiences.

What was it Mama had said about ‘discovery’? New rivers and things, new friends?

The ‘things’ caused the tingle.

‘Things’ embrace surprise and I like surprises. Even to wake up finding the sun weaving its path through the clouds is a nice surprise. Then I know that today I can get out and about, not be kept in because of rain.

Rain was needed sometimes, his mama had told him... Trees that grow fruit, vegetables that keep us healthy and flowers that give us beauty, all need water to drink, same as people.

Yet sometimes the rain doesn’t seem to know when enough is enough, so I’m kept in until it finally realises!

He liked to lie abed at such times, watching the sunshine creep along the wall like it, too, was seeking a discovery.

And it will find plenty because the sun covers everything...more than I can ever see at one time.

He had often played a ‘seeing’ game. It was one he could do on his own when Thomas was kept indoors on punishment or off helping his father build houses.

The seeing game was taught him by Father-Will, a ‘test of observation’ he called it, which to Adam was a mere jumble of words he didn’t understand. It called for remembering, within the time he could count to ten, everything his eyes glanced on, and he had quickly realised just how many things one’s eyes could take in, in such a short time, nowadays short because he had practised over and over counting to ten as quickly as he could, to make the game easier.

Father-Will wasn’t his real father. His mama had explained when he was little, how his real father had been a lag like her and as were Thomas’s parents. Most people he knew either used to be lags or still were, people lucky enough to have been brought from England but who had to work for the government for a time to pay back the favour of having been brought. That’s what his mama told him, so he knew it was true.

His real father, also Adam...funny coincidence that, he’d ever reckoned, had gone off to live with the blacks because he wanted to learn how they found food in the forests. Redcoats had never been able to find any. And his father never came back.

Maybe he got a sickness and died, Adam had told Thomas. Mrs. Green got what Father-Will called smallpox and him being a surgeon should know, and she died. So that was most likely what happened to my real father.

No one really knows, his mama had said, so Adam sometimes wondered if he could still be alive, still looking for food in the forests. Adam had gone looking himself at times but never found any. He looked in the bush for apple trees, peach trees, cabbages, carrots and many other things that people in the town now grew in their gardens, yet couldn’t find even one of those things.

No wonder, he reckoned, the redcoats could never find any.

Government House, Sydney

William Balmain, sir. Not only did he perform well on Norfolk Island, he did so here during my absence in England.

Governor Hunter smiled.

You and he didn’t always see eye to eye, I somehow recall?

You stir the pot, sir! John White exclaimed, yet with a wry smile.

Indeed, my friend. It was hardly fair comment, yet one I found difficult to resist.

Both laughed, for they shared excellent rapport.

John White had been chief surgeon on the fleet bringing the first white people to Botany Bay to found a prison colony. Hunter was then captain of HMS Sirius, fleet flagship, so he too shared the problems of the early settlement. He returned to England after Sirius sank on a Norfolk Island reef, to spend several years at sea against the French. Now returned in his new role, he disliked the ‘Your Excellency’ when addressing a governor; he saw it an implied barrier between himself and those he considered as much friends as subordinates.

‘Sir’ will be adequate, he told each of those people.

The incident he and the surgeon now found amusing was an altercation between White and William Balmain, Third Surgeon to the fleet back in the early months of arriving. They had argued over some trivial medical matter, both at the time the worse for tippling, and challenged each other to a duel. Having each fired off both their pistols in the dead of night to have the entire settlement awake, redcoats springing to arms thinking it was either a convict rebellion or a French invasion, the only damage caused was a minor flesh wound to Will Balmain’s thigh. The incident by then, however, could be laughed over.

Yet the governor and White quickly returned to the matter at hand.

Will has earned it, sir. I would not otherwise recommend him. You were back in England when Governor Phillip got that wretched spear in his arm from the natives at Manly and it was Will Balmain who got the deuced thing out, a painfully tricky exercise too, with the hunting spear’s reverse barbs. Arthur Phillip was high in praise of Will at the time.

Yes, I recall now you mention that. It was then that Phillip personally recommended him as resident surgeon on Norfolk Island, eh?

Yes, sir. In fact, Will sailed there in company with Gidley King on his return from England.

The governor put his hand to his chin.

Deuced inconvenient of you of course, John, choosing now to want to retire. But I do understand and won’t ask you to reconsider. But your replacement must be the best man available. And I know King also thinks well of Will Balmain. And being a family man is also in his favour.

White dropped his voice, despite no others were present. Regarding his family, sir, I’m not sure if you realise that Meg is but his ‘colony-wife.’ She is free now. Her sentence expired some two years ago. He never did marry her despite there seems considerable harmony in the union.

Apparently so. And with children... one quite recently, wasn’t there?

A daughter, sir. The older boy is not William’s, sir, he is son of a successful bolter. But Will supports the boy. She has since given him two daughters.

He has a wife at home?

"No. The navy appointed him direct from medical school as surgeon aboard Nautilus. He later applied, as did I, to join this expedition once New South Wales was decided on for transportation."

Mmmm.

Not only most bachelors but indeed many married free men, of both naval and military calling, having signed on for three years, took ‘colony-wives’ from convict ranks due to the imbalance. In the little colony, men outnumbered women seven to one, so as many relationships proved as enduring as others short-lived, so colony-wives naturally presented their ‘husbands’ with offspring.

The governor’s musing, however, was over the controversy of colony-wives versus legal wives when it came to social gatherings. In many instances, even officers who themselves supported colony-wives, frowned on the practice of brethren escorting anyone of convict class into gentle company. It was ever a tender point. No career officer ever married his colony-wife, for if one’s career were to progress when returning to British society, a ‘worthy’ background in a spouse was essential.

However, in a colony short of skills, even the governor must overlook adverse aspects of social graces when skills were the deciding factor in appointments.

So John White had read exactly the governor’s Mmmm.

Could he also tread tender footsteps in the Rum Trade?

Who does not, sir?

I think you know what I mean. We cannot have the colony’s surgeon-in-chief with fingers scraping about in sticky pots!

The governor’s tone had turned clearly brittle. His personal intercession to curb the burgeoning ‘Rum Trade,’ as was called the general smuggling and profiteering conducted by even those in administration, along with leading citizens and most military officers, had proven resoundingly unsuccessful. His embarrassment at failing to quash it called for extremely delicate handling when in conversation with him on the subject.

I couldn’t see minor dabbling in any way impairing his public image, sir. And I cannot believe that, if he is involved at all, it could be in a significant manner. He is extremely conscious of his position.

Hunter made no reply. He simply nodded several times.

No other is as well qualified for the role, sir, repeated White.

Hunter straightened.

I shall make the appointment. Please ask him to come see me in the morning?

White smiled. Yes, sir.

But, John, have a quiet word to him on that other matter, will you? I cannot afford to be seen offering promotion to a man with ethical question marks hooked over his shoulders.

White felt the quiet words should come directly from the governor rather than be delegated, yet said nowt. He would pass the request on to Will.

He simply saluted and left.

Two

Mama!

Meg climbed out of bed and went to him. When he had first called, she had waited, thinking he might be simply dreaming. Yet he called again.

She sat on the bed. What is it, boy?

Why does God take little children who haven’t done anything really bad?

Meg wiped back a tear. She had herself been having a weep, in her own way asking the same question.

Everybody has their time decided at birth, some say, Adam, although no one is ever sure. And even if so, no one ever knows when it will be. So some die old and some die very young, like Ann.

Ann was but three. Will Jane die at three, also?

Meg looked over to the crib where little Jane slept soundly, sucking her thumb as usual when sleeping. She tried keeping her eyes from the empty cot where her first-born child to William had died.

I hope not, darling. Father-Will thinks Ann died because of some infection in the air. There are many things that cause people to die, and only some of those do we have medicines for. We can only hope and pray that the others will not die, especially when it’s only little children.

He thought on that as his mama kissed him and tucked the covers closer before returning to her and Father-Will’s bed.

If life can be so short-lived for some, like sister Ann, then it’s important for everyone to cram as much as possible into life while you can. Some have more chance of course, not convicts who are owned by the government so can do only what they’re told. But mama and Father-Will are free and can both cram much into their lives.

So, pondering on that, Adam realised how often he just sat around thinking. Like when he was bored, wondering what to do.

Maybe I should never just sit around anymore in case I go off early like Ann?

Adam had much serious stuff to consider as he lay back. Into his mind flashed the vision of a man on a horse. He simply mounted and turned his horse wherever he wanted to go. And aboard ship like the one that brought them from Norfolk Island, it was simply directed wherever the captain wanted. So ships, animals and convicts, he reckoned, always told what to do, were the same sorts of things, really.

There are obviously so many things to discover in life!

In future, he then reckoned, that instead of simply sitting around waiting to be told what to do, he must work out directions he should take in life.

Oh, the excitements to be discovered when one thinks about things to do, to then do them...like my real father who went off searching for food.

Now armed with the knowledge of life and death, he turned into a more comfortable lie. With the realisation of so many more things out there to discover, he was indeed anxious for tomorrow.

~ * ~

William Balmain and Meg Dawson celebrated his appointment as Principal Surgeon of the Colony without fanfare. It was over a quiet dinner in their cottage.

It is indeed an honour, Will, especially him conferring such a generous land grant. How much is a thousand acres? As big as Garden Island?

Considerably more, I should think. And all prime land, Meg, the point of a promontory into the harbour, just two miles west of Sydney Cove. By water that is, maybe three if riding the Parramatta Road. Deeds will be drawn up within a week, designating the land coordinates and markers will be planted. We shall then journey out to visit it, my dear, so you can see exactly what comprises a thousand acres. I am anxious to see it myself. If its forests are not too thick we may even, without having to await clearing, be able to ascertain where the house should stand.

Ah! Meg exclaimed. But surely building a house calls for large capital?

Not so large in the circumstance. My new salary is the same as John White received. The governor insists he cannot afford more, and land costs him nothing...that is why the grant is so generous. There is ample stone and timber on the site, he says, and my new position entitles me to more convict assignees. For the small cost of feeding and cladding them, it is free labour. Furnishings will be our greatest expense, for any that arrives is bid for by the officers.

They then sat silent, each mind spinning in quandary on where to start planning.

With you already so overworked, Will, can you appoint more help?

I am granted one more assistant to fill the role vacated as each moves up a rung. But no one additional. England is pressing him, the governor insists, to reduce costs, despite the number of arriving convicts continues to increase, so the need for public services also increases.

Where does that leave you, then?

I intend to have quiet words in a few ears, my dear. The increase in salary affords opportunity to invest in imports from which returns are both quick and generous.

I had always thought investing was taking risks, like gambling?

In England, unless one was well advised, yes, investing was a risk. Here where the population is beginning to explode, demand for merchandise increases quickly. It has been explained as akin to a triangle...the more money fed into the point at the top, the more orders can be placed for importing all manner of goods, so as they arrive, the walls of the triangle spread. Its base, therefore, the money coming out, keeps increasing with demand. Traders who put in money take their returns of the increasing business so that every shilling and pound made in profit provides even more to invest. Whilst ever the population is on the increase, Meg, demand for goods must rise.

Meg didn’t understand the mechanics of business; she was simply content that Will seemed to have a grasp of it. He illustrated rare excitement and her mind’s whirring included the familiar sight of new settlers she had watched arrive, many, from the tone of their dress and amount of luggage that followed each ashore, obviously of considerable class who would be big spenders.

My situation now, Meg, promises an increasingly rosy future. You see how well those of John White’s level of society live...well, he has no more personal wealth than me, so in future we shall be able to live not only as well, but better. We shall also, by then, have returns on money invested, as well as being able to assign more convicts. So you, dear mother of my children, he directed slowly, and with a confident smile, may begin giving thought to what we should include when building the house, at least by way of modest domestic comforts.

~ * ~

Thomas, what is Irish?

Thomas looked askance. What?

Irish.

What’s Irish?

That’s what I asked you.

Thomas shrugged his shoulders.

I was listening at the door of Father-Will’s study yesterday and his visitor told him that many convicts off last week’s ship are Irish.

He didn’t say what made Irish different from other convicts?

I gathered that it’s maybe a disease people here can catch.

What sort of disease?

A plague or something, I suppose.

Does this mean England is now sending convicts, not because they nicked something, but because they got a plague?

Adam nodded. He knew what he’d heard and was worried.

Maybe this plague is what killed your sister?

Maybe so. At the time, Father-Will wasn’t sure what killed her. Maybe it was Irish.

Now they both shrugged shoulders, but the short attention span of seven-year-olds soon dissipates and they returned attention to their game of Pitch and Toss as they termed the serious game of marbles. Yet soon, Thomas sat back on his heels.

Did your sister turn some nasty colour before she died?

I don’t think so. I watched when Mama was crying over her and the only change in colour was that she was whiter than usual.

Well, it can’t be that. I just thought maybe Irish was a colour.

The gentleman said of these Irish that they were all ‘tinged with a hint of insurgence,’ whatever that means. You ever heard anything like that?

I once heard Mrs. Appleton tell my ma that some new cotton she bought was yellow tinged with a hint of green. Maybe Irish is indeed a colour. Why don’t you ask your Father-Will?

No. Then he would know I was listening and I’d likely be punished.

Maybe he’d ask the tutor to give you ‘hard lines’ again, like when you told him you’d seen scarecrows in the cornfield, shouting and waving arms about to frighten the birds.

To which Adam simply nodded.

They let a minute of contemplation pass before returning to their marbles.

~ * ~

By the time of Adam’s birth, the Second Fleet had arrived in New South Wales, first relief ships in two and a half years of desperately painful hunger. Already dead from malnutrition in the colony were hundreds of First Fleeters. Also dead were more than half the babies born during the period, a severe challenge for the handful of surgeons among the more than a thousand Sydney Cove souls.

The First Fleet had lost only some thirty souls on its voyage, when statistics of the day indicated that, it having been the longest voyage ever undertaken by so many souls in the history of the world, more than a hundred were expected. Yet, shamefully on the Second Fleet, two hundred and thirty died of malnutrition, and of the two hundred hospitalised on arrival, twenty died within a week. The poor surgeons had no more medical supplies to work with than what had been brought on that Second Fleet to then last the entire colony until further relief arrived.

For more than a year prior, the dispensary shelves had