Under Full Sail Page 8
Her desire to travel to Australia was spontaneous: it came in April 1852 as a consequence of newspaper reports of the gold rush, which ‘induced my brother to fling aside his Homer and Euclid for the various “Guides” printed for the benefit of the intending gold-seeker, or to ponder over the shipping columns of the daily papers. The love of adventure must be contagious, for three weeks after I found myself accompanying him to those auriferous [gold-bearing] regions.’
There was, however, an inauspicious start to the voyage:
Everything was ready – boxes packed, tinned, and corded; farewells taken, and ourselves whirling down by rail to Gravesend – too much excited – too full of the future to experience that sickening of the heart, that desolation of the feelings, which usually accompanies an expatriation, however voluntary, from the dearly loved shores of one’s native land.
The sea was very rough, but as we were anxious to get on board without farther delay, we entrusted our valuable lives in a four-oared boat, despite the dismal prognostications of our worthy host. A pleasant row that was, at one moment covered over with salt-water, the next riding on the top of a wave, ten times the size of our frail conveyance, then came a sudden concussion, [our boat] smashed into a smaller boat, which immediately filled and sank, and our rowers disheartened at this mishap would go no farther. The return was still rougher – my face smarted dreadfully from the cutting splashes of the salt-water; they contrived, however, to land us safely . . . though in a most pitiable plight; charging only a sovereign for this delightful trip; very moderate, considering the number of salt-water baths they had given us gratis. In the evening a second trial proved more successful, and we reached our vessel safely.
Ellen told how her first ever night on board while the ship lay at anchor was an unexpected experience: waking in the morning in a tiny cot ‘scarce wide enough to turn around in’, in a claustrophobic little cabin that was a far cry from her usual four-poster bed in a good-sized room. That morning they bade farewell to London:
The first sound that awoke me was the ‘cheerily’ song of the sailors, as the anchor was heaved – not again, we trusted, to be lowered till our eyes should rest on the waters of Port Phillip. And then the cry of ‘raise tacks and sheets’ (which I, in nautical ignorance, interpreted ‘hay-stacks and sheep’) sent many a sluggard from their berths to bid a last farewell to the banks of the Thames.
Nearly two months after sailing down the English Channel then out into the wide blue waters of the Atlantic, Ellen and her fellow travellers were experiencing the energy-sapping, humidity-laden doldrums of the equatorial region. They were becalmed for more than a week, until Sunday, 6 June, when the faintest of puffs saw them finally ‘cross the line’, much to everyone’s delight:
We were weary of gazing upon the unruffled waters around us, or watching the sails as they idly flapped to and fro. Chess, backgammon, books and cards, had ceased to beguile the hours away, and the only amusement left was lowering a boat and rowing about within a short distance of the ship, but this (even by those not pulling at the oars) was considered too fatiguing work, for a tropical sun was above us, and the heat was most intense. Our only resource was to give ourselves up to a sort of DOLCE FAR NIENTE [pleasantly idle] existence, and lounge upon the deck, sipping lemonade or lime-juice, beneath a large awning which extended from the fore to the mizzen masts.
Eight weeks later, with the ship powering east, 260 nautical miles south of Adelaide and a similar distance from the entrance to Port Phillip Bay, Ellen – who was the daughter of a clergyman – observed, with great reverence, a burial at sea:
Early this morning one of the sailors died, and before noon the last services of the Church of England were read over his body; this was the first and only death that occurred during our long passage, and the solemnity of committing his last remains to their watery grave cast a saddening influence over the most thoughtless. I shall never forget the moment when the sewn-up hammock, with a gaily coloured flag wrapped round it, was launched into the deep; those who can witness with indifference a funeral on land, would, I think, find it impossible to resist the thrilling awe inspired by such an event at sea.
It was Friday, 20 August when she and all on board excitedly fixed their gaze on the entrance to the bay. The captain had his crew trimming and retrimming the sails, all the time working wind and tide so their ship would be safely guided through ‘the Rip’, the narrow, reef-riddled entrance to Port Phillip.
Inside the bay, the pilot – a ‘smart and active fellow’ – boarded the ship after being rowed out from the shore in a longboat. He suggested to the captain that the ship anchor just inside the entrance, as a severe storm was brewing in the north. That was the call from the captain, and it was two days before the weather turned in favour of a passage north to the anchorage off Melbourne.
Soon after the sails were set and the anchor raised, the value of having the pilot on board became apparent to Ellen, and everyone else:
Got under way at half-past seven in the morning, and passed the wrecks of two vessels, whose captains had attempted to come in without a pilot, rather than wait for one – the increased number of vessels arriving, causing the pilots to be frequently all engaged. The bay, which is truly splendid, was crowded with shipping. In a few hours our anchor was lowered for the last time. Boats were put off towards our ship from the Lairdet’s Beach [Port Melbourne]. We were lowered into the first that came alongside, and after a twenty minutes’ pull to the landing-place we trod the golden shores of Victoria.
However, treading those shores brought an unexpected sensation. Ellen noted that, after four months at sea, everyone’s sea legs were not prepared to leave them immediately. This was of no great concern, though, ‘for we are in the colonies, walking with undignified, awkward gait, not on a fashionable promenade, but upon a little wooden pier’. She continued:
And now the cry of ‘Here’s the bus,’ brought us quickly outside again, where we found several new arrivals also waiting for it. I had hoped, from the name, or rather misname, of the conveyance, to gladden my eyes with the sight of something civilized. Alas, for my disappointment! There stood a long, tumble-to-pieces-looking wagon, not covered in, with a plank down each side to sit upon, and a miserable narrow plank it was. Into this vehicle were crammed a dozen people and an innumerable host of portmanteaus, large and small, carpet-bags, baskets, brown-paper parcels, bird-cage and inmate, etc., all of which, as is generally the case, were packed in a manner the most calculated to contribute the largest amount of inconvenience to the live portion of the cargo. And to drag this grand affair into Melbourne were harnessed thereto the most wretched-looking objects in the shape of horses that I had ever beheld.
The journey into Melbourne gave Ellen her first impression of the country she had sailed halfway round the world to experience – and it wasn’t what she was expecting:
‘And is this the beautiful scenery of Australia?’ was my first melancholy reflection. Mud and swamp – swamp and mud – relieved here and there by some few trees which looked as starved and miserable as ourselves. The cattle we passed appeared in a wretched condition, and the human beings on the road seemed all to belong to one family, so truly Vandemonian [like a convict of Van Diemen’s Land] was the cast of the countenances.
‘The rainy season’s not over,’ observed the driver, in an apologetic tone. Our eyes and uneasy limbs most FEELINGLY corroborated his statement, for as we moved along at a foot-pace, the rolling of the omnibus, owing to the deep ruts and heavy soil, brought us into most unpleasant contact with the various packages before-mentioned. On we went towards Melbourne – now stopping for the unhappy horses to take breath – then passing our pedestrian messmates, and now arriving at a small specimen of a swamp; and whilst they (with trousers tucked high above the knee and boots well saturated) step, slide and tumble manfully through it, we give a fearful roll to the left, ditto, ditto to the right, then a regular stand-still, or perhaps, by way of variety, are all but jolted over the
animals’ heads, till at length all minor considerations of bumps and bruises are merged in the anxiety to escape without broken bones.
At one stage during this journey, the new arrivals were advised that the Yarra River could be seen straight ahead, but for them a river it wasn’t. Ellen innocently asked, ‘Where?’, then, when looking in that general direction, she could only see something that to her ‘resembled the fens of Lincolnshire, as they were some years ago, before draining was introduced into that county’.
During the voyage out from England, Ellen’s brother and four other young men had decided to go to the diggings as a group. They bought a dray for £100 and two ‘strong cart horses’ for another £190, plus all the sundry digging and camping equipment they thought necessary. After departing Melbourne on 7 September – ‘a damp and dismal day’ – with Ellen riding on the dray and all the others walking, they set out for the diggings near Kyneton, more than 50 miles north along an often rugged track. Having spoken to diggers who had gone that way before them, they decided it was best to camp out as often as possible, ‘and thus avoid the vicinity of the inns and halting-places on the way, which are frequently the lurking places of thieves and bushrangers’.
As they progressed towards their destination, they became increasingly intrigued by the names given to the many gullies they crossed. All related to the finding of gold or associated incidents: Peg-leg Gully took its name from three men, all of whom had a wooden leg; Golden Gully was where a man had pulled a tuft of grass from the ground and found a nugget below its roots; while Murderer’s Flat and Choke’em Gully convinced Ellen and her group to keep moving. The most interesting of all was White Horse Gully, where a raging horse had plunged its hooves into the soft ground and unearthed a nugget that sold for an impressive £5000.
During their goldfields adventure, which also took them to diggings near Bendigo and Ballarat, Ellen, her brother and his friends did find small amounts of gold which they happily converted to cash. Throughout this time Ellen continued to update her highly detailed diary; in fact, the book that it eventually became was so thorough in its depiction of her travels that it proved a respected guide for would-be prospectors and migrants planning to venture from foreign shores to Australia and its goldfields.
*
Apart from Ellen Clacy’s book, there were, until the mid–1850s, only a few detailed guides that would adequately prepare new arrivals for the physical and emotional burdens they would encounter in Australia. The most professional of them was titled The Emigrant’s Guide to Australia, written by John Capper and published in England in 1856. In his opening paragraph the author explained:
The deep interest taken by almost every class of society in all that relates to Australia and the doings, or rather ‘diggings’, of its colonists, renders any attempt at diffusing practical information upon such matters, at once important and acceptable . . . The majority of the present generation may easily remember the ‘great South Land’ as containing but one or two small penal settlements – as a remote region of desert, unfriendly soil, difficult of access, offering no inducements to settlers, and tempting none but the most wretched to visit its shores. It was, in fact, at no further date than thirty years since, a place of crime, of chains and stripes; a vast jail in the wilderness, a criminal lazarhouse [leper colony] at the antipodes, a voyage to which was as much dreaded, as would have been a trip to Siberia or Russian Tartary [in northern and central Asia].
Capper then sketched an image of the new Australia, based on his own experiences and those of others. The same generation that had held the preceding view of ‘a criminal lazarhouse at the antipodes’ was now quite justifiably seeing it as a ‘land flowing with something better than milk and honey’. He described the continent as rich beyond exaggeration in gold, copper and timber, and similarly wealthy in corn, wool, wine and oil. The forests were so vast they could supply the world with sufficient timber ‘for the next dozen centuries’, and Australia was ‘blessed with a climate so admirably adapted to the human frame that in most parts of the country the profession of a medical man is a poor and unneeded one’.
His portrait of Australia was painted with a broad brush; he touched on every possible aspect of city and country life, and explained what parts of the land had been explored and what remained a mystery. He told of many superb coastal ports and detailed what was known of the inland, but, quite understandably, focused on the largest towns.
He was effusive in his praise of Sydney, declaring that it presented ‘an elegant and uniform appearance that could scarcely be excelled by that of any English town of similar size’. Along with an abundance of beautiful buildings, it had an air of European civilisation not expected by the newly arrived: ‘the thickly-studded waters swarming with sailing craft and steam vessels, rushing crowds on shore, all tend to impress the stranger most favourably with the beauty and importance of this Australian capital’.
The author’s impressions of Melbourne were little different from those of Ellen Clacy. Because of the gold rush, it was one of the world’s fastest-growing towns, and accordingly offered many of the comforts and experiences English and other migrants wished to enjoy.
Capper’s most important chapter for his readers was titled ‘Who Should Emigrate, And How, With a few Words to Those who had Better Remain at Home’. Here he stressed that while Australia could easily be seen as a land proffering employment and significant financial gains, it was not for everyone, in particular the ‘struggling classes’. Many small-scale miners would find nothing on the goldfields, and in the towns the Australian population was growing faster than employment opportunities. They would face similar difficulties in Australia to those they had experienced in England.
*
While many immigrants would fail to find either gold or a decent livelihood, in the popular imagination, Australia was a land of golden opportunity for all. But it could so easily have been very different . . .
Without the gold rush, many of these people would have known little, if anything, about the land down under. Many would never have even heard of Australia, and those who had would have thought of it as nothing more than a dumping ground for loathsome felons. Little wonder, then, that so few people saw any reason to consider migrating there.
It was not until news of the discovery of large amounts of gold in Australia spilled into the northern hemisphere that the country’s image and appeal changed, virtually overnight. Before that – ever since the First Fleet’s arrival in 1788 – colonial authorities had constantly struggled to attract free settlers to this vast antipodean land.
*
Since the earliest years of the nineteenth century, the British Government had held a firm belief that colonising the entire Australian continent was a high priority. It would be the most positive way to build up the colony’s fledgling economy, and deter the enemy, France, from laying claim to any of the country. But to achieve these things they needed people to occupy the land.
Obviously the western side of Australia, where there was no British presence, was the most vulnerable region. In 1826, the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Henry Bathurst, suggested to the colonial government that King George Sound, near the south-western corner of the continent, was an ideal location for a settlement: it was close to the route taken by ships sailing from England to Australian ports to the east, and was well protected.
The Governor of New South Wales, General Sir Ralph Darling, directed Major Edmund Lockyer to command an expedition to the region. Should the French be encountered on the voyage, he was to land troops so that the enemy would be left in no doubt that ‘the whole of New Holland [Australia] is subject to His Britannic Majesty’s Government’, and that ‘orders have been given for the Establishment at King George’s Sound of a Settlement for the reception of Criminals accordingly’.
Lockyer departed Sydney on 9 November 1826 aboard His Majesty’s brig Amity, with a party of twenty-three troops and twenty-three convicts – the latter be
ing the project’s workforce – and supplies for six months. Less than seven weeks later, Amity had sailed west through Bass Strait and across the Great Australian Bight and had anchored in King George Sound.
It was 26 December when the troops, convicts and supplies were put ashore and the first stage of a camp established. A month later, on 21 January, Lockyer decided it was time to enact the formalities expected of him. With the Union Jack wafting proudly in the breeze, the troops fired a feu de joie rifle salute as Lockyer declared to all present that he was formally taking possession of the western third of the Australian continent on behalf of the British Crown. The site of the camp would soon be named Frederick Town in recognition of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (the brother of King George IV).
The following year, Captain James Stirling explored the Swan River region further north, then petitioned the British Government to establish a free colony there. The Swan River Colony was proclaimed on 18 June 1829, but from the start its residents objected to the presence of a penal outpost to the south. So in 1831 Frederick Town was made part of the Swan River Colony and renamed Albany, and its convicts and military personnel were sent back to New South Wales. Meanwhile, two separate sites developed along the Swan River, which soon became the port of Fremantle and the colonial capital of Perth.
*
While this beachhead in the west would hopefully protect the region from occupation by foreigners, much work was still needed to increase the continent’s European population. For decades there had been growing disquiet in government ranks about the lack of skilled workers, particularly skilled rural labourers, among the new arrivals.
There was also a disconcerting imbalance of men and women. In 1830 the ratio was four to one in major centres, and an alarming twenty men to every woman in rural areas. Part of this disparity was due to the number of male convicts who had served their time and subsequently been emancipated. Something needed to be done to improve that balance and accelerate migration.