These Few Lines Read online

  8 strong wind boult in the flihg

  jib broke out

  Saunders also records heavy winds on these days and the fact that the ship sustained some storm damage. After the jib sail was set there was ‘good sailing’ for some days, according to William, who was also impressed by the many and large seabirds that wheeled above, behind and before the Norwood as she cut through the waves towards the speck on the charts that was Fremantle. He wrote:

  albertrosses ollegok cape pigen and other Birds …

  his basic spelling just managing to convey the sightings of the mariner’s traditional good luck charm, the albatross, as well as Cape Pigeons and oligarchs.3

  William seems to have had more luck than Saunders in sighting albatross as Saunders had still not had that pleasure by 13 June. But on 17 June he was able to note that the Norwood had met the Roxburgh Castle, 55 days outward bound to Madras.

  On 19 June, with ‘wind in faver’, it became very cold, with rain, hail and

  very strong sea rowling

  Dr Saunders noted that a waterspout had been seen only two miles away from the ship on that day. This weather meant more seasickness for Saunders to treat and note in his log. Cases of diarrhoea, ringworm, coughs and colds also kept him busy with the arrowroot and the lemon juice. But he also found time to pen a note about the poor quality of the shoes issued to the convicts, which had by this time mostly fallen apart.

  In his diary for that day a possibly barefoot William wrote:

  dreams

  That is all there is. No details, just the one word. Perhaps his dreams were of home, Myra, the children, friends and relations, the trial, possibly that night in Silver Wood when everything in William Sykes’ hitherto ordinary life went terribly wrong.

  Immediately after the ‘dream’ entry, William writes that it was a

  very ruff night 20 dull with strong

  swell on 21

  On that day, amidst the pitching and the vomiting, another woman gave birth. But this time, as Saunders noted in his log, the baby was stillborn. William simply scrawled

  Birth died

  The death of a new-born infant in those days of high and expected infant mortality and in the midst of bad weather at sea was not an occasion for much comment. Irwin certainly avoided mention of it in Norwoodiana and Saunders includes only a sparse record in his journal. Nor was the death recorded in the official reckoning of numbers embarked and disembarked. The child had come into the world and gone out again with barely a flicker of record other than in these humble documents and its parents’ hearts. Migrating mothers commonly reported the deaths of newborn babies, infants and even older children as an almost matter-of-fact consequence of such hazardous voyages.4

  Now the seas were becoming rough enough to seriously discomfort the convicts who, while they were below decks in their prison, were continually wet and cold. Saunders was concerned about health and safety and was only able to hang half the required number of heaters. Rats were plaguing crew and passengers, though there was at least some relief from Irwin’s determined sermonising as the weather was too rough to hold divine service on the twenty-third. From William’s point of view it was just another

  miserable day

  The next few days were much the same, with fair winds but squally rains. On 26 June there was a serious accident. Probably as a consequence of the dirty weather and general misery, the covers on the ship’s boiler had not been properly secured. It exploded:

  ackedent

  with the Boiler and too men

  scolded

  William writes. It was actually three men scalded, as Dr Saunders notes, ‘two rather seriously’.

  On the twenty-seventh they again met The City of Shanghai but there was nothing else to break the monotony of the same rough weather well into July:

  sailing very fast

  with squall until the 9 and

  then calm and dull

  William Sykes, puddler, poacher, transportee and soon to be Swan River convict, morosely ended his diary of the Norwood’s second and final convict voyage on 9 July 1867. These are not the last words we will hear directly from William Sykes, and we will hear much more of him through Myra’s and his own letters, then, intermittently, through the official documents of penal servitude. Four days after William completed his terse testament he would come in sight of the land where he had been sent to serve for the rest of his life.

  On 13 July, at 2.30 in the afternoon, the Rottnest Island lighthouse was spotted from the masthead. It was not long before all those aboard the Norwood saw their journey’s end. A convict who had arrived at the Swan a year or so earlier described the first sight that William and his shipmates had of their new abode:

  The first you see of the land of your exile is a rather low coast-line, broken by two rocky islands, which rise out of a long, low reef of sand and rock, and assist in forming a moderately safe roadstead. As you round the northernmost of these, and approach the land more closely, you see it to be covered with a wild heathery scrub, out of which rise here and there wild-looking trees, scantily leaved and of no great beauty … 5

  After her brisk 86 day voyage6 the pilot came aboard at 5 pm and brought Norwood into the turquoise waters of Gage Roads, just off the settlement of Fremantle. But, as Saunders noted, the heavy winds made it impossible to land and the ship was forced to lay off for some days. This forced delay was probably frustrating for all aboard, though perhaps least of all for the convicts. They were only taking a few days off their sentences, all of which would involve hard labour in the harsh bush of the colony. From the decks of the Norwood, even through the windswept spray, they could see the hulking shape of a large limestone building atop the hill behind the town. ‘Conspicuous above all’, as the 1866 convict described it. The grim caverns of Fremantle Prison – ‘the Convict Establishment’ – dominated the rambling seaport and proclaimed the seriousness with which the colony and the British government intended to pursue transportation to the Swan River, now that it had been ended to the eastern side of the continent.

  William Sykes and those suffering with him must have viewed this sight with apprehension, even fear. Little in any of their lives, legal or criminal, had prepared them for incarceration in unhealthy British gaols, dangerous sea voyages or for life – and, in all probability, death – on one of the last and hardest frontiers. Before they could begin to work out their crimes on that gulag, though, they would first have to pass through a forbidding limestone gateway to be ironed, uniformed and newly-numbered.

  On 14 July the wind finally dropped and at 1 pm the convicts were taken by barges from the Norwood to the jetty. Within an hour or so of their departure the ever-efficient and matter-of-fact Surgeon Saunders had birthed the baby of a pensioner guard and his wife. By that time the convicts were being marched in line through the streets of Fremantle and up the hill dominated by the bulk of the prison. Here, they were officially inducted into the system that would totally control their lives for the duration of their punishment. To some extent the transportees had been selected according to the skills they possessed. The original arrangement between the colony and the British government had been for the Swan River to receive convicts of good character who could contribute to the development of the enterprise. Although the original good intentions regarding minor offenders had gradually faded away, the convicts aboard the Norwood represented a considerable asset to the colonists and their aspirations.

  They were a diverse group. Thirty-three had no occupation and can probably be considered professional criminals – thieves, burglars and footpads. Forty-four of the transports described themselves as labourers, while the remaining 170 odd were a handy miscellany of trades and skills that could be put to good use in a struggling frontier settlement. There were a good number of men from the building trades, including seven bricklayers, seven carpenters, six painters, five masons and two wagoners, together with a sprinkling of architects, engineers, surveyors and glaziers. The new arrivals, who also br
ought other useful skills to the colony, included six butchers, five fitters and turners, five bakers, four blacksmiths, four sawyers, clerks, farmers, accountants, druggists, a silversmith, shepherd, cooper, a variety of metalworkers, an upholsterer and makers of gut, combs, boilers, packing cases, watches and ropes. There was even a maker of fiddle strings. Thirteen of the men were miners.

  Their crimes were many and various: housebreaking, picking pockets, burglary and the usual assortment of offences against property. There were rick burners and arsonists, both common forms of rural protest. There were counterfeiters, utterers, embezzlers, sheep stealers, deserters and other military malefactors as well as receivers of stolen goods. Crimes against the person were also well represented. As well as the Silver Wood poachers, there were murderers, rapists, paedophiles and a committer of incest. All began serving their time together within the massive walls of Fremantle’s convict establishment.

  The Cornhill Magazine convict again provides a contemporary depiction of Fremantle Prison:

  Your first impression, on finding yourself within the gates, is a mixed one. The courtyard is very quiet – not unlike that of a large deserted country inn, and the inspection you undergo before going to the baths is a quiet affair, conducted without fuss or nonsense and only carried just as far as is necessary. So far so good. But the windows of the great building before you, being of a thick grey glass, impress you most unpleasantly.

  The writer then goes on to recount the initiation of convicts into ‘the Establishment’:

  After inspection on entrance you go to the baths, and now is the time to secure any money you may have with you … From the baths, which are sensibly and conveniently contrived, you pass into a great yard to be shaved and have your hair cut, both of which operations, let me tell you, will be performed most effectually. Every particle of whisker, every hair of your head which can be made to pass through a flat comb, is taken off unsparingly. They cut the hair pretty close in England, but what they leave on there is a ‘luxuriant growth’ compared with what they leave on in Australia.

  The Cornhill Magazine convict had, like William Sykes, spent some time in Portsmouth Prison before being transported. He was able to make some comparisons between the two establishments:

  In size, the cells here [Fremantle] are little larger than the iron cages at Portsmouth; but they are built of stone, have a good window, are of good height, and are plastered and whitewashed, have a firm table and sufficient conveniences, and are really cheerful, airy little dens.

  As well as this bright picture of prison architecture, this writer also compared the disciplinary system of Fremantle most favourably with that of English gaols:

  You have, when not at work, full liberty of entry and egress [to and from the cells]. For about ten minutes at breakfast-time, and the same at dinner and tea, you must be in them; but even then the doors are left open. All the rest of the day out of working hours you can go down to the yard or stay in your cell – as you please. The doors are closed only at night.7

  Relaxed though these regulations were, those spending their time in Fremantle Prison were constantly reminded of their incarceration by the bulky limestone walls that formed the horizons of their days and the muffled solitude of their nights. Into this place and its practices passed William Sykes, the last poacher transported to Australia.8

  He was described in the official prison record as 5 feet 61/2 inches in height, with light brown hair and grey eyes. His face was oval, his complexion light and his appearance healthy, in contrast to Bone and Bentcliffe who were both described as ‘middling stout’, bearing the evidence of their livelihoods in the ‘coal cuts’ on each man. John Teale was of average build, of swarthy complexion and with an oval face. William had a cut on his left knee, perhaps a result of the rough barge crossing to the shore.9 He was 39 years old and he was sentenced to ‘Life’. His time had begun.

  But for others who had been aboard the Norwood, their time was at an end. Dr Saunders noted in his final log entry, with satisfaction and relief, that he was at last a man free from government service. William Irwin no doubt felt much the same. The Norwood had landed her cargo, her ‘weight of woe’ as Irwin had once described the convicts in his weekly paper, and delivered them to their place of punishment and penance. With all evidence of her convict voyage promptly and efficiently dismantled, the Norwood set sail back across the vast waters to the far end of the globe, where Myra Sykes and all her children waited anxiously for word of William. It was to be a long wait.

  9 Swan River

  The Convicts are coming, oho!, oho!

  What a curse to the Swan! What a terrible blow!

  No – devil a bit – don’t fear, my old bricks,

  How much we may learn, if they’ll teach us their tricks.

  Swan River Song, 1849

  Long before the founders of the Swan River colony arrived in 1829 the vast western coast of Australia had been the site of extensive human occupation. For at least 40 000 years the people of this land had moved across its beaches and deserts and through its forests. They had hunted its wildlife, gathered its fruits and celebrated their oneness with the land and all its features. In small bands they had enjoyed more than 200 generations of undisturbed existence in one of the world’s most remote places.

  Their myths told of the ancestors and creator serpents that had made the sky, the earth and all those who walked upon it. Their legends were sung and danced in ceremonial gatherings. As well as the Dreamtime stories, they also spoke sometimes of more recent events, such as the sighting of strange winged vessels that passed north and south along the rugged coast.1 Although the indigenous inhabitants would not know this for many centuries, these were the sailing ships of English and Dutch buccaneers and traders. Sometimes the strange vessels were blown onto the jagged reefs at the base of many of the cliffs, their passengers and crews drowned, marooned and even murdered by each other.

  In June 1629 a Dutch ship, the Batavia, was wrecked on the Abrolhos Islands; the survivors became involved in one of the most chillingly bloodstained stories of maritime history. The English buccaneer, adventurer and naturalist William Dampier made landfall near Derby at what is now King Sound in 1688, describing the local inhabitants as ‘the miserabalist people in the world’. Despite this unpromising and inaccurate assessment,2 Dampier returned in 1699.

  The Dutch continued to sail along these ill-fated coasts, despite sometimes being wrecked. While searching for signs of these foundered vessels and their valuable cargoes of treasure in 1696, Willem de Vlamingh hove to off what is now Fremantle and explored the region inland around what would later be the city of Perth. De Vlamingh found little in his voyages and eventually sailed away from Western Australia early in 1697. He took with him the inscribed pewter plate left by Dirk Hartog on the island he named after himself in 1616, when he became the first known European to walk on the western shore of the continent. To mark his accidental discovery, Hartog left some high-class graffiti, a pewter plate he had engraved and nailed to a pole on the island, a message to any future comers that he had been there first.

  Over the next several decades Dutch ships plied the Western Australian waters unchallenged and unhindered, other than by the rocks and the elements. It was not until 1791 that the navigator George Vancouver named the great harbour of King George Sound, its maritime and military potential being the cause of the later founding of the settlement now called Albany. Vancouver was followed by a navigator of legendary skill and achievements, Mathew Flinders, who in 1801 sailed by King George Sound on his circumnavigation of the continent.

  These explorers, entrepreneurs and the mostly undocumented sealers and whalers who fished these waters had tentative, intermittent and frequently violent contact with the indigenous peoples. Some shipwreck survivors were cast away forever in a savage land as alien as a distant planet. The fates of these lost souls are open to speculation, though there are some legends and some medical evidence to suggest that at least one European ma
le interbred with the indigenous peoples.

  All of this was largely unknown when Captain James Stirling, a man with family connections in the Indian Ocean trade, established his ambitious real estate venture in 1829. A British military settlement existed briefly at King George Sound from 1826 but this was succeeded by Stirling’s enterprise. He had first contrived to be officially despatched to the Swan River early in 1827, when he explored the hinterland, discovered the availability of fresh water, acres of good farming land and, just as importantly, established the existence of a harbour. Stirling’s highly favourable and well-argued report to the British government, hastened by British fears of French occupation, eventually won official support for the establishment of a colonial outpost. Stirling was quick to put himself forward as the logical person to command such a venture.

  After a good deal of politicking and governmental shilly-shallying, mainly due to fear of the expense involved, Stirling’s abilities and his connections ensured that he was given the position, along with substantial grants of land and other concessions, including the title ‘Lieutenant-Governor’ and independence from the east coast colony of New South Wales. Stirling sailed aboard Parmelia, reaching the Swan in June 1829; here he found Captain Charles Fremantle on Challenger, the representative of the British government sent to ensure that Stirling’s group of settlers was not beaten to the post by the French. The Swan River Colony had been founded.

  The first settlers began those heroic feats of pioneering and establishing European settlement that are the foundation myths of modern Australia. Stirling had determined that, unlike the convict colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, the Swan River would be a place for solid, dependable English yeomen to farm and prosper. His exertions in Britain on behalf of his colonial dream had generated a good deal of popular enthusiasm for the Swan, so people clamoured to undertake the same arduous voyage that William Sykes and his companions would take 37 years later, if under very different circumstances.