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Authors: Jennifer Livett
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people coughing, groaning, vomiting, or agonisingly silent, all effort on the next breath. Open sores unspeakable, cheap English clothes like a ghastly joke. Booth knew the stories of the last thirty years; barbarous cruelty on both sides, and far worse from whites than blacks, if you had to be truthful. The blacks had been hunted, driven over cliffs, shot, poisoned, burned, hacked . . . and the misery of it was horribly evident here, in the hopeless faces, the bright, haunted eyes.
As the party approached one dwelling, they saw an old woman sitting on the ground outside, staring out to sea, keening low and mournfully. A dirty petticoat hung round her shoulders. Her fingers fretted the neck of her ill-fitting dress. She stopped abruptly when Mr George Robinson, the Superintendent, approached her. He whisked away the petticoat, thrusting it at his assistant (his son) to be got out of sight.
Was Robinson a trumped-up, illiterate Cockney bricklayer—or a courageous half-saint? Booth had heard both. In Hobart he was known as ‘the Conciliator’ and praised for his efforts, but these people were dying with terrible speed under his regime.
Wybalenna meant ‘black man’s house’, or so Robinson said. He knew some of the tribal languages, and with a show of ease translated the old woman’s tremulous song.
‘Over the water is her land, she smells it on the wind. The spirit of it calls to her night and day. She, the child of it, calls back in answer. She knew every bush and tree, every nest and burrow, the shape of each stone. If she cannot be buried there she does not know how she will find her ancestors when she dies. I tell her, Your Excellency, Your Ladyship, that Our Lord Jesus has strong powers. He will lead her to the ancestors.’
The Governor nodded sagely. His wife murmured something inaudible.
Mrs Evans only rejoined them when they started back to the ship. She seemed loath, now, to say anything about her recent experiences, preferring to tell Booth she believed she was acquainted with his sister. They had met while she was staying with relations in Mitcham. An unexpected connection—but then, not really unexpected, he thought. He had come to understand there are always more connections than we know about, across the widest spaces. So many links between the colony and England, most of them fluid. Water, ink, blood, each carrying its own cargo. Frail ships criss-crossing the seas, their holds packed with innocent-looking objects as dangerous as guns: china tea sets; bolts of flannel; packets of seeds and bank drafts. All bearing the message that there are certain ways in which life must be lived, and ways in which it most assuredly must not.
The message was scored all the deeper by ink on millions of pages carrying the stories we live by: the Bible, Shakespeare, Homer, the latest Romance or Newgate novel. Blood and more intimate fluids made their own connections, rarely spoken of in polite circles. MrsEvans, Char, himself; the Arthurites and the Franklins; all entwined in invisible currents across the surface of the globe.
What he could not write to Char, because it would sound like boasting of a too-readily assumed familiarity with the new Governor’s wife, was that he had found Lady Franklin perilously easy to talk to. Wherever they stopped on the east coast she had spoken to settlers, had asked how they came there, sought their opinions of the colony, their views on the keeping of bees, fowl, sheep.
On one occasion, as they walked back to the ship afterwards, she and Booth were somewhat ahead of the rest of the party, and she said suddenly, ‘You think I go too far in the questions I ask? Your face seemed to say it, Captain . . .’ She smiled. ‘It is my dear father’s fault.’
She and her father were the best of companions, she said. Perhaps because her mother had died when she was six. Her father—he was a silk merchant—took her travelling with him from when she was very young. Her elder
As the party approached one dwelling, they saw an old woman sitting on the ground outside, staring out to sea, keening low and mournfully. A dirty petticoat hung round her shoulders. Her fingers fretted the neck of her ill-fitting dress. She stopped abruptly when Mr George Robinson, the Superintendent, approached her. He whisked away the petticoat, thrusting it at his assistant (his son) to be got out of sight.
Was Robinson a trumped-up, illiterate Cockney bricklayer—or a courageous half-saint? Booth had heard both. In Hobart he was known as ‘the Conciliator’ and praised for his efforts, but these people were dying with terrible speed under his regime.
Wybalenna meant ‘black man’s house’, or so Robinson said. He knew some of the tribal languages, and with a show of ease translated the old woman’s tremulous song.
‘Over the water is her land, she smells it on the wind. The spirit of it calls to her night and day. She, the child of it, calls back in answer. She knew every bush and tree, every nest and burrow, the shape of each stone. If she cannot be buried there she does not know how she will find her ancestors when she dies. I tell her, Your Excellency, Your Ladyship, that Our Lord Jesus has strong powers. He will lead her to the ancestors.’
The Governor nodded sagely. His wife murmured something inaudible.
Mrs Evans only rejoined them when they started back to the ship. She seemed loath, now, to say anything about her recent experiences, preferring to tell Booth she believed she was acquainted with his sister. They had met while she was staying with relations in Mitcham. An unexpected connection—but then, not really unexpected, he thought. He had come to understand there are always more connections than we know about, across the widest spaces. So many links between the colony and England, most of them fluid. Water, ink, blood, each carrying its own cargo. Frail ships criss-crossing the seas, their holds packed with innocent-looking objects as dangerous as guns: china tea sets; bolts of flannel; packets of seeds and bank drafts. All bearing the message that there are certain ways in which life must be lived, and ways in which it most assuredly must not.
The message was scored all the deeper by ink on millions of pages carrying the stories we live by: the Bible, Shakespeare, Homer, the latest Romance or Newgate novel. Blood and more intimate fluids made their own connections, rarely spoken of in polite circles. MrsEvans, Char, himself; the Arthurites and the Franklins; all entwined in invisible currents across the surface of the globe.
What he could not write to Char, because it would sound like boasting of a too-readily assumed familiarity with the new Governor’s wife, was that he had found Lady Franklin perilously easy to talk to. Wherever they stopped on the east coast she had spoken to settlers, had asked how they came there, sought their opinions of the colony, their views on the keeping of bees, fowl, sheep.
On one occasion, as they walked back to the ship afterwards, she and Booth were somewhat ahead of the rest of the party, and she said suddenly, ‘You think I go too far in the questions I ask? Your face seemed to say it, Captain . . .’ She smiled. ‘It is my dear father’s fault.’
She and her father were the best of companions, she said. Perhaps because her mother had died when she was six. Her father—he was a silk merchant—took her travelling with him from when she was very young. Her elder
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