Beneath the Southern Cross (5 page)

Eora was the Dharug name for the coastal area which was the home of the Gadigal people, and, like many, Wolawara had found it hard to leave the waterways of his ancestors. ‘We belong to the sea and to the rivers,' he had said when talk of leaving had first started. ‘We are water people. It is wrong to take our families into the arid land.' And his stubbornness, he admitted now, had resulted in the deaths of two sons and a daughter. As for Yenerah, his last remaining son …

The admission was difficult and Wolawara's gaze remained fixed on the ground. ‘With your own eyes you have seen him, Thomas. He is possessed. Once a fine young man, now he begs in the streets for the rum to feed his demons.'

Wolawara raised his head and, behind the guilt in his eyes, was an angry resolve. ‘This is not the fate which will befall my grandchildren. While there is strength enough left in this old man, it is Wolawara who must save them.'

Thomas paused for a moment before asking, ‘What will you do?' He glanced briefly at Wiriwa who was listening intently for the answer.

‘We will leave Eora.'

It was obvious from the fleeting shock visible in Wiriwa's eyes that Wolawara had not discussed his decision with her.

Thomas looked from one to the other. Wolawara and Wiriwa are old, he thought. Like me, they are old. Now was not the time for them to leave the home of their ancestors.

He said nothing. But, as Wolawara continued to talk, the seed of a plan germinated in the mind of Thomas Kendall.

 

‘I've never seen anyone swim like that.'

James and William were lost in admiration as they stood watching young Turumbah's naked body cut through the water like a dolphin. One minute the boy had been submerged, the next he had leapt to the surface, emitted a squeal and disappeared again, only to reappear seconds later, twisting and rolling and diving like a creature delighting in its natural element.

When he had finished showing off, Turumbah swam closer to the point on which the boys stood and beckoned them to join him.

‘Come massa! Come along! Come!'

For William the temptation was too great. The afternoon was hot, there was no-one about, so he took off his shirt.

‘William!' James was horrified.

‘No-one can see. Come on, James.'

Stripped to his undergarments, William flopped clumsily off the rocks. He could swim enough to keep himself afloat but he didn't venture too far from the point. Turumbah joined him and a splashing match ensued.

James wandered back along the point to the reedy shallows. Today had been a succession of shocks to him. From the fearful black man and his threatening dance, to Grandfather Thomas speaking in the native tongue and, finally, to the unashamed nakedness of Turumbah. That had been the biggest shock of all.

When Turumbah, signalling silence, had led James and William in a circle behind the hut to the water's edge and proceeded to strip to his bare skin in front of them, James's shock had left him speechless. No-one should be seen naked. For as long as he could remember, his mother had told him that nakedness was a sin. ‘Cover yourself, James,' she would say when, as a very small boy, he emerged from the tin bathing tub, ‘cover yourself.'

Shocking as today might have been, however, it was exciting
and unpredictable, a day like no other, and James wanted to be a part of it. He found a flat, dry rock, sat down and carefully took off his shoes and stockings. With equal care, he took off his vest, folded it with his jacket and placed his new felt hat on top. Then he pulled his trouser legs up to the knees and waded out into the shallows, enjoying the water, cool against his calves and the sand, coarse beneath his feet.

A shadow glided amongst the reeds ahead, then stopped. Too curious to be alarmed, James waded stealthily towards it. Just when he was convinced it was nothing, merely a play of light, the shadow reappeared right in front of him. About a foot in length and breadth, its sides appeared to gracefully curl, and once more it glided ahead of him, only to disappear in a brief flurry of sand.

James was fascinated. For a full ten minutes he followed the small stingray through the shallows until the creature retreated to the deeper water.

When he finally returned to the rock where he'd left his clothes, he found William and Turumbah dressed and sunning themselves as they waited for him.

‘I saw a fish! A fish with a long tail!' James called excitedly. ‘I followed it everywhere!'

‘
Daringyan
.' Turumbah called back. ‘Catch him tows an this place.' It was only then that James noticed, perched atop the Aboriginal boy's head, and at a rakish angle, his new felt hat.

James's dismay must have been evident, and he felt himself flush as William laughed loudly. ‘Give it back to him, Turumbah, I told you he would be angry.'

Regretfully, the boy took off the hat. He examined it briefly to make sure it was unmarked—it was only a little damp inside—before handing it back with a mischievous smile.

James put the hat on and concentrated on the buttons of his vest, keeping his face averted. His shocked reaction had been instinctive. He didn't really mind Turumbah wearing his hat. He wished that William hadn't laughed.

As James knelt to put on his shoes and stockings, Turumbah stopped him. The boy repeated a word several times, a word which the other two didn't understand. ‘
Badangi, badangi
,' he said, then beckoned impatiently. ‘Come, Gran'sun James, come along.'

They followed him, Turumbah unfastening a knife like implement made from shell which dangled from the twine about his waist. It was time to shuck oysters from the healthy crop which grew along the rocks of the foreshore.

An hour later, when the boys returned to the hut—Turumbah ensuring that his hair and clothes were dry and that their approach was from the opposite direction to the bay—James's hands were scratched and bleeding and one trouser leg was torn. The big toe of his right foot was painful where he'd stubbed it on the rocks, and he knew that inside his shoe blood was oozing onto his stocking.

But James didn't care. He wiped his hands on the once pristine white handkerchief and returned it to his vest pocket. He savoured the sea-salt taste of the oysters on his tongue. The day had been the most exciting and memorable of his young life.

Thomas noticed James's dishevelled appearance but said nothing.

Wolawara rose to farewell them, and the two men shook hands.

‘I beg of you, my friend,' Thomas said, taking both of Wolawara's hands in his, ‘do nothing until I next come to you. I will return within seven days. Until then, please do not leave Eora.'

Wolawara nodded his consent and Thomas and his grandsons turned to go. But Turumbah would not leave it at that. He made a great show of shaking hands as vigorously as he could with William and James. Particularly James.

‘You like Turumbah, Gran'sun James? Turumbah
bud-jerry
fellow.'

Before he knew what he was doing, James had taken off his new felt hat. He couldn't help himself. Holding it in both hands, he offered it to Turumbah.

The boy stared at the hat and the outstretched hands, bewildered.

‘Take it, Turumbah,' James said. ‘It's yours, a gift.'

No second bidding was necessary. In a moment the hat was on Turumbah's head, and when Thomas and his grandsons finally set off, the boy was still leaping about excitedly, dancing, waving and pointing to his new possession.

Thomas studied his younger grandson as they walked away from the clearing. There would be hell to pay when his mother found out he'd lost his new hat.

James felt his grandfather's eyes upon him. He looked up and smiled reassuringly. He had no regrets. He didn't quite know why he had done what he'd done, but he would weather the storm.

Thomas was pleased. More than pleased. It was a breakthrough. James was not yet entirely under the influence of his mother. It was time for him to learn some truths.

‘Let's walk to the Common,' he said, ‘and sit and talk. There is a story I wish to tell you both.'

He would tell them the story of Wolawara. But he would not tell them of his plan. Not yet. The boys would find out soon enough, for it would alienate him from his younger son forever. Now was the time for his grandsons to know the truth so they may judge his actions accordingly.

Much as Thomas railed against the exclusivists and their class system, the truly unpardonable sin in his eyes was the lamentable predicament of the native, who had been stripped of all he'd owned, including dignity. His numbers had been decimated by white man's diseases and he had been left to beg in the streets, his women to exchange their bodies for food. It was not the way Governor Phillip had wished it. It was not the way the King of England himself had instructed the colony be governed.

Thomas and his grandsons reached the vastness of Sydney Common where cattle and goats grazed and where, on misty mornings, groups of gentlemen regularly held swan-shooting parties. When they had settled themselves on a grassy hillock in the late afternoon sunshine, Thomas told them his story.

Food and shelter were the major priorities in the early days of the settlement. Heavy labour was assigned to the hardened criminals and, in chains and leg irons, they were mercilessly worked, their daily misery in the stone quarries and brick fields slowly producing the buildings of Sydney Town.

Those convicts considered less of a threat to the community were assigned work, under guard, at the government farm, and they soon learned that the trees of Port Jackson were tough and unyielding. The work was intense, many men labouring for several days to grub out just one swamp mahogany or one red gum. And when the land was finally cleared and cultivated, the soil proved too poor and too pest-ridden for the tropical plants acquired in South Africa, and the time unseasonal for the planting of fruit varieties brought from England.

Further delegation of labour was proving a problem. Whilst the navy and military were engaged in the navigation and exploration of rivers and terrain, who was to police the colony? It became evident that prisoners of good conduct who had proved themselves hardworking and reliable should be assigned positions of trust. Thomas Kendall, who had received a glowing report from the
Friendship
's first mate, was deemed such a man.

‘I was right, you see, Thomas,' Anne said, gratified by Thomas's improved status. ‘I told you they would need men they could trust. Who knows but they might even grant you an early pardon.'

Anne had been ambitious for him from the very outset. When, occasionally, Thomas had returned from an expedition, angry at
the brutality of a soldier or the unjustness of a situation, Anne had said, ‘Do nothing, my love, do nothing.'

She was wise and cunning and Thomas knew she was right, although at times it had cost him considerable effort to keep his tongue in check.

By comparison to many in the colony whose miserable lives were spent in chains at the mercy of sadistic gaolers or guards, Thomas and Anne led a relatively comfortable existence. A married couple with a baby, both with good-conduct records, they were granted the comparative freedom of the camp's married quarters, and Anne was assigned daily service at the makeshift military barracks, washing, cleaning and cooking for the soldiers.

The work was hard but Anne never complained. She worried only about the health of her baby, whom they'd christened Catherine at an official ceremony conducted by the Reverend Johnson. The birth aboard the
Charlotte
had nearly killed both mother and child and Catherine had remained weak and fragile.

Sadly Anne's fears proved justified and on Saturday 8 March, 1788, Catherine Kendall, firstborn of Thomas and Anne, was laid to rest, three months of age, alongside others who had failed to withstand the rigours of life in the colony.

Since settlement Thomas had been assigned to working parties on expeditions up the Parramatta River and northward to Broken Bay, and he had even accompanied Captain Hunter's team on early surveys of the harbour. Furthermore, during each of these expeditions, Thomas had been surprisingly successful in communicating with the natives. Such a skill, coupled with his reliability, made him a perfect candidate for overseeing duties.

From the outset Thomas had been intrigued by the local people. Entirely naked, of slender build, dark black skin and short curly hair, they were ebullient and friendly. Curious, like children. Most of the men had a fore tooth missing and scars on their bodies—results of manhood initiation ceremonies, it was later discovered—and many wore a short bone or stick through a hole in their nostrils.

On Thomas's first encounter with the natives, the men approached the longboats as soon as the working party had pulled ashore and, although each carried a spear or a club, their actions were not threatening. Indeed, they seemed fascinated by the
strange visitors. Particularly, it appeared, by their clean-shaven faces.

They jabbered away in a harsh, staccato tongue and pointed towards the women who remained with their children in a cluster further down the shore—although, curiosity getting the better of them, they were inching gradually closer and closer to their menfolk—then they pointed at their own genitals. It was evident that the men were confused as to the sex of the clothed, and hairless, white intruders.

It was Second Lieutenant King who issued the order to one of his team and, as the soldier exposed himself, a great shout of admiration went up, not only from the men but from the women also.

Thomas was carrying the knapsack containing the gifts intended for the natives. He was instructed to open it. As he knelt and handed the trinkets, mirrors, baubles and beads to the various members of the working party to distribute, the natives, both men and women, clustered about like children around a Christmas tree.

Lifting two bright strips of cloth from the knapsack, Thomas was about to pass them to one of the soldiers when a black hand intercepted his. He looked up into the face of a young man about the same age as himself. The native poked himself in the chest, repeatedly asking for the cloth, and Thomas was uncertain—it was not really his place to distribute the gifts. But amongst the gabble of voices, the excitement of the natives jumping about, and the crew laughing at their antics, it didn't seem to matter. He nodded.

The man grinned, gap-toothed, with delight. ‘
Guwiyang
,' he said and, with slender fingers, dextrously wove the pieces of yellow and red cloth together. ‘
Guwiyang
,' he said over and over as he tied the woven cloth around his head.

Thomas couldn't help but smile back. He lifted out a string of bright blue beads, handed them to the man, and awaited the reaction. The man grinned again, nodded, and turned to the young woman who stood beside him. A three-month-old infant was at her hip, hanging comfortably off her naked body, watching the proceedings intently through bright, black, fascinated eyes. The man hung the string of beads over the woman's right ear. ‘Wiriwa,' he said, pointing to the woman. ‘Wiriwa.'

That was the first time Thomas met Wolawara. Several days later, their paths once again crossed.

On a survey of Shell Cove, again under the command of Captain Hunter, the working party came upon a group of natives in canoes, fishing. The canoes were small and flimsy, constructed of tree bark gathered at each end and secured by strong vine. The natives' skilful handling of such feeble craft drew admiration from the soldiers and the crew. With a two-foot paddle in each hand, legs tucked under them, bodies erect, not only could the men propel their craft at speed, they could stand at a moment's notice, aim their cumbersome pronged spears, ten or twelve feet in length, at the target of their choice and generally achieve success. One of the men, Thomas noticed, was wearing a bright red and yellow headband.

As the working party left the ship and set out in the longboat for shore, Thomas watched, enthralled. A number of women, too, were in canoes, fishing with hand lines. This in itself was not remarkable, but in the bows of several of the canoes burned a small fire. How they kept their fires constantly alight, without damaging their canoes in the process, remained a mystery; but it seemed the native always liked to travel with his fire.

As the team pulled for shore, the natives abandoned their fishing and joined the men on the beach. Gifts were again distributed. On previous expeditions, combs and mirrors had proved amongst the most popular offerings, and the crew laughed when a native, looking in a mirror for the first time, turned around to see who was standing behind him.

Thomas watched the man in the red and yellow headband. He had been given a comb. He scratched his arm with it. And when one of the crew demonstrated its use, he grinned affably and scratched his head with it.

As before, the clean-shaven faces of the white men fascinated the natives. ‘Thomas,' the first officer commanded, ‘shave one of them.' Thomas looked back at the officer, uncertain. ‘It's been done before, man, very successfully. They like it. You just have to pick a bold beggar.'

The shaving equipment was brought ashore, and gestures were made as to which of the natives might want to be shorn of his beard. The first to step forward was the young man in the headband. A young woman, tending the fire in the bow of her canoe, rose to watch, concerned. Thomas recognised her. The man had
given her the beads and said her name. What was it? He couldn't remember.

As Thomas approached him, the Aborigine grinned broadly. ‘Aah,' he said, ‘
guwiyang
,' and he pointed to the headband, ‘
guwiyang
.'

Thomas repeated the word. ‘
Guwiyang?
' he asked and the man realised the question. ‘
Guwiyang
,' he repeated and pointed from the headband to the coals burning in the bow of Wiriwa's canoe. ‘
Guwiyang
.'

‘Fire' was the first Dharug word Thomas learned.

As he shaved Wolawara, the natives nudging each other and chattering excitedly at the appearance of bare skin beneath the matted beard, Thomas spoke to him. ‘Thomas,' he said, and he paused briefly to jab himself in the chest, ‘my name is Thomas.'

‘Tom-ass,' the man replied and, when Thomas nodded, he said ‘Wolawara,' and pointed to himself.

‘Wolawara,' Thomas repeated, and the man nodded in return, pleased with the introduction.

From that day on, Thomas always kept a lookout for Wolawara, the man in the headband of fire. And he memorised as many words of the Aboriginal language as he could glean from the excited exchanges which took place. When an inquisitive group of natives had gathered to watch the seine being hauled, there was much admiration as to the fine catch in the net, and that day Thomas learned that ‘
magura
' meant fish, a ‘
daringyan
' was a stingray, and that a ‘
walumil
' was a breed of shark, and that, for some strange reason, the natives would not eat shark.

Each time he encountered Wolawara, Thomas would test the latest word he'd acquired—often he was wrong and Wolawara would correct him—and on each encounter he greeted not only Wolawara by name but also Wiriwa, to whom he had been reintroduced. The greeting of his wife pleased Wolawara greatly.

Two months after he had first met Wolawara, Thomas received orders to depart with a team of six convicts and one armed guard for a period of one week to cut and bale the rushes which grew in the eastern bay and had proved ideal material for roof thatching.

As the boat pulled in to the rushcutting bay, Thomas studied his team of six workers. He did not know them personally but had seen them about the camp in each other's company, thuggish men,
troublemakers, their undisputed leader a tough little cockney called Farrell. Such men would not have been recommended for a work detail like this, Thomas thought; Farrell must have bribed an officer. It was easily enough done, the military was rife with corruption.

Thomas hoped there would be no trouble, though he doubted the men were planning to escape. Although relatively easy for prisoners who worked unfettered by chains, escape was becoming less common as the convicts realised that there was nowhere for them to go. The French convoy, still at anchor in Botany Bay, refused them sanctuary under an agreement between Commander-in-Chief La Perouse and Governor Arthur Phillip, and many escapees, unable to survive in the wilderness, either met their death or eventually limped back to camp, half-starved and bleeding. No, Thomas decided, their plan would not be escape—Farrell was too smart for that.

They pitched camp and the soldier on guard duty, young Benjamin Waite, a strapping Lancashire lad of twenty-five, distributed the long-bladed knives with which the men were to cut the reeds. Private Waite's duty was not so much to guard the convicts as to guard their weapons. And it was not so much to guard the weapons from unlawful use by the convicts themselves—the weapons being stowed in Private Waite's tent at the end of each working day—as to guard the weapons from the nocturnal visits of thieving natives.

The Aborigines had outgrown their interest in baubles and beads. Even mirrors and combs had lost their attraction upon the discovery of hatchets and knives. Discriminate gifts of working implements were made here and there, the military not unduly worried about providing such potential weapons. The Aborigines had, after all, proved a peaceful people and, should they ever decide to turn hostile, they had weapons enough of their own.

The problem, however, was the Aborigines' inability to conceive the right of ownership. If they saw something they liked, they took it, be it food or hatchets or shovels or knives, and the only thing to send them on their way was a musket ball fired into the air. The duty of the amiable Benjamin Waite, therefore, was to protect camp property.

As the days passed uneventfully, it seemed to Thomas that his
fears were ungrounded. The men were not out to cause trouble, it appeared, but were intent instead on having a good time. They were lazy, and he had to urge them on to make their daily work quota, but they took it in rough humour.

‘We'll 'ave to get you a uniform, Kendall,' they'd say. ‘You're a right soldier you are.' And Farrell would nudge his new-found friend, Private Waite, and say, ‘Go on, Benny, give Mister Kendall your uniform, then you can be one of us.' And Private Benjamin Waite, big and burly and as simple as the men who followed Farrell, would laugh.

Benjamin liked Farrell. Farrell was funny. And generous. Around the campfire at night, as he told bawdy stories and made them all laugh, he gave each of the men a tot of his rum. ‘Just a tot, mind,' he'd say. ‘We don't want to run out of the stuff now, do we?'

Thomas felt hypocritical as he accepted the rum, he didn't like Farrell at all, and of course the rum was illicitly gained, but to refuse would alienate him from the men. Besides, the rum helped him sleep.

In teams of two, the men moved further and further afield each day, cutting fresh reeds to bring back to the camp for baling. In the midafternoon of the fifth day, Thomas noticed Red McGregor, his partner, in earnest conversation with Farrell.