Matthew Flinders' Cat (17 page)

‘Yes there was!’ Ryan interrupted. ‘1788. Captain Phillip come here in his ship, the
Supply
, we learned it in school. You said Trim was born in 1797.’

‘Ah, yes, quite true, but the
Supply
was a convict transport and Captain Arthur Phillip was charged with establishing a convict settlement which was to be named New South Wales.’

‘Same thing, they just changed the name,’ Ryan persisted.

‘Yes, I suppose so, but the convicts didn’t see themselves as citizens of a new country, only that they’d been banished from their homeland to the very ends of the earth.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ Ryan said, accepting the explanation. Billy could see that the story of Trim wasn’t going to be a simple matter of storytelling. Ryan didn’t intend to be a passive participant. He was happy with this, we learn better from discussion than listening.

‘Perhaps we can keep questions for later, lad, what do you think?’ Billy asked. ‘Righto,’ said Ryan.

‘Well, Trim was far from impressed with what he found on these convict shores. The settlement was divided between Sydney Town and Parramatta and a right old mess it all was. There is no record of Trim having visited Parramatta, but Sydney Town was enough to put him in a foul mood, it was quite a dreadful place for both cats and humans. Just 3200 souls shared both settlements and a motley lot they were too. It wasn’t as if Trim was a snob, in fact quite the opposite, he was accustomed to strange places and peculiar faces. British sailors at that time were not a handsome breed, most of them being press-ganged into the job.’

‘What’s press-ganged mean?’

‘Well, going to sea wasn’t very popular and the navy had a good deal of trouble getting crew to man their ships, so they’d virtually kidnap them. The average jack tar of that time was a pretty miserable sort of person, usually a man living on the streets who was starving and lice-ridden, with his clothes in tatters and probably going about barefoot. The press gangs would ply such men with grog and get them to sign up before they became unconscious. Then they’d drag them on board a vessel about to leave port and the hapless sailor-to-be would wake up with a fierce hangover to find that they were already out to sea. Conditions on board a man-of-war or even on a merchant ship were terrible and more men died of diseases like typhus and dysentery than were ever killed fighting at sea.’

‘And even them sort was better than the convicts?’

‘Well, so it seems. Shall I go on?

‘The people of the penal colony of New South Wales, with very few exceptions, were drunken riffraff, both convict and trooper with the free citizens hardly much better. The males with hard-favoured faces and the females possessed of a great frumpishness. Misery was their middle name and indolence the central part of their nature. As two-thirds were convicts, one would therefore suppose that they had little reason to work.

‘The cats were no better and there was never a more flea-bitten, manged and scrawny example of the feline species. On his frequent journeys of exploration ashore Trim found himself with no reason to spend even an hour in the company of the resident cats. They had no news of the slightest importance, their small-town gossip didn’t interest him and, as far as he was concerned, they were, to a cat, country yokels.

‘It was not that Trim thought himself superior, a shaggytailed upper-class cat, all whiskers and strut, who was critical of the poor examples of the local cat while being himself bone idle. He was a hard-working ship’s cat who, among his various employments, was responsible for the demise of the rat population on board. At first he pitied the poor creatures he found on shore. Then he discovered that rats were to be found in abundance in the dockside warehouses of Sydney Town and were there simply for the taking with a minimum of effort. Yet the local cats, like everyone else, seemed too idle to undertake an honest day’s labour and thereby procure sufficient sustenance to alter the condition of their miserable lives. It was upon such facts that he based his less than flattering opinion of the local cats.

‘Of much more interest to Trim were his explorations, which were many and varied, and there is much to be told about these fascinating excursions into the wilderness. For example, while doing a little exploring of the bush to the east of Rushcutters Bay he’d once chanced upon a group of blackfellows. It was a damnable hot day with the flies a great bother when he came upon a small group, whether family or not he couldn’t say. They stood upon a sandy headland leading down to a small harbour beach, three women, two piccaninnies and an adult male. The male carried a long sharpened stick and stood in a most curious manner by placing the sole of one naked foot upon the knee of the other, while resting quite comfortably on the other foot, his balance held secure by means of the stick planted in the sand.’

‘I’ve seen that in a pitcher!’ Ryan grinned. ‘When we did an excursion to the Museum. Abo standing in the nuddy with his leg up like that, his donger showin’ an’ all!’

Billy nodded and continued with the story. ‘They wore no garments whatsoever and, as a cat, Trim approved greatly of this, the humans he was mostly acquainted with were not fond of bathing and paid scant attention to the laundering of their apparel, adorning themselves in all manner of extremely smelly drapery. Cats are by their very nature fastidious in their attention to their grooming and this lack of personal hygiene was one of the characteristics Trim disliked most in humans, who used their tongues for talking and noisily gobbling down food, but never for grooming.

‘By contrast to the convict population, these blackfellows were of a good physical proportion and had about them a most delicious smell. Seeking its source, Trim observed that upon the head of each family member there rested a fish, its entrails cut loose to attract the flies. So dense were the flies that swarmed above their heads and rested upon the fish that it was as if they were a swarm of bees. But here then was the clever idea, not a single fly came to land upon the native fellows themselves, which Trim thought to be a most clever contrivance. What’s more, when nightfall came and the flies departed, the family had the means of a hearty meal.’

‘Yuk!’ Ryan called out.

‘Trim took satisfaction in being both explorer and sailor but was ever mindful of his true vocation as a ship’s cat. He enjoyed the wilderness and became a great expert on what it contained, the nature of the animals, birds and plants of the land, but he took his official title, Master Trim Flinders, Master Mariner & Ratter, very seriously and worked hard to distinguish himself. He knew himself to be well bred but also well able to rough it with the best. During the course of his life, he faced many vicissitudes and some considerable hardship, which he accepted with equanimity as part of the sailor’s lot.

‘Trim started his seagoing career as an apprentice sailor and ratter where, I am told, he performed with merit but was often rebuked for asking too many questions.

Though this did not stop him, he was a cat with a most curious nature. Trim became a Master Mariner & Ratter and was eventually responsible for inventing several new ways of combating
Rattus oceania
, the notorious ship’s rodent known universally to be the most vicious and cunning of its tribe. As Matthew Flinders once observed to him, “To question everything is important, for knowledge is power and ignorance is enslavement. When we accept without questioning, we forfeit the power to control our own lives.”

‘Trim was very much a cat in control of his own life, but he also carried a second title which he took seriously. The title concerned was Companion to the Ship’s Master. Trim always insisted that had it not been in the captain’s heart to give him this title he would have remained in obscurity, a good ship’s cat and sometime explorer. It was the relationship he shared with Matthew Flinders that brought him to the attention of others and resulted in his gaining a small but secure place in the history of Australia.

‘Matthew Flinders was a man bred to loneliness and oft-times needed a friend he could talk to, who, in the best traditions of conversation, took the role of an intelligent listener. There were things he told Trim of a private nature, some of which were not always to his personal credit, such as attitudes and preferences which he would not have admitted even in the letters he constantly wrote to his wife, Ann. One such secret was the disease of love, which he caught on the island of Tahiti while sailing on the
Providence
as a midshipman with Captain Bligh.

‘These letters to Ann, which he would often read to Trim, contained a great many ardent declarations of his love and expressed a constant regret that they were so cruelly parted. Trim was inclined to feel that this ardency was intended to be a compensation for their separation, a form of marriage that took place with quill and ink on paper. It was Trim’s observation that his master was an awkward man who much preferred his ship and his navigational scribbles to the connubial bliss to be found in an attentive wife ensconced in a rose-covered cottage.

‘Trim’s opinion of his master must be taken seriously for he knew Matthew Flinders more intimately than probably anyone, sharing his cabin with him while they sailed together for much of the time Matthew Flinders was charting the coastline of New Holland. When he’d completed this extraordinary task, Captain Flinders sought Trim’s opinion as to the name he should give to this new territory, pointing out to him that it was known variously as New Holland, Terra Australis and the Great South Land, none of which being satisfactory now that its true dimensions were known. Besides, it had been circumnavigated and charted by an Englishman.

‘ “What shall we call this territory we have so well surveyed, Trim? What shall we add to this land Australis to make it our very own?” It was late and Trim was half asleep. “Eh?” he said, not fully hearing the question. Whereupon Matthew Flinders clapped his hands together.

‘ “Capital, my dear! Drop the
s
and add an
a
, what a clever cat you are, we shall call it Australia!” ’

‘That’s dumb!’ Ryan protested, enjoying Billy’s little joke.

‘It was a name that greatly pleased Matthew Flinders’ masters in England, who didn’t much care for the name New Holland, the name given to the Great South Land by the Dutch explorers. It was a constant reminder to Britain that another country might be entitled to make claims on this vast new territory. The Frenchman La Pérouse had landed in Australia and the French were also making claims to the new land. So Britain proclaimed the land
terra nullius
, called it Australia and demanded that henceforth it be seen as a part of the British Empire.’

‘What’s terror nullius mean?’ Ryan asked.

‘Ah, it means “empty land”. In Latin,
terra
means land and
nullius
means empty. You see, the British penal colony established on this new land was not strictly legitimate as the Aboriginal people already occupied the land and were, and still are, its true owners. So the British government decided to ignore this small technical hitch and declared that the land was “empty” and that its indigenous people, the Aborigines, were not sufficiently civilised to be included in the human race and henceforth this “empty” land belonged to Britain. Rather a convenient decision, I’m sure you’ll agree?’

‘I suppose the Abos were all too pissed to care, eh? Them putting a cut-open fish on their head for the flies.

Yuk!’

Billy smiled, the boy didn’t give up easily. ‘No, lad, it was the European invader who introduced alcohol in the form of rum to the natives. Shall we go on, then?

‘Now when I say Trim was with Mr Flinders as a constant friend and listener that’s not entirely true. You see, the problem was Matthew Flinders was a bit of a dreamer and someone had to run the ship when he was busy looking through his eyeglass and measuring and drawing and scribbling his measurements on a giant piece of vellum with his goose-quill pen, scratching away with degrees of latitude and longitude, rises and falls, depths and shallows, shoals and rocks, coves, cliff-faces and sandy beaches.’

‘Vellum?’ asked Ryan.

‘Vellum is paper made of animal skin, they used it for important charts instead of paper because it lasted longer and was much stronger.

‘The point is, the ship could have gone aground or perished on the rocks a dozen times or more had it not been for a certain sharp-eyed cat who constantly watched, steering it out of danger. Mr Flinders always wanted to get closer to the shore so he could draw the dents and measure the bays with his surveyor’s instruments. Never looked where he was going, that one. “Closer!” he’d call, not looking up from his eyeglass. “Take me closer, damn you, helmsman!” And Trim would have to yell out to the man at the helm, “Take no notice! Drop anchor now!” As a cat he may have had nine lives but he had no immediate plans to waste them all by means of drowning at sea in one single act of gross negligence. Such a calamitous end could happen simply enough when they had all their wits about them, treacherous shoals and unknown rocks abounded along an uncharted coastline. Trim had no intention of losing the vessel as a result of a bit of navigational scribbling.

‘Sometimes they’d drop anchor in some remote bay and go ashore with Mr Brown, the naturalist on board. Mr Brown was very fond of Trim and was always happy for him to go along, knowing Trim was a most sensible cat and not likely to do anything rash. They’d take to the wilderness or the desert to collect plant samples or do a watercolour painting of a specimen and in the process they’d see things you couldn’t even imagine. Trees so mighty they would measure four times the height of a ship’s mast, some of them possessing a base hollowed out by fire caused by light ning, the cavity remaining sufficiently large to accommodate a cottage.