The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (34 page)

According to the accepted historical record, Mary Watson, aged twenty-one, had been married less than eighteen months when she died of thirst. Mainland Aboriginals attacked the two Chinese workmen at her absent husband’s
bêche-de-mer
station on Lizard Island: Ah Leung died in the vegetable garden; Ah Sam suffered spear wounds. With her four-month-old baby, Ferrier, and the injured Ah Sam, Mary put to sea in a smoke-blackened, cut-down ship’s tank used for boiling sea-slugs. They drifted for eight days and forty miles, making landfall in several places without finding water.

Their remains, identified by Mary’s husband, Robert Watson, were found some months later, in January 1882, on No. 5 Island in the Howick Group off the Cape York Peninsula. Still in the iron tank, now resting in the mangroves, their bones were immersed in fresh rain from a recent tropical downpour. The baby’s skull rested on his mother’s breast. The skeleton of a Chinese man lay on a woven mat in the shade of a tree a little way from the tank, his head on a wooden box used as a pillow, a quilt pulled neatly up to his throat.

In the tank, investigators found a small wooden box containing clothing, jewellery, a small amount of money, and a diary in Mary’s
hand, carefully preserved in waterproof cloth, describing their last days.

Much of the evidence supporting this version of events is equivocal, reliant on Mary’s diary entries. A copy of the diary found with the bodies in the tank appears at the start of the novel. The original diary is held in the John Oxley Library in Brisbane.

Robert Watson’s deposition after the bodies were discovered is also part of the public record and is also reproduced at the start of the novel.

My version of events is fictional speculation, transforming the real people involved in Mary’s story into characters. In no way do I propose their actions or personalities to be a true and accurate account of their lives. I have attempted, nevertheless, to respect historical accuracy while imposing my own interpretative slant on what is known. This interpretation maintains, as far as possible, consistency with the public record: newspaper reports, official documentation, and preserved sentiment on the events surrounding Mary’s demise.

At the time, what happened to Mary and her baby threw fuel on an already incendiary debate regarding white and black collisions in Far North Queensland. Punitive expeditions against indigenous tribes in the area were carried out regardless of a lack of evidence.

The references made by the characters to cannibalistic practices of the indigenous people around Cooktown and the Palmer River reflect a widely held, though wholly unsubstantiated, belief of the time. These rumours were no doubt a useful psychological lever to justify harsh retaliation against tribal groups in the area.

The references to ‘Myalls’, ‘Merkins’ etc do not reflect true indigenous groups. The nomenclature was merely a convenient way for Europeans to divide different tribes according to locality, appearance and perceived customs.

The patronising attitude of Mary towards the indigenous boys on Lizard Island, and the disrespectful approach of all characters to the Chinese, though totally unacceptable to our contemporary sensibilities, were nevertheless commonplace at the time.