The Sable Provenance

By John Namnik

This 200-year saga (1790 – 1990) is a close-to-true novel that began with a criminal family in England, another in Scotland, and a family of nobles in Ireland.
It is the story of how they came to be in Australia and how the progress of convicts and aristocrats resulted in the SABLE siblings of Western Australia.
Follow the trail of the Waddell Scots and the Irish Morrises who battle the hostile elements of Northern Tasmania as early settlers. Distant neighbours at first, the two clans cross paths while their descendants become close neighbours in inner-suburban Melbourne; but it takes almost 200 years before two descendants, one from each clan, meet and marry in Fremantle, Western Australia.
On the journey, rub shoulders with governors, prime ministers, scoundrels, soldiers, swagmen and heroes. Find out the fate of the Latvian Andrej Namnik as his life, depicted in “The Bear and The Diva” (the author’s previous novel) carries on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Namnik
• Release date: Jan 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466179158

Book preview

THE SABLE PROVENANCE

by

John Namnik

***

PUBLISHED BY CHARGAN AT SMASHWORDS

This book available in print from

www.chargan.com

The Sable Provenance

Copyright © 2012 John Namnik

Graphics, 2009, Steve Whitfield

www.idstudios.net.au

Cover Design by Benjamin Namnik

ISBN: 978-1-4661-7915-8

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

John Namnik has asserted his right under the Copyright Act 1976 to be identified as the author of this work.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

***

Contents

Circa 1810

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Circa 1820

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Circa 1830

Chapter 6

Circa 1840

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Circa 1850

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Circa 1860

Chapter 16

1870 onwards

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

The 20th Century

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Post 1910

Chapter 37

Post1914

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

A Brief Interlude

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Circa 1930

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Aftermath

Chapter 51

Circa 1950’s

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Australia & The World

1950s and early 1960s

Chapter 56

Parade Years

1961 to 1964

Chapter 57

A Lifetime In Five Years

1965-1970

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Hostel Years

1970-1978

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Conclusion

1982 on

Chapter 65

Epilogue

1992-2010

Afterword

Appendix

Acknowledgements

Genealogy Tables

Map of Tasmania, Australia

Dedication

***

Genealogy tables

***

Circa 1810

Chapter 1

At the rear of an unremarkable tenement situated in a nondescript cobbled street of Newcastle-on-Tyne, John Mould, twenty-seven year old carpenter and joiner, was silently congratulating himself. In a few minutes he would turn out another faultless, shiny, sixpence. Not only could he give himself a pat on the back for that, he was chuffed that he and Eleanor had twice escaped committal for stealing and for uttering false coinage. It was Ellen’s idea to exchange ten counterfeit sixpences for Mary McArthur’s two and six. Well, that made two stupid women – he would not make the same mistake next time.

He sniggered at the irony of his name, Mould, as he prepared to pour the molten metal into a mold. Into the brass that was now liquid in his crucible, he placed one drop of pure silver, added a little arsenic to lighten the colour of the brass, and then prepared to add two drops of nitric acid which would bring the silver to the surface, giving the whole concoction the appearance of pure silver.

He didn’t need distractions at this point and bristled at the crying and thumping that he heard coming from the front of the house.

Ellen! Control your little brats, will ya! But the hubbub continued and increased in volume.

Ellen! he roared, I’m not tellin’ you again. Shut those…

He swung around as the door behind him flew open. Five constables burst into the room.

John Mould, you won’t be gettin’ out of this one. You’re nicked laddie, and your missus along with you, threatened the senior constable.

Eleanor’s voice screeched above the crying of her three children.

I can’t leave me kids. What about me kids?

The Welfare’s outside; they’ll be taking your children was the passionless reply.

***

A nervous couple stood before a solemn-faced bewigged magistrate as he pronounced:

Eleanor Mould, you are found ‘not guilty’ on the charge of Coining; you are hereby discharged. John Mould, you are found ‘guilty’ on the charge of Coining. This offence is considered to be treason and as such, carries the penalty of execution by hanging. However, this court hereby commutes your sentence to transportation to the colony of New South Wales for the term of your natural life. Such sentence is not to be considered as an act of compassion, but is due to the need for skilled tradesmen in that colony. You are to be taken forthwith to the hulk prison Retribution where you will remain until such time as you are transported.

Feeling returned to John’s legs – feeling that had drained away the instant that ‘hanging’ was mentioned – and he was able to march under his own steam to the holding cell.

***

As the magistrate pounded his gavel to signal the closure of proceedings against John Mould, that day the gavel was pounding the magistrate’s bench in Sydney to bring to a close a case involving the pastoral magnate, John MacArthur.

The bench of magistrates determined that he could keep the two stills he had imported from Glasgow and which had been impounded by Governor William Bligh, who had banned the practice of distilling. This was yet another episode in a litany of acrimonious incidents between the country’s most senior public servant and its most powerful businessman. Concurrent with the proceedings over the stills were several other issues, most seriously the matter of aiding the escape of a convict via the schooner Parramatta, which was owned by MacArthur.

Bligh had MacArthur tried for sedition and while Judge Advocate Richard Atkins, having endured a haranguing outburst by MacArthur, promised that the pastoralist would be thrown into prison; Atkins himself was in turn berated by his six fellow magistrates (members of the NSW Corps), whereupon Atkins stormed from the court.

What followed amounted to Australia’s only coup d"état. Next day, on the 20th Anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet, the NSW Corps rebelled against the administration and invaded Government House. They placed Bligh under house arrest where he remained for about a year. So, having lost his ship, Bounty, to mutiny, now Bligh had lost the whole colony to mutiny. Major Johnston of the Corps appointed himself as Lieutenant Governor and soon after appointed MacArthur as Colonial Secretary and Magistrate.

***

Such was the state of the colony when John Mould arrived several months later on the Admiral Gambier, a ship of 500 tons, carrying 200 prisoners. For most of the journey the ship was part of a fleet led by HMS Polyphemus of 64 guns. At home, Eleanor again turned to crime but not always for the purpose of supporting her children for, although she had another child of unknown paternity, she remarried one Christopher Bunbury. It was four years after John departed before she was arrested and departed for NSW on the Minstrel. John and Eleanor did not get together again. Ellen was soon living with another, Richard Woollock, and John had his eye on a lass named Lydia.

Chapter 2

As John Mould tinkered with coining in Newcastle-on-Tyne, a secretive meeting was taking place two hundred miles south in a manor in Worcester. Lydia Martin (née Chambers), Maria and Sarah Hopkins and Mary Pearsale were taking a tea break from their domestic duties at the home of the manager of the Worcester Weaving Factory.

Let’s do it tonight, Mr Earl is taking his old bag to the theatre. Let’s hope Mrs La-de-dah don’t wear too much jewellery. When Sarah and I have done their dishes after dinner, we’ll beg a ride into town with them, sayin’ we want to visit our mum.

What about the dogs, Maria? Henry, their loyal do-all, will let ’em out before he drives the old farts to the theatre.

Cripes, Mary, don’t be daft. I’ll leave ’em out some meat laced with laudanum. They’ll be asleep or dead by the time Henry gets back, re-assured Maria. She and her sister, Sarah, lived on site with the dogsbody Henry. Lydia and Mary, the daytime domestics, had their own homes to go back to every day.

Now, continued Maria, Lydia and Mary, you don’t go home after work. You two hide in the greenhouse. When the dogs are knocked out, you break in an’ pinch the old bag’s jewels.

We’ll only have ’arf an hour before Henry gets back, said Lydia.

That’s right, so don’t ’ang about, when Henry drops Sarah and me off, we’ll go ’round the corner and get a Hansom and pick you up in front of the neighbours. Then you’ll give me the booty and I’ll give it to me bruver ’n ’e can fence it in Birmingham. An’ yoose two get yourselves some alibis.

The scheme played out as planned but two factors brought the women down. Henry, when asked by the constabulary if he’d seen anybody near the manor on the said evening, reported that he recognised the Hansom driver who picked up a fare near the manor. The driver was traced and reported that he had picked up two women next door to Mr Earl’s manor and furnished a description. The second factor was Mary’s greed. When her belongings were searched, Mrs. Earl’s diamond ring was found in her possession.

Two weeks before the gavel sealed John Mould’s fate, the gavel came down on Lydia (Chambers) Martin’s sentence of seven years, to be served in parts beyond the seas, for Grand Larceny. Both were interned for exactly one year before embarking for the antipodes: plenty of time for the married Lydia to manage a tryst with the prison guard, John Moore. Such a relationship was not necessarily a fleeting folly for it gave a girl protection, especially if the guard was assigned to the maritime transport which, in John Moore’s case, he was. But it was hardly a relationship of love, judging by Lydia’s future activities.

The result of this tryst saw Lydia board ship five months pregnant, so these were two reasons she did not have to be concerned about rape – her lover John, and her embryonic John. As her lover-guard assisted her mount the gangway to board the Aeolus on the Portsmouth Docks she could have cast her eyes to the left and seen John Mould ascending the gangway of the Admiral Gambier.

Two months later, after the arrival of the flotilla in Rio, John could have seen a pregnant woman scrambling along the deck of the 200 ton ship docked adjacent; not unlikely since the lascivious eyes of two-hundred men would certainly be cast toward the deck-load of eighty women. But they would not dock together in Port Jackson (Sydney) for Aeolus left Rio later, got caught in storms and found it necessary to return for repairs. Such conditions blurred any distinction between morning sickness and seasickness but at least – since the Aeolus was single-decked – one did not have to bother calling out the standard warning of watch under or chunder, as one leaned over the railing to vomit.

Lydia delivered baby John. At least, she thought, I will have some rest-time before they set me to work in the Female Factory. Just two weeks after docking at Port Jackson on the twenty-first anniversary of white settlement in Australia, and exactly one year since the Rum Rebellion and Bligh’s arrest, Lydia first set foot on Australian soil.

Eventually, John Moore gained promotion which entitled him to private quarters and a servant. He chose Lydia naturally, and within two years of their arrival in NSW they were parents of their second child, Eliza. However, the home was no love nest. Within nine months of Eliza’s arrival, Lydia was pregnant to another man – John Mould. It was no longer a problem if Lydia wished to leave her Master and de facto because she had been granted her Ticket-of-Leave just before she became pregnant. Convicts were eligible for a Ticket-of-Leave after three years, a Conditional Pardon after ten years, and an Absolute Pardon after fifteen years.

Lydia had fallen for the five-foot-nine dark-haired, tanned, ruddy thirty-year-old foreman of the Colony’s lumberyards. He must have had the looks, for there were ten times as many single men as single women which gave women plenty to choose from when seeking a mate. Not that either was single. Whilst married convicts could remarry after seven years if their spouse was left in Great Britain, this condition did not apply to John, since Eleanor, his wife, was also in NSW. So John and Lydia formed a de facto arrangement and would have four children of their own. That Lydia registered young John and Eliza with the surname of Mould at their baptism (as well as their own four children) is testament that Lydia had quite some respect for her new man. However, the reader will, most likely, not be of the same opinion about the man whose consistent criminal behaviour saw his first three children left orphaned in the small settlement in which they both lived. His future behaviour too, may not be regarded as an endearing trait.

It is only the first issue of John and Lydia which concerns our story. Her name was Jemima and she arrived on April Fools Day, 1814, and, fortunately for her descendants, she would prove to be very foolish, sixteen years hence.

Chapter 3

The two intrepid burglars had only just closed the first floor window behind them when the bigger of them, William Sanderson, blurted in a whisper, my God Johnno, there’s somebody coming up the stairs!

Damn, you said the house would be deserted. What do we do now?

Get out fast. But it was too late to make a getaway.

Who might you be then? asked the young lassie, dressed as a maid and holding a lit candle.

Good evening to you, miss. Your master asked us to check this faulty window with a view to replacing it. Sure enough it ain’t working since you’d be beholding us standing here.

But it’s the night, she challenged. The quick-witted Will gathered from the few words she had said that he was dealing with an intellect well below par. He thought too that since she hadn’t asked why they hadn’t knocked at the front door, then she may be quite gullible.

"Aye, ’tis the night as you say. But we are so busy fixing things in the day that we can only come at night. And what might your name be, lass?

I’m Sarah.

Same as me own little daughter. May I say that you have lovely red hair, Sarah. We’ll be going, now that we’ve checked the window and I’ll be getting in touch with your master about the fixing of it.

Thank you, she murmured, blushing over the compliment, I’ll show you to the door.

Once back in the street, John Waddell turned to Will: Whew, not even me own cut-throat shaves that close. Are ye thinking it could mean trouble?

Seein’ as it’s our sixth job, it could well mean trouble. Maybe we had better quit it for a while.

Margaret’s lined up the house of her mistress, Mrs Paton, for tomorrow night: she’ll be going to the Kirk for a few hours.

Let Hodgey and Licky do it. I want to get home for a shot of single-malt, replied Will referring to the Scotch they had picked up on their previous job.

Hey, I want to sell that stuff, Will! You know I’m savin’ desperate to start me own smithy business.

Within a week, the burgling syndicate of four couples would be wondering what had given them away.

Nine months after John Mould and Lydia Martin had separately received their sentences, and while they were serving time awaiting transportation, a short-lived crime wave in Glasgow came to an end.

Once again the gavel fell, this time on John Waddell and his wife Margaret (née McDonald) as they were sentenced to 14 years transportation.

In the interim John was sent to The Tollbooth, built in 1636 at the intersection of Trangate and High Streets. (The steeple was preserved and still towers above the Glasgow Cross). Like John Mould who was currently interned in a prison hulk, John Waddell was later moved to another hulk, the Zealand. Margaret was sent by coach to the notorious Newgate Prison in London. Unlike the Moulds, the Waddells had a great mutual affection so they could only hope that it would not be long before they were re-united in Terra Australis.

Apart from their immediate plight of privation and separation, John and Margaret suffered the guilt of bringing shame upon their own families, who were hard-working, honest people, just as they themselves had been until...

John was ambitious; once he qualified as a smithy, under his master Wright, he would move from New Lanark Village to the big city. The village was a company town owned by the Glasgow banker, David Dale, who built the textile mills housing for the workers and all the facilities required by a small town; as such it offered little opportunity for private business. His mother and father, Margaret Young and John Waddell from Falkirk and Paisley respectively, had moved their family to New Lanark for work in the mills. The family consisted of young John and his five sisters. John was ready to leave the town (which is still preserved by the National Trust), but his father was seriously ill. John senior did not hold out for long and young John left shortly after his father’s death for Glasgow where he soon met and fell in love with Margaret McDonald who, born in 1783, was six years older than he.

Margaret was a servant for Mrs Paton and John was a wright for Mr Auchinvole and both were saving to set up an independent business when John was laid off due to lack of work.

Both were hard working and honest until John and several friends found themselves without work.

Margaret and 100 other females sailed from England on the Friends and arrived in Port Jackson on 10th October 1811. She spent an anxious four months in the Women’s Factory awaiting John’s arrival. As Friends docked, John left England on the Guildford for the four-month voyage. He arrived on 25th January, 1812 which was a day of celebration in the colony for His Majesty’s birthday. The next day, the 24th anniversary of white settlement, John and Margaret were re-united and had their own celebration. They were told that they were listed for further transport to Van Diemen’s Land and they would be dispatched together. But, while at Port Jackson, they found suitable time and circumstance to conceive their first child.

***

The colony had regained some stability since the arrival of Gov. Lachlan Macquarie. Conspirators of the Rum Rebellion were being tried and punished. John MacArthur was under an Order of Exile from NSW.

On 21st April the first horse race meeting was held at Parramatta. Carnivals were held that included horse racing, foot racing, cock fighting, and boxing. Macquarie, though, banned gambling, drunkenness, swearing, quarrelling, fighting and lewdness.

The first bank was mooted – The NSW Loan Bank – to overcome the fraud associated with hand-written promissory notes and the holey dollar was introduced as coinage.

Ralph Malkins led his wife into the streets by a neck-rope seeking bids for her sale and Thomas Quire bought her for £16. Prosecution saw Malkins receive 50 lashes while his wife was sent to Newcastle. Quire simply lost his money.

Rev. Samuel Marsden exported the very first load of wool, 4000 lbs, to England on the Admiral Gambier, the ship which had transported John Mould.

House numbers were ordered to be painted on all dwellings at the cost of sixpence.

Macquarie was touring Van Diemen’s Land and ordered a town and port to be built at Port Dalrymple, at the mouth of the Tamar, to be called George Town. At the time he was under some pressure to account for the escalation of the colony’s expenditure which was £72,500 in 1810.

The Governor ordered a decrease of the military population which stood at 1,100 soldiers in a total population of 11,000. The Select Committee on Transportation wanted more women transported but Macquarie said they were simply a drawback, to which the Committee replied: But yet, with all their vices, such women were the mothers of the colony’s inhabitants.

The brig Emu, bound for Hobart, was captured by the US ship, Holkar, as a consequence of the War of Independence between England and America.

Sam Jervis came out of the bush after living with Aborigines for 23 years. He had jumped ship on the Tamar when he learned that the Captain planned to maroon him and assume his inheritance.

***

On Gov. Macquarie’s return from his tour, he set to with his quill to tackle his paperwork. On 12th June, 1812 he penned a memorandum to Major Gordon, the Commandant at Port Dalrymple. In essence, he mentioned that he was sending, on the Lady Nelson, thirty males and twelve female convicts among whom he would receive five very good and useful tradesmen, namely a blacksmith, a wheelwright, a carpenter and two bricklayers… allowing the blacksmith and wheelwright to work occasionally for the settlers (as well as the Government). The blacksmith was John Waddell. The population at the Port consisted of just some 300 people of whom half were convicts.

Within months the first son was born to the Waddells. His name, of course was John (the third); Elizabeth arrived five years later and David in 1819. They were all baptised by Rev. Knopwood at St John’s Church of England in Launceston. The Anglican minister found himself administering the sacraments to all the Christian denominations as he travelled the height and breadth of Van Diemen’s Land.

John and Margaret were sent to Launceston not too long after landing at Port Dalrymple and whenever they had the opportunity they applied for land and livestock by grant or purchase. Eventually they built their own house – one of the first ever built in Launceston – and attached to it was a smith; thus John and Margaret finally achieved their dream of owning their own workshop.

Genealogical table: The Morris Ancestry

Genealogical table: The Family of John Waddell IV and Mary Ann Russell

Genealogical table: The Family of John Riley and Mariah Morris

Circa 1820

Chapter 4

In 1814, bushrangers were creating so much mayhem in Van Diemen’s Land that Gov. Macquarie offered them an amnesty, but made the mistake of allowing them seven months to surrender, thus giving them carte blanche to create further havoc in that period.

The conditions on convict ships became worse instead of better, with many dying from typhus, including many of the crew. Conflicts with natives were on the increase and in New Zealand a European crew had been massacred, roasted and devoured.

The great explorer who had mapped the coastline of New Holland and christened the continent Australia was released by the French after six years of imprisonment on Mauritius. He died, aged 40, just before Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo ending conflict between France and England.

Pugilism finally gained official acceptance with a bare-knuckled prize fight over 50 rounds.

The first steam engine was imported from England, an invention patented over 30 years previously.

The Adamande carried Van Diemen’s Land’s first free settlers into Hobart on 20th September 1816. The exodus of convicts from Norfolk Island to Van Diemen’s Land ceased.

John MacArthur returned to NSW after eight years exile in England to resume his breeding of merinos and exporting of the fleece which his wife and sons had carried on in his absence. It would not be long before he would clash again with the Gov. – this time Macquarie. The new Gov. was an emancipist and insisted on the equality of pardoned convicts; MacArthur and other elite powerbrokers wanted a two-tier social structure and were thus the pioneers of any consequent class system in the country.

Fr Jeremiah O’Flynn was the first Catholic Priest to enter the country. The Gov. banned him from practising and sought confirmation that he had permission from London to migrate. He was soon sent packing back to Ireland. To date, that amounted to 20 years of anti-Catholic discrimination, if not persecution, since the First Fleet arrived. It took a further five years for two priests to be permitted entry, and then they were restricted in their ministrations while general gatherings by Catholics, outside church service, were banned.

As Macquarie was replaced by Sir Thomas Brisbane, driving on the left side of the road became law.

***

The warm morning sun glinted off the sabres of the two Redcoats who heeled their chestnut steeds on either side of Gov. Macquarie’s grey. Lachlan Macquarie had today donned his royal blue tunic bearing gold epaulettes; his navy blue breeches were tucked into long shiny-brown leather boots. He was returning to Government House, having visited the courthouse to sort out the objections to his appointment of Dr Redfern to the magistracy. (Commissioner John Bigge had recently arrived from England to investigate the Affairs of the Colony and to assess the system of transportation. He criticized Redfern’s appointment claiming that London would not approve an emancipated person holding such an office.) An adjutant took command of the grey as Macquarie dismounted and strode off to his home and office. On entering, he detoured down the west wing with the intention of calling on the Colonial Secretary, John Thomas Campbell, whose office was situated at the wing’s extremity and currently undergoing repairs and extensions. Because of the noise of hammering, scraping and sawing and the attendant dust, the secretary had removed himself to an office further up the corridor.

Good morning, Your Excellency.

How are you handling the disruptions, John?

They will soon be finished, Sir, then I’m sure my sanity will return as though it never left.

What’s your verdict on the workmanship?

Fast and thorough. The head carpenter is a master of the mortise joint.

Let’s have a look, shall we?

The two men approached the area under work in a breezy quasi-march. The Secretary called the tradesmen to attention.

Governor Macquarie present, Gov…

Yes, That’s all right Mr Campbell. The workers downed tools and stood at a casual attention awaiting, they supposed, an inspection or an oration meant to hurry them along. They received neither.

Macquarie approached the foreman and spoke in a manner that could be called casual considering his voice was the most powerful in the land.

Mr Mould, how goes the work?

Ahead of schedule, Guv.

The secretary chastised, Excellency to you, Mr Mould!

Yes sir, was all John Mould would concede.

That’s pleasing news, Mr Mould, continued Macquarie, as I have a rather large project I wish you to assume the charge of.

What might that be Governor?

Mould! chastised Mr Campbell at the seeming insolence.

It’s all right, Mr Campbell. Mr Mould, have you heard of Port Dalrymple in Van Diemen’s Land?

Heard of it, yes Sir, that I have, but I ain’t never seen it.

I have commissioned a new town to be built there; it will be called George Town and I am appointing you chief carpenter. I have seen your work since you arrived and I have all confidence in you.

Thank you sir, but ah……

I know the objection you wish to raise.

He can’t object, Your Excellency, interrupted the Colonial Secretary, You’re a bloody convict, Mould!

John, please don’t bother. Now Mr Mould, I believe your Pardon is due in seven weeks and you would like to know where you stand. While you are obliged to attend at George Town, should you continue the work as a pardoned man until the completion of the project, I will grant you a fifty-acre allotment of land at beautiful Launceston. Should you choose to desert the project when granted your pardon, you will find it difficult to find gainful employment and there will be no grant of land.

John Campbell beamed at the Governor’s besting of the convict, but stayed silent, acknowledging that the Governor always got the best of everybody.

I’m sure your wife and children will find the cooler climate more agreeable, concluded Macquarie, delaying his departure momentarily to receive any forthcoming reply.

Two thoughts raced through John Mould’s mind: the bugger is totally familiar with my record and, here I am, an Englishman of the Church of England, being ordered about by two Scots. But all he said was,

Thank you, Sir.

Good Mr Mould, I will write forthwith to Lt-Gov. Sorrell in Hobart, informing him of your commission. He turned, took a step, then turned back to the convict taunting, haven’t tried coining the Holey Dollar, I hope?

John’s face flushed, Not yet, Guv, he answered. He flushed not through embarrassment but from guilt, for his pocket held a number of nails that he would take home tonight, as he had done most nights, for use in forging coins.

Seated behind his grand oak table, the Gov. penned his instructions to Sorrell, part of which read:

... I have at the same time appointed our very best house carpenter here to be Superintendent of Carpenters at George Town whither he now proceeds in the Prince Leopold and I must beg he may not be removed on any account from the works which with this man’s able assistance and skill under the Superintendence of Lt. Vandermuelen ...

Dated 27th Feb. 1819.

***

Lydia was a little piqued that John Mould had ignored her first summons to the dinner table, so now she would have to brave the drizzle to fetch him from his workshop which stood at the rear of their house which was on the corner of Sorell and Cimitiere Streets.

John, the food will be cold by ... Well, for goodness sake, is that a rocking horse you’re making?

That’s what it is, lass, a surprise for Jemima’s 5th birthday. I’ve got the paint for it and I’ll be leaving that job for you.

John, just tell me you’re not nickin’ this stuff.

Would that be Saint Lydia speaking?

I’m having nothing to do with stealing again. I got kids who need me and so do you.

You’re daft, woman. We throw bits of timber and paint into the rubbish cart every day.

That’s as may be, but ’spose you tell me about those new boards that appeared in our yard yesterday. To this, John gave a shrug of his well-muscled shoulders.

Just can’t help yourself, John Mould. You must like prison life is all I’ll be sayin!

"Won’t happen. I’m teacher’s pet, don’t