The Emigrants: Gold & Glory

By JJ Barrie

Transport and the tyranny of distance was the real problem for the colony of New South Wales.
Distance limited the how far wheat, the most valuable of the farm crops, could be transported but it was generally no more than thirty or forty miles. Cattle, fattened on the lush pastures of the coastal ranges, walked to market losing a little fat but the beef the small population could consume, was limited. While hides were exported back to England by the thousand, it was not a proposition to raise cattle for skins alone.
Only sheep were valuable enough to show a profit – a ton of wool worth ten times that of a ton of wheat. Wool could afford the cost of transport to the ports, and across the world where growing markets, created by the woollen mills of England and Europe, had an insatiable appetite for the fleece. Flocks of sheep doubled every few years but needing huge acreages, most squatted their flocks as settlers claimed larger and larger tracts of the colony.
The bullock driver brought the bales after shearing down dusty bush tracks to the Sydney merchants, sometimes hundreds of miles. Swaying from side to side, with wheels creaking, accompanied by a volley of strange oaths and the sharp crack of the stock whip, the monstrous beasts strained at their yokes with the attendant kelpies nipping their heels. Close to the near wheel walked the driver, tall and broad-shouldered – a sunburnt care-worn man with long shaggy hair covered by a grubby, wide brimmed, sweat-marked hat. A months beard covered his dusty face. Dressed in the trademark dark blue cotton shirt with sleeves rolled to the shoulders of his browned, hairy arms, coarse moleskin trousers and calf-half leather boots completed his uniform. A wizened man, more shabbily dressed in much the same gear, trotted along the off side. With three mongrel dogs chained under the back axle of the dray, another load of the golden fleece was off to market.
The hard-working pioneer squatter won in time. Some even became extremely wealthy, and understandably possessive of their lands. Against the world trend, many sought to continue the transportation of convicts providing cheap labour. Failing in these endeavours, the emigrants changed the balance, supplying the lifeblood of the colony – labour.
Then they found gold!

• Language: English
• Publisher: CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: Sep 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310393426

JJ Barrie

J J BARRIE, the Australian born author and novelist, recently retired after years of involvement in general business writing in order to concentrate on a love of historical crime and investigative procedure. The first historical crime novel was published in 2009.An abiding interest over decades in English family history largely related to Cambridgeshire and adjacent counties continues. Particular interest and research into industrialisation and the resultant migration to the colonies has resulted in THE EMIGRANTS. The trilogy is almost complete with the first volume - THE BROTHERS FIVE - published in eBook and print formats by Custom Books. The second volume - GOLD & GLORY - is in edit for release towards the end of 2012. The final volume is in draft and planned to be released in 2014.Now writing fulltime and extensively traveled, with a close knowledge of much of Europe and Asia, each novel has a particular affinity with their locales as reflected in the revised historical novel just released – MONA LISA: THE VIRGIN MOTHER. Several other historical thrillers are works in progress, notably CURSE OF THE DIAMONDS and THE SHELFORDS OF SHELFORD – both set predominantly in England.More information is at www.jjbarrie.com

Book preview

Prologue

The Colonies 1853-1854 Chapters 1-12

Gold Fever 1854-1856 Chapters 3-18

The Curse 1855-1857 Chapters 19-21

The Sisters 1856-1858 Chapters 22-31

Epilogue

THE EMIGRANTS Book One

THE STORY SO FAR

It was really no choice at all – starve or emigrate.

Face death by drowning or disease, fire or starvation. Steal a loaf of bread and be transported to the same colonies anyway… but in chains. Times were brutal, life cheap and cruel.

With more mouths to feed and less land to grow food, the English farm labourer enjoyed few alternatives – the horror of the dreaded workhouses; subsistence by petty crime; or poverty, penury and pestilence – hardly choices for most. Migration to one of the new settlements became a real alternative, resulting in the biggest diaspora in recent history. By the middle of the nineteenth century, thousands sailed to the colonies of Australia.

Improvement of their lowly lot in life was typically the motivation for emigrating but for some different objectives dominated. A few saw emigration as the way to defeat the hangman, a long stint in an English goal or transportation. Others found the far-reaching decision a means of leaving behind forever a wife or a violent husband; even abandoned children. Some with more pious objectives took their religious beliefs with them.

Whatever their reason, the decision to emigrate grew to be the most fateful any would make in their lifetimes. All over England, families sat around hearths contemplating the painful choices. They weighed their crushing debilitation against the potential of unbearable loneliness and the unlimited possibilities for wealth and freedom in a new land.

Amongst the emigrants were four extended families each from the different classes in nineteenth century Victorian society. This is the story of their incongruent relationships and the tumultuous journey aboard the Harriet to the colony of New South Wales.

In England, the vicious crimes of the Sheathers required an urgent departure as the shadow of the hangman stalked the two brothers. For the three Bunch brothers, gold and opportunity called but murder haunted the young men. Wealth failed to insulate the Earl of Shipton and his aristocratic family from death and misadventure, the colonies a place to forget the loss of a baby sister.

For a God-fearing woodcutter’s family, a new beginning beckoned where farmland was on offer.

Famine gripped the country and the onset of the industrial revolution changed the face of their England. Taking the first available ship, they were unprepared for the rigours and agonies to be faced, encountering circumstances not able to be imagined before departure. Strangers to the sea; most had no knowledge of the tempestuous oceans, not long ago sailed only by intrepid explorers.

Conditions on ships plying the trade to the colonies varied. Even though the Harriet was better than many, it was still in cramped, shared, unhygienic dormitory-style quarters in which the emigrating families spent the next three and a half months. With almost no privacy, poor ventilation, little light and temperatures varying from thirty to more than a hundred degrees, life was hell and basic in the extreme.

Emigration was challenging but still they went with hope, desire and love.

The pretty seaside town and ancient port of Southampton changed as timber wharves replaced the stony beaches. Filth and open sewers discharged into the once pristine, deep waters of the River Test. A forest of masts from all over the world substituted for the tall trees of yesteryear. Warehouses, bawdyhouses, brothels, bars and inns provided refuge to spivs, pickpockets, pimps, prostitutes and crooks sold their wares or plied their nefarious trades. Men were robbed or shanghaied, women raped or kidnapped – almost anything could be bought, begged, stolen or sold along the waterfront.

Ships still departed with a human cargo. Once, wretches for transport as convicts chained in long sad rows, hands secured to hands, legs to legs, shuffled forward to some unheard cadence.

Now voluntary but no less sad, they departed their loved ones for the uncertainties of the colonies. For many, the only differences were the lack of chains and the crack of the cat-o-nine tails.

The Bookmaker

Abraham Bunch, one of ten or more bookmakers in Newmarket, plied his trade in the centre of horse racing in eastern England. The portly but gentlemanly old Earl of Shipton, his biggest client, had a gambling obsession bringing him daily closer to ruin. While the two men duelled for nearly ten years, neither saw any problem in the increasing size of the bets or the level of outstandings the accounts sometimes reached.

Away from the racetrack, Abe Bunch was a cruel, drunken slob. Not only a loud-mouthed coward with an uncontrolled temper who beat his wife mercilessly but a criminal employing enforcers to do the same to men. Each was of the one mould – big, brawny and tough, with the obligatory misshapen nose. Blood already soiled Abe's hands, originally having acquired the business after paying the Sheather brothers to murder the old owner, Benchley the Bookmaker

With Abe drunk almost every night, his subjugated wife, Heidi, battled to educate and bring up their three boys. One evening, drunker than most, Heidi shot and killed him with an old pistol. Fatherless, their provider gone, she despair for her sons, slowly failing over the years until her death – her life simply exhausted.

By now young men, the three brothers perceive opportunity and excitement, joining an emigrant ship departing from Southampton. As assisted passengers, they enthusiastically become part of the exodus to the colonies.

The Earl

The crusty, old fifth Earl of Shipton was of another age, one where each knew his place in society. His penchant for a wager became almost legendary but the quiet sale of his assets and the borrowing against the security of his estates went unnoticed as his losses mounted. One day the inevitable happened – he defaulted on his loans.

Needing to resolve his bank problems, he planned a scam to replenish his depleted assets with cash. It is simplicity itself. At the next race meeting, as is usual he laid his bets on credit, something accorded a gentleman of his status by the lowly bookmaker. After the last race, his men collected his winning positions but did not settle any losses. He repeats the process over the next several meets, increasing his cash substantially... and his debts. With the exception of Bunch, the bookmakers deferred settlement of his unpaid losing wagers, assuming he will pay. In a typical fury, Abe sent his two debt collectors to recover some of the outstandings. When the wily Earl shot both as intruders; his troubles deepen.

Further enraged, Abe contracted the Sheather brothers to murder the Earl, certain the estate, which he assumed is solvent, will reimburse him rather than let the Earl's image be tarnished. The Earl, however, had already secreted the cash in a trust fund with his solicitors leaving him all but bankrupt. The murder of the old man achieves nothing and Abe is soon dead from the gunshot wound inflicted by his wife.

Previously unaware of the debts or the extent of his father's gambling problems, the new Earl of Shipton sets out to rebuild his family fortune, considering the emerging railways a better bet than those made by his father on horses. With the trust account a bonus, an unexpected dowry and a French wife, Emilée, his life takes on new meaning.

Schooling completed, the seventeen year-old son of his earlier marriage and heir to the Earldom, Edward Cole concludes reading law at Cambridge. Over his years at university, he dotes upon his tiny stepsister, Sophie. The family, however, is not immune to death and despair. A freak storm blankets the roads of the fens with snow, their coach slips and crashes, killing the driver, postilions and her nanny. The little girl survives but her terminal injuries merely delay the inevitable and the noble family mourns her loss. In his final years of medicine, John Sterling, his school friend and the son of the Cambridgeshire Chief Constable, Sir James Sterling convinces Edward a period in the colonies might help cure his grief. A pact is made; he agrees to join Edward at the year's end in Sydney and complete his residency. Wealthy and titled, Edward joins the exodus.

The Brothers

The Sheather families lived around to fens for generations. Firebrands, Samuel and Edward prefer to be thugs for hire. As teenagers they tried sheep stealing – a hanging offence – only just defeating the arms of the law. Graduating to bashings and beatings to order, the brothers soon add murder. Paid by Abe Bunch to fake the suicide of his old employer, Benchley is smothered to death. The shooting of the Earl, and the stealing of his gold fob watch, is followed by the robbery of a coach claiming three more victims. With the arrival of the railway, they become serious killers – two die in a mail car massacre, three men at Middleton Woods and still more as the constabulary closes in. At Upwell the local doctor dies in a faked accident. Another fob watch is stolen. The brothers have left themselves few options – emigration or they will hang.

Even as the families leave Cambridgeshire for the emigrant ship, they kill – at Royston, a jeweller dies for some gold and the fetish for watches continue. In Southampton, three young thugs die in a brawl and two others are killed after a case of mistaken identity. Joined by their own sons, they murder even more men during the robbery of a shipping office. Only days before being caught, and unaware of the urgency shadowing them, they join the Harriet for New South Wales. It does not stop there...

The Woodcutters

In contrast, two law-abiding, God-fearing brothers head the Layton families. Fens dwellers for generations, they existed well by fishing, farming wheat and barley, drying reeds for thatch, growing vegetables and milking a cow. The current generation of Charles and John witnessed the enclosure of land, reducing farm acreage to uneconomic levels. Eels, once a local currency, disappeared from the muddy waters as more of the fens was drained. Much of the reed beds died but no one could afford a new thatch, anyway.

Timber for building was a growing resource, so they became sawyers. The wives grew vegetables within the curtilage of their tenant properties. Their sons turned to gardening, farming what little land remained. Woodcutting fell as demand for sawn timber deteriorated and the available trees became too expensive. Mainly stunted and scrawny, the left over copses made firewood the only option. Again once a good business, in a few short years barter replaced coin. Work slowed and the villages owned by the Earl of Shipton declined as he gambled away his inheritance. Unemployment rose. Most villagers already lived in poverty with nothing left to sell. The families could do little – firewood was unable to be afforded.

As industrialisation continued to creep into middle England, they laboured hard to ensure both their sons and daughters were well educated. They soon realised the future for their children lay in the mines, moving to the cities to find work in the factories or in emigration to the colonies. The Layton families made the hardest of decisions – they chose to leave their few remaining loved ones, almost gave away their livelihoods and sought subsided migration – their only way to ensure a real future.

These stoic agricultural labourers already knew about penury and pestilence, skimping and saving to provide a start. Religious zeal and an unexpected windfall provided them with impetus and hope.

The Exodus

Progressively filling with migrants, the special train puffed from Wisbech in Lincolnshire through Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and on to London, finally reaching the filth and decadence of the Southampton wharves.

Ready for its maiden voyage to the colony of New South Wales, the fine, specially built wooden sailing ship – the Harriet – swung at anchor.

Assisted comprised most of those embarking. The government, shires and towns, churches or the colonial masters – paid their fares and provided food in return for a term of work upon arrival. The barque, a hundred-yards long and less than a quarter as wide, would be home to more than four-hundred souls and the crew.

The steerage passengers, laden with luggage, boxes, bags and cases, struggled up the narrow gangways; seamen directing them to their tiny 'quarters' – there being only eleven unassisted in the total of three hundred and eighty-three migrants. The eighty-one men included farmers, carpenters and stonemasons, shepherds, gardeners and bricklayers, dairymen, a plumber, horsemen and a wheelwright – tradesmen England could ill-afford to lose. Only sixteen of the males over fourteen were single compared with seventy-nine females. The prisons and workhouses of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk provided many of the women, most destined to be servants or wives to the men in the colonies.

Cabin passengers fared better. Chests and hand luggage taken by seamen at the wharf, the climb much less difficult unladen and with the gangway to themselves. Cabins were private, their meals served in their own stateroom.

The fine ship moved from its moorings on time; the passengers lined the deck in two minds. Some waved, sometimes with glee but more often in sadness. A few prayed; others remained silent.

The Harriet sailed past the Isle of Wright before crossing the Bay of Biscay, heading south. The voyage to Sydney-town was not devoid of excitement, intrigue or action. With storms and a hurricane, becalmed one day and hot the next, they experienced the whole range of weather as the ship passed over the equator into the southern oceans. Sickness, death and birth; good cheer and sadness – all the human emotions made an appearance. Shipboard romances blossomed. With a noticeable breaking down of Victorian mores, class strictures soon blurred.

Rotten food and victualling trickery stripped the third officer of his rank and bonuses, to be off-loaded and replaced at the halfway port of Capetown. A murder by poisoning resulted in one of the Bunch brothers being unfairly incarcerated in the brig, destined for trial in Sydney. The fateful decision of the Captain, normally balanced in his judgements, was keenly opposed to no avail.

The real culprit of the murder remained free but not for long. One of the Sheather sons made an unwanted move against Eliza Broderick, a chaste young lady. The molester is foiled by her brother using a belaying pin with deadly accuracy. The eldest son of Samuel Sheather becomes another death by misadventure recorded in the ship's log; the families vow revenge.

After Capetown, seven-thousand uninterrupted miles lay ahead. Captain Sharrick made the unpopular decision to traverse the Great Circle route towards the fiftieth parallel shaving off a thousand miles. Some crew worried they may fall off the edge. Not all believed the world round.

Bass Strait, between the mainland of Australia and Tasmania, was perhaps the greatest peril. Many a ship avoided the hazards of the long sea journey only to be wrecked tragically nearly in sight of its destination. After passing through the passage, the final run up the eastern coast should have been without incident but the fomenting problem of a womanless crew and eighty lusting young women exploded.

Mutiny threatened, cut short by their entry into Port Jackson – the huge bay on which Sydney-town grew twelve miles inland – where it was the ignominy of quarantine, delaying their arrival. During the voyage, a boy died from deadly chickenpox and several cases of measles were detected. The English public service had reached the colony – an over-zealous petty officer insisted the ship berth at the port's quarantine wharf before being allowed to disembark at Farm Cove. The collective groan would have been a full mutiny if it were known the delay was to extend for two weeks rather than the several days expected.

Now certain justice had passed them by, the Bunch brothers found means to release their still incarcerated brother. In a week, they became escapees and outlaws – and soon to be branded as bushrangers. Before taking flight across the pristine bay in a ship's boat, they freed the sailors charged over the mutiny incident. Five were recaptured.

The last was not seen again, the sandy inlet had probably lived up to its name – Shark Bay.

THE COLONIES

1853-1854

Transport and the tyranny of distance was the real problem for the colony of New South Wales.

Distance limited the how far wheat, the most valuable of the farm crops, could be transported but it was generally no more than thirty or forty miles. Cattle, fattened on the lush pastures of the coastal ranges, walked to market losing a little fat but the beef the small population could consume, was limited. While hides were exported back to England by the thousand, it was not a proposition to raise cattle for skins alone.

Only sheep were valuable enough to show a profit – a ton of wool worth ten times that of a ton of wheat. Wool could afford the cost of transport to the ports, and across the world where growing markets, created by the woollen mills of England and Europe, had an insatiable appetite for the fleece. Flocks of sheep doubled every few years but needing huge acreages, most squatted their flocks as settlers claimed larger and larger tracts of the colony.

The bullock driver brought the bales after shearing down dusty bush tracks to the Sydney merchants, sometimes hundreds of miles. Swaying from side to side, with wheels creaking, accompanied by a volley of strange oaths and the sharp crack of the stock whip, the monstrous beasts strained at their yokes with the attendant kelpies nipping their heels. Close to the near wheel walked the driver, tall and broad-shouldered – a sunburnt care-worn man with long shaggy hair covered by a grubby, wide brimmed, sweat-marked hat. A months beard covered his dusty face. Dressed in the trademark dark blue cotton shirt with sleeves rolled to the shoulders of his browned, hairy arms, coarse moleskin trousers and calf-half leather boots completed his uniform. A wizened man, more shabbily dressed in much the same gear, trotted along the off side. With three mongrel dogs chained under the back axle of the dray, another load of the golden fleece was off to market.

The hard-working pioneer squatter won in time. Some even became extremely wealthy, and understandably possessive of their lands. Against the world trend, many sought to continue the transportation of convicts providing cheap labour. Failing in these endeavours, the emigrants changed the balance, supplying the lifeblood of the colony – labour.

Then they found gold!

Already overwhelmed by the cessation of convict transportation, authorities shrank from the thought of the chaos of a gold rush. There were few roads, fewer police and a colonial government opposed to the finding of gold. In one location after another, more finds quickly followed the first gold discoveries. As the headlong rush started, even stable settlers left their jobs for the nearest diggings, leaving whole towns and villages, farms and sheep runs without workers.

In England, thousands took any available ship to Australia, anxious to make their fortune but completely unprepared for the rigours of the life facing them. Sailors deserted en-masse, and while Sydney was a little saner than other reports, many spent their savings before they had even left for the diggings. The goldfields were isolated. Even the best routes were little more than bullock tracks, becoming muddy morasses when wet before returning to miserable dustbowls in the dry heat of summer. Living in tents or a bark hut at best; tree stumps for chairs, a tea chest as a table and the bed made from saplings covered with a couple of blankets – was the norm. Tea was boiled in a billy, the staple bread a home-baked damper and mutton was the chief meat, supplied by the nearest camp butcher. Most would be little better off than in the England they had left.

At the same time, Sydney-town – the town, more and more referring to the burgeoning central business area – was maturing. No longer a frontier town, Sydney gained buildings of stature. Sealed roads and piped water was more and more available, and for all its faults, an able colonial public service existed.

Grand homes and estates had become established and the Rocks developed as the centre of a separate low-life society in the tradition of wharf areas and ports everywhere. Both graced the foreshores of the magnificent harbour.

As trading and migrant ships filled the harbours and coves, cabs and carriages became more common than bullock wagons. Shops with plate glass windows, emporiums and hotels lined the paved streets, crowds thronged to the live theatres, recitals and concerts. Churches, banks and even an embryonic Sydney University were built as the settlement spread, forming suburbs.

Increasingly men no longer dreamed of going to live in the country or the goldfields, becoming intent on their trades, professions and businesses. They built homes, tiny factories and workshops turning out all kinds of goods, implements and tools, furniture, ironmongery, leather and woollen goods and cloth. Breweries, mills, quarries, brickworks and pottery yards soon supported a well-developed building industry. Warehouses and wharves, victuallers, importers and exporters sustained the booming shipping trade, and flourished.

Life in Sydney still depended on wool. The city’s establishments and new mercantile agencies were centres where squatters purchased equipment and stores, sold their wool and spent their cheques. By the mid-1850’s, even as the dominance of wool was being challenged by gold, bankers and traders still measured prosperity by the fleece.

As the town became a small city, the itinerant workers and single men found their entertainment in the pubs, eating houses and more bawdy establishments around the Rocks. In the tenements and lodgings, the poor continued to live in appalling conditions. While the town prospered, the detritus of society was becoming embedded in the seedy end of the developing city, attracting all types of nefarious activity. In this cesspit, many emigrants, unsuccessful diggers, ticket-of-leave convicts and just the unfortunate, lived, worked and played.

‘This was the atmosphere emigrants arriving on the Harriet would seek their fortunes.

David Campbell planned to buy a more traditional farm, and settle comfortably but for the Laytons, indentured to the Macarthur-owned Camden Park, it would be a year before they were free to find land to farm for themselves. As a British Army officer, Captain Bushby would soon lead the hated mounted troopers – the traps; Edward Cole would join his law firm as the third partner and the Broderick siblings, their ambitious, mercantile parents. The Sheather brothers – Samuel and Edward and their families, would continue in their evil ways, becoming just another part of the Rocks coterie of illicit dealers and traders. Murder and mayhem would soon follow them closely. As escapees, the once honest and hard-working brothers, William and Henry Bunch, would make an inauspicious start to their futures in Australia led by their less than scrupulous brother, Isaac.

Many would follow the gold discoveries – some finding success but most would not, finally becoming traders and shopkeepers or farmers and labourers. Many women would marry – some successfully but for one or two, it would turn out to be a brutally wrong decision.

One in six Britons emigrated to this new world in just thirty years - part of the greatest diaspora in human history – choosing to be new Australians.

*****

CHAPTER ONE

The pilot ordered the two forward anchors to be dropped in Farm Cove. each slipping noiselessly into the still waters of the bay. The Harriet had finally arrived in Sydney-town.

The Commissioners embarked. As the sun climbed higher into the clear winter sky, they interviewed and cleared passengers progressively. Cabin passengers were processed immediately, quickly followed by indentured passengers travelling on subsided fares. Amongst the first of these families to disembark were those of Charles and John Layton and Richard Marshal. As the barges deposited passengers and luggage on the wharf, these indentured families were met by a jovial, smiling John Hindmarsh, the agent responsible now for each. With several labourers and a few of the crew, the luggage was loaded onto a dray. The relieved passengers followed their belongings, marvelling at the bustling wharves and the crowded streets.

Crossing the Tank Stream, they made their way around Sydney Cove to a building next to Sullivan’s Warehouse. Entering the tall brick warehouse, clearly signed AMA & Co, they found each floor of the three-story building divided into small groups of cubicles furnished with beds, mattresses, folded blankets and tables and chairs. Explaining there was a central kitchen on each floor where meals could be cooked, separate bathrooms for men and women were at each end and a laundry and the latrines were nearby, Hindmarsh suggested they bathe, wash and hang their clothes.

‘I’ll take you on a walk this afternoon and show you a small part of the town and the Rocks,’ he said affably. ‘After supper, I’ll sit down with you; tell you about the program. What you’ll be doing and where you’ll being going, an’ all that.’

Rev. Jacob Pearson led most in prayer before the families settled themselves into their spacious lodgings. Awed at the space and the air, there was a feeling they were living in a palace after the cramped conditions of the Harriet and the Quarantine Station.

That afternoon and the next day, cleaned and rested, they went their various ways as they walked the throbbing heart of Sydney.

On board the Harriet, Captain Sharrick wrote in the Ships Log:

16 June 1853: Anchors weighed three bells – 0930 at Farm Cove.

First Officer given leave. Mr. Driscoll paid off. One third of the crew given leave, two-thirds tomorrow. Crew already talk of gold. Captain remains aboard. Ships report follows… George Sharrick (Capt.)

Meanwhile the Commissioners continued processing passengers.

The Campbell and Bushby families departed together, reaching the wharf to be met by James brother, the Surveyor-General John Bushby, himself, accompanied by several of his black-suited staff. After an effusive welcome for his brother and his wife, James introduced David Campbell and his family and the dashing Edward Cole. Inviting both families, and Cole, to join him at his townhouse to change – freshen up, as he put it – and lunch, only Edward was moved to decline.

‘My thanks in any event but I am being met by my new clerk from the firm I shall be joining. It is most generous of you to offer, Surveyor-General. My new home is apparently only a short distance from yours, as I am informed. We will all dine just as soon as I have my land legs back again.’

Brooking no objection from the others, they were bundled into two carriages, leaving their luggage to be collected by his staff. The Bushby townhouse was really a three-storied Georgian styled mansion on several acres of land, fronting cobbled Macquarie-street, situated almost opposite the Government House gardens with its glorious views over Farm Cove.

On arrival, John Bushby had his butler show his brother and his wife to their suite. Suggesting the Campbell’s would be happier staying a few days; he had them directed to similar suites. Brushing off the protests of David Campbell, Bushby insisted it was no inconvenience at all. ‘Please, relax; I have the business of government to attend so I shall see everyone at dinner. You are most welcome, and we can discuss your requirements over a good port.’

They bathed, rested and changed, enjoying a late lunch.

Dinner was a typically English affair, Captain James Bushby in full dress uniform and the ladies in their finery with just a touch of jewellery. The elegant, unmarried, thirty-three year old John Bushby was the perfect host.

‘Well, young lady,’ said John Bushby addressing Fanny. ‘I am sure you’ll enjoy Sydney. You will find it is more fun in the relaxed atmosphere of the colony. There is less formality and, of course, the weather is very much better than England.’

As the dinner progressed, James Bushby commented to his brother, ‘John, most enjoyable. Just wonderful after the monotonous food on board but still – well, at least we’re here. I sent a messenger to Victoria Barracks this afternoon to advise I had arrived. Could I arrange a carriage, I need to present my credentials to the Colonel tomorrow, the Governor the following? How far is the barracks?’

‘A half-hour, don’t give it a second thought, James. I shall arrange for mine to be available.’ The discussion continued on the policing of the colony and the role of the British Army regiments.

David Campbell enquired, ‘I find it all confusing; the role of the army, I mean.’

‘We have an unusual situation here. There is a developing colonial police force limited to the town and a few regional centres. Quality and experience is wanting in my opinion, but I must say improving as more professional men come over. Our British Army regiments are really the police force. Most are cavalry and the men are trained and experienced, and more of the officers either are seconded or join the permanent police after their tour is completed. Over the next few years it will have to change, you know; build a proper police force, separate the army and all that. It will happen when we have some form of self-government, and that’s not too far away. My guess is a few years at most. Very interesting times ahead; come into my study. I shall fill you in over some fine brandy and even better cigars. Ladies.’

As soon as the commissioners arrived on the Harriet, Adam and Eliza Broderick were among the first to be cleared as their parents had already warranted their stay. Waiting on the dock, the excited parents watched as their two grown children came down the gangplank onto the barge. Within fifteen minutes, they were reunited – the first time in nearly five years.

Loading their luggage aboard a covered two-horse carriage, chattering incessantly, the family set off towards Tusculum, the Sydney home of John and Elizabeth Broderick. Travelling around the crenellated entrance towers to Government House, along the harbour front and past the busy wharves of Woolloomooloo, the carriage climbed through a sandstone cutting to the entrance to the Broderick estate off Macleay-street. The new road continued on to the main east road intersection at Kings Crossing.

Winding through the nine acres to the Georgian style classic home with its magnificent views over Port Jackson, the children had not seen the new home. The creation of John Verge, the emancipated convict architect, the home had been built to the requirements of Elizabeth and John. The white columned wide verandahs surrounded the two storied home with its six bedrooms, two bathrooms, large well-planned living areas and a grand dining room. A separate servants quarters and a huge kitchen and stores were located at the rear with the stables. Unlike most new gardens, John saw beauty in leaving the natural landscape largely intact rather than the exacting task of creating an English garden.

Many of the great white-barked gum trees – locally known as ‘ghost’ gums – were retained, natural grasses were mown and wildflowers allowed to grow naturally.

The home had been built while the children were in England, so they were overjoyed, finding pleasure in exploring both the house and its grounds. Unpacked and relaxed, the family lunched on a sunny north-facing verandah, and the now young adults were introduced to the staff. Like most houses of their class, the staff lived in the extensive quarters attached to the kitchen and stores. While the gold rushes had already caused some to leave for the diggings, John was rewarding those remaining. Excited at being together and with so much to tell, dinner conversation continued until well after midnight.

After a visit to the factory the following week, Adam agreed to work with his father as his assistant in order to learn the business. John was ecstatic at the news he had secretly hoped for, deciding immediately to hold a party to introduce his grown children to Sydney social life. Unlike England, in Sydney the new manufacturing and merchant classes developing the colony largely dominated society. Even though defined classes still pervaded, there was a greater mingling and increasingly blurred divides.

With the coming reunion filling her with enthusiasm, Eliza had already forgotten Thomas Sheather.

The two Sheather families had travelled ostensibly as part of the