The Valley of Cathedral Rock

By Robert D.Giblin

In the year 1808, a poignant Christmas unfolds as three young convicts are expelled from Mother England on an appalling vessel, The Lady Nora, en route to the distant colonies. The untamed expanse of New South Wales is to become their fateful home, their lives destined to be ensnared in the clutches of forced servitude. Amidst a brutal lashing administered by their slave-driver owner, Captain Richard Kempsie, Dan Watson makes a startling discovery—a cache of tools and equipment meant for his envisioned project along the sprawling Murrumbidgee's Big River. With Ned Trevlac and Caroline Archer, the dairymaid, by their side they hatch a daring escape from the merciless floggings inflicted by Captain Kempsie. Their audacious flight over the Blue Mountains in 1814 precedes the very construction of the region's inaugural road. Enduring a gruelling sixteen-week odyssey over treacherous terrains, the trio finally stumbles upon a hidden sanctuary. Amidst the rugged embrace of their newfound haven, the bond between Caroline and Dan deepens, culminating in the birth of their son, Steve. Their toil yields bountiful harvests and Patrick Doolan, Caroline's erstwhile employer, helps turn their farm into a prosperous enterprise. Recollections of an ancestral Aboriginal prophecy echo as a harbinger of change. With the arrival of rains, Doolan, guided by the ancient warning, had once averted catastrophe by elevating his livestock and structures to higher ground. Similarly, when the land whispers of impending drought, Caroline, Dan, and Ned take decisive measures to safeguard their holdings. Their rapport with the local Wirandjuri community, marked by mutual reverence, blossoms into a source of strength. The acquisition of land ownership through Doolan's Bathurst agency, offers a semblance of security. Yet, life's capriciousness remains unrelenting, as fires and drought lay waste to their labours. Hard lessons become their teachers Eclipsing the passage of time, a revelation dawns—a grandson of Captain Kempsie, betrothed to Lucie, the granddaughter of Dan and Caroline, unearths the truth behind their sanctuary. The looming question persists: to whom shall this secret be revealed? Will their idyllic valley ever be truly theirs, shielded from the spectre of Captain Kempsie and the authorities? The final crescendo awaits—a symphony of retribution, redemption, and the enduring spirit of an untamed land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gabi Plumm
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223504535

Robert D.Giblin

Robert Giblin, a fifth generation Tasmanian, has born in 1931. Early education was a one-teacher country school and later at Hobart State High School. He left there aged fifteen to start working life as a deckhand on a trading ketch carting timber from Southern Tasmanian mills before studying Horticulture at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. He commenced farming life in 1950, then moved to North Queensland with his family in 1970. His long-held interest in poetry and short-story writing eventually lead to this, his first full length publication: The Valley of Cathedral Rock Robert currently lives in the Far North Queensland town of Cardwell.

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DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the early pioneers: white, black, and the convicts who laboured long and hard to make Australia what it is today.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Without the determination and dedication of my editor, Gabi Plumm, this book would never have seen the light of day. My grateful thanks goes to her for all her exceptional work.

FOREWORD

The Valley of Cathedral Rock is a piece of fiction, it is not entirely original, for there are many truths written in or between the lines. All writers are influenced by what they themselves have read, have learnt from others and have absorbed from their own observations and experiences of life. The writer’s contribution in this story is the creativity, and that creativity was inspired by conversations I had with my grandmother, Lucie, more than seventy years ago, when together we sat around the homestead fireside during the long Tasmanian winter nights, and she told me the true history of her side of our pioneering family.

I have never forgotten what she told me, and although I started to put it all down in story form some thirty years ago, it is only now, with the relaxation advanced age has endowed me, that all she had to tell me is recorded and embedded, one way or another in The Valley of Cathedral Rock.

For the truth she told is this. My great, great-grandfather, Thomas Doolan, was a convict, transported from his native Ireland to the penal settlement of Tasmania — or as it was then known Van Diemen’s Land — in the early 1800s for stealing a ‘peck’ of wheat. With good conduct Thomas eventually won his freedom, married and had a son — a ‘Colonial Lad’ — my great-grandfather, Patrick. In turn, Patrick married a farm girl and settled on a small farm in North-western Tasmania, and there raised a large family, six of whom were girls and one of whom was my grandmother, Lucie Gabrielle.

The stories Lucie told me of the terrible trials the convicts endured, and how they and their descendants helped clear the land to get this nation started on its road to the success we enjoy today, has always inspired me. Their efforts or their beliefs, their mistakes or their successes, whatever they were, or whatever was and still is thought of them, needs to be a recorded story.

PROLOGUE

One Christmas in 1808, three young people, unknown to each other at the time, find themselves on the stinking, overcrowded ship The Lady Nora bound for the Colonies. The almost-unknown land New South Wales was to be home to these unfortunates; slave labour would be their fate for the rest of their natural lives.

By chance, the young convict, Dan Watson and his friend Ned, discover a hidden cache of implements and equipment destined for a new project their ‘owner’ is planning. This find enables them to hatch a daring and perilous plan to escape the vicious floggings of Captain Richard Kempsie, and take the dairymaid, Caroline Archer, with them.

Through barely marked land, rugged blue mountains, dramatic craggy gorges and frightening encounters, the three, along with stolen horses, cattle and a dog named Scamp brave new territory to find the land of their dreams.

But would it ever be theirs? Would Captain Kempsie find them and bring them back to face the music, or to be shot on sight?

Author Bob Giblin’s story which is based on his ancestors’ accounts is told with fascinating detail, wonderful true-to-the era text and dialogue; it carries you along into that world of fear, love and incredible determination.

CHAPTER 1

The Exiled Trio

DANIEL

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It was the day before Christmas, 1808. The sun had not yet risen over the rolling mist-shrouded fields of Shoesbury Hall, so the darkness of night still lingered about the woodlands lining the river. From the water, dark and silently still at this sheltered reach, a lad from the nearby village slowly and with utmost care raised the beautiful spotted brown trout he had ‘tickled’ under the overhanging grassy riverbank and, still smoothly stroking the trout’s shining belly, laid it securely on the turf between his knees. Deftly, he then slipped his knife blade under the quivering trout’s gill cover, expertly slit its throat and bled it.

The lad, the seventeen-year-old son of a ploughman on the grand estate of Shoesbury Hall, rested back on his heels on the grass admiring the beauty of the trout before him. He was an intelligent, capable and well-built young man, and although he held few prospects of advancing far in life with only temporary jobs — even in the busiest of times only helping his father with the horses and perhaps ploughing — he was forced to rely on his parents for support. Even so, he still held a dream that one day, somehow, he might have something to call his own, somewhere to share with a loved one and raise a fine family. He had no idea how such a dream might come about, yet it was forever in his mind.

Even though his father had regular employment ploughing the wheat fields of the estate, times were hard and difficult for such workers; there was widespread distress and poverty. So as his eyes took in the beauty of the six-pound trout before him, he thought how pleased his family would be; Christmas dinner would be worthwhile after all. He was picturing in his mind the happy scene when a sharp command broke his thoughts and the evening silence.

Git ‘im Paddy, sool ‘im, sool ‘im!

The short sharp command from the Estate’s Game Keeper had hardly registered in his mind before the liver-and-white hunting Spaniel was viciously mauling at his calf. Swiftly he grabbed the animal by the scruff of the neck and plunged his knife deep into its chest. The dog gave a startled yelp which quickly trailed away to a feeble whine, and the two, together with the trout, toppled into the deep water of the river.

The Game Keeper, enraged with the loss of his best hunting dog, struck out at the floundering lad with his stout hunting stick. In his fury, he lost his balance to fall into the stream and there in the deep water — being unable to swim — he drowned.

The Game Keeper’s assistant, another lad from the village, who was actually a friend to the one struggling in the water, gave assistance, but despite their exerted joint efforts, they were unable to save the Keeper or drag the body up the steep riverbank. The dying dog, paddling feebly around in tight circles, drifted slowly downstream, the knife still embedded in its chest. The trout, lost to all, lay amid the pebbles of the riverbed.

The result of this Christmas Eve encounter for seventeen-year-old Daniel Watson of Shoesbury, Essex, after having been found guilty of ‘poaching’ a trout and being instrumental in the death of the Game Keeper, was that he should be transported to Botany Bay in the New Colony of New South Wales, for the term of his natural life.

CHAPTER 2

CAROLINE

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It was late in the evening before Christmas Day of that same year at the Rectory of Saint Albans, not far from the unsavoury River Thames waterfront wharves at Woolwich. The rough work in the preparations for the household’s festivities had fallen heavily on the shoulders of the sixteen-year-old kitchen maid, Caroline Archer.

The days leading up to the event had been long and hard with precious little rest or time to herself, for the Rector’s wife, a mean-spirited and whining sort of woman had pushed the girl, as well as any others who may have come under her command, to their very limits, so that all might be up to her expectations on what was, personally for her, the most important day of the year. Unlike her ever-preaching husband, she saw the Holy Day as one for the pretentious display of what she considered her social standing in the community; a community which in fact hardly bothered to take any notice of her. Her interest was not one of reverence for religious belief, but rather satisfying her own self-conceit.

At long last all the hurried and wearingly hard hours were over, and at this late hour the girl sat on the edge of her bed in the tiny, cramped garret overlooking the sombre grey walls and slated roof of the adjoining church. Preparing for sleep, her thoughts strayed to her own family and how much she yearned to be with them on this special occasion. But such was not of her choosing, yet she held on to a cherished dream that even though she was bound to the will of others, the day would come when she might be free to make her own way in life, to find something better than the miserable poverty which Woolwich presented.

It may well have been something more than just a childish dream, for though she had been born to a poor family with little prospect for anything much better, it was a family in which she had known warm care and the fondest of love; deep down she understood how family life could be.

Her parents, hard-working and decent folk, lived in the coachman’s quarters above the stables of the Seamans Arms hostelry on the outskirts of the town from where her father drove a horse and cart to carry away the stable manure into the countryside, returning with farm produce for the hotel where her mother worked as a scullery maid in the hotel’s kitchen. It was a miserable life in such crowded, raw surroundings; certainly not one a sixteen-year-old girl should be part of.

So, in what they had considered a good move for their daughter, a move which promised a better chance in life, her parents made an agreement with the Rector of Saint Albans, one Anthony Harrington-Smythe, that in return for her keep and perhaps further lessons in reading and writing, Caroline would carry out the household duties the good Rector’s wife would ask of her.

Through the nature of the agreement her parents had made, Caroline did not have a great deal to do with the Parson himself, for it was under the constantly watchful eye of his wife that she spent the best part of her time: scrubbing, cleaning and polishing. But she did trust the Parson, for trust was the way she had been brought up. There were occasions when he would sit with her and attend to her reading lessons, mainly with the assistance of the Bible and the study of the Scriptures.

What she didn’t understand, given the experience of her tender years, was that the ‘good’ Harrington-Smythe was intentionally grooming her, gaining her confidence with feigned friendship, so that when the opportunity arose, he would take his pleasure of her.

Now, on the eve of the holiest day of the year, that opportunity had arisen  Caroline sat on the edge of her bed ready for sleep. Suddenly, the door to her tiny room opened and the Reverend Harrington-Smythe, his balding head almost touching the rough-hewn rafters, stood before her, a polished wooden-handled hairbrush in his hand. In her exhaustion, she had been quite unaware of his scaling the steep, narrow stairway to the garret, and his sudden appearance in her room startled her. Somewhat bewildered she jumped to her feet.

As startled as she was, it was not so much his presence which concerned her the most, for he had visited her on other occasions in the garret to hear her read, but this time, dressed in her loose-fitting nightgown, the open bodice ribbon of which she had neglected to tie up, made her feel deeply embarrassed and strangely insecure.

The Parson, in his calm and trained ritualistic fashion said, I’ve brought you something for Christmas, and smiling with the lascivious smile of a lecher, he presented the brush adding, It’s little enough, I know, but someone with such beautiful hair as yours should at least have a decent brush to take care of it.

The girl was taken aback, firstly because she was well aware that her hair was not all that beautiful — he had never remarked upon it before — and secondly, she knew the brush belonged to her mistress. So, she was somewhat hesitant to accept the gift. The Parson insisted, so without speaking, but with an incongruous feeling of apprehension, she took the brush, at the same time wondering why it was not her mistress who was making the gift.

As she did so, the Parson moved behind her, and  ran one hand through her long brown hair, now let down loosely upon her shoulders, the other reached inside the open bodice of her night gown to close roughly upon one firm small breast. For the first time in her life the cold chill of fear rippled through her entire being, rooting her speechless where she stood. The groping hands of the Parson lifted the nightgown clear of her shoulders. The garment fell with a smooth rustle to her feet, leaving her young naked body for his odious eyes and hands to molest.

Only when the Parson pressed her back towards the bed did she realise her danger and his full intentions. Come what may she knew it should never be like this, and gathering every ounce of strength she could muster from her tired and frightened being, she struck the Parson full on the face with the wooden back of the brush, cutting deeply into his brow and cheek, which immediately drew a stream of blood from a deep cut over his eye. He raised a hand to his face to stem the flow, but blood quickly oozed between his fingers and, bellowing like a frightened child, pitifully wailing for help from his wife, he stumbled out of the garret and down the narrow stairway.

Shocked and afraid of what might happen next and unable to find sleep, Caroline lay in fearful expectation of the future until eventually sleep overtook her.

The result of this Christmas Eve encounter for Caroline, was being charged and found guilty of stealing a hairbrush, the property of her mistress. The Court, understanding full well just what the Parson was doing in her bedroom at such a late hour — much to the relief of himself and his pretentious wife — dismissed the charge of bodily harm, for such could bring the death penalty. Also, at that time, the sentence of stealing anything with a value of more than a shilling, could also bring the death sentence, and that was not what the authorities wanted.

Since the ratio of men to women in the new Colony of New South Wales, to where Caroline was bound, was twenty to one, the authorities there were in desperate need of more females to be sent out. Single women, especially healthy young women such as Caroline, were in high demand as servants for the more wealthy and wives for the serving officers and men. The new Colony had to be populated.

Many saw the new Colony as merely a penal settlement for England’s growing band of lawbreakers, the real plan of the noble gentlemen who put forth the idea of Colonisation was primarily to set up yet another outpost of the British Empire, and for that to succeed there was the need to populate; to populate with Colonial-born generations. Nothing would have been served by sentencing Caroline to death. So, the conniving justice system lowered the value of the stolen hairbrush to eleven pence, resulting in her sentence being reduced to transportation to Botany Bay in the Colony of New South Wales for fourteen years’ hard labour.

In that time, she would, of course, be of use to the Authorities and free settlers until marriage and the raising of a family of Colonial Lads or Lasses could be arranged.

CHAPTER 3

NED

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Christmas was over and the New Year’s revelry was well under way at the local Fox and Hounds Inn when Ned Trevlac arrived to join the celebrations. The past year had been hard on the estate for Ned, but now, with the onset of a new year he was ready to join some of his companions to welcome it in.

Ned was the second son of a successful tenant farmer on ‘Westmorland,’ the large Estate of Sir Frederick Mayhew. The family had been tenant farmers on the estate for over a hundred years, and with careful and dedicated farming practices, had become secure, if not wealthy. Their real wealth, at least in their eyes, was their standing in the community, as they considered themselves to be among the higher echelon of local society — which of course they weren’t — they were merely tenant farmers. In one aspect of his life Ned was not like the rest of his family, for he saw himself for what he actually was, the labouring son of a tenant farmer, with no real prospect of having any control of the tenancy’s future; under the existing laws that was the right of his elder brother.

In truth, that mattered little to Ned as he had no desire to be beholden to the rich and powerful landowners with their grand estates, or under the controlling thumb of his father. His desires were much more fundamental; a happy family life was his ambition. He saw what his family was with their pretentions and the bickering over family standing and wealth, and wanted none of it. At the age of twenty-two, he had met and fallen in love with a farm girl, the daughter of a not-so-successful tenant farmer on a nearby estate. Alas, the girl did not come up to the presumptuous standards of Ned’s family; there was much dissatisfaction among the whole group. Eventually, his father gave him an ultimatum. Forget the girl or leave the family, and in this Ned had little option, for he had fallen deeply in love and was loved in the same vein. So, he moved out to marry the girl, and being more than capable with agricultural matters, had little trouble finding farm work on the nearby estates.

Although his personal life with his wife and little daughter, whom he adored, was a happy one, he missed that which he had enjoyed with his parents and siblings, for he was essentially a family person. That led to occasional unhappy states of mind which resulted in more frequent visits to the local Fox and Hounds In. This, in turn, led to an ever-growing association with a small group of radical political thinkers — young people who saw the inequality between the elite estate landholders and the way they treated their tenant farmers. This influenced the way they treated their common farm workers.

There were occasions when perhaps the wine flowed a little too freely. Arguments would erupt between Inn’s patrons and the English landlords, especially in those times when the ‘Irish Position’ was such a volatile issue. They were so wealthy that all those who worked under their control were near starving. When such an argument did occur one evening, Ned found himself right in the centre. Eventually, the argument turned into a scuffling fist fight and quickly thence into a general out-of-hand brawl which came to an abrupt end when old man Hodgkinson, the owner of the Inn tried to intercede and break up the mêlée but was felled by a blow to the head from a thrown gin bottle, and killed.

In the confusion no one was certain who had thrown that fatal gin bottle, but somehow, Ned, who more often than not appeared as the leading spokesman for the small group of radical political thinkers, was named and blamed, and although he was innocent, it was he who stood trial for the Innkeeper’s death.

It wasn’t surprising, considering the pretentious way his family saw their respectability, that there was little sympathy or assistance offered by them, and since they believed him guilty from the outset, they were in fact somewhat eager to see their radical son tamed. Thus, they never turned a hair to help his wife and little daughter or arrange any legal support.

Even so, it was surprising to many, that given the flimsy evidence that was submitted, Ned was found guilty and therefore thrown into the stinking, rotting hulk of the Star of the North, moored in the lower reaches of the River Thames where he awaited transportation to Botany Bay in the new Colony of New South Wales, to serve out his sentence; to be exiled for the term of his natural life.

With that guilty verdict, Ned could have been hanged there and then, but the authorities desperately needed men of farming ability to work the virgin soils of the new Colony, thus they saw yet another suitable convict to join the burgeoning ranks of cheap labour, not only for government public works such as roads and buildings, but also for the likes of the Colony’s ‘exclusionists’ to work their lands and care for their ever-increasing herds of stock. As far as the law saw it, the extreme life sentence meant that Ned would never see his wife and daughter again. They were left to fend for themselves as best they could.

It would be hard to imagine the heartbreak felt by Ned and his little family, for with the term-of-his-natural-life sentence, he could never return to his homeland. As far as the law was concerned his marriage was now annulled, but he could, at the whim of the authorities in the New Colony, marry again sometime in the future.

That was never going to be the case for Ned, he would remain forever single, and cherish the memory of the love he had known. Somehow, even though he had been deserted by his own family and friends in his time of need, judged so badly by the authorities and the law which had found him guilty of a crime he had not committed, he still faced his unknown future with forbearance, for it was in his nature that where there was life there was hope.

So it was, that for both Ned and Daniel, chained and garbed as convicts, after having been transported from the courts through the cobblestone streets of London in open wagons, with jeering crowds hurling abuse and all kinds of disgusting garbage at them, were tossed into rotting cells packed with so many felons there was barely space to move, let alone find a spot to sleep. Their wretched food was simply shoved into their cells from a sack scattered on the floor where they had to fight ferociously against sewer rats as well as inmates, to snatch enough to sustain them.

For Caroline, conditions were no better, and she found her strength for survival wanting as she fought for her food and a corner to rest Among some of the most deplorable female types she could have ever imagined; that women could act and speak as they did make her feel sick at heart, sick with society, and at moments, sick of life itself. What use, she would wonder, would such women be worth in this new colony where they were bound?

What lay ahead for her in the near future would be, so she had been told, at least six months sailing the rough southern oceans. How would she survive?

CHAPTER 4

TRANSPORTATION

Embarkation day arrived pleasantly warm and clear, with blue skies and gentle breezes. Bad as had been their ordeals of lying in the stinking hulks moored in the Thames to await this day, it seemed to the three as they were marched on board The Lady Nora along with their fellow convicts, that perhaps the worst was over.

For here lay a clean, trim little vessel, and all about them the hustle and bustle of making ready for sail conveyed a certain air of excitement. So, it may well have been understandable perhaps that none of them could know or even imagine the trials and degradation which lay ahead. In any case, their mother country had not been kind to them, and the contrived mockery of a justice system had treated them ruthlessly. So maybe this new land, this young colony of New South Wales so far away and with all its mystery, might not be too bad after all.

Surely things could not get worse. So, for the three, come what may, there must always be room for hope that life would get better.

Their salvation, however, was to be in their destiny, for it was that which would eventually bring the trio together to take control of their lives.

Light unpredictable breezes made the passage down the Thames laborious for the 350ton Lady Nora under Captain Jeremiah Johnson, but once out in the Channel she picked up favourable winds and was soon out in the Bay of Biscay where those below decks, for the first time in their lives, felt the roll of the great ocean swells beneath them.

They were not long on the open sea before things began to change below decks. Brawls broke out continuously among the convicts, generally the fighting was over the miserable rations doled out to them, but order was always ruthlessly restored by the guards, either by the lash or the musket butt. During one wild mêlée, a convict was bashed to death and his body hauled up and dumped unceremoniously into the sea. It was an incident which would be repeated many times before the voyage was over.

Soon it became evident that neither the captain, his crew, nor the authorities through their guards on board, cared much for the convicts’ welfare. The captain had been paid to transport 286 convicts to Port Jackson, and that was that. Just how many survived the voyage, or what condition those who did were in, was of little importance to him. The vessel would be cleaned out, whatever back cargo could be found, and Captain Johnson would return to the Thames for yet another such human cargo. To him it was simply a matter of securing the maximum profits for the ship’s owners.

On the deck holding the women convicts, groups emerged, the largest by far consisted of those from the degraded order. Of them, all were either hardened criminals, prostitutes or just plain sluts; it was this group that controlled matters for all. They offered their favours not only to the sailors and guards, but even to their sister convicts, all for some trifling extra which might be secured; generally, just a single bite from a weevil-riddled ship’s biscuit.

Their actions shocked and frightened Caroline. Never in all her life had she imagined such practices, for although she was now a young woman going on seventeen and had lived in the confines of a rowdy hotel, she had been lovingly guarded by her parents so was unaware of much that went on in the wider world. But few among this pitiful group appeared to even notice what took place as the sailors and guards came below to make use of the wretched lot. With their own problems to watch over, even fewer cared. So desperate were some of these female convicts to trade their favours for some extra morsel of food, or even a single swig of rum, they had secretly removed a panel from the wooden barrier between their cell and that of the sailors and guards in their adjoining fo’c’s’le.

For the worst of this degraded lot, satisfaction and the need for extra rations were no longer sufficient from the visiting men, and they eventually turned their evil intentions to the few decent women convicts who stood apart from them. The stealing of their food and the degradation they effected on this pitiful lot sent Caroline hiding in the darkest corner she could find.

Eventually she was discovered and dragged out. It was during her struggles in one such instance that Sadie, a