It may well have been that among the band of exiles were some unjustly sentenced, mixed up accidentally with a crowd of excited rustics engaged in unlawful deeds—wondering spectators rather than actors. Such a victim was probably the unhappy Annetts, a vacant-faced farm labourer, from Essex or Dorset, whose wife, accompanied by their two children, came daily to see him before the ship sailed.
I seem to remember the wretched group, though most probably it was my good nurse's description that imprinted it indelibly on my memory.
There would they sit, hour after hour, bathed in tears—he, with the irons on his limbs and the ugly prison garb; she almost a girl, with traces of rustic beauty, as he was hardly more than a boy—holding each other's hands and weeping silently for hours; then, sobbing in paroxysms of lamentation, both repeatedly declaring his innocence, the children wondering gravely at the strange surroundings, at times mingling their tears with those of their parents. It was a sight to touch the heart of the sternest. Then the last agonised parting, when the fainting woman was carried on shore, when the hopeless outcast watched his native land recede, instinctively aware that he gazed on it for the last time.
Is there such a physiological process as a broken heart? It would seem so, even in this world of lightly-borne sorrows and forgotten joys. He, at least, was not thus fashioned, stolid peasant as he seemed to outward view, untaught, uncared-for, born to the plough and the monotonous labour of the farm animals, which in his undeveloped intelligence he so closely resembled. But their fidelity to the heart's deepest feelings was rooted in his being. He never raised his head afterwards, as the phrase goes. He moved and spoke, went through the ordinary motions of humanity, as in a dream. Day by day he pined and wasted; in little more than a month, from no particular ailment, he died and found burial in that mysterious main which before his sentence he had never seen.
The only other death on board was that of the second mate, a fine young seaman named Keeling. Strange to say, he had a presentiment that drowning would be the manner of his end. He would say as much, on one occasion telling us that he was one of three brothers. Two had been lost at sea. He knew the same fate was in store for him. He even put his head in a bucket of water once, and held it there, 'to see how it felt.' He was strong, active, temperate, and a smart officer. One day, in calm weather, when spearing fish from the dolphin-striker, he lost his balance and fell overboard. The ship had way on, though the breeze was light. He was a good swimmer; a boat was instantly lowered. I believe that my recollection of seeing him rise and fall upon the waves, far astern of the vessel, is accurate. The boat rapidly nears him—swimming strongly and easily supporting himself. It turns for a moment, shutting him out from sight. A man leans over to grasp him. Why do they commence to pull round in circles? Why can we not see the rescued man taken into the boat? After an interval which appears terribly long, the boat comes back to the ship without him. At the very moment of rescue a wave drove the boat stem on. The keel struck him on the head. He sank like a stone, never being visible to the boat's crew afterwards. Thus was his doom accomplished.
Though our passengers did not resemble those of the Malabar, we boasted a similar military force. The Surgeon-Superintendent was a much-travelled, cultured man. The Major and Subalterns in charge of the detachment were agreeable personages; fortunately they were not required to act in any military capacity beyond causing guards to be strictly kept. Had the prisoners even been other than they were, their chance in rising would have been small, having to deal with one of the most watchful, prompt, and determined men, in the captain of the vessel, that ever trod a plank. It was happily ordered otherwise. The voyage was successful and devoid of adventure. There were neither storms, mutinies, fevers, nor other disasters. And somewhere about the month of August (as we left England in April 1831) we delivered our passengers to the authorities in Launceston, in good order and condition. Our military friends quitted us after our arrival in Sydney, our final destination. My father had visited the port when an officer in the East India Company's service as far back as the year 1820, had been struck with the land's capabilities, and augured well of its future. He resolved to settle therein in the aftertime, did events shape themselves that way. By that voyage our destinies as a family were decided.
The Paris of the South was then a seaside town, numbering not more than thirty or forty thousand inhabitants. Described in station parlance, it was well grassed and lightly stocked. As a matter of fact there was a good deal of grass in the streets, and between Macquarie Place, which was our first location, and the Domain, the little Alderney cow, which had accompanied us on the ship, was able to pick up a good living. She and other vagrom milch kine often eluded the vigilance of the sentry, at the entrance to the Domain, where they revelled in the thick couch-grass; to be turned out at the point of the bayonet when discovered. Much of the city is changed; but much remains unchanged. Our first abode was a moderate-sized house in Macquarie Place. It possessed a second story and a garden, standing next to a tall, narrow building, occupied by Mr. Harrington, an eminent civil servant of the pre-parliamentary régime, later on Griffiths Fanning's office. Messrs. Montefiore, Breillat, and Co. possessed the corner house with its walled enclosure, taking in the angle of Bent Street, with a frontage also to O'Connell Street. The wall, the house, and the store still stand, unaltered in half a century. Mr. Dalgety, then himself a junior clerk, might be seen walking to and fro from the wharves, inspecting cargo, note-book in hand. Think of that, young gentlemen in like positions, and ponder upon the mercantile monarchies which have been (and may still be) reached by perseverance, financial talent, and prudent ambition!
Chief-Justice and Mrs. Forbes, with their family, inhabited a large stone house on the opposite side of the street, also surrounded by a wall. It now forms a portion of the Lands Office buildings. Archdeacon Cowper lived on the other side, now New Pitt Street, a grass plot with two large cedars being in front of the house.
Sydney must have been then not unlike in appearance to one of the larger country towns, Bathurst or Goulburn, save and excepting always its possession of the unrivalled harbour and that fragment of Eden the Botanic Garden. There we children walked in the mornings of our first summer in Sydney. The grateful freshness of the air, the beauty of the overhanging trees, the vision of blue water and white-winged skiffs seen through flower thickets, still remains among my childhood's fairest memories.
At the back of our garden rose a stone wall, which supported the higher level of the allotments fronting O'Connell Street. In a balconied mansion opposite lived Mr. Raymond, the Postmaster-General, with his numerous family of sons and daughters.