The Australians 01 - The Exiles by William Stuart Long

Author:William Stuart Long
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780440123699
Publisher: Dell Pub. Co
Published: 1979-01-18T13:00:00+00:00

Phillip’s greatest anxiety at this time was, however, the rapid inroads being made into the colony’s food stores and the failure of the Government Garden to produce a crop to offset the shortage of flour. The livestock brought from the Cape — with the exception of the pigs and poultry — died like flies and breeding results were disappointing. Of the Government flock of seventy ewes, only one now remained alive and healthy and the cattle had broken loose and vanished into the bush. As the weather became colder, even the supply of fish diminished, for no apparent reason.

A few of the officers and some of the convicts’ garden plots flourished, notably the one diligently worked by a dozen of the younger women, which the Governor observed with approval but, he was bitterly aware, it was no use deluding himself. He had close on a thousand mouths to feed and, unless more provisions were sent from England or he could procure flour and livestock from Batavia or the Cape to make up their losses, the colony would soon be facing the very real threat of starvation. He needed the Sirius and needed her desperately to explore the coast and search for rivers and grazing land but, if the Home Government failed him, as he grimly accepted that it probably would, he would be compelled to send Hunter to purchase supplies before the end of the year.

In the hope of avoiding this, he sent appeals to Sydney and Nepean by every ship which left the harbour and, aware that a year must elapse before he could expect any reply, he cut the ration of meat and flour. Scrupulously fair, as always, having made this decision, he added his private stock — brought out at this own expense — to the common store and himself drew no more than a single man’s share of the dwindling supplies. He transferred Dodd and the best of his convict husbandmen to an area sixteen miles from the head of the cove, where the soil appeared better, naming it Rose Hill after Sir George Rose, the Treasury official to whom he owed his appointment as Governor. The last of the seed grain was planted there and, when the hard working Dodd reported that it had germinated, every male convict with agricultural experience or inclination was sent to work the new land, with a strong body of Marines, under Captain Meredith, to guard them. The Government Garden in Sydney Cove was given over to the cultivation of vegetables, to which it proved better suited.

But Phillip was still anxious, and his letters to Lord Sydney and Sir Evan Nepean reflected his anxiety. After explaining his plan to send the Sirius to the Cape, if provisions from England failed to reach the colony by the end of the year, he wrote:

“The crops for two years to come cannot be depended on for more than will be necessary for seed and what the Sirius may procure can only be to breed from .

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