The Last Convict by Anthony Hill

Author:Anthony Hill [Hill, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

The Governor’s son has got the Pip,

The Governor’s got the measles,

But Moondyne Joe has give ’em the slip,

Pop goes the Weasel!

There was a round of applause and laughter as Samuel finished the song, and cackling, too, as he wiped his eyes with his sleeve and caught his breath.

‘Here, Bob, you can take me falsies out again.’ He fumbled in his mouth, trying to extract the dentures and resume his haggard appearance, but the reporter intervened.

‘I say, would you mind keeping them in, Sam? It’s a bit easier to understand you with your teeth in place.’

‘Oh. Well. If you say so, Mr Cribben. I suppose . . .’

The old man muttered to himself for a little in irritation – before coming to a resolution and deciding to go on with the story.

‘Oh, the hue and the cry! That was in March of ’67, and it went on for months – all during my time there. But, you know, on this occasion Moondyne Joe seemed to have disappeared completely into the bush.’

‘Several years, wasn’t it?’

‘Almost exactly two years, during which the authorities didn’t find neither hide nor hair of Moondyne. His friends kept Joe well hidden, see. And then he was only found by accident. He’d snuck into Houghton’s wine cellar to take a bottle or two while the owner was away helping with a police search. Unluckily for Joe, they came back too soon, and Mr Houghton went down to his cellar to get some refreshments. Joe, thinking he’d been nabbed, tried to make a run for it . . . and so he did, right into the arms of the coppers waiting outside.’

‘And then back to Fremantle, with years added to his sentence.’

‘Yes . . . A year for absconding, and another four in irons for breaking and entering the wine cellar. For all the good that was supposed to do.’

A note of sadness crept into the old man’s voice, as he remembered the futility and cruelty of it all. But then he added with a little laugh, ‘Not that it mattered all that much to Joe. He soon talked his way out of it. Of course, I’d long gone by then. Got my ticket-of-leave and sent down to work in the Vasse district, around Busselton. The Hamptons had both gone as well. New Governor. New Comptroller-General of Convicts. And Joe went on to live a pretty honest sort of life for the next thirty years after that, they say . . .’

The old chap began to drift off again – tired, though stimulated, like the actor he was, after such a performance. Haunted, too, by the ghosts of those days who came briefly to life again as Samuel remembered them. Moondyne, the Hamptons, the pale faces of convicts and warders long dead. Jimmy Carr. Dick Leach. And the smell of eucalyptus and wood smoke from the forests down south . . . the scent of fresh-sawn jarrah logs as they carted them from the timber mill to the jetty .

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