Bone and Beauty by Jeanette M. Thompson

Author:Jeanette M. Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2020-02-06T04:24:54+00:00

13

Mounted police

Weatherboard Hut, Blue Mountains, Tuesday 28 September 1830

Captain Walpole and his detachment of the 39th Regiment had camped overnight on the Blue Mountains. A company of four soldiers stationed at Weatherboard Hut checked the passes of all travellers. The governor had doubled the guard due to the risk of insurgency.

The march began again at sunrise. Mist covered the King’s Tableland in white damask. The troops descended into Jamison Valley and prepared for the final climb of the mountains, the Big Hill that Walpole had heard most about. The soil of the valley was wet and peaty. A shower of rain could have bogged the captain’s horse up to the girths, but by sunrise, thin bands of cirrus cloud streamed high above the trees, carrying away the threat of rain. The crispness was better for marching than the heat of the plains and the men made good time to Pulpit Hill, across Blackheath, and to a ridge the height of Mount York. And yet the bluff and bravado of the Sydney farewell wore thin as the troops trudged in the humid air through the tangled reaches of the mountains.

At a place known as One Tree Hill, a stockade of slab huts had been erected for the road gangs. The road was as forked as the flogging tree that stood at the intersection. The path followed Cox’s Road down to Collits’ Golden Fleece Inn, requiring a steep descent and a hazardous river crossing before the troops could rest.

Private James Kelly had not seen the lands west of this range, and the vision from Mount York broke upon him as both splendid and terrifying. The descent was perilous. Captain Walpole chose to take Cox’s Road as it was the shortest route for the foot soldiers. Cox’s Road was only wide enough for the soldiers to march two abreast. Rocks overhung the narrow passages and roots and slips of rubble made each footfall treacherous. Mercifully, the descent on foot took less than an hour. A horizontal forest of dead trees had been discarded at the bottom of the mountain over the past fifteen years – each log, having been felled and chained to the back of the oxen cart as a brake during the dreadful descent.

When Captain Walpole reached the Vale of Clywdd, he sent the troops on ahead and cantered two miles further to The Golden Fleece, there to wait while the wagon was brought safely down. The valley was so steeply bordered by mountains on three sides that one side always seemed in darkness, either due to the shadow of dawn or dusk. For only an hour each day, when the sun was directly overhead, did it shine unhampered into the valley. This was the brief window Captain Walpole set his breakfast table before. The Golden Fleece was renowned for hospitality. Captain Walpole, by his stature and the importance of his mission, was feted.

The colonial table held everything an Englishman expects of breakfast – bacon, eggs, pancakes, boiled potatoes, porridge and

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