Origins to Eureka by Thomas Keneally

Origins to Eureka by Thomas Keneally

Author:Thomas Keneally [Keneally, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS004000
ISBN: 9781741760989
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2009-09-30T14:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 14 *

ARRIVING AT THE END OF THINGS

A convict arriving in Sydney or Hobart in the early to mid 1830s encountered prosperous-looking communities where women and men of wealth and property dressed in the best fashion of two British seasons past. The town of Sydney to which the 220 Irish convicts of the Parmelia were introduced in March 1834 as they marched from the landing stage to the main depot, ran raffishly inland along gentle hills either side of Sydney Cove. The settlement retained the narrow streets of the original convict camp of the late 1780s. Most houses were cottages with little gardens in front, and such structures clung in random clusters to the sandstone ledges of the Rocks on the western side of the cove. But they took on a more ornate, orderly character in the streets—Pitt, Macquarie—towards the eastern side of town. The landed prisoners heard the cat-calls of old lags as they staggered on unsteady land-legs uptown past St Phillip’s Church on its hill, past the Colonial Treasury, the Barrack Square, and saw the town’s theatre on the left. The barracks and the offices of government were built of Sydney’s honey-coloured sandstone, the most splendid structures of this eccentric seaport.

The town abounded with ‘canaries’, convicts in government employ, in sallow-coloured jackets and pants, and free dungaree men, poor settlers and occasional tradesmen, who wore cheap blue cotton imported from India. The lean, dishevelled children of convicts, cornstalks or Currency urchins, ran wild, grown healthy by the standards of Europe on colonial corn doughboys, salt beef, fresh mutton and vegetables. Convict women on ticket-of-leave stood in gardens or outside public houses smoking Brazil twist in dudeens, clay pipes barely two inches long. Laggers, or ticket-of-leave men, wore blue jackets or short woollen blue smocks, and the hats of both convict and free were unorthodox, some of plaited cabbage-tree fronds, some of kangaroo skin. Soldiers and police were much in evidence in front of Customs House, Commissariat Office, Treasury, the post office, and all other government offices. But side by side with this martial formality, male and female sexual services were full-throatedly offered in a manner polite visitors said was more scandalous than in the East End of London. ‘A Wapping or St Giles in the beauties of a Richmond,’ as one Englishman described Sydney. The abnormal imbalance between male and female gave the flesh trade an added fever, as did dram-drinking—the downing of Bengal rum out of wine glasses.

There was a huge gulf of urbanity and learning between the Parmelia men and their fellow Irishman Sir Richard Bourke, whose Government House and stables the line of felons from Parmelia passed. Bourke was an improver, though never a radical. He was considered by the Exclusives, the free settlers who wanted to keep the convict class down, to be dangerously soft on serving convicts. He had reduced the power of magistrates in remote areas of the colony to inflict punishment on convict servants. Property owners were always reporting in their



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.