The Book of the Bush - George Dunderdale

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      The surviving men were the master, B. H. Peck, Joseph Bennet, Thomas Sharp, John Watson, Edward Calthorp, Thomas Hines, Robert Ballard, John Robinson, and William Kinderey. The women were Ellen Galvin, Mary Stating, Ann Cullen, Rosa Heland, Rose Dunn, and Margaret Drury.

      For three weeks these people lived almost entirely on shellfish. They threw up a barricade on the shore, above high water mark, to protect themselves against the cannibals. The only chest that came ashore unbroken was that of Robinson the apprentice, and in it there was a canister of powder. A flint musket was also found among the wreckage, and with the flint and steel they struck a light and made a fire. When they went down to the beach in search of shellfish, one man kept guard at the barricade, and looked out for the blackfellows; his musket was loaded with powder and pebbles.

      Three weeks passed away before any of the natives appeared, but at last they were seen approaching along the shore from the south. At the first alarm all the ship-wrecked people ran to the barricade for shelter, and the men armed themselves with anything in the shape of weapons they could find. But their main hope of victory was the musket. They could not expect to kill many cannibals with one shot, but the flash and report would be sure to strike them with terror, and put them to flight.

      By this time their diet of shellfish had left them all weak and emaciated, skeletons only just alive; the anthropophagi would have nothing but bones to pick; still, the little life left in them was precious, and they resolved to sell it as dear as they could. They watched the savages approaching; at length they could count their number. They were only eleven all told, and were advancing slowly. Now they saw that seven of the eleven were small, only picaninnies. When they came nearer three out of the other four were seen to be lubras, and the eleventh individual then resolved himself into a white savage, who roared out, "Mates ahoy!"

      The white man was Scott, the sealer, who had taken up is abode on the island with his harem, three Tasmanian gins and seven children.

      They were the only permanent inhabitants; the cannibal blacks had disappeared, and continued to exist only in the fancies of the mariners. Scott's residence was opposite New Year's Island not far from the shore; there he had built a hut and planted a garden with potatoes and other vegetables. Flesh meat he obtained from the kangaroos and seals. Their skins he took to Launceston in his boat, and in it he brought back supplies of flour and groceries. He had observed dead bodies of women and men, and pieces of a wrecked vessel cast up by the sea, and had travelled along the shore with his family, looking for anything useful or valuable which the wreck might yield. After hearing the story, and seeing the miserable plight of the castaways, he invited them to his home. On arriving at the hut Scott and his lubras prepared for their guests a beautiful meal of kangaroo and potatoes. This was their only food as long as they remained on King's Island, for Scott's only boat had got adrift, and his flour, tea, and sugar had been all consumed. But kangaroo beef and potatoes seemed a most luxurious diet to the men and women who had been kept alive for three weeks on nothing but shellfish.

      Scott and his hounds hunted the kangaroo, and supplied the colony with meat. The liver of the kangaroo when boiled and left to grow cold is a dry substance, which, with the help of hunger and a little imagination, is said to be as good as bread.

      In the month of July, 1835, heavy gales were blowing over King's Island. For fourteen days the schooner 'Elizabeth', with whalers for Port Fairy, was hove to off the coast, standing off and on, six hours one way and six hours the other. Akers, the captain, and his mate got drunk on rum and water daily. The cook of the 'Industry' was on board the 'Elizabeth', the man whom Captain Blogg was flogging when his crew seized him and threw him overboard. The cook also was now pitched overboard for having given evidence against the four men who had saved him from further flogging.

      At this time also Captain Friend, of the whaling cutter 'Sarah Ann', took shelter under the lee of New Year's Island, and he pulled ashore to visit Scott the sealer. There he found the shipwrecked men and women whom he took on board his cutter, and conveyed to Launceston, except one woman and two men. It was then too late in the season to take the whalers to Port Fairy. Captain Friend was appointed chief District Constable at Launceston; all the constables under him were prisoners of the Crown, receiving half a dollar a day. He was afterwards Collector of Customs at the Mersey.

      In November, 1835 the schooner 'Elizabeth' returned to Launceston with 270 tuns of oil. The share of the crew of a whaling vessel was one-fiftieth of the value of the oil and bone. The boat-steerer received one-thirtieth, and of the headmen some had one-twenty-fifth, others one-fifteenth. In this same year, 1835, Batman went to Port Phillip with a few friends and seven Sydney blackfellows. On June 14th he returned to Van Diemen's Land, and by the 25th of the same month he had compiled a report of his expedition, which he sent to Governor Arthur, together with a copy of the grant of land executed by the black chiefs. He had obtained three copies of the grant signed by three brothers Jagga-Jagga, by Bungaree, Yan-Yan, Moorwhip, and Marmarallar. The area of the land bought by Batman was not surveyed with precision, but it was of great extent, like infinite space, whose centre is everywhere, and circumference nowhere. And in addition he took up a small patch of one hundred thousand acres between the bay and the Barwon, including the insignificant site of Geelong, a place of small account even to this day. Batman was a long-limbed Sydney native, and he bestrode his real estate like a Colossus, but King William was a bigger Colossus than Batman--he claimed both the land and the blacks, and ignored the Crown grant.

      Next, John Fawkner and his friends chartered the schooner 'Enterprise' for a voyage across the Straits to Australia Felix. He afterwards claimed to be the founder of Melbourne. He could write and talk everlastingly, but he had not the 'robur' and 'as triplex' suitable for a sea-robber. Sea-sickness nearly killed him, so he stayed behind while the other adventurers went and laid the foundation. They first examined the shores of Western Port, then went to Port Philip Bay and entered the River Yarra. They disembarked on its banks, ploughed some land, sowed maize and wheat, and planted two thousand fruit trees. They were not so grasping as Batman, and each man pegged out a farm of only one hundred acres. These farms were very valuable in the days of the late boom, and are called the city of Melbourne. Batman wanted to oust the newcomers; he claimed the farms under his grant from the Jagga-Jaggas. He squatted on Batman's Hill, and looked down with evil eyes on the rival immigrants. He saw them clearing away the scrub along Flinders Street, and splitting posts and rails all over the city from Spencer Street to Spring Street, regardless of the fact that the ground under their feet would be, in the days of their grandchildren, worth 3,000 pounds per foot. Their bullock-drays were often bogged in Elizabeth Street, and they made a corduroy crossing over it with red gum logs. Some of these logs were dislodged quite sound fifty years afterwards by the Tramway Company's workmen.

       Table of Contents

      "Know ye not that lovely river?

       Know ye not that smiling river?

       Whose gentle flood, by cliff and wood,

       With 'wildering sound goes winding ever."

      In January, 1836, Captain Smith, who was in charge of the whaling station at Port Fairy, went with two men, named Wilson and Gibbs, in a whale boat to the islands near Warrnambool, to look for seal. They could find no seal, and then they went across the bay, and found the mouth of the river Hopkins. In trying to land there, their boat capsized in the surf, and Smith was drowned. The other two men succeeded in reaching the shore naked, and they travelled back along the coast to Port Fairy, carrying sticks on their shoulders to look like guns, in order to frighten away the natives, who were very numerous on that part of the coast. On this journey they found the wreck of a vessel, supposed to be a Spanish one, which has since been covered by the drifting sand. When Captain Mills was afterwards harbour master at Belfast, he took the bearings of it, and reported them to the Harbour Department in Melbourne. Vain search was made for it many years afterwards in the hope that it was a Spanish galleon laden with doubloons.

      Davy was in the Sydney trade in the 'Elizabeth' until March, 1836; he then left her and joined the cutter 'Sarah Ann', under J.

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