I
It has often occurred to me to wonder why my recollections of our
arrival and first days in Sydney should be so blurred and
unsatisfactorily vague. One would have thought such episodes should
stand out very clearly in retrospect. As a fact, they are far less
clear to me than many an incident of my earlier childhood.
What I do clearly recall is lying awake in my makeshift bunk for some
time before daylight on the morning we reached Sydney, and, finally,
just before the sun rose, going on deck and sitting on the teak-wood
grating beside the wheel. There, on our port side, was the coast of
Australia, the land toward which we had been working through gale and
calm, storm and sunshine, for more than ninety days. Botany Bay, said
the chart. I thought of the grim record I had read of early settlement
here. And then came the pilot's cutter, sweeping like a sea-bird under
our lee. The early sunshine was bright and gladsome enough; but my
recollection is that I felt somehow chilled, and half frightened. That
sandy shore conveyed no kindly sense of welcome to me.
The harbour--oh, yes, the harbour was, and is, beautiful, and I can
remember thrilling with natural excitement as we opened up cove after
cove, while the _Ariadne_--stately as ever, but curiously quiescent
now, with her trimly furled and lifeless sails--was towed slowly to
her anchorage. The different bays--Watson's, Mossman's, Neutral, and
the rest--had not so many villas then as now. Manly was there, in
little; but surf-bathing, like some other less healthful 'notions'
from America, was still to come. From the North Shore landing-stage
one strolled up the hill, and, very speedily, into the bush.
Yes, the place was naturally beautiful enough; but the _Ariadne_ was
home; her every deck plank was familiar to me; I knew each cleat about
her fife-rails, every belaying-pin along her sides, every friendly
projection from her deck that had a sheltering lee. The shining
brass-bound, teak-wood buckets ranged along the break of her poop--the
crew's lime-juice was served in one of these, and they all were
painted white inside--I see them now. _Ay di mi!_ as the Spanish
ladies say; I am not so sure that any place was ever more distinctly
home to me. Over the rail, across the dancing waters of the harbour,
where the buildings clustered about Circular Quay; as yet, of course,
there could be nothing homely for me about all that. And, as to me, it
never did become very homely; perhaps that is why my recollections of
our first doings there are so vague.
How often, in later years, my heart swelled with vague aspiring
yearnings toward what lay beyond, while my eyes ranged over that same
smiling scene, from the Domain, Lady Macquarie's Chair, and the
purlieus of Circular Quay! (There were no trams there then.) Here one
saw the ships that carried folk to and from--what? To and from Home,
was always my thought; though what home I fancied that distant island
in her grey northern sea had for me, heaven knows! Here one rubbed
shoulders, perchance, with some ruddy-faced, careless fellow in dark
blue clothes, who, but a short couple of months ago, walked London's
streets, and would be there again in the incredibly brief space of six
weeks or so. Dyspepsia itself knows no more fell and spirit-racking
anguish than nostalgia brings; and at times I have fancied the very
air--bland, warm, and kindly seeming--that circulates about the famous
quay must be pervaded and possessed by germs of this curious and
deadly malady. At least, that soft air is breathed each day by many a
victim to the disease; old and young, and of both sexes.
No doubt we must have spent some days in Sydney, my father and myself;
but from the _Ariadne_, and the parting with Nelly Fane and my other
companions, memory carries me direct to the deck of a little
intercolonial steamer, bound north from Sydney, for Brisbane and other
Queensland ports. I see myself in jersey and flannel knickers sitting
beside my father on the edge of a deck skylight, and gazing out across
dazzlingly sunlit waters to the near-by northern coast of New South
Wales. Suddenly, my father laid aside the book which had been resting
on his knee, and raised to his eyes the binoculars he used at sea.
'How extraordinary,' he murmured. And, my gaze naturally following
his, I made out clearly enough, without glasses, a vessel lying high
and dry on the white sand of a fair-sized bay.
My father's keen interest in that derelict ship always seemed to me to
spring into being, as it were, full-grown. There was in it no period
of gradual development. From the moment his eyes first lighted upon
the tapered spars of the _Livorno_, where she lay basking in her sandy
bed, his interest in her was absorbing. Everything else was forgotten.
In a few minutes he was in eager conversation about the derelict with
the chief officer of our steamer. I remember the exact words and
intonation of the man's answer to my father's first question:
'Well, I couldn't say for that, Mr. Freydon' (In Australia no one ever
forgets your name, or omits to use it in addressing you), 'but I can
tell you the day I first saw her. She was lying there exactly as she
is to-day. I was third mate of the _Toowoomba_ then; my first trip in
her, and that was seven years ago come Queen's Birthday. Seen her
every trip since--just the same. No, she never seems to alter any.
She's high and dry, you see; bedded there on an even keel, same's if
she was afloat. Yes, it is a wonder, as you say, Mr. Freydon; but it's
a lonely place, you see; nothing nearer than--what is it? Werrina, I
think they call it; fifteen mile away; and that's a day's march from
anywhere, too. Oh yes, there might be an odd sundowner camp aboard of
her once in a month o' Sundays; but I doubt it. She isn't in the track
to anywhere, as ye might say. No, I guess it would only be bandicoots,
an' the like o' that you'd find about her; an' birds, maybe. Only
thing I wonder about her is, how she landed there without ever losing
her top-hamper, and why nobody's thought it worth while to pick her
bones a bit cleaner. Must be good stuff in her stays an' that, to have
stood so long, with never a touch o' the tar-brush.'
There was more in the same vein, but this much comes back to me as
though it were yesterday that I heard the words. I see the mate's hard
blue eye, and crisply curling beard; I see the upward tilt of the same
beard as he spat over the rail, and my father's little retreating
movement at his gesture. (My father never lost his sensitiveness about
such things, though I doubt if he ever allowed it to appear to eyes
less familiar with his every movement than my own.) It seems to me
that my father talked of the derelict--we did not know her name then,
and spoke of her simply as 'the ship'--for the rest of the day, and
for days afterwards; and the key to his thoughts was given in one of
his earliest remarks:
'What a home a man might make of that ship--all ready to his hand for
the asking! The sea, trees--there were plenty of trees--sunshine,
solitude, and space. Think of the peacefulness of that sun-washed bay.
Nothing nearer than fifteen miles away, and that a mere hamlet,
probably. Werrina--not a bad name, Nick--Werrina. Aboriginal origin, I
imagine. And all that for the mere taking; open to the poorest--even
to us. You liked the _Ariadne_, Nick. What would you think of a ship
of our own?'
Assuredly, we were the strangest pair of emigrants....