~ Adam, Son Of Gurrewa ~

by

Kev Richardson

“Thomas, what is Irish?”

Thomas looked askance. “What?”

“Irish.”

“What’s Irish?”

“That’s what I asked you.”

Thomas shrugged his shoulders.

“I was listening outside the door of Father Will’s study yesterday, and his visitor was telling him that many convicts off last week’s ship are Irish.”

“He didn’t say what made Irish different from other convicts?”

“Well yes, in a sort of way. It seems maybe it’s a disease of some sort that people here can catch.”

“What sort of disease?”

“Maybe a plague or something, I suppose.”

“Does this mean England is now sending convicts, not because they nicked something, but because they got a plague?”

Adam nodded vigorously. He knew what he’d heard, and was worried.

“Maybe this plague is what killed your sister?”

“Maybe so because at the time Father Will wasn’t sure what was the sickness that killed her. So maybe it was Irish.”

Now they both shrugged shoulders. But the short attention span of seven-year-olds soon dissipated. They quickly returned attention to their game of “Pitch and Toss,” as they termed their serious game of marbles.

Yet soon Thomas sat back on his haunches.

“Did your sister turn some nasty colour before she died?”

“I don’t think so. I’d seen her earlier that day when Mama was crying over her, and the only change in colour was that she was whiter than usual.”

Thomas nodded. “Well it can’t be that, then. I just thought maybe Irish was a colour we’d never heard of.”

“The gentleman said of these Irish that they were all ‘tinged with a hint of insurgence’ whatever that means. You ever heard anything like that?”

“Once I heard Mrs. Appleton tell my ma that some new cotton she bought was yellow tinged with a hint of green; so maybe Irish is indeed a colour. Why don’t you ask your father Will?”

“No. Then he would know I was listening and be displeased. I’d likely be punished.”

“Maybe he’d ask the tutor to give you ‘hard lines’ again, like when you told him you’d seen scarecrows in the cornfield, shouting and waving their arms about to frighten the birds.”

To which Adam simply nodded.

They let a minute of contemplation pass before returning to their marbles.

Two

By the time Adam was born, the Second Fleet had arrived in New South Wales, first relief ships after two and a half years of desperately painful hunger. Hundreds of First Fleeters had already died from malnutrition, as well as more than half the babies born during the period.

And what a challenge it had proved for the handful of surgeons among the more than a thousand Sydney Cove souls, when confronted with the atrocious state of health of those arriving in the relief ships.

The First Fleet had lost only some thirty souls on its voyage when statistics of the day indicated that, it having been the longest voyage ever undertaken by so many souls in the history of the world, more than a hundred should have been expected. Yet, shamefully, on the Second Fleet, two hundred and thirty died of malnutrition, and of the two hundred hospitalised on arrival, twenty died within a week. The poor surgeons had no more medical supplies to work with than what had been brought on that Second Fleet to then last the entire colony until further relief arrived.

For more than a year prior, the colony’s dispensary shelves had been barren.

William Balmain believed the trials surgeons were then subjected to were the start of his downturn in health. He had then, for weeks on end, been on duty more than twenty hours of every day trying to keep people alive with only enough vegetables and fruits for a quarter of the mouths to be fed. Governor Phillip had already shipped half of all convicts off to Norfolk Island, ten days’ sail away, for there they had found soil arable enough to farm. It had been only months before the Second Fleet’s arrival that arable soil had been found within reach of Sydney Cove, and that was twenty miles upriver at a time when overland travel was impossible because of murderous savages in the forests.

And it was to be a season later before anything could be yielded from it. So the undernourished ‘relief’ convoy had merely added to starvation conditions.

Surgeon William Balmain and his colleagues had been physically ‘taxed beyond endurance’ during several dreadful months and his ‘frailty of body’ complaint had revisited often in the years since, to leave him an ailing man.

He insisted to Governor Hunter that not only must he have more assistance in that the colony now comprised sixteen hundred free settlers as well as several thousand convicts, apart from the thousand in administration and military, but also better facilities.

“Hospital facilities and dispensary supplies are totally inadequate for now so many, sir,” he had pleaded.

Yet the governor again illustrated his superiority as a shrewd negotiator over William Balmain, for William came home to Meg to report that whilst he had received not one additional member of staff, nor even one penny worth of additional supplies, nor added hospital facilities, he had been given an additional grant of land adjoining the last.

“However, there is another advantage,” the seemingly gullible Will announced: “I have been appointed a civil magistrate with its own additional salary.”

Meg closed her eyes, conscious of the facts that firstly, neither had this been an additional outlay for the governor because this civil magistrate salary had ever been a cost. Only recently had a magistrate suffered a stroke and was paid off. Secondly, that Will proved himself so gullible in his quest to increase personal income, that in failing to have his workload of office eased, he had in fact had it increased. He had been a civil magistrate under Philip Gidley King on Norfolk Island and acquitted himself well enough in such capacity, as Governor Hunter must be aware, and Meg remembered only too well what a time-consuming role that had been.

But here in Sydney, Will’s let himself in for it again, in a settlement several times the population of Norfolk.

But she daren’t say so. Her sensitive position as colony wife could well lose present advantages should she start criticising his decisions. She still had Adam and little Jane to consider. Yet she was as genuinely concerned over the state of his health as over his obstinacy in continuing to take on additional work. And as well as his increasingly busy career, he still made time to help in various social activities. He was Captain of the Sydney Loyal Association, a volunteer company formed to counteract the threat of convict insurgence should it arise, and he had also established and completed a citizens’ subscription to build a new Sydney Gaol.

“Why ever not a hospital rather than gaol?” she would have liked to ask him, but felt she should not. And further, he had made a personal contribution of two hundred pounds to the fund--far too large an amount by Meg’s standards.

He was. by now, however, considered one of Sydney’s wealthy, and his new house nearing completion kept being extended. It was now being referred to as ‘an imposing residence’ with its fine harbour views. He named it Balmain House.

“We will move in within a six-month, my dear. I have signed an agreement with the London company from which I have been buying our furniture and fittings, to act as their agent here. They have an entire fleet of trading ships, so this will provide considerable profits on the import of all merchandise.”

Meg nodded, and only sighed when he further added, “When we move into the house, Meg, you must select and train available convicts from the female prison to clean, cook, launder and serve. I shall assign the appropriate stable and yard hands.”