



Produced by Amy Zellmer





THE

BOOK OF THE BUSH

CONTAINING

MANY TRUTHFUL SKETCHES OF THE
EARLY COLONIAL LIFE OF SQUATTERS, WHALERS,
CONVICTS, DIGGERS, AND OTHERS
WHO LEFT THEIR NATIVE LAND AND
NEVER RETURNED.


By GEORGE DUNDERDALE.


ILLUSTRATED BY J. MACFARLANE.


LONDON:
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED,
WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.


[ILLUSTRATION 1]





CONTENTS.

_____________

PURGING OUT THE OLD LEAVEN.

FIRST SETTLERS.

WRECK OF THE CONVICT SHIP "NEVA" ON KING'S ISLAND.

DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER HOPKINS.

WHALING.

OUT WEST IN 1849.

AMONG THE DIGGERS IN 1853.

A BUSH HERMIT.

THE TWO SHEPHERDS.

A VALIANT POLICE-SERGEANT.

WHITE SLAVERS.

THE GOVERNMENT STROKE.

ON THE NINETY-MILE.

GIPPSLAND PIONEERS.

THE ISLE OF BLASTED HOPES.

GLENGARRY IN GIPPSLAND.

WANTED, A CATTLE MARKET.

TWO SPECIAL SURVEYS.

HOW GOVERNMENT CAME TO GIPPSLAND.

GIPPSLAND UNDER THE LAW.

UNTIL THE GOLDEN DAWN.

A NEW RUSH.

GIPPSLAND AFTER THIRTY YEARS.

GOVERNMENT OFFICERS IN THE BUSH.

SEAL ISLANDS AND SEALERS.

A HAPPY CONVICT.


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

ILLUSTRATION 1.
"Joey's out."

ILLUSTRATION 2.
"I'll show you who is master aboard this ship."

ILLUSTRATION 3.
"You stockman, Frank, come off that horse."

ILLUSTRATION 4.
"The biggest bully apropriated the belle of the ball."

* * *


"The best article in the March (1893) number of the 'Austral Light'
is a pen picture by Mr. George Dunderdale of the famous Ninety-Mile
Beach, the vast stretch of white and lonely sea-sands, which forms
the sea-barrier of Gippsland."--'Review of Reviews', March, 1893.

      *     *     *


"The most interesting article in 'Austral Light' is one on Gippsland
pioneers, by George Dunderdale."--'Review of Reviews', March, 1895.

*     *     *

"In 'Austral Light' for September Mr. George Dunderdale contributes,
under the title of 'Gippsland under the Law,' one of those realistic
sketches of early colonial life which only he can write."--'Review
of Reviews', September, 1895.

* * *


THE BOOK OF THE BUSH.

---------------------

PURGING OUT THE OLD LEAVEN.

While the world was young, nations could be founded peaceably.  There
was plenty of unoccupied country, and when two neighbouring
patriarchs found their flocks were becoming too numerous for the
pasture, one said to the other:  "Let there be no quarrel, I pray,
between thee and me; the whole earth is between us, and the land is
watered as the garden of Paradise.  If thou wilt go to the east, I
will go to the west; or if thou wilt go to the west, I will go to the
east."  So they parted in peace.

But when the human flood covered the whole earth, the surplus
population was disposed of by war, famine, or pestilence.  Death is
the effectual remedy for over-population.  Heroes arose who had no
conscientious scruples.  They skinned their natives alive, or
crucified them.  They were then adored as demi-gods, and placed among
the stars.

Pious Aeneas was the pattern of a good emigrant in the early times,
but with all his piety he did some things that ought to have made his
favouring deities blush, if possible.

America, when discovered for the last of many times, was assigned by
the Pope to the Spaniards and Portuguese.  The natives were not
consulted; but they were not exterminated; their descendants occupy
the land to the present day.

England claimed a share in the new continent, and it was parcelled
out to merchant adventurers by royal charter.  The adventures of
these merchants were various, but they held on to the land.

New England was given to the Puritans by no earthly potentate, their
title came direct from heaven.  Increase Mather said:  "The Lord God
has given us for a rightful possession the land of the Heathen People
amongst whom we dwell;" and where are the Heathen People now?

Australia was not given to us either by the Pope or by the Lord.  We
took this land, as we have taken many other lands, for our own
benefit, without asking leave of either heaven or earth.  A
continent, with its adjacent islands, was practically vacant,
inhabited only by that unearthly animal the kangaroo, and by black
savages, who had not even invented the bow and arrow, never built a
hut or cultivated a yard of land.  Such people could show no valid
claim to land or life, so we confiscated both.  The British Islands
were infested with criminals from the earliest times.  Our ancestors
were all pirates, and we have inherited from them a lurking taint in
our blood, which is continually impelling us to steal something or
kill somebody.  How to get rid of this taint was a problem which our
statesmen found it difficult to solve.  In times of war they
mitigated the evil by filling the ranks of our armies from the gaols,
and manning our navies by the help of the press-gang, but in times of
peace the scum of society was always increasing.

At last a great idea arose in the mind of England.  Little was known
of New Holland, except that it was large enough to harbour all the
criminals of Great Britain and the rest of the population if
necessary.  Why not transport all convicts, separate the chaff from
the wheat, and purge out the old leaven?  By expelling all the
wicked, England would become the model of virtue to all nations.

So the system was established.  Old ships were chartered and filled
with the contents of the gaols.  If the ships were not quite
seaworthy it did not matter much.  The voyage was sure to be a
success; the passengers might never reach land, but in any case they
would never return.  On the vessels conveying male convicts, some
soldiers and officers were embarked to keep order and put down
mutiny.  Order was kept with the lash, and mutiny was put down with
the musket.  On the ships conveying women there were no soldiers, but
an extra half-crew was engaged.  These men were called "Shilling-a-month"
men, because they had agreed to work for one shilling a month for the
privilege of being allowed to remain in Sydney.  If the voyage lasted
twelve months they would thus have the sum of twelve shillings with
which to commence making their fortunes in the Southern Hemisphere.
But the "Shilling-a-month" man, as a matter of fact, was not worth
one cent the day after he landed, and he had to begin life once more
barefoot, like a new-born babe.

The seamen's food on board these transports was bad and scanty,
consisting of live biscuit, salt horse, Yankee pork, and Scotch
coffee.  The Scotch coffee was made by steeping burnt biscuit in
boiling water to make it strong.  The convicts' breakfast consisted
of oatmeal porridge, and the hungry seamen used to crowd round the
galley every morning to steal some of it.  It would be impossible for
a nation ever to become virtuous and rich if its seamen and convicts
were reared in luxury and encouraged in habits of extravagance.

When the transport cast anchor in the beautiful harbour of Port
Jackson, the ship's blacksmith was called out of his bunk at
midnight.  It was his duty to rivet chains on the legs of the
second-sentence men--the twice convicted.  They had been told on
the voyage that they would have an island all to themselves, where
they would not be annoyed by the contemptuous looks and bitter jibes
of better men.  All night long the blacksmith plied his hammer and
made the ship resound with the rattling chains and ringing manacles,
as he fastened them well on the legs of the prisoners.  At dawn of
day, chained together in pairs, they were landed on Goat Island;
that was the bright little isle--their promised land.  Every
morning they were taken over in boats to the town of Sydney, where
they had to work as scavengers and road-makers until four o'clock in
the afternoon.  They turned out their toes, and shuffled their feet
along the ground, dragging their chains after them.  The police could
always identify a man who had been a chain-gang prisoner during the
rest of his life by the way he dragged his feet after him.

In their leisure hours these convicts were allowed to make
cabbage-tree hats.  They sold them for about a shilling each, and the
shop-keepers resold them for a dollar. They were the best hats ever
worn in the Sunny South, and were nearly indestructible; one hat
would last a lifetime, but for that reason they were bad for trade,
and became unfashionable.

The rest of the transported were assigned as servants to those
willing to give them food and clothing without wages.  The free men
were thus enabled to grow rich by the labours of the bondmen--vice
was punished and virtue rewarded.

Until all the passengers had been disposed of, sentinels were posted
on the deck of the transport with orders to shoot anyone who
attempted to escape.  But when all the convicts were gone, Jack was
sorely tempted to follow the shilling-a-month men.  He quietly
slipped ashore, hurried off to Botany Bay, and lived in retirement
until his ship had left Port Jackson.  He then returned to Sydney,
penniless and barefoot, and began to look for a berth.  At the Rum
Puncheon wharf he found a shilling-a-month man already installed as
cook on a colonial schooner.  He was invited to breakfast, and was
astonished and delighted with the luxuries lavished on the colonial
seaman.  He had fresh beef, fresh bread, good biscuit, tea, coffee,
and vegetables, and three pounds a month wages.  There was a vacancy
on the schooner for an able seaman, and Jack filled it.  He then
registered a solemn oath that he would "never go back to England no
more," and kept it.

Some kind of Government was necessary, and, as the first inhabitants
were criminals, the colony was ruled like a gaol, the Governor being
head gaoler.  His officers were mostly men who had been trained in
the army and navy.  They were all poor and needy, for no gentleman of
wealth and position would ever have taken office in such a community.
They came to make a living, and when free immigrants arrived and
trade began to flourish, it was found that the one really valuable
commodity was rum, and by rum the officers grew rich.  In course of
time the country was divided into districts, about thirty or
thirty-five in number, over each of which an officer presided as
police magistrate, with a clerk and staff of constables, one of whom
was official flogger, always a convict promoted to the billet for
merit and good behaviour.

New Holland soon became an organised pandemonium, such as the world
had never known since Sodom and Gomorrah disappeared in the Dead Sea,
and the details of its history cannot be written.  To mitigate its
horrors the worst of the criminals were transported to Norfolk
Island.  The Governor there had not the power to inflict capital
punishment, and the convicts began to murder one another in order to
obtain a brief change of misery, and the pleasure of a sea voyage
before they could be tried and hanged in Sydney.  A branch
pandemonium was also established in Van Diemen's Land.  This system
was upheld by England for about fifty years.

The 'Britannia', a convict ship, the property of Messrs. Enderby &
Sons, arrived at Sydney on October 14th, 1791, and reported that vast
numbers of sperm whales were seen after doubling the south-west cape
of Van Diemen's Land.  Whaling vessels were fitted out in Sydney, and
it was found that money could be made by oil and whalebone as well as
by rum.  Sealing was also pursued in small vessels, which were often
lost, and sealers lie buried in all the islands of the southern seas,
many of them having a story to tell, but no story-teller.

Whalers, runaway seamen, shilling-a-month men, and escaped convicts
were the earliest settlers in New Zealand, and were the first to make
peaceful intercourse with the Maoris possible.  They built themselves
houses with wooden frames, covered with reeds and rushes, learned to
converse in the native language, and became family men.  They were
most of them English and Americans, with a few Frenchmen.  They loved
freedom, and preferred Maori customs, and the risk of being eaten, to
the odious supervision of the English Government.  The individual
white man in those days was always welcome, especially if he brought
with him guns, ammunition, tomahawks, and hoes.  It was by these
articles that he first won the respect and admiration of the native.
If the visitor was a "pakeha tutua," a poor European, he might
receive hospitality for a time, in the hope that some profit might be
made out of him.  But the Maori was a poor man also, with a great
appetite, and when it became evident that the guest was no better
than a pauper, and could not otherwise pay for his board, the Maori
sat on the ground, meditating and watching, until his teeth watered,
and at last he attached the body and baked it.

In 1814 the Church Missionary Society sent labourers to the distant
vineyard to introduce Christianity, and to instruct the natives in
the rights of property.  The first native protector of Christianity
and letters was Hongi Hika, a great warrior of the Ngapuhi nation, in
the North Island.  He was born in 1777, and voyaging to Sydney in
1814, he became the guest of the Rev. Mr. Marsden.  In 1819 the rev.
gentleman bought his settlement at Kerikeri from Hongi Hika, the
price being forty-eight axes.  The area of the settlement was
thirteen thousand acres.  The land was excellent, well watered, in a
fine situation, and near a good harbour.  Hongi next went to England
with the Rev. Mr. Kendall to see King George, who was at that time in
matrimonial trouble.  Hongi was surprised to hear that the King had
to ask permission of anyone to dispose of his wife Caroline.  He said
he had five wives at home, and he could clear off the whole of them
if he liked without troubling anybody.  He received valuable presents
in London, which he brought back to Sydney, and sold for three
hundred muskets and ammunition.  The year 1822 was the most glorious
time of his life.  He raised an army of one thousand men, three
hundred of whom had been taught the use of his muskets.  The
neighbouring tribes had no guns.  He went up the Tamar, and at Totara
slew five hundred men, and baked and ate three hundred of them.  On
the Waipa he killed fourteen hundred warriors out of a garrison of
four thousand, and then returned home with crowds of slaves.  The
other tribes began to buy guns from the traders as fast as they were
able to pay for them with flax; and in 1827, at Wangaroa, a bullet
went through Hongi's lungs, leaving a hole in his back through which
he used to whistle to entertain his friends; but he died of the wound
fifteen months afterwards.

Other men, both clerical and lay, followed the lead of the Rev. Mr.
Marsden.  In 1821 Mr. Fairbairn bought four hundred acres for ten
pounds worth of trade.  Baron de Thierry bought forty thousand acres
on the Hokianga River for thirty-six axes.  From 1825 to 1829 one
million acres were bought by settlers and merchants.  Twenty-five
thousand acres were bought at the Bay of Islands and Hokianga in five
years, seventeen thousand of which belonged to the missionaries.  In
1835 the Rev. Henry Williams made a bold offer for the unsold
country.  He forwarded a deed of trust to the governor of New South
Wales, requesting that the missionaries should be appointed trustees
for the natives for the remainder of their lands, "to preserve them
from the intrigues of designing men."  Before the year 1839, twenty
millions of acres had been purchased by the clergy and laity for a
few guns, axes, and other trifles, and the Maoris were fast wasting
their inheritance.  But the titles were often imperfect.  When a man
had bought a few hundreds of acres for six axes and a gun, and had
paid the price agreed on to the owner, another owner would come and
claim the land because his grandfather had been killed on it.  He sat
down before the settler's house and waited for payment, and whether
he got any or not he came at regular intervals during the rest of his
life and sat down before the door with his spear and mere* by his
side waiting for more purchase money.

[Footnote] *Axe made of greenstone.

Some honest people in England heard of the good things to be had in
New Zealand, formed a company, and landed near the mouth of the
Hokianga River to form a settlement.  The natives happened to be at
war, and were performing a war dance.  The new company looked on
while the natives danced, and then all desire for land in New Zealand
faded from their hearts.  They returned on board their ship and
sailed away, having wasted twenty thousand pounds.  Such people
should remain in their native country.  Your true rover, lay or
clerical, comes for something or other, and stays to get it, or dies.

After twenty years of labour, and an expenditure of two hundred
thousand pounds, the missionaries claimed only two thousand converts,
and these were Christians merely in name.  In 1825 the Rev. Henry
Williams said the natives were as insensible to redemption as brutes,
and in 1829 the Methodists in England contemplated withdrawing their
establishment for want of success.

The Catholic Bishop Pompallier, with two priests, landed at Hokianga
on January 10th, 1838, and took up his residence at the house of an
Irish Catholic named Poynton, who was engaged in the timber trade.
Poynton was a truly religious man, who had been living for some time
among the Maoris.  He was desirous of marrying the daughter of a
