Nanberry (25 page)

‘This is my brother's grave.'

‘Your brother?' She stared at him. ‘You ain't a darky, are you?'

He supposed his tanned skin might have made him look half-caste. ‘No. My foster brother. Nanberry White.'

‘He the other savage buried here? An' you say he's your brother?'

‘Yes. He is my brother.' He raised his hat — she was still a woman, even if tattered, stinking and ignorant — then walked back to the waiting carriage. He would have liked to sit by his brother's grave longer, but not with her. Besides, he didn't know who owned the land now. James Squire, who had buried both
Bennelong and Nanberry, and been a friend to both, had died the year before.

Nanberry had been in his forties when he died, old age for a sailor. It might have been from scurvy, or influenza … His mother didn't know why Nanberry died. It had only been two years ago. Andrew felt a pang. If he had come back to this country a little earlier he might have seen his brother again. That whole part of his past was locked to him now.

Andrew hoped Nanberry hadn't died alone.

He looked back at the grave among the trees and flowers, at the sparkling river and the gleam of cliffs. No, his brother had died with those he loved around him and in the land he loved as well.

Suddenly another word from the past came back to him. ‘Babana,' he whispered. ‘Brother. Goodbye, babana. Thank you for teaching me to see the land around me. It's stood me in good stead. Rest in peace.'

His luggage still hadn't been delivered when he got back to the hotel. He was just about to scribble a note to his mother when at last the porter appeared, wheeling his trunks on a trolley.

He sent the man to find him a carriage. Instead he came back with a cart pulled by two draught horses. It looked like it was mostly used for carting barrels of ale, rather than a gentleman and his belongings, but at least it was clean. Andrew helped the driver and porter load his sea chests, then gave the porter a shilling for his trouble. He climbed up beside the driver.

‘Where to?' The driver took a swig from a stone jar. Rum, by the smell of it, or something worse brewed from potatoes. He offered the jar to Andrew, who shook his head.

‘Liverpool. Mr Moore's house. Do you know it?'

The driver nodded. ‘Biggest house in the colony, I've heard, though I ain't never seen it. On the Georges River.' He looked at Andrew. ‘Terrible long way out to Liverpool, matey.'

‘I'll pay you for the journey back too.'

‘Can't say fairer nor that.' The driver jerked his head back towards the hotel. ‘They says you was at Waterloo. That true?'

‘Yes,' said Andrew repressingly.

‘Easy enough to say it. Don't mean you was there.'

Andrew pulled open his coat and showed the medal that he wore each day of his life now.

The driver dipped his hat in respect. ‘Well done, sir. Sorry for doubtin' you.' He flicked the reins. The horses began to pull, slowly and reluctantly. It will be a long day for them, thought Andrew. They'd be yearning for their stable and their hay.

‘Ye got business with Mr Moore?'

‘Yes,' said Andrew shortly. An officer and gentleman didn't chat to carters. But the man didn't seem to know or care about such etiquette.

‘What sort o' business then?'

‘I'm his stepson.'

The man stared at him, his mouth agape.

‘Ye pullin' me leg?'

‘No.'

‘Well, blow me down and cover me with cabbages. His stepson, eh? Never knew Mr Moore had no stepson. An' not one as fought at Waterloo! Nor no sons neither.'

‘I left here when I was seven.'

The man stared at him. Andrew flushed. He had just more or less admitted, he realised, that he'd been a convict brat, son of a convict woman.

But the man just said, ‘Mr Moore is a right good man. Last time the floods came down the Hawkesbury Mr Moore paid for feedin' the families from his own pocket. Mrs Moore, she helped
the Governor's wife set up the orphanage and a school too. There ain't a couple o' better people in the colony, nor back in England neither, I'm thinkin'. Ye must be proud.'

His mother had mentioned things like that in her letters — the hungry families, the orphanage. But he'd had no idea their charity had been so great that even a carter knew of it, and admired them.

‘Yes,' said Andrew quietly. ‘I'm very proud.'

It was a long hot way to Liverpool, past fields of wheat and barley and small camps of natives, huddled and in rags, so different from the tall straight people he remembered. Convict gangs worked wearily, carrying rocks to mend the road. None of the lags even bothered to look up as they passed, except when the driver stopped to ask the way.

But there were good things to see as well. Neat farmhouses with bee skeps behind them, and big-eyed dairy cows; here an orchard of peach trees and ripening plums or a boy shepherding a small flock of sheep, heavy with wool; there bullockies with teams of sixteen or more, hauling loads of logs or sacks of what he supposed was grain.

‘Nearly there, matey, I reckon,' said the driver at last.

Shadows thickened the afternoon. He'd have to give the man money to stay at a tavern and stable his horses for the night.

And suddenly they were there. He recognised it, even though he'd never seen it. The driveway opened off the road, lined with tall English trees. The big house was of pale sandstone. It rose up above its gardens. Roses, hedges of bright flowers, gravel that looked freshly raked. His father had left behind a convict woman and her brat. Now she lived in a finer house by far than he did back in England.

He felt his heart thud. It had been more than six months since he'd had a letter from his mother — there was no way to get mail aboard ship. Perhaps a letter from her had passed him, travelling to England while he sailed here.

So much could happen in six months.

All at once he felt more fear than he had ever felt in the bloody chaos of the Battle of Waterloo. At least his mother must still be alive — the carter would have mentioned it if she'd died. But she was scarcely a young woman any more. Would he even know her after twenty-three years?

Would she know him? He had sent her a small portrait of himself, after Waterloo. Would she recognise him from that? What would she think of her son now? Would they be strangers to each other, despite the letters, after all this time?

The cartwheels sounded loud on the gravel as they reached the grand front door. The carter pulled the reins.

Andrew paid the man, jumped down from the cart and climbed the stairs, then lifted his hand to knock as the driver began to unload his trunks.

Something shrieked above him.

It was an o'possum. He gazed up as a furry face glared down at him, the dark eyes wide in the light from the carriage lanterns. It had a baby clinging to the fur on its back, almost as big as it was.

Andrew grinned. He lifted the giant doorknocker and brought it down. The door opened almost at once. The servant inside must have heard the cartwheels on the gravel and been waiting.

‘Good evening, sir.' The manservant's dress was impeccable, his accent almost as good. Andrew could see the hall behind him, the flicker of the candles in the chandelier, polished wood tables, Chinese silk carpets, oil paintings on the walls. And coming out of one of the rooms …

Her hair was more grey than brown, held up with silver combs. Her dress was green silk. Green jewels shone at her ears.

But she was still his mother.

He stared at her, as the manservant spoke again. ‘Who should I say is calling, sir?'

She knew him. Her face looked as though she could see every day that he had lived, every day that he had been away. He heard the rustle of silk skirts as she ran along the hall.

‘Andrew!' Her cheeks wet, wet even before she reached him. He was crying too as he lifted her off the ground, as he hugged her, hugged her.

He was home.

Behind him the o'possums yelled at each other in the trees.

Note: All opinions on different races, religion, whaling and possums in this book are those of the characters who lived in the eighteenth century. The author does not share them.

The events in this book are as true as I can make them. The first decades of the colony were an extraordinary and fascinating time. But there comes a point where a historian and author has to say, ‘I don't know.'

I have done my best to interpret actions and motives in this book, but many things still puzzle me. There are places where I may think I have interpreted correctly, but have failed.

It is impossible to truly understand either the English or Eora cultures of the 1780s and 90s. We are simply too far away to understand people whose reasons for doing things and customs were so different from ours.

So little of what happened was written down back then. The books, diaries and letters that remain from that time often contradict each other. In many places I've had to choose one
account over another while knowing that neither may be quite true.

Neither the English nor the Eora understood each other. In most cases, perhaps, they didn't want to, though the Eora might have wanted English axes, or the English Eora canoes or spears.

I was about three when my mother first told me stories of the early colony (I played doling out the stores in my sandpit). Ten years ago I might have said I had read every document available from that time.

I had no idea, back then, how much material might still be in England, unpublished and unavailable until recently, such as the remarkable trial records of Rachel Turner or the school records of Andrew White. Records of ships' crews are still being found, as has been a letter dictated by Bennelong.

To me, now, Nanberry and Andrew White seem to be the first modern Australians, triumphantly accepting both sides of their heritage. They each took what they needed both from English culture and from the land of Australia. Both, I think, led fulfilled lives, despite the hardships around them. Like the possum — another great survivor and adaptor — they triumphed. But neither may have been like the boys and men I describe in this book. I know enough to say, ‘I do not know.'

The people in this book

All history books are detective stories, and history writers must track down information and put it together exactly as a detective does. When I began this book I thought it would be a simple story of a doctor and his attempt to tame a possum. But more and more evidence — often extraordinary and from the most unexpected sources — kept adding to the tale. A small part of this research has become this book.

Surgeon White, Nanberry White, Rachel Turner, Andrew White, Mr Thomas Moore, Mr Balmain, Booroong, Colbee,
Balloonderry, Bennelong, Governor Phillip, Captain Waterhouse, Major Ross and many others were all real people. The only ‘named' fictional characters are Maria, Yagali, Andrew's friend Garudi, Mr Flitch and Big Lon, although people very like them existed. (I did find information that suggested that a certain Aboriginal boy may have been Andrew's companion, but it was too tenuous a link to add that real name to the book.)

Even the most incredible parts of the story in this book are true: the auction of the women, the ‘smallpox' plague that killed only Aboriginal people but spared the white settlers, the convicts left to starve while the captains stole their rations and the almost-murder of Governor Phillip. Surgeon White really did give the same name to the Cadigal boy he adopted and to his son. The foster son seems to have used the name Nanberry White, at least most of the time, and not ‘Andrew'.

One of the problems of writing about real times and real people is that you have to accept what happened, even if it does sound extraordinary to us, reading about it so many years later — and even if you'd rather it wasn't true. The Bennelong in this book becomes a drunk. He is sometimes a brute and violent, often a figure of fun. That is the way he was portrayed by those writing at the time, not the way I wanted to write him. The same writers respected and admired Colbee, Arabanoo, Nanberry and, to a lesser extent, Balloonderry, so it is unlikely they laughed at Bennelong's boasts simply because he was of another race.

Yes, only one man — Captain Waterhouse — went back along the beach to rescue the wounded Governor. I can't understand why others didn't run to help him or why the marines didn't try to fire their muskets sooner, but that is what seems to have happened. Even more hard to accept is that no one at the time seemed to think it strange. Perhaps it all happened far more quickly than the way they spoke of it implies. Again, I don't know.

I would have liked to change many parts of this story: to have Surgeon White come back to Rachel, to realise that this country could be both beautiful and generous, or to have Andrew meet Nanberry again (which indeed he may have done, as nothing is recorded about what either did for most of the years of their lives). It would have been good to make Nanberry become a magistrate or for the captains of the Second and Third Fleets and the officers of the Rum Corps finally to be held to account for their crimes.

But it didn't happen that way.

The past isn't always comfortable to look at or as we would like it to be. That's why it is so important that we try to work out what really happened.

John White (1756/7–1832)

Much of this book is based on Surgeon White's
Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales
(1790). According to his journal, he severely disliked Australia, describing it as ‘… a country and place so forbidding and so hateful as only to merit execration and curses'.

Surgeon White was an extraordinary man, conscious of his status as a gentleman, pompous enough to fight a duel (before this book begins) with his Assistant Surgeon Balmain, probably because Balmain didn't show him enough respect, and a superb and dedicated scientist, botanist and zoologist. As Surgeon-General to the First Fleet and the settlement at Port Jackson, his advanced ideas on diet and medical care meant that many of those weak and starved wretches survived a remarkable journey across the world. No other ship or fleet in the next fifty years would achieve as much.

Surgeon White worked desperately to save each new influx of convicts to arrive in Sydney Town dying from disease, starvation and the terrible conditions of the Second Fleet and subsequent contingents from England. He acknowledged Rachel's son,
Andrew, as his child, supported him and his mother after he returned to England in 1794 and sent for Andrew to join him there when the boy was seven.

In 1796 he resigned from his job as a naval surgeon rather than be posted back to the colony — despite having Rachel, Andrew and Nanberry to go back to. But it is worth remembering that this man had lived through the worst years of the colony, including the time when perhaps nine out of ten of the Aboriginal people in the area died of what he thought was smallpox.

His failure to help more than two of them and the appalling death rate of the convicts unloaded from the ships must have made his job a form of helpless Hell. He did admit in later years that the colony might have become a far better place than the prison hole he remembered.

John White worked as a surgeon at Sheerness from 1799 and then at Chatham Dockyard from 1803. He married twice — his first wife died — and he had two daughters, or two daughters and another son (there are conflicting records). He retired on a half-pension in 1820 of £91 5s a year. He died at Worthing on 20 February 1832 aged seventy-five.

Did Surgeon White have a possum?

When I began to write this book I was sure that Surgeon White had a pet possum. But as I looked through the letters and diaries written at the time, I couldn't find a pet possum anywhere.

Where did I get the idea?

I don't know. Possibly from the stories my mother had told me about that time. Some legend passed on from her mother, and her mother's mother, back through generations of women who had passed on stories of our family — and an old family diary, from the early days in the colony, and often malicious gossip about prominent figures they had known too.

Surgeon White wrote two books mostly about the wildlife of
the colony, particularly the birds he deeply loved and whose study he obviously found a comfort after the horror of his work. There were references to possums in White's writings: ‘o'possums' he had tried and failed to tame. By June 1798 he certainly was very familiar with ‘o'possums' and compared other new animals to them. He knew they had a pouch with teats in which to carry their young.

In one of his references to possums Surgeon White wrote that he had often tried to breed them in England, and had bought many and had others given to him by friends. He certainly studied them in detail, but also admitted how little he knew.

Rachel Turner (1762–1838)

Rachel Turner was one of the first people to ever be defended in an English court of law. In this book she believes that she was the very first person to ever be defended, by the young and enthusiastic Mr Garrow.

But although Mr Garrow's defence of his clients would change the way English — and Australian and American — trials were held, the first few times he tried to defend his clients the judges were so furious at what they saw as contempt of court that he did his clients more harm than good.

Although almost certainly innocent, Rachel Turner was found guilty; her sentence of death was changed to seven years' transportation to celebrate the declaration that King George III was sane again. She was truly an incredible woman, transcending the deprivations of her early life to become one of the wealthiest women — and possibly the most loved — in the colony, successful far beyond her dreams. Ironically, she became far wealthier than she would have been if Surgeon White had married her, and almost certainly had a far more fulfilled life, living in her grand house by her beautiful river, helping to make the new colony successful, and beloved and admired by many people.

Andrew Douglas (Douglass) White (1793–1837)

Andrew White is probably Australia's first Australian-born returned soldier, a man who became a hero of Waterloo, and, at last, came home. He was accepted by Surgeon White's new family in England, and became one of the first students at the new Chatham House boarding school, graduating as an engineer, serving at the Battle of Waterloo and then probably working on siege fortifications in the Lowlands — either Belgium or Holland — before coming back to Australia, the land he seems to have regarded as home, and to his mother.

Almost every man who survived that nightmare battle against Napoleon and the French army under Marshal Ney seems to have been regarded as a hero, but if Andrew White worked as an engineer or sapper, supervising the digging of tunnels to get closer to the enemy, or to protect the English and their allies from shot and cavalry attacks, then he almost certainly was heroic. In the phrase of the time, ‘A Waterloo veteran could ask a drink of any man in England, and never have to pay.' Any veteran of Waterloo was treated with the same respect in Australia. It is hard to convey to a modern audience how much the men who survived Waterloo were venerated and given special privileges, both official and unofficial. I suspect Andrew Douglas(s) White's life deserves a book of its own. I now have far too much information about it to record here.

Andrew sailed back to England in July 1824. He returned to Australia for good in 1833. He married Mary Anne Mackenzie in 1835.

Andrew White stayed in the Royal Engineers even once he had come to Australia, till he retired on half-pay and became a magistrate. There is no record of any children. On the other hand, I may simply not have found the record or it may have been lost or never officially recorded.

I did find a record that the daughter of an Andrew White who
lived at the same time and the same place had married a man named Weir (coincidentally the maiden name of my mother-in-law). I continue to look for more evidence of what actually happened to Andrew after he came back to Australia. Records from that time are incomplete, inaccurate and often very difficult to track down. It would be yet another of the many coincidences that I found while writing this book to discover that I am distantly related to Andrew, Surgeon White, Rachel Turner and even Nanberry, by marriage.

Andrew, like his mother, had a most extraordinary life. Even with the help and recognition of his father, he would still have had the stigma of being the illegitimate son of a convict, and from Australia. He rose from his humble beginnings to become an engineer, an officer, a hero, and — I hope, though have no evidence — finally happy and fulfilled back home.

Nanberry (–1821)

(Nanbree, Nanberry Buckenau, Nanbaree and other variations of spelling also exist, but almost certainly refer to the same young man, although he is probably not the Nunberri who sailed on the
Blanche
on the Shoalhaven River.)

Most accounts of Indigenous Australians in the early colony focus on Bennelong, a man who in many ways had a tragic life, stranded between two cultures and at times earning contempt from both.