The Convict's Daughter Read online

  From this time on, Dr Kinchela was hounded, almost night and day, by two great devils: debt and deafness. The debt he brought upon himself and couldn’t keep at bay, while the deafness dwelt within and seemed to consume more of him with each passing year. The learned doctor had had a fortune, and a healthy one too, but he had given it away—without a second thought and with all the goodwill in the world.

  The West Indies experience was unpleasant to say the least. From the start the Irish family had been confronted by the sweet stench of the place and a sea breeze thick with the scent of fermenting fruit and cane. This rotten odour may have been an omen for the ensuing corruption they witnessed, for the entire family saw things in the Indies they would prefer not to remember. Anne and the girls, for example, had been confined to the worst sort of female society. Indeed, several of the colony’s ‘better women’ delighted in relaying ghoulish information about the Creoles and the astonishing ‘reprisals’ their husbands exacted in response to the uprisings. Such women would describe the floggings with great relish before calmly finishing that this was simply ‘the way things are done here’.

  There was, in fact, more to it, as the doctor knew, for he was out there, week after week, in the heat of the day, observing the plantations from his government gig as he carefully collated his findings. There were stirrings, he reckoned, all about the island and for good reason. He had presided over one hearing, for instance, in which a planter had coupled with a woman while the poor creature was still in her leg irons. But somehow—whatever the circumstances—the Kinchelas had to make the West Indies work and to do that, certain alliances—however uncomfortable—were necessary. So the doctor asked his family to endure a little longer and promised they would soon be back on their feet.

  Despite all the careful sidestepping, the West Indies brought few rewards for the Kinchelas and when the family returned to London in 1826 they were still encumbered with debt, and had little notion of what to do next. There was no way a gentleman could live within his means, Kinchela tried to explain to his wife, particularly with two spirited sons as well as a couple of daughters who would need to be settled soon enough. The family simply had to keep extending their line of credit and hope that someone might help them honour their debts. The Duke had been willing, twice, but the Colonial Office took a grimmer view these days. Nor did those underlings employed by the colonial secretary appreciate the unpleasant missives they continued to receive from a most aggrieved London tailor demanding compensation for a long list of cuffs and shirts and jackets and trousers for the Kinchela boys.

  Such matters continued to dog Kinchela, and by the time the news of a second and much better appointment as the Attorney General of New South Wales arrived it was received with great relief. The doctor arrived in the colony in early 1831 ahead of his family. He was blessed with a reputation for being a careful judge, particularly when it came to criminal hearings, although it quickly became apparent that he cared less for civil matters. Still he went about his new appointment with renewed vigour and when his wife and children stepped ashore several months later they found the doctor energetically engaged in his new position and happily ordering everyone he could into line.

  Within a year, however, there were rumours. And even with the support of a sympathetic governor like the Irishman Richard Bourke, the tide was beginning to turn. The doctor could manage administrative matters quite ably, that was true, but how on earth could a deaf and debt-ridden man preside in court? Even in a colony of felons, scoundrels and imposters, the prospect of a deaf judge seemed too great a mockery of Blind Justice. Stories of Kinchela’s various courtroom confusions spread like wildfire and the sniggers and asides became such that several of the colony’s better men determined that something had to be done. But because Dr Kinchela was so well liked, it was agreed that it would be best to move him sideways—without too much discomfort to his family. By the mid-1830s things were falling nicely into place when suddenly Major James Mudie made that all quite impossible.

  Mudie was a nasty sort. Years earlier, while still in England, he had been discharged from the marines for thieving and then after a failed turn at selling fake medals commemorating war heroes he had been declared insolvent. ‘Major’ Mudie, indeed! He had been lucky to avoid transportation. Most marines crossed the street to avoid ‘the Major’ when they saw him coming. But such was the lack of good men in the colony that Mudie not only got free passage but also a generous land grant. Within a few years he had established Castle Forbes, which he ran like a tyrant, flogging convicts at whim and guarding his home with half-starved Newfoundland dogs.

  Mudie was like one of his own dogs, snatching lame prey and then tearing at their limbs until the life leaked out. Most men sensed this about the Major and kept away. Except those who couldn’t, like the convicts at Castle Forbes, who were caught in Mudie’s ferocious grip, try as they might to escape. Which many did, God help them. Rumours began to circulate that Mudie had captured one such party of runaways and then—without so much as a trial—strung them from makeshift gallows outside his gates. Those in the upper ranks of colonial administration—John Kinchela, John Hubert Plunkett and Roger Therry—were convinced that Mudie had violated British justice. They went to Bourke and insisted he take a closer look. But even though everyone knew what had happened at Castle Forbes, none of the convicts were prepared to speak. So the colonial administration was left with mud on their boots and Mudie walked free.

  From that time onwards, the Major nursed a lethal grievance against Dr Kinchela and his friends—and he set to writing a book that would bring down not only that administration, but also the entire colony. In London there was a market for anything about the colonies. Some authors made an attempt at accuracy, but most books and pamphlets were rife with salacious froth about hoary whores, rampaging blacks and murderous convicts who ate one another. Many of these embellished versions were written by people who had never set foot on colonial soil and few bore even a passing resemblance to reality, but even so, they titillated the prim and the perverse alike and—more importantly—they sold like hot cakes. While most colonists were intent upon elevating the reputation of New South Wales, Major Mudie persisted with his crude distortions and lewd ridicule and his new book, The Felonry of New South Wales, scaled new heights of personal malice. When the first copies arrived in Sydney, replete with sneers about many well-known colonists, including the Attorney General, people began to bay for Mudie’s blood and by the time the Major returned to New South Wales in the spring of 1840, he was well and truly persona non grata.

  From his magisterial seat in Wellington Valley, Dr Kinchela’s second son, the bold and resolute John Junior had been waiting. The young man had read the offensive book and stewed and steamed throughout that winter, plotting his revenge as well as the restoration of his family’s name. He had even chosen the thick stock crop he was going to use on the old blackguard when he dared to show his face in town. John’s mood was made worse by the fact that his poor father had been suddenly ‘attacked by paralysis’—a stroke so cruel that he was forced to leave public life—and with nothing more than a modest pension. Once more the family’s fortunes hung in the balance and this time Anne Bourne determined they had no choice but to satisfy their creditors by leaving the fine two-storey property they leased on the South Head Road and named Ormonde House in memory of their beloved Kilkenny home. The family was forced to move to a modest cottage in Liverpool where Anne nursed the afflicted doctor in significantly reduced and now also greatly aggravated circumstances.

  It was a spring morning in 1840 when John Junior finally spied the Major in the George Street market. ‘Brimming with Hibernian blood and courage’, the ‘stalwart son’ stepped forward to teach the old rogue a lesson. It was far from a fair match, the local papers crowed, John Junior not yet thirty, while the red-haired Major was somewhere in his sixties, and not at all in good health. The doctor’s eldest son smacked Mudie about the chops with his crop and then chased him down
the street, whacking the older man about his hat, ten times, twenty, and on and on until there was blood about the Major’s mouth and he finally fell cowering to the ground. ‘Not such a fan of floggings now, are you, Mudie?’ someone jeered as all of Sydney stopped to watch. ‘Where are yer dogs now, Major?’ another sneered.

  The Major took the matter to the civil court, insisting John Kinchela Junior pay £1000 for the injuries inflicted upon his person. Their father’s friend Roger Therry came to John Junior’s aid and the tiny Irish lawyer was all flourishes and fancy words in court, expounding upon the various ways that Mudie had offended the honour of both this noble Irish family and the colony itself. Therry provoked such a steady stream of laughter that in the end Mudie came out worse than those he had lampooned in his vindictive book. The court resolved John Junior should pay only £50 and the doctor’s second son was also deeply gratified when the Major’s many enemies came crawling out of the woodwork, eager to pay for the pleasure of Mudie’s public humiliation.

  But then, within a few years the doctor died and to make matters worse, John Junior suddenly went to London on business, robbing James of his closest companion as well as the man in whose shadow he was happy to reside. When John returned a year later, he had become quite earnest and also entirely preoccupied with restoring the family name. Indeed, from this time on, John was so engaged with his enterprises that James came to feel that he had lost a brother as well as a father. Sure the two men still travelled and worked together, but more often than not John made a point of distinguishing who was earning what. He also refused to adopt the light banter that had been their way together as boys. John was also dismissive of his younger brother’s sense of fun and made it quite clear that he would henceforth confine himself to the serious business of making money.

  From this time on, when John wasn’t on one expedition or another he was superintending someone’s property so he could bring in money for his next big investment. As well as pastoral runs in Bathurst and the Wellington Valley, where he had done a short stint as a magistrate, John had also acquired a parcel of land in one of the most remote parts of the colony. And so, in 1845, the Kinchela boys—along with a number of well-heeled Irish Protestant lads—pushed north in that direction taking with them thousands of sheep. They were looking for a tract of land that was large enough for them to manage as a series of runs within one giant landed estate—a sort of Protestant empire in the north, if you will. After several months of pushing their stock through the swamps and stone country they eventually found it—about 300 miles north of Moreton Bay in the Upper Darling Downs Region. John called the run Hawkwood and for the best part of the last three years he had been up there—wrestling with the country and ‘warning off the blacks’. As James had no other means of inheritance, he had little choice but to follow his brother into that mosquito-afflicted territory.

  So it was that James now followed in the great man’s wake, but it hadn’t always been that way. In their early years James had shared much of his older brother’s zeal, although he had always been less prone to sharp thoughts and fast action. Nonetheless, the two boys had been united in their pursuit of gain and glory, until the last few years when James had found it increasingly difficult to muster up the energy to care as much as his earnest elder brother. It had been those three overlanding expeditions to Adelaide that had done James in. Back then, in 1838, their father was still around and the two men had been younger. The more James looked back to that dreadful spring associated with their last expedition, the more he was convinced that he should never have agreed to overland cattle with William Thornton, their cousin who had just got off the boat brimming with his own brilliance. By then James had already done two runs with John but in early 1840 his brother had just raised some extra capital—£4000 in fact—which he had borrowed from his sister’s husband, Thomas Gore—and he wanted to stay in town to work out what to do with it while he waited for the return of Major Mudie.

  John was willing, however, to finance another expedition, as long as James was prepared to take the lead and give Thornton second in command. James had been champing at the bit. He had never been one for the books, nor that position in the office his father had arranged for him. He wanted to be out and about, preferably on a good mount and with something to do. This was his chance to prove himself. He knew he had a good sense of the land and that he could see things most of his brother’s friends missed, like which way a river would flow and where they would find feed for the stock. A final run would set them all up, James was certain, and also show them all what he was made of.

  But from the start, the expedition had been a disaster. The sheep were sickly, the weather vile, the land parched and the party at odds with one another. The worst of all was Thornton. James had some idea how to handle the blacks, but his cousin was trouble, especially when grog and women were involved. There were too many times out there—in that flat dustbowl of the interior—when the native fires had surrounded them and they couldn’t find their way through the smoke, that Thornton had created more trouble than he was worth. And then, when the party eventually got back into Sydney, boots worn to shreds, horses just about bone and their best dogs dead, his damned cousin had turned on his heels and married some older widow with a good estate. Why not? All the money was gone. Dried up on the road to Adelaide somewhere. James shrugged when his brother came asking questions in an accusing tone, clearly still smug about his recent victory over Mudie. At the time, James had been so sick he could not leave his home for nigh on three months let alone explain the matter to John. His liver had been shot ever since. Shortly after that, a sort of stiff silence had descended upon relations between the brothers and James had lost most of his ambition.

  The whole experience still left a nasty taste in his mouth, Kinchela realised as he leant against the front bar at the Pitt Street hotel. He took another swig of his drink to push the memory away. Gradually, however, he became aware that someone was looking at him. From the corner of his eye he noticed a young girl standing in a wedge of late afternoon sun at the place where the kitchen door had been left ajar. She was small and fresh, with dark brown hair and hazel eyes and seemed to be watching him with some intensity. Well, he thought, scratching his top lip as he sought to conceal the slightest of grins. He could stay here a few nights. Cool his heels for a bit and take a look at the stockyards. That might be a start.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The All-Seductive James

  Little by little the gentleman settler from Moreton Bay began to notice an improvement in his health and disposition. ‘Must be the turtle soup,’ he had joked to the personable proprietor once or twice. At first the hotelier had been entirely genial, but then a little later he became less cordial, and recently, about the fourth week of his stay, James had noticed a distinct cooling in the older Irishman. ‘The broth does wonders, sir, for those who look after themselves,’ the woman of the establishment said, perhaps a little curtly, in reply to what was becoming a rather predictable performance of affability, which Kinchela kept up in the dining room most evenings. He made a note to give up a few extra bills to keep them happy.

  James had grown more comfortable with his mother’s new house at Liverpool and the obvious pleasure it gave her when he called for dinner most Thursdays. He had meant to stay in Sydney for only a fortnight and return to Moreton Bay before pushing onto Hawkwood with some stock and a crate of Swan Drop for the firearms, but after a few weeks of good meals in Sydney, James Butler realised that he was not relishing a return.

  When he and John had first travelled up to Moreton Bay in the mid-1840s, a few years after their expedition to Adelaide, other men were still making their gunyios down by the lagoons, using tea tree bark to create the makeshift shelters when the rains came. Back then the township of Moreton Bay was not much more than a few buildings clustered about half-finished streets. Those who settled after the convicts had left often brought their favourite blackfellows with them from down south. They learnt quickl
y they needed local men to find out where things were but that there could also be trouble in that too. Things could turn quickly—like what happened to the sawyers up at North Pine who had been speared by Dundali and then finished off with a few good blows of a waddy. You had to be on your toes. Sure, there were a few good men like that fellow Petrie who kept things as steady as possible, but the potential for trouble was greater than anything James had ever known. And that was just in Moreton Bay.

  After a few slow weeks forcing their way towards the Upper Darling Downs—thrashing through the undergrowth and clambering over rocky outcrops with their stock—Moreton Bay had seemed positively civilised. But it was worth it, for the two brothers found a land of steep-sided gorges, massive water-sculpted granite boulders and miles after endless miles of salmon-coloured sandy plains punctuated with winsome hardwood through which their sheep and cattle could easily graze. They knew they would need money and lots of it if they were going to make Hawkwood work, so John took a job as a station manager and James stayed behind to mark out the boundaries and keep an eye on the couple of old lags they had brought with them to watch the stock. That had been James’ lot over the last couple of years—building fences and boundary riding, moving stock to avoid skirmishes with the local blacks and pulling water from the river they had named the Boyne when things got too dry. Sometimes riding a day or so to take company with the other Irish boys on the nearby runs. That and the occasional visit to Moreton Bay for settlers’ meetings or down to Sydney to sell stock.

  But now, despite all the hard work, both brothers were coming to the conclusion that the Hawkwood run was an impossible proposition—perhaps the whole of the north was—what with the mangroves, mosquitoes and diseases. If the blacks didn’t get you with their spears and waddies then it would be one of their fires. Kinchela had heard stories that would silence the boasters in town. The things that had to be done up there were not the sort of thing anyone wanted to talk about. Swallow it down with a quart of rum and be done with it.