Birrung the Secret Friend (11 page)

I heard that she came back again a couple of times to see the Johnsons, naked like all the natives, not even wearing her petticoat. Elsie and I weren't there to see it, but why we weren't, and where we'd gone, what happened when the Frenchman came for Elsie, is a story I won't tell you today.

I am an old man now, not a ten-year-old boy, but I can still see Birrung like I did that first day by the mud storehouse, clean and pretty in her blue and white dress. I can hear her voice telling me native words. I've even used some of those words with native people, and they understood them too. I've used all that she taught me, and I reckon Elsie learned things from Birrung I never knew about back then too. I've never shot a black man, like so many of my neighbours, or put out poisoned flour. I've tried to understand and, because of Birrung, known I can't.

So that is my secret. I had a friend a long, long time ago. She was a girl, and she was black.

I loved her.

Now you know my secret too.

Barney Bean, Elsie and Sally are all fictional, although based on real people. Mr and Mrs Johnson, Mr Dawes, Milbah and Birrung/Abaroo existed. Their lives in this book are based on what is known about them from letters written at the time by Mr Johnson, and diaries and books written by others in the colony.

Mr Richard Johnson was the colony's first clergyman, beloved of the convicts and some of the officers. He was a committed and passionate Christian who saw himself as a missionary to the colony of New South Wales, to the convict and Indigenous populations as well as to the officers. Often described as ‘tireless', he was more likely often very tired indeed, building his first house mostly by
himself, cultivating the most productive and possibly the largest gardens at the time in the colony, giving Sunday services in the open air or in a crumbling storehouse when it rained, and trekking down to Rose Hill, an outlying settlement, to conduct weekly services there too, while also working as a magistrate, tending the sick in hospital, caring for orphans, and teaching both children and adults to read and write and do sums.

Bennelong went to visit Governor Phillip, who had been badly wounded by an Indigenous man, to negotiate peace in the aftermath of this potentially war-inciting event. Barangaroo, Bennelong's wife, was violently opposed to Bennelong's role as an intermediary between the native people and the colonists, so Richard Johnson and Birrung remained with her as a guarantee that her husband would be returned to her.

Mr Johnson's work was heroic during the hellish months after the arrival of the Second Fleet. Against all advice he insisted on going down into the holds of the ships, among the dead and dying in the filthy darkness, tending them, feeding them from his own supplies and garden. The convicts loved and revered him — even if he couldn't stop them swearing.

By the end of 1789, Mr Johnson had drawn up a
plan for ‘dame schools' — small schools supplying a basic education — for the entire colony. He paid for the building of the colony's first church himself, a wattle-and-daub chapel built at what is now the corner of Bligh and Hunter streets. With his wife, Mary, he used the church as a schoolroom during the week and taught over a hundred convicts and their children.

The effort broke his health. Illness left him partially deaf.

So why don't we remember him as a hero?

‘History' is created from the letters and documents left to us. Much of what there is to read about the early colony was written by people who resented Mr Johnson because he believed their profiting from starving convicts was morally wrong. Perhaps he made them feel guilty. (People who feel guilty often are angry with the person who makes them feel that way, instead of sorry for their own actions.) Maybe they were also worried that he would hurt their reputations back in England.

Even Elizabeth Macarthur, who left superb letters that vividly portray early colonial life, made it very clear she had no pleasure in the company of Mrs Johnson, a woman who spent her days teaching convicts, not at picnics and in flirtation. The Macarthurs were not just
influential in their own time: Elizabeth's letters are one of the chief sources of information about the early colony. Self-sacrifice and dedicated service to the poor and criminal, not to mention physical labour by the ‘high-born', do not seem to be choices she valued.

Mr Johnson's work was tolerated by Governor Arthur Phillip, the colony's first governor, who, perhaps reasonably, thought building granaries to keep the colony fed was more important than the church Mr Johnson wanted, and who may have thought, as was common back then, that it was a waste of time teaching convicts how to read, write and do sums. The treatment of Mr Johnson grew far worse when Phillip returned to England, worn out by his work in the colony and the spear wound to his shoulder, which never healed properly. Now the officers of the New South Wales Corps (or ‘Rum Corps') took command of the colony. Mr Johnson strongly disapproved of the behaviour of many of these officers, such as Major Grose and Captain Macarthur, Elizabeth's husband, who granted themselves large estates and the right to buy and sell goods and rum. They in turn despised him.

It wasn't until Governor Hunter was appointed that Mr Johnson was repaid for the expenses he incurred
building the church. But even then, the Rum Corps encouraged convicts to taunt the chaplain in the street, though not the convicts from the First and Second Fleets, who loved him. The culprits were later arrivals, who had never had anything to do with him apart from compulsory (though not enforced) church services on Sundays. The services possibly brought the convicts little benefit, being hot in summer and cold when the south wind blew, and with Mr Johnson's voice hard to hear over the noise of the wind or the cicadas. They would not even have known the hymns to join in singing.

The church Mr Johnson had built with so much dedication was burned down in 1798, possibly on purpose, even as revenge for his criticism of the corrupt Rum Corps officers. By then the increase in the population of the colony meant that Mr Johnson would have been a stranger to many, and his sacrifices and kindness unknown to them.

In 1800 Mr Johnson and the next governor, Mr King, set up an orphanage. The Johnsons sailed to England in October of that year. It is unclear whether he intended to come back to the colony. By then he was ill, partly from overwork and his struggles against the corruption
of the colony, but also because he chose to help tend those who had infectious illnesses. His health seems to have remained frail, and he was offered only temporary, badly paid jobs until 1810, when friends helped get him a better position in London. He died in 1827. Mrs Johnson died in 1831. Milbah had died in 1804, only a few years after their return to England. A son was born two years after Milbah and was still alive after his parents' deaths, but I have been unable to find out anything more about him.

Little is known about Birrung's life after she left the Johnsons and I have been unable to find later references to her in any of the writings from the colony after the Johnsons left. She may possibly have been written about, but under a different version of her name. The last reference I have been able to find is in a letter written in 1795 by Mrs Johnson, saying that Abaroo
. . . still visited them.

These are mostly taken from the records of those years made by Mr Dawes, with further references from the
Macquarie Aboriginal Words: a dictionary of words from Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages
(edited by Nick Thieberger and William McGregor, published 1994) and the notes of the language used in the Sydney region by Jakelin Troy, though all the Indigenous words in the text are ones I have come across in other contexts. However, as with Birrung's name, there are many ways these words have been put into English letters. I hope that ‘Birrung' and her people will accept a ‘tried to get it as right as I can' instead of ‘I am sure that this is accurate'. Dictionaries of the eastern coastal languages are still being put together, from the words people remember, as well as written sources.

BIRRUNG

The Birrung of this book was called Abaroo by the Johnsons and members of the colony, except for Lieutenant Dawes, who recorded the name as Booroong, and as Boo-ron, Birrung and Burrung. As mentioned above, the Cammeraygl and other languages that Birrung may have spoken use some sounds that are different from English, and difficult for English speakers to pronounce or even hear or repeat.

I chose the form Birrung because it is recorded as meaning ‘star' in the languages of the Indigenous
people of the Sydney region, and the Eora word for ‘star' sounded like Booroong or Birrung. Her name might equally have been Burang, meaning ‘grass', or Barang, meaning ‘stomach'. But as with Nanberry, Bennelong, Colbee and Barangaroo, we may never know what their names really were, either the short form, or the longer names they used more formally and that the colonists were unaware of.

MILBAH

I have been unable to find out what Milbah means, but there are many records of it being used as a girl's name in New South Wales from about 1800 onwards — not commonly, but various different families did choose it for their daughters. The records don't show any other Indigenous name being used in the English community, so perhaps the naming of daughters Milbah was a tribute to the Johnsons' daughter, a gesture of love and thanks for her parents' contributions. In 1816 a baby girl (probably of European, not Indigenous descent) born in the colony was given the name Milbah, according to the birth records, so the name was still being used in the community at that time. Possibly Milbah's parents remembered the kindness of the Johnsons.

Those who have never grown their own food in Sydney or similar climates won't know how fast crops grow, and what abundance can be grown in a small space in a short time. According to the diaries of the early colony, fruit trees were producing fruit within two years. Possibly they were advanced trees when transplanted, but well-watered trees do grow fast. They wouldn't have produced much, but our trees here, in a colder climate, usually produce some fruit the first and second year after transplanting.

Colonists were hungry because they didn't work their gardens, or gather food like oysters, wild spinach, mussels and other shellfish. Oysters were a common food for even the poor in England, so all in the colony would have known they were good to eat, and abundant enough to feed everyone. Those who did, or who had good gardeners, like Governor Phillip, ate well. No one starved even during the time of worst hardship, except for one man who saved his rations to escape to China, and another whose rations were taken as ‘rent' to use someone else's pannikin. Nor did Surgeon White record any pellagra from protein deficiency, just scurvy in newly landed colonists after a long voyage. White —
who hated the colony, for the misery he had seen — even described it as the healthiest place on earth. But the colonists were terrified they might starve. They had landed with three years of food supplies. By the time the Second Fleet arrived, their stores were almost gone. Many of the convicts and most of the officers refused to do any hard work, from growing food to gathering oysters. Gentlemen were not supposed to do manual work. Mr Johnson was one of the few in the colony who did. The colony wasn't starving, but they were certainly terrified of starvation, ragged, mostly shoeless, scared they had been forgotten by England and that the colony might even vanish like the Roanoke colony had in North America. Many convicts believed the officers might sail off in the colony's small ship and leave them stranded. All were probably afraid that once the stores ran out, both convicts and officers might steal or commandeer food from those who were growing it, rather than worked, and the colony might degenerate into civil war.

For those who wonder if you really can grow abundant fruit and vegetables, eggs and cheese in two years, even without hoses and a central water system — try it. It will not only give you deep satisfaction — and keep you fed while you begin a career like writing books — but
give you the confidence that, with a few seeds and dead-looking sticks, you can keep yourself and your family fed. It is that security that the early colony lacked.

ELSIE'S SOUP

This is delicious, and very cheap to make. The flavour will change depending on what kind of cheese you use, and what you cook the onions in, and even on what kind of onions you use. Red onions give a sweeter soup, brown ones a stronger onion flavour. Cheap white sliced bread doesn't add much taste at all, but a sourdough white or a French loaf or rye bread or a good multigrain will really make the soup richer. I sometimes use six tablespoons of strongly flavoured, freshly grated parmesan cheese, but gouda is a mild cheese that turns wonderfully stringy in this soup, and tastes good. Feta and cheddar also work, as will probably any cheese that you love best, though again the taste and texture when cooked will vary from cheese to cheese. You can also use stock instead of water, and that changes the flavour too. But every variation I have made has been very good indeed.

Basically this is a soup made from the most simple ingredients, but every one of those ingredients has to be good to make it a great soup, not just an OK one.

Place the fat, oil or butter in a pan with the chopped onions.
Slowly
cook the onions, stirring all the time, till they almost melt and are a pale gold colour. They must not be cooked too fast, or they will turn dark brown or black and be bitter. They also have to be stirred all the time, or they will catch on the bottom. This slow cooking changes the flavour of the onions, so they become less sulphur-like and sweeter and slightly caramelised. They will take at least twenty minutes to cook, and possibly much longer. Onions with ‘fat' rings take longer to cook than ones with ‘thin' rings. (Once you've cut up an onion, you'll see what I mean.)