The Far Horizon (12 page)

Chapter Fourteen

The winter months of 1813 were dry and parched with not a drop of rain, and as a result the harvest failed. But the surplus of supplies and grain in the Government stores compensated for the shortfall.

The following year, in the early months of 1814, there was again no sign of the normal March rains. Lachlan began to watch the weather with a growing anxiety, as did the farming settlers. The colony could not cope with a failed harvest two years in succession.

‘We badly need rain,’ he said to Elizabeth as they prepared for a large dinner party to be held that night in Government House.

‘I have a pain,’ Elizabeth said quietly.

‘A pain?’ Lachlan turned to her. ‘What sort of pain?’

‘I think,’ Elizabeth said, frowning as she rose to her feet, ‘that you should send for Dr Wentworth and the midwife.’

He stared at her. ‘Are you sure it is that kind of pain?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘When is the baby due?’

Not for another few weeks.’

‘Not for another few weeks?' Elizabeth had suffered three miscarriages in the previous years and now the emergency of yet another miscarriage came on Lachlan so suddenly that every other thought was driven from his mind but the heartbreak and suffering awaiting Elizabeth.

In his anxiety he tried to prepare her, calm her, until in the end she lost her temper.

‘Lachlan, it is
not
another miscarriage! The baby has just decided to come a few weeks early. Now, please stop behaving like Job's comforter and send for the midwife and Dr Wentworth.’

Dr Wentworth could not be found, away attending some far-flung settler. His new young assistant, Dr Redfern, came instead.

I’ll cancel tonight's dinner-party,’ Lachlan said.

‘No, no, it's too late for that,’ Elizabeth protested. ‘And it's not fair to disappoint those ladies who have spent days deciding which dress they shall wear.’

Lachlan looked unsure. ‘It’s only a military dinner.’

‘With officers and their ladies – the worst sort to offend. No, let everything go ahead as planned and make my excuses to our guests. Although do not reveal to them the real reason,’ Elizabeth added hastily. ‘Just say I am indisposed due to being overtired.’

*

After the evening sun had plunged down into the sea, the invited guests flooded into Government House. Lachlan greeted them with a polite but abstracted air, the buzz of their conversation competing with the music of the small orchestra that was successfully drowning out the sounds coming from the bedroom upstairs.

Elizabeth was suffering.

At nine o'clock the party sat down for dinner. Mrs Ovens and the kitchen staff had worked wonders as always. The guests, who were totally unaware of what was happening upstairs, jollied their way through soup, roast beef and vegetables, with a third course of oysters, rounding off with pastry tartlets, pumpkin pie and fresh fruit.

No one seemed to notice that Governor Macquarie had not eaten a bite. All were unaware of the terrified suspense being endured by their host. He had completely forgotten the reason for this ‘official’ dinner, which was beginning to seem interminable.

A number of times George Jarvis slipped into the room to whisper the latest news into his ear. And George whispered the truth, as Lachlan trusted him to do. Elizabeth was suffering badly, but Dr Redfern seemed to think it was all quite normal and there was no cause for worry.

The clock in the hall loudly chimed out the hour of midnight, and for some strange reason the entire room seemed to go quiet.

A few seconds later all heads turned curiously at the sound of frantic feet clattering and skidding down the stairs into the hallway.

George Jarvis slid to a stop at the open door of the dining room, his eyes staring at Lachlan, his breath caught in his throat.

‘A son!’ he eventually gasped. ‘A strong and healthy son!’

Everyone stared at George, then at the startled Governor, then at each other.

Goodness! So that was why His Excellency was so irritable tonight! All this time while they had been dining, his wife had been going through the labour of childbirth upstairs.

Again all eyes turned to the Governor, who seemed to be finding the news that he had a son too incredible to believe.

All ears listened ... then it came - the sound of a baby crying ... a sound that grew stronger and stronger until Lachlan suddenly sprang out his chair and raced up the main staircase with George Jarvis following.

The guests excitedly surged after them, the ladies squealing with delight. Now the party would go on all night. ‘Wine! Wine!’ somebody shouted. ‘More wine all round to toast the baby's health!’

Servants appeared from every door and archway, all surging towards the main staircase.

As Lachlan and George reached the landing, Mrs Reynolds, the midwife, another ex-convict, came out of the bedroom with beads of perspiration still glistening on her flushed face.

‘Tes a boy we got for thee, sur! 'Andsomest little boy as I ever did see! And thur an't nuthin' wrong with 'is lungs! Hark at 'im now, screeching like a tyrant!’

When Lachlan entered the bedroom, young Dr Redfern was pouring hot water into a basin and washing his hands. His coat was gone and so was his neckcloth. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to the elbows. He looked tired but triumphant as he turned and smiled with satisfaction.

‘I told you there was no cause for worry. I knew we would win through in the end.’

Lachlan smiled in gratitude at the young doctor who had once worn leg-irons.

Elizabeth was sitting up in bed, purring over the child in her arms like a cat with her kitten, clucking away as if her ordeal had never been.

Jubilant, she looked up at her husband and smiled.

Lachlan looked at the newly washed naked infant. There was a knot of golden hair on his head. … Oh yes, he was a Macquarie.

Elizabeth took the shawl that Mrs Reynolds handed to her and wrapped it around the baby. ‘Thank God there are no freezing Perth winters here to take a child,’ she said quietly … and then she looked up and smiled at the amazed expression on her husband's face as she handed him the boy.

‘Lachlan Campbell Macquarie,’ she said, before he even asked.

*

The most surprising and moving event that followed the
Gazette
's announcement of the birth was the stream of emancipists that came bearing gifts for Governor and Mrs Macquarie's baby son.

One old swag brought his pet parrot that he had trained to talk. ‘No curse words, mind,’ he told the Governor, ‘nothing like that. No, that’s why I thought the little lad might enjoy chatting to him, when he gets a bit older, like.’

Another came with a baby kangaroo. Another arrived with a stuffed Emu. Even the convict girls came with little items of clothing and woolly toys, which they had sat up through the nights making with wool they had filched from the wool factory where they worked.

‘Oh, that is kind,' Lachlan said with suppressed emotion as George Jarvis brought more knitted gifts from the girls to him.

When Elizabeth saw the little bonnets and booties and beautifully knitted woollen jackets, tears began to slip down her face.

‘And look at this!’ She held up an extremely stylish little sailing boat that a group of Irish convicts had carved and painted.

‘They wouldn’t do it if they didn’t like him,’ Mrs Kelly told Elizabeth. ‘The convicts wouldn’t give a tinker’s curse about the Governor having a new child if they didn’t like the Governor himself. But they do, we
all
do – except for the Exclusives, of course. They hate him something fierce!’

Perplexed, Elizabeth frowned. ‘But
why
do they hate him, Mrs Kelly, do you know?’

‘Aye, I do, m’lady. That small group of rotters hate him because of the way he treats the convicts and emancipists. He doesn’t treat them like scum, does he? No, he treats the cons fairly and then when they’ve served their time he gives the emancipists a chance to better themselves. Sure wasn’t your own little lad delivered by young Dr Redfern.’

‘Yes.’ Elizabeth sat thoughtful. ‘Why was Dr Redfern sent out here, do you know? What crime did he commit?’

Mrs Kelly huffed and puffed before finally exclaiming, ‘Ah, sure, it was nothing more than a bit of foolishness, m'lady. He had just finished his studies at the school of medicine in London and he and his student friends were celebrating and they all got a bit tipsy, and when the others dared young Dr Redfern to dress himself up as a highwayman in a mask and ride out and pretend to be a robber – he did so, just for the fun of it – and got caught.’

Mrs Kelly nodded her head at the sadness of it. ‘Daft it was – a daft dare and a stupid joke – but none of his friends were laughing when he was sentenced to be transported for seven years hard labour in Botany Bay.’

‘A highwayman? No, it was Dr Wentworth who wore a mask and rode out as a highwayman,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I remember him telling me quite truthfully about the event that brought him here.’

‘Well, I’m almost certain that young Dr Redfern was a highwayman too,’ said Mrs Kelly. ‘And if you’re asking
me
what he did to get sent out here, then you don’t know, so he
could
have been a highwayman, couldn’t he?’

Elizabeth flicked Mrs Kelly a cynical glance. ‘What,
two
highwaymen, and both just happen to be doctors?’

‘Well …’ Mrs Kelly was getting flustered, ‘maybe it’s just something that doctors like to do, m’lady, dress all in black and pretend to be highwaymen, and then maybe they didn’t do anything wrong at all and were falsely charged, like so many of my kitchen girls were. But Dr Wentworth and young Dr Redfern are the only two doctors we have in the entire colony, and so whatever the reason, its very lucky for us that the two of them
did
get sent out here to Botany Bay and not to anywhere else, isn’t it?’

Elizabeth looked down at her newborn son, delivered so perfectly by young Dr Redfern. ‘Yes, very lucky for us,’ she agreed.

*

For days, Lachlan’s mind had been preoccupied with wondering what nationality his son would be? A New Hollander? A New South Welsh? A Botany Bayist? Even worse – that he should be known as a
currency
child!

The name of being a
currency
child was given to all those children born here in the colony, due to the fact that the colony's currency was inferior to the British pound sterling. Consequently anyone born here was known to be
currency
, as opposed to those born in the Mother country who were regarded as pure
sterling
.

Even while visiting the new school, he had heard this weapon of snobbery being used amongst the children in the playground. ‘You cheeky brat! How dare you turn up your
currency
nose at me! I am pure
sterling
, and that I'll have you know!’

What this country needed, Lachlan decided, was a new name. A name that would bring the people together under their own national identity. A name encompassing everyone; those born of the British regimental class, free immigrants and emancipists alike. A name they could all be proud of.

A name that he found when the Colonial Secretary, in London, Lord Bathurst, sent him copies of the charts of the continent of
New Holland
made by the explorer Captain Matthew Flinders.

Like many explorers Flinders had noted the stars of the southern constellations, using the arms of the Southern Cross as pointers to the stars of the
aurora astralis
in the skies around the South Pole.

‘Aurora astralis
…’
the words fascinated Lachlan and floated across his mind and across his notepaper with his pen until he finally decided on the word he liked best.

Excitedly, Lachlan immediately wrote a reply to Lord Bathurst acknowledging receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia.

‘I have chosen this name of Australia,’ he wrote, ‘which will I hope be the new name given to this country in future, instead of the name hitherto given it of "New Holland," which, properly speaking, applies only to a very small part of this immense continent.’

A new
General Order
was written to be read out to all soldiers writing home in the future, as well as a proclamation from the Governor printed in the
Gazette
informing all citizens of ‘
The new name of this new
country
…’

‘Australia,’ read Mrs Ovens. She looked up from her newspaper. ‘It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think so, Joseph?’

Joseph Bigg shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’ll never be used,’ he replied dismissively. ‘No one will put it on their letters for their new address. Specially the soldiers won’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s too hard to remember, it’s too bleeding long, and it’s too bloody hard to spell.’

‘Oh, I see …’ Mrs Ovens bowed her head and smiled shrewdly. She was certain now that Joseph Bigg could not read nor write, let alone spell a word as long as Australia.