“Tinker,” the Black and White Poley Bullock
Inspecting the Women’s Quarters at Eagle Farm
A Picnic Occasion
Cutting in Hamilton Road, made originally by Women Convicts
Dr. Simpson
His After dinner Smoke His Former Life
The “Lumber-yard “
The Prisoners’ Meals The Chain-gang
Logan’s Reign
The “Crow-minders “
“Andy”
We in these days can hardly imagine Brisbane without horses in drays and carts and traps of all sorts, but at first when my father was a little chap there were none. One comical conveyance he remembers well. It was an old spring cart with a cover on it, drawn by a black and white poley bullock, yoked in shafts as a horse would be, and driven by a prisoner called Tom Brooks. This turnout belonged to the Government, and was used to convey the prisoners’ dirty clothes to the women convicts at Eagle Farm each week to be washed. Two or three times when Mr. Petrie went out to inspect these quarters at Eagle Farm he took his wife and children, making a picnic of the trip. They all drove in this grand buggy drawn by “Tinker, the bullock.” On these occasions old Tom Brooks, the driver, would walk alongside and lead the bullock, but when carting the clothes he sat in the buggy and drove as though the animal were a horse. Sometimes “Tom’s” brother John, being a bigger boy, would accompany old Brooks, when he went with the clothes, and considered it a great honour to drive “Tinker.” On the picnic occasions, the party always stopped on the road to boil the kettle (there were no billies in those days), and to give “Tinker” a rest. The halting place was past Breakfast Creek, on the river bank where the ice-works were afterwards built. There was a spring there, and it was a nice place to rest. This road, which is the present Hamilton Road, had formerly been made by the women prisoners. Looking at the cutting now it seems impossible to realise this. Of course it has been extended since
.
A Dr. Simpson had charge of these prisoners at Eagle Farm (about the years 1840-41). In his cottage he had a little room off the kitchen containing a sofa, table, and some chairs. Here he was in the habit of retiring for an after-dinner smoke and rest. On one occasion when young “Tom” had accompanied his father and mother to Eagle Farm, he happened to go into the doctor’s kitchen, and saw there the man cook with a large Indian pipe. The youngster watched the man and saw him place the bowl on a little shelf on the side of the wall next the doctor’s room, then noticed him put the stem, which was two or three feet long, through a little hole in the wall. This made the boy very inquisitive as to what would happen next, and he watched more intently. The cook then filled the big pipe with tobacco and put a red hot coal on this, and “Tom,” dodging round the doorway, saw the doctor, from where he lay on the sofa in the next room, take hold of the stem, and putting the end in his mouth, calmly start to puff. This was intensely interesting of course, and “Tom” thought it very funny the way the doctor enjoyed his after-dinner smoke.
Dr. Simpson also smoked cigars at that time, and in after years he evidently gave up the long pipe, for he was known never to use anything but a cigar. Some notes re this gentleman kindly sent along by a reliable correspondent, may be of interest :-
“When Dr. Simpson was a young man he was in the army in Ireland-whether as a surgeon, or as a private or otherwise, I do not remember. He studied as a doctor in Edinburgh, but was an Englishman. He was employed by two ladies of the Royal Family of Russia to travel with them from St. Petersburg through Europe to Rome, etc., and back. He studied homeopathy, or rather that system of curing diseases, under Hahnemann (a German), the originator of that system, and was remarkably successful in effecting cures. He was employed as doctor for the children by the Duchess of Devon- shire. He wrote the first book in the English language on homeopathy, and the doctors were so offended at it that they persecuted him out of the country. He informed the Duchess of Devonshire of his resolution, and she was sorry to lose his services, and told him if she could assist him in any way she would do it. He came to Sydney and then got permission from the Government to come to Brisbane, then a convict colony. Making it a free settlement was talked of, and officers, police magistrate, and commissioner of Crown lands would be required. He then used the influence of the Duchess of Devonshire, and that put him wherever he wished. He took the Commissioner for Crown Lands, but had to act for some time as police magistrate.”
Dr. Simpson had the reputation of being very clever at curing illnesses in those early days of Brisbane. My father remembers him well, also his friend, W. H. Wise- man. A writer in a South Brisbane paper recently speaking of the convict days, says: “It is only just to say there were bright reliefs to this dark outlining. Old hands’ named with gratitude Dr. Simpson, the medical officer, afterwards a resident of Goodna, and the chaplains of the penal times as their best friends. Commandant Cotton was considered their best governor. Mr. Andrew Petrie, senior, foreman of works, had won all their hearts. They never tired praising these good men. Let the present time fully honour their memories as lights shining in a dark place.”
The better class of prisoners were not hobbled as the chain gang were, but they worked in a place called the lumber yard, which stood where the Longreach Hotel is now. This was a walled enclosure containing different buildings where the prisoners worked at trades of every description. They made their own clothes, caps, and boots, and kept the chain gang supplied with these also; then they made the nails and iron bolts, etc., required for buildings; they tanned leather, and made all the soap and candles needed for the settlement. Also there were blacksmiths, carpenters, cabinet makers, coopers, wheelwrights, barbers, etc. The brick wall surrounding this place was high, with one opening- a gate facing Queen Street. Close to this gate on the outside there was a sentry-box, where the soldier who kept the gate could retire if it came on to rain. This soldier had to march up and down in front of the gate to prevent any escape, and after so many hours he was relieved by another man, and so on through the day till about six o’clock, when half-a-dozen or eight red coats arrived with their sergeant. Then the overseer (a head prisoner) would muster the men, and placing them in rows, would call out their names to see if any were missing; after which they were all marched out of the gate and down to the barracks which stood a few yards above Messrs. Chapman & Company’s establishment. The overseer, or gaoler, then searched each man before locking him up, in order to ascertain that he had no tobacco or anything on his person.
“Tom” often went with his father to the lumber yard when a boy. He can remember events of those days better than he can happenings of twelve months ago. The prisoners had a cook amongst them, who cooked each man’s food for him. Twice a week tea, and sugar, and meat, were doled out. Meat was divided in the following fashion: It was cut up into equal junks, as many small pieces as there were men, and placed on a bench ready. Then one prisoner was blindfolded and put in a corner, while another stood by the meat, the rest waiting in a row. The man near the meat touched a piece with his finger, calling “Who for this?” and the blindfolded prisoner made answer with one of the waiting men’s names, the owner of which then went forward and took his piece. So it went on till all was finished. This was done that there might be no grumbling about more bone in one piece than another, and all seemed satisfied with the arrangement.
Besides this tea and sugar and meat twice a week, the prisoners daily were fed on rough corn meal porridge. This was served out in kids (small wooden tubs, like cheese vats, but shallow), which held about two quarts of the mixture, flavoured with salt, but, of course, eaten without milk. The chain gang got nothing but this hominy three times a day. My father says some of them looked fatter and stronger than those with the extras.
Though Grandfather Petrie had nothing to do with how the chain gang were treated, his young son “Tom,” as might be supposed, often came into contact with them. He has seen about three hundred of these men marched from the barracks down to where Messrs. Campbell and Sons’ warehouse now stands. They worked from here towards the Government gardens, chipping corn and hilling it, and soldiers kept guard to see that no one ran away. As soon as the men arrived on the ground, they all pulled off their shirts before starting to work. Father has heard them say this was in order to keep these upper garments clean. They worked away with only their trousers and caps and boots on, and their bodies were all tanned with the sun. “You would see,” says Father,” the poor fellows’ backs marked with the lash, some not quite healed from the last flogging.” They had each so many yards to get through before time to “knock off” came. Some would finish beforehand, and these would be allowed to sit down, and rest, but now-and-again one could not get through in time, and he was therefore flogged. A pine tree stood on the bank of the river, one hundred yards up from where the steam ferry now lands its passengers, and to this tree these prisoners were tied to be flogged.
Though my father has many a time seen men flogged in Queen Street, he does not remember the scene at this pine tree. But often the little chap sat and listened to the prisoners as they rested and told stories of how they had been treated in Logan’s time. They pointed out to the boy the tree where the floggings took place for unfinished work, or for an answer to an overseer. The overseers were picked prisoners, and they were generally cruel men who would report everything to the Commandant, in order to gain favour. They had freedom to go about without a guard watching them, and they were kept apart from the others, as they ran a risk of being murdered for their cruelty. Father has often heard the prisoners say it was awful the way they were treated in Logan’s time, and they thought it a blessing when his end came, for they had then better times. The blacks, they remarked, got the credit of the murder, but they themselves knew who did it, and it was all right for he deserved his death.
The chain gang was generally divided up into lots who worked at New Farm, Kangaroo Point, South Brisbane, from Turbot Street along the river towards Roma Street Station, and from the present steam ferry at Creek Street along the river to the Government gardens. Mostly the work they did was to hoe the ground and plant and hill corn. Father has often seen the convicts cultivating the ground about Brisbane, and it was all done by hoe-no plough. ‘I have seen,” he says, “the poor fellows march with chains on their legs to their work at New Farm and back again.” On each cultivated part when the corn was in cob, a prisoner was put to keep away the crows and the cockatoos. He was dubbed the “crow-minder,” and he had what was called a clapper to make a noise to frighten these birds. This clapper was made of three pieces of board, two about seven inches long and four inches wide, and the third some six inches longer, which was shaped like a butter pat with a handle. The two shorter pieces were fastened one on either side of the long one by a piece of cord or string put through the holes made in the boards, and when this affair was held in the hand and shaken about it made a great noise. The man was supposed to walk up and down through the corn shaking this, for the benefit, or rather otherwise, of the crows who came inquiring.
These “crow-minders” were prisoners under short sentence, and they were not chained like the others. The man who watched the land running along the river from Creek Street was called “Andy,” and he had a hut built up in the fork of a gum tree on the bank of the river, down a little way from the pine tree already mentioned. This gum tree had steps made of pieces of iron, driven in like sawyers’ dogs, and it was called “the crow-minder’s tree.” “Andy” used to climb up to his hut and watch that the blacks did not swim across from Kangaroo Point, or come in a canoe to steal the corn or sweet potatoes. The blacks were very daring in those days. “Andy” had an old flint pistol which he fired off to give the alarm when the darkies appeared. The hut was a protection from them, and when up in it he could keep any number off. The “crow-minder” at New Farm had a similar tree and hut; it stood on the river bank near where the residence of Sir Samuel Griffith now stands.
Father has often gone about among the corn with “Andy” while the clapping was going on. The boy was told in those days that once in Logan’s time, when Kangaroo Point was under a crop of corn, the blacks were very troublesome; nothing seemed to prevent them from stealing. So one was shot and skinned, then stuffed and put up among the corn to frighten the rest. It turned out a good cure, the corn wasn’t troubled afterwards. Whether this was true or not, my father does not know, but he was told it as a fact many a time.