As part of my research during this residency, I’m undertaking a number of walks in and around Newcastle. During the walks, I write lists of observations; typically things which are seemingly insignificant or everday occurrences. Each walk is also recorded using GPS as are the number of steps using a pedometer.
The first two lists can be found via the links below:
Walk 1
http://www.nicholashedges.co.uk/lockup/walk1.htm
Walk 2
http://www.nicholashedges.co.uk/lockup/walk2.htm
At the end of Nobbys beach can be found Nobbys Island. Once a rocky outcrop, the island was joined to the mainland through work carried out by convict gangs between 1818 and 1846. In 1855, the quarried summit of the island (the rock of which had been used to create the pier joining the island with the mainland) was cut down from 62 metres to his present height of 28 metres. A sign near the island explains how the local Aboriginal people, the Awabakal, believe Nobbys Island was created in the time of the Dreaming by the great rainbow serpent as it pushed itself onto the land after it had dropped from the sky into the island. To read how it was mined for coal (after being surveyed by Lieutenant John Shortland who surveyed the bluff during the 1790s) and then – being a danger to ships – reduced by almost a third in height, makes one feel sorry, especially in light of the beliefs of the Awabakal people.
The importance placed on rocks by Aboriginal people is also described near Newcastle beach, where a sign describes Yi-ran-na-li, the Aboriginal name for the cliff which, the sign tells us, is known by them as being a place of silence and respect. The cliff was – or rather is – a sacred place and the sign itself something of an apologia, the text of which is worth repeating here in full:
“In the 1880s, John McGill, an Awakbal man, also known as Biraban (Eaglehawk) told the missionary Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld the story of Yi-ran-na-li whilst passing beneath the cliff one day.
‘There is a sort of scared place near Newcastle on the sea-beach, beneath a high cliff named Yi-ran-na-li, it is said, that if any person speaks, the stones will fall down upon them, from the high arched rocks above, the crumbling state of which is such as to render it extremely probable, that the mere concussion of air from the voice would cause the effect to take place.
I was walking beneath the projecting rock and called loudly to McGill , who with other blacks, were with me. He instantly beckoned me to be silent, at which I wondered, a few small stones fell down from the crumbling overshadowing cliff at that moment, and they urged me on.
When we had passed out the precincts of the fearful place, I asked what they meant by commanding my silence, and pushing on so quickly without speaking? This elicited the tradition of the place as a very fearful one, for if any one speaks whilst passing beneath the overhanging rocks, stones would invariably fall as we had just witnessed.’ (Threkeld in Gunson 1974:65)
The large rock fall in 2002 perhaps marked Yi-ran-na-li’s final stand. It was a rock so large that we couldn’t ignore it. The rock was a statement about our inability to live within the constraints and sensitivities of place. Despite the removal of the rock and the total reshaping of the cliff face to make it ‘safer’ we should not forget the cultural belief of the local Aboriginal people that this place was to be feared and respected.
The cliff speaks to us with a wisdom that is thousands of years old. McGill knew this cultural wisdom but we have failed to listen, and today we still have so much to learn about the many other aspects of an endemic sense of place and about the environment we live in.
It is not too late to show the respect that Yi-ran-na-li deserves.’
http://thelockupresidency.blogspot.com/2010/10/yi-…
I arrived in Newcastle, NSW yesterday afternoon after a 3 hour train journey from Sydney. The journey itself was pleasant enough, save for the moment a rather loud couple got on and upset the peacefulness of the carriage. She kept going on about how “it wasn’t against the law” in such a way as to suggest that whatever it was that ‘wasn’t against the law’ was in fact against the law and was, furthermore, something she had done. Her partner then proceeded to take off his t-shirt, flap it out as if shaking sand from a beach towel, before leaving it on the seat in front of him. There he sat in all his glory; no top, flabby, hairy and covered with tattoos. If this wasn’t bad enough (and believe me it was) he then proceeded to comment on the magazine he was reading. “You can see he’s a Beckham!” he kept on. “He’s just like his Dad.” Imbecile.
I moved upstairs and enjoyed a peaceful rest of the journey. Something I like about Australian train carriages is the way you can move the seat-backs, so that where you have two seats facing each other, you can flip the back of one so they become two seats facing the same way; very natty.
The journey to Newcastle takes one through some lovely scenery as well as that which isn’t quite as nice. Many of the towns we passed through seemed rather down at heel to say the very least, comprising a hotch-potch of painted sheds and shacks. Newcastle however, appears to be a very pleasant town which I will explore shortly.
The residency itself is at the Lock Up Cultural Centre which was once a police station. The Lock Up refers to the cells (including a very rare padded cell) and exercise yard which I will document later. My apartment and study is on the first floor and is very pleasant as can be seen in the photographs below:
http://thelockupresidency.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-…
On 28th October 1828, the Marquis of Hastings sailed into Port Jackson after a 4 month journey from Portsmouth, England. Aboard was Stephen Hedges, the brother of my great-great-great-grandfather, Richard. Today, 172 years later, I took the Manly Ferry to Circular Quay in Sydney, sailing into Port Jackson also on October 28th. Quite unplanned, it was an interesting coincidence. Of course, the manner of our arrivals couldn’t have been more different. Economy class cabins may offer less legroom than business, but 22 hours on a plane with meals and entertainment certainly beats 104 days in a stinking hold fettered in chains.
As we travelled out of Manly, I noticed the clouds, one of the few things which, even though they’re ephemeral, are nevertheless, consistent over centuries. Clouds have interested me in relation to the story of Stephen Hedges ever since I read the meteorological charts of William Rae, the ship’s surgeon. The immediate landscape may also have changed (to say the very least) but the sky and the water below are little different to all those years ago.
To reach the Manly Ferry I had to walk along the Manly Coastal Walk as well as a few suburban streets, and it was whilst walking down those streets that I realised how different the birds sounded. Certain things weren’t so different as regards comparison with England, but the sonic suburban landscape was quite alien; birds seemed to make noises like someone twiddling knobs on an old analogue synthesizer. That’s not to denigrate Australian birdsong – just an interesting difference.
Also, as I walked down the road, I found myself experiencing a part of my past – not a specific part, but a sense of what a part of my past was like. I have very strong sense impressions of the summer holidays when I was about 6 or 7 years old; dry sand in the sandpit, the pattern of dappled sunlight on the pavement leading to the shops and the smell of creosote on the fence. In this far-flung street on the other side of the world, I found myself walking within that sensation, as if somehow, I was physically experiencing a memory.
Strolling along the Manly Coastal Walk, I saw and heard the sea lapping at the rocks and on the beaches, and I thought – as I’ve often thought before – how that very sound has remained unchanged for millions of years; a sound which, given the way that it’s inspired and beguiled humankind for centuries, seems intimately bound up with man, rather than something which existed long before Man had even evolved. I thought too how this place had for so long evaded explorers and yet it had always been there in all its vastness – the past as a foreign country; there but out of sight and almost unreachable.
Like many people around the world I have seen countless images of Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and yet, despite their status, I felt a small shiver as we sailed up and saw them appear in the flesh. I have seen them, but i hadn’t until today experienced them. The iconic shape of the Opera House defined the ‘presentness’of that moment in time, a ‘presentness’ shared by all those aboard the Marquis of Hastings in October 1828.
Although everything looked entirely different, the ‘presentness’ of that lived moment in time was just the same. I was arriving in Port Jackson, carrying with me all that had gone before, just as everyone onboard had done. Today they are names on lists and often very little more – lines drawn in water. But by following the line of the Marquis of Hastings and drawing our own, we come a little closer to making the men more than just names. They cease to be outlines, and instead become like countries.
http://thelockupresidency.blogspot.com/2010/10/arr…
On Monday 28th January 1828, a sawyer by the name of Richard Burgess was travelling from Abingdon to Oxford with a cartload of bone for sale in town. On the road to Oxford, Burgess met with three men; Stephen Hedges – a young Abingdon man in his late teens, Henry Stockwell, originally from Aberdeen and a few years older than Hedges, and a man called John Harper. Hedges – described later by Stockwell as the ‘captain’ as regards the events about to follow – asked Burgess if he was going to Oxford and whether he’d carry a parcel for them. Burgess agreed, at which point Harper left the group, while Hedges and Stockwell continued on towards Oxford with the cart.
On the Oxford Road, near the lodge of what was then Radley House, Burgess was asked to stop. At first Burgess refused, but relented, stopping as he said later for about five minutes. At that time the house was owned by Sir George Bowyer (who in 1815 had been forced to sell its contents to help his struggling finances) and rented from him by a Mr. Benjamin Kent. When Harper arrived back on the scene with a bag, the three men went off into the gardens.
After five minutes the men returned carrying the bag which Burgess described as being very heavy. What was in the bag, Burgess didn’t know, but given that Stockwell was carrying a piece of lead on his shoulder, it must have been obvious.
On the way into Oxford, the men – still travelling with Burgess – met a Charles Jones whereupon, according to Burgess, they engaged in conversation. Burgess went on into Oxford, to Mr. Round’s wharf and near the gates set down the lead and delivered his cargo of bone for weighing. Half an hour later, Stockwell and Jones reappeared and put the lead back on the cart. Burgess asked him where they were going to take it, to which he was told to follow Jones.
Burgess followed Jones up the ‘City Road’ and near the Castle met with Hedges and Harper. They turned back through Butcher Row to the place where the lead was to be delivered, and here, for his trouble Burgess was paid sixpence.
The next day, on Tuesday 29th January, James Smith, servant to Benjamin Kent, discovered three ‘hips’ of the larder roof had been stripped of their lead. Two weeks later, on Wednesday, 13th February, Stephen Hedges appeared in Abingdon before the mayor T. Knight Esq. on suspicion of stealing lead from an outhouse belonging to B. Morland Esq. (I’m assuming here that B Morland and B. Kent are in fact the same person). He was fully committed to the Bridewell whereas Stockwell and Harper were, at that point, still on the run.
Justice however soon caught up with them, and together with Hedges they were tried at the Berkshire Easter Sessions on Tuesday, 15th April. Stephen Hedges and Henry Stockwell were found guilty of stealing 154 lbs of lead. The sentence passed was transportation for a period of 7 years. The report in Jackson’s Oxford Journal makes no mention of Harper’s fate. Charles Jones was acquitted.
Having been convicted and sentenced, Hedges and Stockwell were taken to Portsmouth, and on Monday 28th April, received aboard the prison hulk York.
The system of prison hulks had been established by an act of Parliament in 1776 (following the declaration of American Independence which meant the loss of penal colonies there) to ease overcrowding in British prisons. Old warships moored on the Thames and those in other ports, were converted into prisons, and despite the terrible conditions suffered by the prisoners within, the system remained in place for another 80 years.
For more, please visit: http://nicholashedges.blogspot.com/2010/10/road-to…
