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  The following day the three men reached Wattamolla (‘place near running water’), a small cove barely forty kilometres south of Sydney. They were now so exhausted they were reduced to ‘crawling’ on the sand. Nearly every day of their epic journey, Clark had dreamt of the moment when a passing ship would see the crooked line of walkers on the shore and end their ordeal in shouts of joy. Looking out to sea, there were surely many times when he had imagined a ship on the horizon, his eyes frequently deceiving him. But on this occasion the long-anticipated moment was not an illusion.

  Clark spotted a small fishing boat not far offshore. The mere sight of it returned all his energy at once. Feverish with excitement, the three men scampered ‘along the rocky shore’, frantically ‘waving’ and shouting to the boat, the sound of the sea drowning their cries. At first the fishermen didn’t notice them. But when one man finally saw them, the boat turned and came in. Barely able to comprehend the forsaken figures on the beach, the fishermen ‘picked up [the] three men, in a most wretched and worne out condition’. Clark’s moment of salvation had finally arrived.24

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  On 17 May 1797, William Clark, his Lascar servant and John Bennet were once again at sea. ‘Scarcely alive’, they gazed out from their tiny fishing boat onto the massive, vertical sandstone cliffs that skirt Sydney’s coastline, the large boulders strewn at their feet like the remains of an ancient fortress. Whether or not they had the strength to tell their story to the fishermen who saved them, these few precious hours would remain with them forever. Six months after leaving Calcutta, they were finally arriving at their destination.25

  Their astonishment and relief was tinged with despair and anxiety. They had lost twelve of their fellow walkers, while the fate of Thompson and the carpenter, as with Hamilton and the survivors on Preservation Island, was still unknown. As they entered Sydney Harbour and sailed past the lonely signal mast that stood on South Head, the satellite of British civilisation that had lured them halfway round the world in search of wealth slowly came into view. Rounding Bennelong Point and anchoring in Sydney Cove, the scene that greeted them was more like a makeshift English village than the capital of a southern empire: small fenced allotments creeping above the shoreline, a wattle and daub church with thatched roof and earthen floor, rudimentary convict cottages spreading over The Rocks, a ‘wooden bridge’ across an already polluted Tank Stream, and a solitary windmill standing on what would later become Observatory Hill. As soon as they stepped ashore, they were led immediately to Government House, the most prominent and impressive building in the colony, which stood little more than a hundred metres from the quay, close to where the corner of Bridge and Phillip streets stands today. There, ‘they were received [by Governor Hunter] with that humanity which their unparalleled sufferings could not but inspire’.26

  Sandstone coast, south of Sydney, 2013

  The arrival of the three castaways in Sydney created a minor sensation. It was not only Hunter who wanted to hear of their ordeal, but also anyone who was interested in the country beyond the colony’s boundaries. Within a matter of weeks, Clark had told his harrowing story to Hunter, Lieutenant Colonel David Collins, and the maritime explorers George Bass and Matthew Flinders. The insignificant settlement at ‘the extremity of the globe’ was effectively an island surrounded by hundreds of Aboriginal Countries, of which the bulk of the settler population was largely ignorant. For colonists who had little idea of what Collins nonchalantly termed the ‘unsettled part of New Holland’, the news that Clark and his party had walked through more than seven hundred kilometres of unknown country was staggering. Everyone in Sydney wanted to know the answer to one question: what was out there? Critical of Hunter’s failure to explore the surrounding country, the Scottish Martyr and Unitarian Minister Reverend Thomas Palmer, who was transported to the colony in 1794, could barely contain his excitement at the news of Clark’s arrival. ‘Of this wonderful country’, reflected Palmer, ‘we have little or no knowledge, except a small portion of the seacoast of a corner of it. With two armed ships and a schooner on purpose for the use of the colony, no discovery has been attempted. Such things are never thought of; and if a private adventurer undertakes them, he is discouraged. Chance however has done something’. Palmer, who craved intellectual stimulation and the trappings of society, felt the exile of life in Sydney keenly. For a cultured man who lamented that he had read ‘over and over’ his ‘little stock of books’ and who was intensely curious about both Aboriginal people and the country around him, Clark’s story confirmed his sanguine view of New Holland. Like Hunter, Palmer was excited by Clark’s assessment that the strong tidal currents to the north of the (Furneaux) ‘archipelago’ indicated the existence of a ‘navigable passage’ between the mainland and Van Diemen’s Land. If this were true, he wrote, ‘the passage to India would be very considerably shortened’. But most of all, he was struck by Clark’s glowing description of the country through which he had travelled.

  The country is described as totally different from this, very rich and fertile, abounding in pines and firs, of which there is not one here. In all the intercourse of whites with the uncorrupted natives of this country, they have found them most kind, humane and generous. Where the mate and supercargo were wrecked, no civilized Europeans could exceed them in kindness. They supplied them in abundance, and successive parties of fresh natives, equally kind, shewed them the way.27

  Only weeks after Clark’s arrival, the tale of his journey was already being adjusted around the edges to reflect the storyteller’s prejudices. Whereas Palmer spoke enthusiastically of the kindness of Aboriginal people, Hunter condemned the ‘savage barbarity of the natives’, while Matthew Flinders faithfully relayed Clark’s experience of ‘friendly’ Aborigines and ‘the hostility of others’, as did Collins, who described them as ‘frequently very kind, and at other times extremely savage’. Very quickly, the survivors’ story became an allegory for the colonists’ hopes and anxieties regarding the expansion of settlement. The telling of Clark’s ordeal could be used both to confirm the benign intentions of the ‘natives’ and to establish their ‘barbarity’. Unlike Palmer, Hunter insisted that all fourteen walkers who failed to reach Sydney had been ‘much annoy’d and wounded’ by Aboriginal people, despite the fact that he had no direct evidence to support the claim. The day after Clark arrived, Hunter sent one of the fishermen who had rescued the three survivors in a small whaleboat to search for Thompson and the carpenter. When the fisherman returned, he reported that ‘nothing could be discovered of those helpless people except a few trifling things they had with them, part of which being covered with blood, gave us reason to suppose they had been destroyed by the natives’. At least in the case of Thompson and the carpenter (as Clark told Collins), there was every chance that they had met their end due to the ‘morose, unfeeling disposition of the carpenter’, who insisted that because the Aborigines ‘were black fellows’, it was right to take their food ‘by force’. Clark was convinced that the carpenter’s arrogance and bloody-mindedness had cost both men’s lives. Rather than blame Aboriginal people, for whom he now held deep respect, he preferred to blame one of his own. Three months later, when Hunter sent George Bass and Clark in search of the coal that Clark had discovered during the final days of his journey, a Tharawal man led them through the bush to what he claimed were the skeletons of the two men. One skull was ‘much fractured’, from which Hunter hastily concluded that the men were ‘no doubt murdered by the natives’. However they met their death, for Clark to see Thompson’s skeleton was a gruesome reminder of how close he had come to meeting the same fate. Of the nine Lascars left behind at Moruya and the three others who had been unable to continue, nothing was heard again. No matter how many times Clark, his Lascar man-servant and Bennet told their story, they would always remain to some extent alone with their experience. For many of the colonists at Sydney Cove, the walkers’ journey was both beyond the bounds of settlement and beyond the bounds of comprehensi
on.28

  While Clark and his Lascar servant recuperated, Hunter busied himself arranging the despatch of two vessels to sail down to Preservation Island. John Bennet, who had already recovered, decided that he would join the rescue mission. On 30 May, the schooner Francis and the ‘decked longboat’ Eliza departed from Sydney.

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  If Thompson and Clark had struggled to sustain the physical effort of walking more than twenty kilometres every day, Hamilton had fought tenaciously to shield his crew and passengers from the elements. After the departure of the longboat from Preservation Island in February, the weather turned extremely ‘cold with almost constant gales and heavy rain’. In trying conditions yet again, Hamilton did his best to keep the remaining crew employed salvaging the last casks of rum from the Sydney Cove and ‘washing cargo cloths at the well’. Suffering from exposure, many of his men were unable to work. Hamilton’s sick list quickly increased to thirteen. Even the healthy Lascars were prevented from working more than two to three hours ‘in the middle of the day’ due to the severity of the weather. Hamilton’s provisions were also running low. Within a few weeks he was not able to ‘allow more than One Tea Cup of Rice per Diem for each Man’.29

  On 23 April, the weather ‘blew a perfect hurricane from the south, with much thunder, lightning, rain and extreme cold’, and continued unabated until 1 May. The survivors’ tents ‘were by this time in tatters’ and ‘every Lascar’ was ‘sick’. Unable to even keep a fire burning to ‘cook their pittance of rice’, Hamilton’s crew were dropping fast. Many complained of swelling all over their bodies, especially at their feet, likely symptoms of scurvy. That week, Hamilton buried three Lascars and one European passenger. The gale had finally finished off the Sydney Cove. The ship’s bottom was now ‘totally gone’, with the main and mizzenmasts ‘gone thro’ her’. Not one person was strong enough to attempt salvaging more cargo from the wreck. Instead, Hamilton gave the few Lascars who could still ‘move about’ the Sisyphean task of ‘rolling the spirit casks on logs of wood’ so as to prevent the ‘salt sand’ from ‘eating into the iron hoops’. ‘When that was done’, they dried the ‘cargo cloths’ and rice, and began building a rudimentary ‘house large enough to contain all hands in bad weather’. Building suggested permanence, but Hamilton had no choice. If they were struck by another storm of equal intensity, he knew that ‘inevitable death’ awaited them. Unlike Clark and Thompson, he had no Aboriginal guardian angels to rely on.30

  By the time Hunter had despatched the rescue vessels, Hamilton and his remaining crew had been waiting for assistance for nearly four months. The captain of the Sydney Cove was now the last European on the island, his Lascar crew having remained loyal to the end. There was no descent into Batavia-like carnage. Despite his increasing despair as winter arrived, every day dawned with the hope of rescue. Hamilton built at least one signal cairn and posted men on ‘Lookout Rock’. Every morning, he pondered the fate of Clark and Thompson and scanned the horizon with his telescope for the slightest sign of a ship out to sea. On clear days, when the cold air from the Antarctic brought a razor-sharp light, he could see the columns of smoke rising from the Aboriginal campfires on the Tasmanian mainland and even the snow-capped hills around Launceston. In his tiny, ‘4 oared’ jollyboat, he fought the strong east-west tides and explored Cape Barren and the neighbouring islands, identifying the safe sea lanes and charting the immediate area—making him the first person to suspect that ‘there is a strait through this part of the coast & that Van Diemen’s Land is an island’.31

  With the last of the cargo salvaged, Hamilton turned his mind to building a shelter and fully exploiting the island’s rich array of food sources. The longer they spent on the island, the less dependence they came to have on their rations of rice, which were becoming all but depleted. Fortunately, as time passed, the abundance of choice revealed itself: wallabies and wombats, fish and shellfish, snakes and frogs, Cape Barren geese, quail and ducks (at least, when the soaks on the island were full), limpets that clung to the brilliant orange, black and yellow lichen-covered rocks, supplemented by salt that could be scraped off the granite after the water had dried, and perhaps even succulents and saltbush. But the survivors’ most accessible food source was right in front of them, fighting for the same patch of ground on which they pitched their tents—the thick, oily smell from the rookery filling the air and the incessant din of the birds’ squawking keeping them awake at night. Every September on the equinox, more than eighteen million ‘mutton-birds’ (or short-tailed shearwaters) descend on Tasmania. They populate Preservation Island in their thousands, burrowing in the ground ‘like rabbits’ to make their nests, laying their eggs in late November (which hatch in mid-January) and leaving the island by the end of April. Each night, ‘a little after sunset’, the sky above the survivors’ tents turned ‘dark lead’ as the birds returned to their nests. Every step they took on the island filled in another of the birds’ burrows. Hamilton, who surely had knowledge of the migratory habits of shearwaters in Scotland, would have known that the birds would not be with them indefinitely. He needed to kill as many birds as possible before they departed, smoke them and store them in the shelter for the winter ahead. In the colourful words of a later visitor to the island, mutton-birds made ‘a nourishing sort of food when eaten with potatoes, to such constitutions as those who are inured to a life of hardiness’. By May, Hamilton had managed to erect a basic ‘hut’, with his ‘two hens’ and a handful of pigeons penned close by. The Lascars, having busied themselves killing and smoking the birds over the previous weeks, had amassed a reasonable supply of meat. With this vaguely agricultural set-up and his one remaining cow, Hamilton was modestly prepared for winter. But nothing could nullify the aching loneliness of waiting for assistance. As he intimated later to Hunter, there were many times when ‘he held no hope of being rescued’.32

  The rocky landscape of Preservation Island, close to where Hamilton set up the survivors’ campsite, 2013

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  On the morning of 8 June, everything changed. Hamilton sighted ‘a longboat to the west of the island’ and ‘immediately launched [his] jollyboat’ in pursuit. But to his ‘sorrow’, before he could approach the boat it had sailed completely ‘out of sight’. Undeterred, he returned to the island, ‘showed English colours’ and built a massive fire. Within a matter of hours he saw a schooner off the eastern shore but the sea was by then dangerously high and he could not risk taking the jollyboat out. Two days later, when the longboat again appeared ‘in sight’ he finally managed to reach her. As he hoisted himself aboard and greeted Captain Archibald Armstrong, Hamilton’s relief was overcome by his pressing need to know what had happened to Clark and Thompson and the rest of his longboat’s crew. There on the deck of the Eliza, in a few breathless minutes, Armstrong told Hamilton of the men’s 3-month ordeal, of how they had been ‘stranded in a violent Gale’ and forced to proceed ‘to the Colony by Land’, and how the ‘remainder of the boat’s crew had been left in the Woods unable to come further’, some of them ‘perishing for want’ and ‘some of them wounded by the Natives among which number was Mr. Clark having received a wound by a Spear thro’ both hands’ from which he was still recovering in Sydney. As Hamilton tried to digest the news that fourteen of the men he had sent to Sydney had died, Armstrong explained that the schooner he had sighted two days earlier was indeed the Francis, sent by Hunter to rescue him and to retrieve the cargo from the Sydney Cove. When the Francis arrived off Preservation Island the following morning, Hamilton was reunited with walk survivor John Bennet. Over the next two weeks, as the crew from the Francis and the Eliza assisted the able-bodied Lascars in loading as much of the salvaged cargo as possible, Hamilton listened to Bennet’s story of the longboat’s wreck and the crew’s 700-kilometre trek north along the coast. Measured against this experience, the story of Hamilton’s travails on the island paled by comparison. While they had moved through stretches of unknown country on foot, he ha
d merely dug in. His last days and nights on Preservation Island were spent trying to reconcile his elation and disappointment. He was alive and much of the cargo had been retrieved. But he had lost his ship, his first mate, and more than twenty men, and still he had not reached Sydney.33