Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Preface
- Foreword By John Lucas
- Prologue
- To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- At Sea with Mrs Meredith
- What Mr Meredith asked the Ship's Owner about Dick
- Mrs Meredith looks about her
- Mrs Meredith and Hobart Culture
- Mrs Meredith and Hunting
- Flora and Fossil
- Mrs Meredith goes a-Gypsying and enjoys a Barbecue
- The Merediths attend a Ceremony
- Mrs Meredith speaks of the Good Old Days of Privatisation …
- You Rambling Boys of Liverpool
- The Call of the Genes
- Dear Mrs Meredith
- Dear Mr Simpson
- On the Right Side of the Earth
- Epilogue
- Melbourne Central Cemetery
- Select Bibliography
At Sea with Mrs Meredith
from To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Preface
- Foreword By John Lucas
- Prologue
- To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- At Sea with Mrs Meredith
- What Mr Meredith asked the Ship's Owner about Dick
- Mrs Meredith looks about her
- Mrs Meredith and Hobart Culture
- Mrs Meredith and Hunting
- Flora and Fossil
- Mrs Meredith goes a-Gypsying and enjoys a Barbecue
- The Merediths attend a Ceremony
- Mrs Meredith speaks of the Good Old Days of Privatisation …
- You Rambling Boys of Liverpool
- The Call of the Genes
- Dear Mrs Meredith
- Dear Mr Simpson
- On the Right Side of the Earth
- Epilogue
- Melbourne Central Cemetery
- Select Bibliography
Summary
Ten days at sea from Sydney down a coast
of bays and rocks (all which she sketched) to Hobarton;
squalls to brave, in as rotten carcass of a tub
as ever sullied Neptune's blue. Half-dreamy and half-dead,
(that slide-door to-and-fro-ing like a pendulum!)
she smiled at the miseries of heroines in books
a friend of Mr Meredith supplied for her;
then dirty water dripping on the bed; and once
a fork-tailed centipede fell on her cap
scarpering with railroad rapidity, more venomous,
she knew, than any scorpion's sting. Thank God
the dangerous reptile landed where it did,
not on the baby's head! The sooty beams in any case
were cluttered with woodlice; the ship
a leaking brewer's vat, half-rigged, in want
of top-gallants, studding sails: all which she braved
to gain a temperate clime, a life of health and strength
where the fair promise of infancy might have
prospect of being realised. Remembering
a nervous hubbub of voices, footsteps clattering, then
vehement flappings of a sail blown from its ropes,
another thunderously buffeted, rigging twanging, blocks
thudding about in aptly-named Storm Bay, cliffs sheer
to leeward, weather thick, squally, never-ending rain.
At length they dropped anchor where jingling chains
proved choicer music than any concerto she had ever heard.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Cutting the Clouds Towards , pp. 7Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999