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
Mrs Meredith speaks of the Good Old Days of Privatisation …
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
The minute that they landed us
Upon that dreadful shore,
The planters they inspected us,
Full twenty score and more.
They led us round like horses
And sold us out of hand
And yoked us to the plough my boys
To ploughVan Diemen's Land.
… when idle, unprincipled outcasts
were assignable, once set ashore,
to private service: ploughmen,
shepherds, shearers, reapers,
butchers, gardeners, masons,
shoe-makers, house-servants,
being persons of like class,
required to separate
from their former partners in crime
as the first great step
toward reformation,
huts to live in, doubtless more
commodious than the ones they left
back home, with as much fuel
as they chose to cut themselves,
abundant rations of food, allowances
of clothing, bedding, boots,
and the chance to show
their latent goodness, slough off
notorious idleness, become industrious,
trustworthy servants, earn
tickets-of-leave so they might
hire themselves elsewhere
for wages. So manifest
are this system's advantages that settlers
prefer ticket-of-leave men,
who, sentence served,
gain conditional pardon,
free range of all
the Australian colonies. Some achieve
free pardons in the end!
How could anyone utter such words
as ‘white slavery’ or
other opprobrious epithets?
You see how progressive, how
proven the system was!
So when in that perfidious year
of ’42, they changed assignment
to probation, made
hard-labour gangs do public works,
the good was all undone:
man naturally willing and diligent
lapsed into apathetic drones.
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- Cutting the Clouds Towards , pp. 15 - 16Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999