The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [72]
March’s days began to shorten and confused the Scottish transport, unaccustomed to seasons that fell opposite to the ones she had always known. Early autumn had arrived in the Southern Hemisphere, condensing a thick layer of dew over the complex and delivering a chilling wind down the valley. As the days blurred one into another, the Goosedubbs Street girl began to look forward to the warmth of the Female Factory’s ox-head soup. Dunking the brown bread up and down to soften the crust, she leaned on her elbow and held up her chin. The broth, reheated from the noon meal, tasted surprisingly good. Following the overseer appointed for her new group of twelve, Agnes sat on a hard chapel pew through another interminable sermon by the lisping and hissing Reverend Bedford. Back in the sleeping room, she settled into her hammock and pulled a thin blanket up around her chin. She tucked her legs in a fetal position trying to warm herself. Would she ever see Janet again?
It seemed like she had just closed her eyes when Agnes heard the ringing of the muster bell at six A.M., providing an extra half hour for sleep because of the autumn schedule. On her feet in the washing yard from sunrise until sunset, Agnes labored three months in Crime Class according to its rules and regulations. Back in the British Isles, King William IV had died on June 20, 1837, and Queen Victoria ascended the throne. Word of the colony’s new queen did not reach Hobart Town until late October, the middle of spring in Van Diemen’s Land.
While Victoria became accustomed to her new throne, Agnes found herself in a cart riding away from Hobart and into the bush. In late June, Mr. Hutchinson decided to send the troublesome #253 out to Mr. Parker’s farm, ordering that she was “not to be assigned to a town again.”36 Her red-haired friend was not faring much better. On August 12, 1837, a Mrs. Ray brought Janet before the magistrate for “disobedience of orders.” After serving her sentence of three days in solitary confinement, on only bread and water, the eighteen-year-old maid was retrieved by her mistress.
Agnes’s second assignment proved very rustic. While the eighteen-year-old Queen Victoria attended sumptuous state banquets, the grey-eyed Scot dined on what she deemed vermin. Her master called it kangaroo. The “roo” meat tasted gamy and tough, and she had to skin it before roasting. Cooking and cleaning, however, were the least of her worries. Never-ending wood chopping required her to brush away webs built by a wild assortment of spiders colored in red, green, and silver. At least their brilliant markings made them easy to spot. Lizards and frogs, on the other hand, blended into the forest and startled her every time she turned around. And the bloody serpents drove her mad.
Agnes had been warned about the poisonous snakes that killed horses, cattle, and sheep.37 She found the hissing creatures coiled inside the cupboard, under the dining table, and inside the outhouse she was required to clean. Her disgust for reptiles was probably the only passion the Scottish rebel shared with the governor’s wife. In her quest to civilize Van Diemen’s Land, Lady Jane Franklin had offered a reward of one shilling for every snake killed. Over the course of a year, she soon discovered that the fourteen thousand bounties she paid made little impact on the quickly reproducing snake population.
Out in the pastoral rolling hills, Agnes lost track of days except for the monthly wagon ride into Hobart Town to attend Sunday services. She turned seventeen on September 11, 1837, with neither notice nor celebration. The grey-eyed girl had no privacy and rarely a day off. People made fun of her short hair and her accent. Lugging the mistress’s chamber pots into the woods to be emptied, battling snakes, and fighting off loneliness, all of it was more than Agnes could tolerate. Once again, she walked