Coffee, please, but what I really want is for you to give me some idea of the relevance of all this to me. It's very interesting but … '
You're right, I've let myself get off track. I understand you were in the army.'
A long time ago.'
Where, if I may ask?'
Here and there.'
And you were a boxer?'
Amateur.'
And you were in gaol?'
Again, a while back. Where is this heading?'
I need someone who's resourceful, discreet and experienced at dealing with the rougher elements in society.'
To do what?'
To find someone and persuade them to give something up for a fair price.'
There's no such thing as a fair price, Professor, there's-'
Henry.'
-only a matter of what it's worth to whoever's selling and whoever's buying.'
He drained his glass and beamed-the first full-blown emotional reaction I'd seen from him. That's splendid, worthy of some of my colleagues in the Business School. Very pithy. You said coffee. Long black?'
I nodded. He ordered two from the waiter, who cleared the table. He leaned forward as if wary about being overheard, although the space between the tables and the buzz of sound in the place made our conversation private.
There was another survivor,' he said.
2
Wakefield reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out a fat wallet and selected a card which he passed over to me as the long blacks arrived. The card had the university's embossed coat of arms and motto and carried his name and titles, including Director of the Center for Australian Historical Revision'.
I read the card, sipped the coffee. C-e-n-t-e-r?'
He shrugged. For the Americans. We have a fresh approach that appeals to our corporate supporters here and abroad. A determination to take an entirely new look at the major signposts in this country's history.'
The Dunbar's a major signpost?'
Perhaps not, but it offers a chance to put the centre on the map because I believe there was another survivor and a manuscript that offers a different version of events. If I can secure it, quite apart from its not insignificant monetary value, it'd lend credibility to the enterprise I've staked my career on. I make no bones about that. I was lucky to get this appointment and I'll only be able to hold it if I show results. The backers, shall we call them, are impatient people.'
You need a win?'
I do. And I need your help.'
It was a tricky moment. I hoped he wasn't one of those revisionists who wanted to say that only a few Aborigines were killed on the frontiers, that the White Australia policy never existed and that Australia was in danger of German invasion in 1914. But my newly revived agency wasn't doing too well in a year of local disasters like the Christchurch earthquake, the floods and the demolition of the ALP in the recent state election, and I couldn't afford to turn down work from someone with a wallet that size. I had office rent and a six-figure mortgage to cover. And, as a sucker for Sydney history, I found the story interesting.
I'm listening, Henry,' I said.
He finished his coffee. The wallet was still on the table and he took out a credit card. Let's set the scene,' he said, a post-prandial stroll to the cemetery.'
It was late in March, a month when Sydney can decide it's time for winter to take a grip or, like that day, can bring on spring early. We joined the young and the old, the freaks and the suits, walking along King Street past the boutiques and eateries and turned down Church Street.
A bit like Lower Manhattan,' Wakefield said as he stepped over a milk crate.
Spent a bit of time there, have you?'
Mmm. Some.'
At Columbia?'
He glanced sharply at me. No, I was upstate mostly.'
We reached the church grounds and crunched down the path past the Moreton Bay figs, shrubs and flowers I couldn't identify, and weathered headstones.
This is all in a disgraceful state,' Wakefield said.
I don't know, it's got an authentic feel, sort of restful, as if no one's bothering them and never will.'
He grunted. The church was quiet; we left the path and moved into the graveyard area proper where the roots of the trees pushed up and threatened to trip you and the grass grew in tussocks around the headstones and fenced graves. I had only the vaguest memory of where the monument was but Wakefield went straight to where it stood, white and imposing, inside a rusted iron fence, in pride of place in the middle of a recess in the east wall of the cemetery.
The dark lettering on the monument had suffered some attrition at the edges but most of it had remained clear enough: WITHIN THIS TOMB WERE DEPOSITED BY DIRECTION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF NEW SOUTH WALES SUCH REMAINS AS COULD BE DISCOVERED OF THE PASSENGERS AND CREW WHO PERISHED IN THE SHIPS DUNBAR' AND CATHERINE'. THE FORMER OF WHICH WAS DRIVEN ASHORE AND FOUNDERED WHEN APPROACHING THE ENTRANCE TO PORT JACKSON ON THE NIGHT OF THE 20TH OF AUGUST THE LATTER ON ENTERING THIS PORT ON THE MORNING OF THE 24TH OF OCTOBER.
AD 1857 was engraved at the base of the tomb.
A mass grave is a sad thing, it seems to me, but if Wakefield had entertained such feelings he'd got over them.
Quite a few of the victims, those they could identify, are buried here,' he said, and a couple in this spot, but you'd be hard put to read the headstones now, apart from that one.'
He pointed to a well-preserved white headstone for John Steane, a naval officer who'd lost his life when the Dunbar went down.
A hundred and fifty-odd years is a long time,' I said.
Wakefield took care not to brush against the fence. You're thinking it's a long time-lapse to be tracking something down.'
I shrugged. It's what, five generations?'
Fewer in this case; four in fact. It's a great-grandson of the survivor I'm interested in. That's not a very long stretch as these things go. Some of the people claiming Aboriginal or convict ancestry have to push back a lot further than that.'
I know,' I said. My sister found a convict ancestor for us way back. She was a London prostitute.'
Colourful,' Wakefield said, moving away from the monument. As you may or may not know, we academics get our postgraduate students to do some of our research. They earn their degrees and go on to bigger and better things and
You write your books. I've heard of it.'
We moved between the headstones back to the path.
You object?'
No. I suppose it's subject to abuse, but what isn't?'
Just so. I was able to discover a reliable list of the passengers aboard the Dunbar. That took time and effort, let me tell you. There were many uncertainties. I set some students to tracing descendants of the victims-direct descendants. One of them found a record of a child born to one of the passengers in 1883. You see the implication of that date?'
Yeah, if it's not a clerical error.'
It isn't. You're interested?'
Maybe.'
Fair enough. What I propose is this-I show you the fruits of my research so far, on an understanding of complete confidentiality, and the ... direction in which it's heading and, if you're still interested, we come to an arrangement.'
I thought he might be going to invite me back to the university but he didn't. When I said I was in the car park behind the supermarket we stopped there and shook hands. He asked for my card and I gave it to him. He said he'd email me a document and that I should read it and get back to him with my thoughts. I thanked him for the lunch and watched him stride away-straight-backed, head up, one of the winners.
Or was he? I decided I had a fair bit of checking to do on him, on the university and on the Dunbar before I took this assignment. It might amount to no more than a good, a very good, lunch.
I went to my office in Pyrmont, paid a few bills, wrote the dates due on a couple of others and placed them where they'd stare at me. The office has no views to speak of, which is how I like it. My previous offices, in Darlinghurst and Newtown, carried a lot of memories, of clients good and bad, encounters pleasant and unpleasant, so that sometimes I could sit there reliving the experiences. A bad habit and it didn't operate here where I hadn't been very long and the memories were too recent to dwell upon.
I Googled the Dunbar and was soon immersed in details of the ship and its unhappy fate. While the whole episode didn't have the dimensions of the Titanic disaster, the ship was luxurious for its time, with some very smart cabins, and it had been custom-built as a fast ship to compete with American vessels in the era of the gold rushes. The crew was said to be first class and the captain, James Green, was a veteran of eight previous voyages to Sydney.
Wakefield's uncharitable account of Green's navigational error was more or less accurate. The Dunbar slammed broadside into the cliffs between the Gap and the Macquarie Lighthouse, which wasn't completely effective in bad weather, and her solid construction of British oak and Indian teak couldn't save her.
I read through the accounts of the inquiries and the exoneration of Green that attributed the tragedy to the extreme weather, and James Johnson's testimony that seemed to have, understandably, a shell-shocked quality to it. Survivors carry a burden of guilt no matter how innocent they are, and Johnson was defensive and anxious to withdraw from the limelight. He later distinguished himself by brave actions in connection with another wrecked vessel and, interestingly, accounts of this carried a flavour of rehabilitation, as if the poor bugger had lived something down. I'd been there.
I printed out a few pages and sat back from this pretty superficial research thinking how unfair history could be. I had to admit to being very interested, even intrigued. Wakefield's claim to be able to track another survivor and another account of events was as compelling as a treasure island map.