LOST PORT OF PEARL SHELL

Evening Star, Issue 23094, 21 October 1938, Page 11

LOST PORT OF PEARL SHELL

THE TRAGEDY Of ESSINGTON RUINS IN THE JUNGLE Less than 100 miles from Darwin, on the rim of translucent tropic seas across Van Diemen’s Gulf, lies all that is left of Port Essington—a few gravestones under the banyan trees, the ruins of a church and a bakehouse, and the curve of an old stone pier (writes E. Hill in the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald’). . , , One of the finest harbours in . the world, no ships call there save the little northern freighter Maroubra, that might meet a buffalo-hunter by appointment once in two years or so, pick up his hides from native canoes, and carry them into Darwin.. The jungle has taken back its own. A hundred years ago three ships sailed out of Port Jackson Heads to found a settlement in the north—one of the most heroic and disastrous in all Australia’s history. From Plymouth via Teneriffo and Rio. they were H.M.S. Alligator, under Captain Gordon Bremer; H.M.S. Britomart, under Owen Stanley; and the Orontes, a store-ship —her last voyage, for she broke her hack on the reefs at journey’s end. Aboard as passengers, pilgrim fathers of a forlorn hope, was a party of marines, with a few dauntless English women, officers’ wives. Gordon Bremer had seen Port Essington 13 years before. Phillip Parker King discovered the place, ami rapturously reported the harbour—one of those that might “ shelter a navy,” and never do. Sir Torn Stamford Raffles, of the East Tndia Company, promptly visioned another Singapore, He sent King a letter, transcribed into Malay so that, in case of mishap,, a foreigner would not guess its significance, suggesting immediate settlement there in the interests of Great Britain. Accordingly in 1825 Bremer had brought up 115 troops and convicts from Sydney. They could find no fresh water, and, after planting a bottle with documents and coins at Record Point, sailed on to Melville Island, to be routed by the blacks. A second settlement at Raffles Bay had died of inanition, and it may be that Gordon Bremer was not as sanguine ns he seemed. However, his task was but to deliver the settlers. UNDER THE TAMARINDS. The electric storms of October breaking above them—a flicker, of lightning all night through, steaming humidity by day—thev sailed 19 miles up the harbour and anchored in a glorious land-locked mirror of calm waters. Tall and duskv tamarinds and light green coconuts, planted there by tb« Molars in centuries of bench-combing, lent languorous grace to the scene. The Malays had made this their heademarters in the monsoon . season. They called it T.imboo Moutiara, “Port of Pearlshell.”

Three thousand miles either way from their fellow white men on the coasts of New Holland, the marines began to build a little town. The. Limbakaraja and Bijenelumbo blacks welcomed them as another brand of “ mulwadies ” (Malays), and the bowerbirds mimicked the rattle of their musketry. No convict colony was this, as the earlier settlements in the north had been. With dukes and admirals its godfathers, Port Essington was to be, first, a naval and military stronghold on the route from India, a possession of Great Britain nine points of the law; second, a haven for shipwrecked crews; and third, a trading station, selling Birmingham to the Malays in exchange for their garnered wealth of trepang and pearls. “Persons of respectability had been invited to buy “ town allotments ” within a mile of the pier, suburban allotments within five miles, The irony of these suburbs few Australians have seen. They called the little citadel Victoria in honour of the schoolgirl who had just been crowned Queen of England. A later compliment had better luck. Their duty done, Gordon Bremer and H.M.S. Alligator sailed away, leaving the Britomart as navy and mercantile marine, and Captain John Macarthur, R.N., as Government Resident—he must not bo confused _ with his celebrated namesake whose virtues are writ in wool. Out in the screw-palm scrub, the wild blacks stealing < their axes, the settlers were clearing “ tracts of meadowland ” and planting them up with plantains, and rice, and maize, and sugar-cane, and bread-fruit, and water-melons. Everything grew with such gusto that the plantations walked off through the bush, only to wither away in the long, long “ dry.” Never, tireless, the first year was happy and hopeful. Commander Stokes called in the Beagle, surveying the coasts, and when he returned with the good news of his discovery of the Adelaide Rivqr and its promising agricultural lands, he found H.M.S. Pelorus in the harbour. A GALA NIGHT. To celebrate the influx of visitors, Captain Owen Stanley staged a play. ‘ Victoria Theatre, Essington,’ announced a sail-cloth poster draped on the workshop. The scenery was painted with corroboree ochre borrowed from the blacks, the act drop was an old ensign from the Britomart. A humor, ons chronicler tells us that the play was taken from a tattered sailor’s volume that had been to the Arctic Circle in a whaler, picked up by its owner on Tower Hill. The garrison men were the actors. A diverting close-up is given us of the heroine sweating and smoking when the curtain was drawn unexpectedly, and sea boots underneath frilly Kate Greenaway frocks.

That was a gala night in Victoria, one of the very, very few, for with the ships all joy of life departed. In isolation and fever, the settlers fretted and fought. Sixteen miles from the open sea, there was little breeze to clear away the miasma of the swamps and the rank lagoons. The rain came through the roofs, the jungle creepers and all their insects rambled the rafters. The Malays were apparently _ frightened away, for few praus came in to trade, but the white ants kept the garrison busy—the only war the north has ever known. A shipwrecked crew was at last blown in, in 1843, and it was the population of Essington _ that gave thanks to God for the sight of new faces. In desperation the Imperial Government issued an invitation to Hindus, and Chinese, and Burmese to join the settlers as agricultural labourers and fishermen, but even to these Port Essington made no appeal. When Leichhardt came in 1845, he called it “ civilisation,” and was much heartened at the prospects and progress, but this, perhaps, was merely a matter of comparison. His overland trail had been hard, and only the bush traveller knows the comfort, at long last, of a chair. When the garrison was relieved that year, 27 out of 63 men were invalided home or dead. That dwindling graveyard of the tangled jungle even yet tells its stories. Dr John Clarke, surgeon, is buried there, and a Mrs Lambrick, and her two children, and Father Angelo Confa. lionere, Italian priest, first raissioncr to the north. There are many others of which time and " the wet ” have obliterated the traces, and others still at Coral Bay, that was to have been a seaside resort, a respite from flies and stagnation down at the harbour gates. There lies the assistant surgeon, Tilston a tower of strength, and an unfailing friend to all, who tided over the trying years with scientific research. He made valuable museum collections, and notes on natural history and the native lore and language, and was the first chemist in Australia to distil cadjeput oil. LEAVE-TAKING. In 1848, M'Gillivray, the well-known naturalist of the Rattlesnake, painted a piteous picture of men and a few surviving women, sallow with fever, illfed, and ill-tempered, and ill-fated—-an impassioned appeal to the powers to give the place best. The next • year H.M.S. Meander went up to carry the exiles away. Fearing that a ready-made township might invite the invader, or bring about tribal war among the blacks, the Meander stood off-shore, and, _ in dramatic farewell, shelled poor little Victoria to atoms. There was a heartfelt cheer from those who had given eleven years of their lives to the lost

cause. Only the blacks wept as the gunboat sailed away. The Malays, and the jungle, and the white ants came back as soon as the coast was clear, and the grass fires and the “ breaking down rains ” or mon* soon annihilated the tracts of meadow* land. With Fort Dundas, and names Bay, and later Escape Cliffs, Port Essington faded from the Territory map. Nevertheless, these sad old mill* tarv settlements served their purpose. They paved the way, ultimately for Darwin, that after half a century of trial and error,, like Elijah, finds salvation from the air. . . ... . The last of the oldest inhabitants with memories of the settlement was Flash Poll, who in her youth was Mrs Macarthur’s nursemaid. Her claim to fame, when Darwin was founded, was that she remembered Gordon Bremer, and the Lord’s Prayer, and more of civilisation than was good for her. But Flash Poll has long gone the way of Victoria and its people, and all their travail, and hopes, and, fears are no more than history—a failure that for courage and endurance, shines brightly as success.