Settlers and Convicts: Or, Recollections of Sixteen Years' Labour in the Australian Backwoods

by Alexander Harris, Manning Clark (Foreword)

Mystery surrounds the true identity of the author of this account of New South Wales in the 1820s and 1830s, but many believe it was Alexander Harris. The author had come to Sydney saying it 'was in the hope of bettering my condition', and he went on to observe colonial society and its doings with a keen eye and an expressive pen.
A sense of freshness, adventure and wonder at the unknown in a strange new land is apparent on every page. He is awed by the splendours of the ancient Australian cedar forests of the south coast of New South Wales. He describes the brutality, frequency and injustice of the floggings which were still part of the convict system. He decries the corruption and tyranny of the magistrates and police. He is impressed by the warmth and equality of hospitality in the rough bush huts.
Aborigines and bushrangers, cattle duffers and sly grog dealers, prostitutes and settlers' wives - all are here in an account sparkling with the vitality of fascinating experience in a raw, rough-and-tumble society.
Manning Clark's Foreword recounts the detective-like search for the identity of the author and considers what kind of a man Alexander Harris must have been and why he wrote this account.

Genres: History, Australia, Nonfiction

258 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1847

About the author

Died in Capetown (ON), Canada. See also Australian Dictionary of Biography

Reviews

[Henri Moreaux]

Settlers and Convicts is the biography of a free settler who came to the colony of New South Wales (Australia) in c1840. It follows his sixteen years in the colony from arrival to farming to woodcutting to house building and shop keeping with a couple of near death experiences thrown into the mix.

I'd highly recommend reading a copy that comes with the CMH Clark foreword, such as the 1953 Melbourne University Press edition, as the foreword gives a detailed account of the historical controversy surrounding the book. Namely whilst the events are historically accurate the book was originally written anonymously and the person who claimed to be the writer in 1852, namely Alexander Harris, is unable to be confirmed as having been in the colony during the time period. (There's a bit more, but if interested you can just read the book & foreword!)

All in all, whether true biography/travelogue or compiled factual events narrated as a travelogue it is still an interesting read as the writer travels throughout colonial New South Wales. As someone who has lived in/lives in regions where the events of the book take place it is hard to imagine things back as they were all those years ago. The descriptions of the journey are detailed enough that one is able to follow it on a map, or as a local resident mentally trace it along the now modern roads.

Great book, interesting history, interesting controversy about the book itself.

[Dr G]

I have owned a copy of Settlers and Convicts: Recollections of Sixteen Years’ Labour in the Australian Backwoods by an Emigrant Mechanic for decades now, but have never had the impulse to read it. Recently I was reading some histories of New South Wales and this book was cited, so I took the plunge at long last. Mine is a rather battered version of the 1953 edition with a foreword by the late Professor Manning Clark, in which, on the basis of extensive archival searches, he cast doubt on the authorship of Alexander Harris, or even the existence of Alexander Harris, and disputed the accuracy of the work: “He won every encounter with the police, with convicts, with rival settlers. He won in every conversation”. It subsequently transpired that Clark’s scepticism found its way into the hands of a Canadian grandson of Harris who provided documentation confirming his existence and his authorship, while noting that some other details were inaccurate. (The inaccuracies and inconsistencies do make it difficult to decide whether to address the writing as being by Harris, autobiographer, or as being by the first person narrator of an imaginative but essentially factual account.) I must say that, when I read Clark’s foreword, I was mildly amused with the statement, “He was, to say the least, skilled in ‘one-upmanship.’” Coming from Professor Clark, this seemed a bit rich!
I do, however, sympathize with Clark. It seems that the only documentation ever subsequently discovered to attest to Alexander Harris’s presence in New South Wales was his signature on a petition arguing for the commutation of the death sentence applied to the perpetrators of the Myall Creek Massacre. Since he wrote vehemently against this sentence there seems little doubt this is the same man. The complete absence of any other documentation is puzzling. There is an irony in the fact that it was because the Harris grandson happened to read of Clark’s incredulity that he came forward with an explanation.
I would concur with Clark that “this work is one of the best descriptions we have of the way of life and the values of those men who, by the labour of their hands, built the colony of New South Wales.” It is also eminently readable. To me, Settlers and Convicts seems vastly more plausible than the “autobiography” later written by Harris ( Religio Christi subsequently published as The Secrets of Alexander Harris).
I think one of the reasons I enjoyed Settlers and Convicts is that it is a somewhat picaresque work, in which the narrator travels about various areas of the New South Wales colony, providing descriptions of the landscape, of the effect of the weather, and of the people he encounters or observes.
His descriptions of the country are evocative: “The spot where we had pitched our tent was a small grassy forest on the hill side; and everywhere around it, down below in the endless ravines, and up above towards the insurmountable heights of the range, was thick tangled brush growing amidst lofty trees, so thick set that beneath them was perpetual shadow, or rather something more gloomy still. The ground was covered with decaying leaves and old water-logged windfall trees, so rotten that the foot could break its way deep into the substance of that gnarled wood which at one time would have stopped a cannon-ball. Wherever you went, creeks of crystal ice-like water, plunging down the mountain side each in its stony bed, kept up a murmur day and night; never changing save when increased by rains into the roar of a torrent.” Equally evocative is his description of the difficulty of living during such a torrent. The hut “was no more than a few sheets of the bark that we had stripped off our black butts, leaned together, top to top, tent like, with one end stopped by another sheet. The rain came through the roof of the hut as if we had been making arrangements in its favour; and no sooner had we stopped it there than, coming down the hill, it began to run through the bottom of the hut like a mill-stream; and as we had, in our confidence of fine weather, laid our beds on the ground, they got thoroughly soaked. Scarcely had we in the pouring rain dug a trench around the back of our hut, to turn the water, when we found the rain had put the fire out”.
Harris does not intrude a great deal into his narrative, apart from being the vehicle for the travelogue, and apart from his periodic venture into judgment on what he observes or experiences. These judgments are, themselves, interesting as being, one assumes, representative of the thinking of many people of the time: we do not get the impression that the narrator is isolated in his point of view.
There are many things that elicit a response from him.
He is generally unimpressed by the plebeians of Sydney; he writes of the Rocks: “Congregated on the steep ridge above the King’s wharf all the worst characters of this penal colony – the felon, whose ill-directed punishment has only rendered him more obdurate, cunning, and slothful; the prostitute, who (if such a thing can be) had sunk yet lower; the fence , watching for a livelihood by plundering the plunderer; many who, without great positive vices, a sort of brute like ignorance and uncouthness had rendered it impossible for more orderly and rational society to amalgamate with itself”. He is, in the time-honoured manner of recently-reformed evangelists, concerned by the effects of gambling (“men who one day had a couple of hundred pounds and the next no dinner.”) and drinking (“Surely of all men living the drunkard is the most unfortunate. Others have to contend against the inimical forces around them, but he superadds to this that he is perpetually inimical to himself.”). He laments the impact of both vices on others; one man whose life was in ruins “had a wife and five young children, and it was quite shocking to see the shy, downcast looks with which they received this; even the baby in arms seemed infected with the blank, hopeless look of the family.”
So there is a certain patrician element to that side of his commentary. Nevertheless, he is horrified by the flogging that is both ubiquitous and, he insists, counter-productive: “…flogging in this country is such a common thing that nobody thinks anything of it. I have seen young children practising on a tree, as children in England play horses.” He provides explicit description (possibly somewhat exaggerated?) of some instances: “I had to go past the triangles, where they had been flogging incessantly for hours. I saw a man walk across the yard with the blood that had run from his lacerated flesh squashing out of his shoes at every step he took. A dog was licking the blood off the triangles, and the ants were carrying away great pieces of human flesh that the lash had scattered about the ground. The scourger’s foot had worn a deep hole in the ground by the violence with which he whirled himself around on it to strike the quivering and whealed back, out of which stuck the sinews, white, ragged, and swollen.” He suggests there is a level of sadistic hatred in its administration: “The fact is that officers, and especially young officers, when made magistrates, get irritated at the hardihood of a class of men whom they have made up their minds to despise; and the cat being a soldier’s natural revenge, they fly to it directly.” And he tells of corrupt magistrates who flog men until they confess to a crime they could not have committed.
Corrupt magistrates and police feature in many of his anecdotes. At one point the narrator was detained and when he showed his papers to prove he was a free settler, it was argued that they were forged; he was then required to walk, hands bound, tied behind the constable’s horse until everything could be checked – when all was found to be in order: “It remained in my memory only, as one of the many proofs I have met with how exceedingly unfit a military education renders even gentlemen for posts of judicial trust; and how particularly so for any office where laws of great latitude of interpretation are to be administered. But when the governors of colonies are military men, how can anything else be expected than that they will extend their own leaven through the whole lump, wherever there is a delegate to be empowered or a salary to be absorbed.” The judicial system is similarly disparaged: “There is scarcely one case out of ten but would be decided against the captors in a civil suit. But then the injured is almost invariably a poor labouring man, and generally far from legal advice. Besides which, it has really become such an established custom of the colony, that men do not even think about going to law, be the case as gross as it may.”
He suggests that the general attitude to the law was essentially amoral. He describes encountering a young Australian with his herd which he increased by "gully-raking", scouring the gullies and taking any unbranded cattle he found, branding it as his. "We however gave him to understand that we did not deal in his way; but that at the same time we did not feel it concerned us how he chose to act: 'that live and let live' was our principle; and that as long as our own cattle were safe we should not trouble ourselves about other people's. And, indeed this is the sort of tacit understanding that every stockholder in New South Wales has to adopt. He himself claims to have escaped custody a couple of times when, he writes, he knew he had done no wrong. Try telling that to the judge these days!
The narrator is appreciative of the outlook of many of the ordinary people he encounters. One man offers him some work: “The offer was made in that free-hearted way that so agreeably distinguishes the Australian in social life….With my new mate I spent a very pleasant day in Sydney. I found him, as all the young Australians are, shrewd and good-natured.” He modifies this slightly: “There are very few Australians that one can dislike. A general manly spirit and fairness of feeling characterize all except a few bullies of the very lowest class, and a few pampered half idiots of the very highest.”
One of the most interesting aspects for me was Harris's commentary on aborigines. He does not make much reference to individual personal interactions with aborigines, so we can probably infer that he did not have many, perhaps not even any. He was greatly angered by the decision to execute those Europeans involved in the Myall Creek massacre. We know that he signed that petition opposing the decision. However, his attitude regarding this matter does not appear to have resulted from animosity towards the Aborigines. Rather, he disagreed vehemently with the government's policy of prioritising aboriginal welfare. He argued that the aborigines were interpreting this as meaning that they could attack property or lives with impunity, and the settlers were at a severe disadvantage because they could not carry out reprisals. And he warned that he had heard that, at remote stations, when use of firearms against aborigines was prohibited, men had resorted to poisoning their food.
Some of Harris’s commentary can be pretty confronting in the twenty-first century, but it should be remembered that, at the time he was writing, these ideas would not have seemed so barbaric: “The Blacks should be kindly treated, as they are of great service in stripping bark, showing new runs, tracking lost bullocks and sheep, &c. &c.; moreover kind treatment will be found the great secret of restraining their tendency to furtive and vindictive depredations. At the same time, with kindness must be mingled a manifestation of the most perfect fearlessness, but it should not be mere parade and bravado. They are very quick at detecting the true feeling that dictates an action. Arms should always be ready, and securely kept, and they should know it too.” This is paternalistic but, at the same time, shows some respect. He sees the relationship with the aborigines as being transactional, but from a point of superiority.
In the end, there is an unbiased but self-interested pragmatism to his attitude: “The matter fell into its true and old form, from which it should never have been disturbed: a simple question of intimidation (nothing more) between the musket and the spear. And every black’s common sense solves this question so readily and correctly and uniformly, that the simple consciousness of its being the true and only question is sufficient at any time to bring them into a state of submission. And if we want more than that, if we want a league of peace on equal grounds, really there is no road to it but that we give up their land and forsake their country: for this and this only is the true source of aggravation. It is the white man at large, not the individual, upon whom their enmity is pointed. The miserable rebuff which our philanthropy has met with is only a new enforcement of the old axiom – that men should be just before they are generous. The blacks cannot be conciliated unless by giving up the country. If they are to be intimidated, it must be by something that is more prompt and effective than their own spear, and less dilatory than our law.

He concludes with a rebuke of attempts to evangelise: “there seems something so intrinsically absurd in the nation which is robbing another of its land and its means of subsistence soliciting that other to adopt its religion, that the yet more revolting concomitant of the horrible scourgings which are inflicted on our prisoners is scarcely needed to make the aborigines despise and revolt from us”.
This is not, by any means, a high quality piece of writing. There is the occasional felicity: “On blazed the merry fire made up for the night; loud snored those who were so disposed; and louder grumbled ever and anon those who were not”. There is, by contrast, all too much of the nineteenth century sentimental bilge: “I have often thought I should like to ask the better portion of society, especially the female sex, whether they ever considered the frightful retribution that attends their neglect of this miserable class of women. The betrayed, driven from society, has become the betrayer from the sheer necessities of hunger and thirst, weariness and cold. 'In the twilight, in the evening, in the silent and dark night, she lieth in wait at every corner’. Man's very immunities are his snare; no necessary exposure follows his transgression. And thousands – tens of thousands – hundreds of thousands from the grey- beard to the stripling, follow the steps of ' the strange woman' to her 'chamber of death'.” And there is one lengthy episode where he boringly describes how much reading he was doing and how he was tutored to an understanding of algebra.
One can, however, skim over such passages and enjoy what the book shows of life in early Sydney.

[Peter Macinnis]

This was published as fictional, but knowing the era, this is the work of somebody who was actually here, and who probably had most of these experiences. Whoever the author really was, hoorah for him! The book is also available from the University of Sydney's SETIS collection, so you have no excuse for not reading it.

[Peter S]

A 3 for the use of nineteenth century language and vocab which requires a degree of higher concentration for reading at times. The author is rather verbose when giving his opinions.
His retelling of his various encounters and "adventures" is more palatable reading.
As an important document of early 19th century life in New South Wales it stands the test!

[Yvonne Warren]

I probably got about three-quarters of the way into this book but it was just not interesting enough for me to keep on ploughing through.