|
My Australian Story: Surviving Sydney Cove teachers' notes
Publisher: Scholastic Australia 2000
 Download the PDF of these notes.
25,000 copies of this novel have now been published!
Here are a range of activities which can be used to extend students' knowledge of the story, explore research skills and gives students the opportunity to express their ideas.
-------------------------------------------------------
BRIEF OUTLINE OF STORY
ELIZABETH (LIZZIE) HARVEY was convicted of stealing a linen gown and a silk bonnet worth 7 shillings and transported to Australia on the First Fleet.
After swapping two onions for a journal, her diary begins in 1790 when she is thirteen and working as a domestic on Henry Dodd's farm at Rose Hill. Lizzie intends to post this diary to her younger brother Edward who lives in the Cotswolds in England. Because they have been parted these last four years, the entries interweave how she came to be in Botany Bay and present day happenings.
Orphaned at nine, Lizzie went to London to be an apprentice where she was unjustly accused of theft and sent to Newgate Prison. There she was befriended by Sarah Burke who became her staunch ‘protector'. Lizzie describes her life in the hulks, the 252 day voyage on the Lady Penrhyn, the landing in Botany Bay and working as a domestic for Surgeon James Russell, his son Winston and little asthmatic Emily. Plus her first contact with the Aborigines.
Lizzy's account of life in the new colony takes place over 2 months during the very worst of the ‘starving years'. It opens just before the foundering of the flagship Sirius (5th April 1790) and ends with the arrival of the 2nd Fleet. (June 3rd 1790)
REFERENCES
Cinderella Dressed in Yella
Ian Turner
Taplinger
Publishing Company New York. 1972
Captain Cook Chased a Chook - Children's Folklore in Australia
June Factor. Penguin. 1988.
Toys Down the Ages
John Hornby. Chatto, Boyd &Oliver. 1972
Pioneer Women, Pioneer Land
Susannah Vries-Evans. A &R. 1987
The Women Who Were There
Nance Donkin.
The Convict Ships, 1788- 1868
Charles Bateson. Library of Australian History Sydney 1983
A History of Australia. Book 1
C.M.H. Clarke. M.U.P. 1962
Botany Bay Mirages
Illusions of Australia's Convict Beginnings. Allan Frost. M.U.P.
Phillip of Australia: An account of the settlement at Sydney Cove
M.Bernard Eldershaw.
The Fatal Shore
Robert Hughes. Pan Books 1987
Orphans of History. The Forgotten Children of the First Fleet
Robert Holden. Text Publishing. 1999
Web Sites
First Fleet Resources on the Internet
HISTORICAL NOTE: See the back of the book.
RATIONALE
The concept behind all the MY STORY series was to present history in an accessible and interesting format. One way to do this was to imagine what life might have been like at a particularly interesting time in Australian history and to write this up as a diary.
RESOURCES AND PREPARATION
In a fiction based on history, the trend is that it
- starts with the premise ‘what if you were there at the time'
- describes a society which is based on fact
- is set in the past
- is often a quest
- has total internal logic
- Readers are guided to all the MY STORY series.
Mavis Road Medley by Goldie Alexander.
RESEARCH
- What are the names of the vessels who brought the First Fleet?
- Who was their captain?
- What did they eat on board ship?
- Find out how to make ‘hard-tack.'
- How many convicts and freemen arrived in Botany Bay?
- How many men, women and children?
- What are some of the most important things they brought with them?
- What else did they need?
- Plot their voyage on a map of the world
- Do you know anyone who can trace their family back to the First Fleet? Maybe the Second or Third Fleets?
TALKING POINTS
Imagine that it is the bleak period between April and June 1990.
- You are part of the First Fleet.
- If you are a convict, what crime have you committed?
- For how long have you been sent to Sydney Cove?
- Perhaps you are part of the crew. Or maybe a marine. What family have you left behind in England? How do you feel about this?
- Describe the conditions on board ship. As a convict. As a marine.
- What did you see when you arrived in Botany Bay?
- Recently your vegetable crop failed. You are hungry and your clothes are in rags. You would give almost anything for another pair of boots. What will you do now?
- Describe Sydney Cove in 1790.
- Move to RoseHill. Describe the track you must walk (now busy Parramatta Road) and what you see when you arrive. Who is running the farm?
- What is the only thing that can rescue you? When does it happen?
ACTIVITIES
- Make a story-board or collage to convey FIRST SETTLERS.
- Mock up an interview with Lizzie with you as the interviewer.
- Then change roles.
- Illustrate a cover for this story.
- Write the lyrics for a song called FIRST FLEET BLUES.
- You are a TV producer who has just bought the rights to Surviving Sydney Cove. Your budget only allows for two settings. What are they?
WRITING EXERCISES
- Write a story called CONVICTS.
- Choose a cover for this story.
- Find another title for this story.
- Write a letter to England describing your situation and pleading to be allowed to return
- Decide to stay. What do you do to improve your life?
WHAT INSPIRED THIS STORY?
FICTIONALIZING HISTORY FOR YOUNG READERS
Goldie Alexander (pub Viewpoint Spring 2000)
'The past is another country, they do things differently there.'
L.P. Hartley's ‘The Go Between.
I enjoy writing about other times and places. Writing fantasy, science fiction or history means fewer worries about using contemporary clothes, music, or games. ‘Other times' allows the writer to indulge the imagination without having to worry whether a certain colloquialism might be ‘old hat' by the time the book is published.
My particular interest in writing history lies in bringing the past to life and comparing it with the present. In my first historical novel for Young Adults, Mavis Road Medley (Margaret Hamilton Books), two youngsters from the 1990's find themselves in the Melbourne of 1933.
"Jamie's heart was beating wildly as he saw that he was in the middle of a huge hall, facing a large screen. The tune from On our Selection still lingered in the air as the film rolled on before his startled gaze…. only now did he realize that he was seated in a large, filled-to-capacity auditorium. And that everyone was watching a film."
Using this time-travel technique allows the reader to perceive events through modern eyes. Nothing is easier to lose than the past. Even when I look back on my own growing up years, they seem quite remote, the Australia of the fifties so different as to be almost unrecognizable.
My next historical fiction, My Australian Story: Surviving Sydney Cove (2000) is set in 1790. This is one of a number of diaries published by Scholastics, (and now published in the UK as My Story: Transported.) Like their American counterpart, these are intended to bring Australian history to life. When I began researching this novel, I found that I knew very little about our first European settlers. The more I read, the more I was struck by the difficulties the First Fleet suffered. Conditions in 18th century English jails and hulks, on board the convict ships and the early days of New South Wales, were appalling. I was particularly interested in that period of total isolation between April when the Sirius foundered off Norfolk Island and the coming of the 2nd Fleet in June.
"We… in Rosehill (Parramatta)… ‘ are a long day's walk from Sydney Cove. Any news is slow to arrive. However we now know that the flagship Sirius, which was coming from Capetown with food and other supplies has been wrecked on a reef at Norfolk Island.
‘Have you anything else to report?' Sarah demanded of the sailor who came to deliver this sad news."
My research took me to many different sources, in particular Watkin Tench's diaries, and Captain Phillip's letters. The language might be archaic, but the contents struck a very modern note. Phillip's reasoning for sending Lieutenant Ross to Norfolk Island are not dissimilar from a contemporary CEO sending his difficult 2IC to an inaccessible branch of that same business. Watkin Tench could rarely remark on any person or incident without adding some sardonic comment of his own. They talk of ‘Opened up a elderly convict's belly and found it empty.' ‘Convicts refusing to share cooking pots.' ‘A woman dying of over eating by consuming all her rations in one meal.' Provisions were running out and their first attempts at farming had failed. Governor Phillip had placed everyone - freeman and convict alike - on starvation rations. What they desperately craved was what they perceived as ‘real food': that is pickled pork, mutton, and ships biscuits. With too few muskets to go around, fishing boats or lines, or a willingness to learn from the local ‘indians', hunger prevailed. Meanwhile, as the historian Alan Frost points out, they were surrounded by a profusion of seafood, wild game, and Vitamin C iron-rich wild spinach and sarsaparilla. Perhaps this helped them survive. The evidence lies in the astonishing number of women that became pregnant. To become pregnant they had to be menstruating. It is also interesting to note that significantly fewer children died than if they had stayed in England's appalling 18th Century cities.
My challenge was to get this down in a palatable form for young readers as well as create ‘a good read'. In a way it was those awful conditions that wrote its own story. Briefly: In 1790, Sydney is a convict colony. Elizabeth Harvey is sent there for stealing clothes worth seven shillings. Her diary revealed her struggles as she copes with starvation, disease, brutal punishment, isolation and drunkenness. Lizzie talks about tackling simple domestic tasks, homesickness, looking after the doctor's sick daughter Emily, her ‘sparring' friendship with Winston, and defending Simple Sam from an avenging mob. Her diary, though imaginary, was partly based on the real life story of Elizabeth Hayward, the youngest female convict shipped to Botany Bay.
I perceived Lizzie as brave, curious and somewhat rebellious, part of the new colony's emerging spirit. She says,
‘Sarah says that the Governor think Master Dodd the most trustworthy man in all Port Jackson. Though she also adds that my Master puts too much faith in God – and not enough in hard work- to get us out of our misery. But it seems to me that if all my Master says about God is true, and if God were listening, then our poor lives would not be as sad. Yet, I would never dare say this aloud, as surely I would be flogged for blasphemy."
The writing had to be simple, yet sound authentic. No way could I use the complex and melodramatic language of the 18th Century. I kept sentences short and avoided contractions. Lizzie says to Winston, "Excuse me, sir. That book. Is it something I can write in?" Also, because this was a diary, I had to tell the action instead of showing it. She writes, "Sydney Cove is full of murderers & thieves." Plus I had to do something that was foreign to all my writerly impulses, and that was to tell the action instead of showing it.
However where possible, I used dialogue to show what was happening:
"My Master said, ‘Many folk may not survive. It is hard to collect food when we have so little shot and only two fishing boats.'
At this such a gloom fell over us I was almost sorry that I am still alive…"
There's an automatic pruning in historical novels written for younger readers. Anything that doesn't move the story along must be eradicated. The historical background can only exist as an unconscious framework. The characters must live solidly in their world to make them credible. They must keep their feet firmly placed in their own reality. At the same time there was so much information I wanted to get across. If the reader is ‘historically unsophisticated', the novel had to contain enough information to make sense of the story. My solution was for Lizzie to fill her brother in on everything that had happened to her since they were last together.
She says, "Though it is four long years since we last were together… I plan to use it (the diary) to describe my present life, and a little of how I came to be here…"
However certain frustrations ensued. So many facts that I had painfully researched couldn't be used - for example, a true account of the sexual misdemeanors of the 1st fleet, as that might have been a little too ‘real' for many young readers. Also, I tried to make my convicts sound like cockneys by dropping letters and messing up their grammar. But my editor was worried that my readers might have problems with this, and she fixed it all up.
I supposed that I have always longed for a time-machine. How many of us have wished for the ability to reverse time? Then we could satisfy the confusion of a child beginning to work out some lost connection. Or even try a fresh start with a whole new set of people. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be assured that our present loneliness or sadness must, as surely as time itself, pass? My solution is to delve into history, and to hope that by presenting it as a story, that maybe I can interest one reader into looking beyond the immediate present and to see life as the continuum that it surely is.
About the Author
Goldie Alexander has always wondered what life was like for those early settlers. There are so many questions that are hard for anyone living two hundred years later to answer. For example, what was it like not to have a supply of fresh clean water, proper bedding, sewerage, power, and electronic equipment? What was it like to be running out of essentials such as food, soap and candles? What was it like to believe monsters lurked in the bush and gullies, just waiting to spring out at you? How did those early settlers see the Aborigines? How did the Aborigines see them?
Goldie has always admired the sheer courage it must have taken for those convicts to stay alive. Though Governor Arthur Phillip sailed home a disappointed man, he managed to administrate this unruly colony in a most even and praiseworthy way. Some of the convicts mentioned, such as Esther (Abrahams) Johnston, became wealthy and respected citizens. Certainly these fresh opportunities helped many convicts discard their criminal pasts and prosper in this new land.
THE FOUNDERS OF A NATION
AUSTRALIA'S FIRST FLEET - 1788
Between 1788 and 1850 the English sent over 162,000 convicts to Australia in 806 ships. The first eleven of these ships are today known as the First Fleet and contained the convicts and marines that are now acknowledged as the Founders of Australia.
The Fleet consisted of six convict ships, three store ships, two men-o-war ships with a total of 756 convicts (564 male, 192 female), 550 officers/marines/ship crew and their families.
The six convict ships were:
The Alexander
The Charlotte
The Lady Penrhyn
The Friendship
The Prince of Wales
The Scarborough
Other ships of the Fleet were:
H.M.S. Sirius
H.M.S. Supply
The Fishburn
The Borrowdale
The Golden Grove
LIST OF LIVESTOCK AND PROVISIONS
Plants and Seeds
- Banana
- Cocoa
- Coffee
- Cotton
- Eugenia
- Guava
|
- Ipecacuanha
- Lemon
- Orange
- Prickly Pear
- Spanish Reed
- Tamarind
|
|
