Writing the Coastline of Australia: Emigrants’ Diaries and ‘The Long Looked For Shores’

ANDREW HASSAM Writing the Coastline of Australia: Emigrants' Diaries and 'The Long Looked For Shores' [Alfter seven weeks of most awful weather we got in sight of land. You may judge my thankfulness, as three weeks we had been under water on deck, nor had the daylight entered my cabin. (Fenton 11 Aug 1829) The danger and deprivation of the voyage to Australia made the nineteenth -century emigrant's first sight of land particularly sweet. In the days of sail; emigrant ships took on average three months to complete the voyage from Britain to Australia. To be sure, the ships carrying emigrants toAustralia had a far bettersafety record than those on the North American route, which was not controlled by the Britishgovernment, but nonetheless during these months passengers were well aware of the possibility of their ship's being sunk by icebergs, gutted by fire, or swept by fever. At the very least, these people were deprived of fresh food, fresh water, and fresh company; they had been becalmed on the equator and battened below deck in storms close to the Antarctic. As the months wore on, the emigrants' desire and impatience to catch a glimpse of their new homeland understandably intensified. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that diaries of the voyage out characteristically express relief at the sight of the shoreline: We came in sight of Australia; it was a beautiful sight to us after having been at sea so long, it was Cape Otway that we saw first and soon after the Lighthouse, we sailed down the Bass Straits in the night. (Midgley 10 Sept 1851) Our eyes justwitnessed the joyful sightof the long looked for shores of Australia we had a fine breeze on the quarter and a most delightful day, passed the lighthouse on Cape Ottaway [sic] at noon. The coast we sailed along all day was beautifully romantic, undulated with hills intersected by creeks and ravens [ravines?]. (Skilbeck 5 Aug 1858) The Australian coastline was quite possibly the first sight of land the emigrants had had since leaving Britain; since emigrant sailing ships made the entire journey without calling at ports on the way, their last sighting of inhabited land would have been, at best, the coast of Brazil. In addition, navigation over that distance in the nineteenth century without a landfall UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 61, NUMBER 2, WINTER 1991/2 196 ANDREW HASSAM was, if not unreliable, not yet reliable enough. And emigrants to Melbourne , Sydney, or Brisbane would have known that ships occasionally missed the entrance to Bass Strait and struck Cape Otway on the mainland or King Island fifty miles to the south - in 1845, the Cataraqui struck King Island and only nine out of 408 passengers and crew survived (Charlwood 11). The sight of land, as in the two entries above, signified not only that physical deprivation was coming to an end but that, after months at sea, the voyagers now knew where they were. Yet while the relief of the emigrant might be due to the general material circumstances, the way in which that relief is manifested in a diary intersects with otherfactors. The diary of the voyage covers the transitional period between the abandonment of the familiar co-ordinates of family, home, and work place and the establishment of new co-ordinates in Australia. As I have previously argued ('Narrating the Passage'), the diary can be seen to mediate between two poles, the point of embarkation and the point of disembarkation, being addressed back to family and friends left behind but always projecting forward an endpoint, a resolution to the voyage. The narrative of the voyage is what gives the voyage, as a whole, meaning, and, especially as a quest story, the diary has a great investment in its ending. This ending marks the stable point of the narrative which will resolve the deprivation and make meaningful the adventure ofemigration. The emigrant has invested heavily in the story ending in celebration. This need for a positive closure to the voyage explains why, in the passage immediately above, Richard Skilbeck's 'joyful sight,' the product of his relief at arrival, is couched in terms of the...