Edward Shann

“ The determination to go out into a strange land, to rely on himself, and never to complain, however stiff the task, meant everything. ' 'Tis cheap and easy to destroy. But to help the young soul, add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame to redeem defeat by new thought, but firm action, that is not easy, that is the work of divine men.' (R. W. Emerson.) John Bussell, it is plain, drew some spark of that divinity from his home and college. ”

“ At the time of the settlement of any new district I would take the opportunity of calling the native tribes together and telling them that we had come to dwell amongst them, that we were desirous of being on friendly terms, but that the smallest infringement by them on the property of the European would be punished by DEATH. Any daring outrage in which the whole tribe was implicated, the murder of a white or even the threat, I would make a formal declaration of war. ”

“ But as the colony grows, as new districts are occupied, the same farce or rather tragedy will be acted over and over again, and it is for the benefit of those who have to follow in my footsteps that I write. Minor offences will be committed and pardoned. Forbearance, a virtue unknown to the savage, will be called by him timidity. Greater aggressions will follow, until the colonist, roused to just ire, at length becomes his own avenger. But as I have said before, being individually punished, it is not well punished. Punishment in fact wears the appearance of retaliation or of revenge ”

“ Few notes in a minor key, for all that, are struck in the letters that came to Augusta, by soldiers changing guard or by the overlanding members. This is one by Alfred: 'My dear Bessie, Charley has written us such a nasty exaggeration of evils that I have nothing but the horrors of ruin before me. My imagination is replete with destruction — "sale of houses, land, horses, cows," — "separation, misery" — "we are eaten up by disorganization" — "our family must be brought together in some way to prevent the expense of two establishments," "The Governor will not aid us." ”

“ His whole soul is in the success of the farm. Unlike the Bussells in general, activity to him is not an act of duty, but of inclination. His industry and promptitude render him one of the main props of the family. In person he is scarcely at all altered except that he has added a pair of whiskers of very respectable dimensions, and an imperial which Mr. Green tells him is worth a hundred a year to him at least. He is the same height as John, but more stoutly made, and with remarkably broad shoulders. ”

“ The settlements at Augusta and the Vasse were not made on unoccupied land. They thrust themselves into the hunting-grounds of aborigines, weak indeed in numbers and in means of defence, but, like all humans, tenacious of the land that gave them birth and being. What was the duty — and policy — of the stronger race towards these savages? Was it to provide for them, or to destroy them? No statement from John Bussell's pen of his answer to that riddle has been found. ”

“ I should like to have a little land in this colony. I don't mean a grant or a farm, but building ground, for I assure you there is nothing as profitable as houses. It requires some capital to begin with, but then there is no danger. One hundred pounds will go as far as £5OO in England. I should never think of sending money home, for even bank interest is never below 8 per cent.; at present it is 10 per cent.... A single gentleman here, with a little economy, might keep his carriage on £150 a year. ”

“ But the selfishness of mankind is not the only obstacle to our maintaining our just rights. Fanaticism — blind and inconsistent fanaticism — has found its way into our counsels, — blind because it will not see that rigorous measures from the beginning are most merciful as well to savage as to European, and inconsistent because while it admits the legality of acquiring property by emigration, it prohibits the means of properly defending it. ”

“ The only show, once again, that a new society is a complex structure, slowly built from generation to generation, as men unravel the mysteries of the land by which it lives and is moulded.
South-western Australia, its people know now, is neither the barren waste of the early explorers' tales, nor the easy paradise of the projectors of '29. It enjoys a heavy and dependable rainfall, averaging over thirty inches annually from Perth to Albany, over forty on the Darling Range and below Geographe Bay, and even fifty at Cape Leeuwin and along the karri-covered south coast. ”

“ Its distance from Augusta, the troublesome navigation by which it must be approached, its heavy timber, invincible shade so pernicious to crops, but more than all, the necessity of redeeming by expenditure and improvement the most beautiful grant of land in the whole colony, which we possess on the Vasse river, lead me to think that the fire is not such a misfortune as first sight would estimate it. ”

“ But we who know The strange capricious land they trod — At times a stricken, parching sod, At times with raging floods beset — Through which they found their lonely way, Are quite content that you should say It was not much!' A hundred years later men are again girding their strength to attack the settlement of the timbered lands in that corner of Australia. The climate and environment promise the victors, when they come, a land worthy of the physique and spirit its conquest evokes. They are setting out from the bases the Bussells made for them, Augusta and 'Cattle Chosen'. ”

“ Tory principles, however, at no time deterred any of the family from lending a hand in every task that arose. 'I often think, dear Tip', wrote even Mary Bussell to Capel Carter on Christmas Eve 1835, 'of the horror you always had of us becoming laundresses, when the possibility of our being without a female servant came into your head. Then I look with what ease we get through our office.' Bessie had just before ridden over from Augusta to help the pioneer party at the Vasse. 'She is indeed an admirable girl and equal to anything. ”

“ We both felt that fullness of enjoyment which silence can alone express. Captain Toby was good-natured and attentive in all our vagaries, whether of silence or sauciness. Everyone is so, such is the estimation in which the dear, dear boys are held.'
While 'Captain Toby' voyaged south in the 'Ellen' to announce at Augusta the arrival of their sisters and Lenox at the Swan, Mrs. Bussell in England was learning, from another source, of the high esteem in which John and his brothers stood. ”

“ You must not grieve for us. We have ceased to do so long since. Oh, my Capel! how your feelings have been harrowed! Your dear, dear letters are rich cordials. Continue to write such. The bonnets were most acceptable. We have sent Vernon's papers, and by this shall send duplicates. Our cow ran away again but returned with the heifer. Conceive our joy. I think affairs are taking a prosperous turn. We only want you and some others to feel no wish or want. I snatch this from my company to which I must return. God for ever bless and reward my Capel and all my benefactors, relations, friends. ”

“ Every letter from officers on service in New South Wales to their friends and relatives in the southern English ports told of rich fortunes to be made at wool-growing and land-owning, of low prices for the necessaries of life, and of fertile plains begging for occupation. ”

“ Now may the winter wing her stormy brood, The winds may whistle and the floods may come, The ocean bellow and his boundaries foam, Safe is our roof. Late from yon desert shore A houseless stranger I essayed to roam These woods, if chance some well I might explore Where never social man had quenched his thirst before. ”

“ If it be found expedient to place the soldier without the pale of British law, if the provost-martial can hang, without trial, upon the first tree, a marauding countryman, why should the constable with search-warrant be required to search the premises of the savage? But what are they? To be within bounds, they may be said to be comprised within a circle of 50 miles, and to consist of forest and plain, hill and dale. What settler can afford to search this tract of country? ”

“ But the dream of free societies, in which the first arrivals might be granted wide areas, and thus found landed families like the old Norman barons, was being spread by every letter from Sydney. When, therefore, in 1829, Captain James Stirling, a fellow officer of the Bussells' kinsman, Captain Robert Yates, R.N., called for settlers to colonize the Swan River District, in Western Australia, the lively hope of favours to come from the governor reinforced the prospect of free grants of land in an area pronounced by Stirling 'not inferior to the Plain of Lombardy'. ”

“ Throughout 1835 'Cattle Chosen' continued to delight its owners. In September Fanny laughs at her dear 'Tippoo's' fears about it. 'We find cause to rejoice in it daily. One year in the fertile region of "Cattle Chosen" has effected more in the way of agriculture than ages would have produced upon the vast forests of the Blackwood. The Vasse butter is unrivalled, and we anticipate in a few years an extensive and productive dairy farm.' In November Bessie Bussell rode over from Augusta with John, Vernon, Alfred, and big Dawson, a sawyer, as escort. ”

“ If water there our search reward, Our weary limbs will rest; The turf shall be the genial board, The chase supplies a feast. Down with our knapsacks on the sod Beside yon shelt'ring tree, Our guns lean charged with ample load If danger aught there be. See how these murky woods throughout Our jolly fire glares: Full readily the way-worn rout An evening meal prepares. We'll fill our cups, and sing our song Before we sink to sleep, Our dogs shall then the drear night long Their faithful vigils keep. No lurking savage shall assail. ”

“ The song, the laugh and the joke went round, and about daybreak we reached Dalton Island, which belongs to Captain Molloy. Mr. Green commenced fishing for our breakfast. Captain Molloy's men were employed in making poor Bess eatable, for the old pig had drowned herself, and I can hardly say how deeply she has been regretted. Everything was done to recover her; she was rubbed, caressed and entreated to come to life, for she had known all the ups and downs with them ever since they had been in the colony, and was therefore to have died a natural death. ”

“ There came in his stead a man with a theory, the theory that the blacks were being wronged, and that their wrongs could be righted by civilizing them and giving them equal treatment. No doubt the blacks were being wronged. Their freedom to kill any beast they could find, and to avenge blood by shedding more blood, was being taken from them. How else could colonization proceed? But Governor Hutt had no heart for the task of imposing government upon the natives, and smashing, by the inhibition of fear, the cult of retaliation as a sacred duty. ”

“ We have taken two thousand acres of our Grant on the Blackwood. The place we have fixed upon to commence is a peninsula of forty acres, between two and three hundred yards across the neck, which we have fenced with a post and rail of split mahogany.... It will be advisable for some of us to go to the Vasse where we have taken 3,700 acres, the remainder of our grant. What a pity we did not know of that country before! What a quantity of labour it would have saved us, no trees to get up, the land rich, bearing nothing but grass! ”