Homework w/e 12.09.11 The First Fleet

[Maureen K Clifford]

There’s a park that you’ll find out at Wallabadah, full of headstones and each one inscribed
with the names of First Fleeters – though none rest there – it’s a memory now that's described.
A first fleet descendant put money and heart into this unusual creation
as a lasting memorial to those long gone early settlers of our island nation.

Hand carved by a mason, each stone bears the name of a passenger, convict or crew
and some of the convicts no doubt may have worked out with the sheep at Goonoo Goonoo.*
Their names were recorded in shipping records though I doubt that now they’d be recalled
were it not for the tombstones at Wallabadah, where their stories have now folks enthralled.

They came on the Sirius, Charlotte, Supply, Prince of Wales into Botany Bay
and the journey was hard and the journey was long and many were lost on the way.
They came. Some in chains, and some scourged by the lash, some sick, and some dying as well
and all faced the challenge of a country new..some embraced it…to some it was hell.

And some may have known a lass called Mary Ward whose father was known hereabouts.
She was born in August eighteen sixty six and her birth celebrated no doubt.
Her Dad Fred Ward was Captain Thunderbolt and for bushranging he was best known.
But he was in a fact a local Windsor lad, a young bloke who’d been Aussie home grown.

Though some claim Thunderbolt was shot at Uralla others say he was helped away
to America by a landowner Alf Dorrington - that story survives to this day.
Fred was known to all as a defiant scoundrel, and tales all these scoundrels could tell.
If you sit quiet and listen at Wallabadah perhaps you will hear them as well.

So sit ‘neath the Shea Oaks at Quirindi creek with your picnic and let your mind wander
back many years, to far early times when folks had not so much time to squander.
Close your eyes. Hear the wind whisper softly through pine, as through top gallants 'twas once blowing.
Imagine yourself far from country and home, in a land of which you were unknowing.

The start of our nation is depicted here, it commenced with these poor souls deported
and most far from perfect of that there’s no doubt but not all were as bad as purported.
Fifteen hundred and twenty souls are listed here and Ray Collins carved each single name
as a lasting memorial to those First Fleeters – to whom our country must lay claim.



Maureen Clifford © 08/11

*pronounced Gunny Ga-noo