Diaries: Diaries Can Be Deadly

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Chapter 1

THE SAILOR’S DIARY

Strahan, West Coast Tasmania

Tyler Moore was always glad to see the navigational light on Cape Sorell.

No more so than with two dead sailors on board.

When Moore and his crew had picked the pair out of the ocean one was still alive, but within thirty minutes of getting them aboard the fishing boat, the second one too was dead.

It wasn’t that Moore saw the Cape Sorell navigational light very often as a light, because he preferred to avoid going into Macquarie Harbour at night time, but it was a promise of a safe haven. Moore, like most other fishermen who took their boats into the waters around Tasmania, knew too well the vagaries of the ocean and the winds. The waters could be calm and sedate one minute and violent and unforgiving the next. Winds swept in from the vast ocean expanses to the west or the south, unfettered by any land mass, forcing torrential gales and icy blasts before them.

Macquarie Harbour had had a bad name for a long time and it was because it was a treacherous place and there never seemed to be enough information for the fishermen. A fisherman, or anyone boating in the area, needed reliable information about wind and swell. The CSIRO wave rider buoy off Cape Sorell and Maatsuyker Island, to the south, gave good data on swell indications, but the buoy didn't provide wind data and it had reached the stage where the information from the automatic weather station at Strahan couldn't be relied upon. They identified a need for another wave rider buoy, at Bonnie's Patch near South-West Cape. If they knew where the swells were originating from, the fishermen could work out the direction themselves.

Christ, Moore thought, information was survival in this place - survival so you could fish to the optimum and survival just to stay alive.

The sea was unforgiving and – unforgiving – it killed.

He used his radio constantly, but he still had a preference for the many years of experience he had himself and that of his father and his uncle with whom he had fished in his teens. You could stay alive on those feelings, sense the increase in the swell, waves that grew without wind over them, pushed ahead of moving, swirling storm winds. You could smell the rain, see the way the clouds changed as they scurried across the sky and skimmed low on the horizon, and feel the tension in the stomach.

When it got like that you headed for safety.

And on the west coast there were precious few anchorages where you could be safe until the storms had gone. North from Port Davey, itself just north of South West Cape, there was only Macquarie Harbour and there was a lot of sea to travel. And provided plenty of time and distance in which to die.

Which was why the sailors were dead now.

Moore swung the Carrie Ann round to starboard. On his port side was the Kawatiri Shoal and he lined the bow of the boat up between the two lights ahead. One, on the starboard, sat squat on a short headland of rocks, backed by the low, green-grey scrub, and the second, on the port side, taller, and more like a lighthouse, sat on Entrance Island, flat and rocky. Between the lights the water swirled, ahead of calmer water. The flow of water through here was affected by the tides, but also by the local wind conditions and recent rainfall. Hells Gates, it was called, with good reason, he thought, and entrance to Macquarie Harbour.

Moore had no idea how the sailors came to be out in the middle of the ocean, miles from anywhere. And he wouldn't even have found them if he hadn't taken the Carrie Ann further west than he'd intended. They'd picked up a strong signal and headed for it, extra fish were not to be ignored, and then Luke had seen the light flashing between the waves.

Moore passed the light on Bonnet Island and felt better, the channel widening now, pulling the Carrie Ann around to an almost due easterly track. Macquarie Harbour opened up in front of him. Huge, wide, calm and safe, backed in the east by mountain ranges that folded into each other, that changed colour and kissed long, low dark grey clouds.

The sailors had been in a faded orange rubber raft which was in danger of swamping. Would have, had they not been found. The floor of the raft was awash with water where they lay, lifeless. Graham was the better swimmer among them and he'd tied a rope around his waist and gone over the side and swum to the raft and then shouted back that one was alive. He'd tied the rope to the raft and scrambled into it as Moore and Tommy and Luke, Graham's brother, pulled them alongside. Graham was checking both of the men in the raft and trying to scoop water out of it to stop it going under.

Once alongside, Luke slid over the side and into the raft to help his brother lift the sailors up and get them up onto the deck. The first one was still alive, but only just. They wrapped him in blankets and then brought the second one up; he was dead. Moore got them to pull the raft aboard as well and then helped Luke and Tommy carry the sailor to a bunk below decks.

Will he die? Luke had asked.

No idea, son, Moore had said. No idea. But he'd looked in a bad way, even then.

He'd radioed ahead to let them know they were coming, to have a doctor ready, and he'd left Graham to chart a course towards Macquarie Harbour while he sat with the sailor. Moore guessed that he'd have been no more than thirty years of age, he had short black hair and there was a cut down the left side of his face that looked recent. It was white and swollen with the water.

Ahead of them now, Moore could make out the town of Strahan.

The sailor had opened his eyes maybe a dozen times, but never for very long. He'd looked in fear and amazement at his surroundings and at Moore. He'd tried to speak a number of times, but the effort had obviously been too much for him, and his eyes had fluttered shut, but before he'd died he'd mumbled something and although Moore had listened intently he had been unable to understand. The man had shivered uncontrollably and then died, his face relaxing.

Moore now nosed the Carrie Ann in against the wharf. There were more than a dozen people waiting. More than usual, he thought. The word had spread quickly, as it tended to. Doctor White stood on the wharf, his black bag in one hand, and there was a uniformed policeman standing alongside him. Harold would be quite excited about the prospect of having to investigate something new and different. Moore stepped onto the wharf and walked up to them.

Tyler, how is he? the doctor asked.

He died.

I'll go see, White said and headed onto the fishing boat.

Moore turned to the policeman.

What do you think happened? the policeman asked. What boat are they from? We haven't got any alarms for overdue boats. Was there any wreckage? Do you ...

Hey, hold on, Moore said.

The policeman drew breath.

What boat are they from?

No idea.

Nothing?

Don’t think they’re fisherman, Moore offered.

What?

Moore shook his head, glanced back down the wharf to where the bodies were being lifted off the trawler.

Not kitted out like fishermen. He drew his arms slowly apart as if to say to the policeman that they were not dressed like him.

Maybe fell overboard, off a freighter or a container ship?

And they got a raft out to them. And then left them?

Stowaways?

Possible. You’d think they’d have picked a better boat to be in.

Maybe they were discovered and put over the side to teach them a lesson?

Maybe. And maybe their ship sank.

Sank? You think so?

How the fuck do I know?

I’m only trying to work out ...

Well, work it out then. Don’t just keep bloody speculating.

The raft. Anything on the raft? Any markings?

There is some writing, but it’s very faded.

Let’s have a look then.

However ...

What however?

However, the writing isn’t English.

The policeman was stunned for a few seconds.

That’s something, then. It might help ... I’ll get in touch with Hobart and see if they’ve any reports of ships in trouble.

Or missing?

Or missing. The policeman nodded.

This might help you, Moore added, extending his hand out, holding a book in a plastic pouch.

What’s that?

Don’t know. Maybe your experts in Hobart can help out.

Not in English either, I guess?

Right.

Did you have look at it?

Looks like a diary, a journal of some sort. A log. See here, and he pulled the thin book from the pouch, opening it at a random page, there are numbers, laid out like dates, and then some writing that’s just double-Dutch to me, then another lot of numbers, another date, and more writing.

Moore turned the book open at the front page where a faded colour photo of a young woman was taped to the inside cover. He showed it to the policeman, snapped the book shut and handed it and the pouch over.

It’s all yours now Harold. Yours and your experts in Hobart Town.

Tyler Moore smiled to himself and backed out of the group of people that had gathered. He was never one for all this attention.

Chapter 2

THE VINCENT DIARIES

Melbourne

Henry Vincent was seventy-two years of age.

He'd woken at six-thirty which had been his norm for the past ten years, since Donna had died, and he'd showered and then made himself a bigger than usual breakfast. His doctor had warned him about eggs and butter and milk, but he still allowed himself a luxury now and again. Like a nip of brandy every second night, instead of every night. And a hot plate of chips with bread smothered with butter, at least once a week.

So for breakfast he'd had three strips of bacon and two eggs and three pieces of toast. And orange juice.

He remembered what Bill was prone to saying a lot - you and me don't have a lot of days left and we should take what's offered and not feel guilty about it. We've done our bit, mate. Given to our country, to the taxman, to the family. If you can't enjoy yourself now when can you?

Henry Vincent looked after himself. Lot of men, he knew, let themselves go when they retired and even more so when their wives died. He shaved religiously every day and went to the barber every five weeks, even though his hair, totally white, was thinning at a faster rate these days. He watched the flesh on his face soften and wrinkle, but he saw that his eyes were still bright and alert and he only needed the glasses for reading. That in itself was an accomplishment, he thought. He wore green corduroy trousers and casual brown shoes and a short-sleeved shirt and, whenever he went out, a tie. Old habits, he thought.

The house was not large. They'd had a bigger house when the kids were growing up, but the last of them had left when he was only forty-five and Donna was forty-three. A couple of more years and they'd sold the old place and bought this place and had a bit left over to help the kids with their own homes. This house had been enough for both of them, he reasoned, but Donna had died two years after the move and in some ways he now thought that even it was too big.

Donald always said it was a good solid house and its location meant that it was worth a good tidy sum. But that was Donald. Henry was sure that Donald, his eldest son, would already have everything in the house valued – at least in his mind – and that the day Henry died a large part of it would be on e-bay for sale to the highest bidder. Henry had collected lead soldiers in his time and had – in the past – always thought Donald would like them as part of his inheritance. But like everything else, Donald had said they were worth a small fortune and he could see them going to the highest bidder also. Donald was always looking for a quick payoff. He’d been involved in so many get-rich schemes and some had worked and some hadn’t and, for all his efforts, he never really got ahead of himself. He knew, as of last month, that Donald was in trouble again and needed money to pay his way out of something that hadn’t been the sure-fire thing he thought it would be.

Henry thought the new girl friend, what was her name, Helen, might make a difference, but now he had someone new to prove himself to. Wouldn’t be told. Knew better than his old man. Henry’s daughter Christine had told Henry that he was not to lend him any more money or bail him out of his troubles. Not that he had that much to worry about. Unless the treasure ship came sailing into port.

Yesterday had been his clean-up-around-the-house day – he didn’t really feel comfortable going into the city unless everything was in good order. He’d done a small shop and then packed the groceries away. He was a tidy man and it was easier to keep the house and all his effects that way when there was only him to worry about. Only him to make the mess. He’d set about cleaning the house and then pottered around the garden, pruning part of the tree that scrapped against the front window when the wind blew, pulling out a mass of weeds that had gathered in the corner where the roses grew. And he spent twenty minutes talking to Mrs. Clay, the woman next door, when he went to check for the mail. Nothing serious - the weather, the noise the garbage men made when they picked up the rubbish, the traffic on the road and their individual aches and pains. She’d sometimes come over and they’d have morning or afternoon tea together. There was nothing in it – no relationship. She enjoyed hearing of his researches and was always asking questions about this ship or another. Fred, her husband, was a sullen man, prone to periods of solitary self introspection, especially after a few beers. Henry knew Mrs Clay, Janet, appreciated the banter they had. Sort of like an outing.

He’d made sandwiches for his lunch and, with a pot of tea, sat in front of the television to eat them. He sat until his eyes started to feel tired and he went and lay down on top of his bed and slept for an hour and a half.

He then drifted aimlessly around the house, tidying a pile of magazines in the lounge, reordering some paperbacks on the bookshelves, getting his tea ready, cleaning the canary's cage. He realised that a lot of this incessant need for tidiness and orderliness was a carryover from his time working in a government department. Still, he felt better with it this way, rather than chaos. A place for everything, he thought.

And now yesterday was behind him and he caught the train into the city, and then a tram up Elizabeth Street to the Melbourne City Library.

Walking into the La Trobe Reading Room always amazed him. Originally opened in 1913, it was designed after similar venues of the Library of Congress, in Washington, and the British Museum, in London. It had been renovated and reopened in 2003. Octagonal, in shape with four gallery levels, a huge dome sat atop the room, over 30 metres in diameter and over 30 metres high. There was a central desk with eight spokes of reading desks reaching out to the outer walls, with smaller desks between the spokes.

At this time of the morning, and mid-week, the place was hardly busy and Vincent drifted slowly over to what he had come to regard as his space. He placed his notebooks and pens and pencils on the desk and went off to gather the books. A young librarian recognised him as a regular, said good morning and asked if he needed any help.

Only if I can’t find what I’m looking for, he said softly, and smiled.

Within an hour the desk was covered with books and printout from the digitised material he had referenced. He stopped, surveyed the mess, scratched his scalp and set about sorting what he collected so far into some sort of order.

What remained of Henry Vincent’s hair was still mousy brown. He’d started losing his hair when he turned forty and his friends had always said that it was because he thought too much. If he was given a job at work, he had always gone into it in depth, researching the background, defining the terms, finding the national and international references, scouring the journals. And what he produced, though lengthy at times, was readable, thorough, accurate and, generally, worthy of publication in its own right. But it always took a long time to finalise and, eventually, it was that that killed it for him.

A program was initiated that provided for a number of public servants to be offered redundancy packages. It was designed to provide federal government departments with the opportunity to free themselves of their dead wood. They could identify those people who were not contributing, who were unable to adjust to the new-look public service that was evolving, who were being left behind by the new technology, the move to greater commercialism and the emerging entrepreneurialism. And Henry Vincent was seen as dead wood. He'd been called in by his Director and offered the package and he'd gone away and thought about it. He'd gone through all the options, the prospects for investment and his needs for the future - thoroughly, in his usual way. Surprisingly it hadn't taken long and he'd accepted. They'd agreed on a completion date, there'd been a couple of farewell functions from friends in the office. And he'd gone.

It was like manna from heaven, he'd thought afterwards.

As a lad he’d always been fascinated with the explorers who sailed into adventures in ships of all shapes and sizes - looking for new worlds, plying their trade across numerous seas and oceans, the tea carriers, holds full of silks and exotic spices. He built scale models of the more famous ones and got together a small library of books. He could tell the difference between a barque and a barquentine, between a brig and a brigantine. Knew a carrack could have three or four masts and were used by the Portuguese and Spanish to discover new worlds. Read tales of the clippers who plied the trade routes between England and the Far East, like the Ariel that had won the unofficial Great Tea Race of 1866, from China to London. Knew where the wrecks were.

So now he no longer had an excuse of lack of time or sufficient funds to indulge his hobby. He’d been brave enough, in his terms, to write a detailed essay covering two ships that had once brought convicts to Australia. Good enough to publish, he thought – but he’d never tried.

He did some family tree research for a friend and the thoroughness of the end product was enough for the friend to refer someone for another job. A thank you payment of three bottles of 15-year-old single malt whisky had been happily received for the job.

And then – eighteen months ago - he’d inherited a library full of books from an old aunt and he’d set about going through them. He was expecting the books to be about Victoria, but, surprisingly, most of them were about Tasmania and he’d discovered this was because his aunt had relatives there, and that some of her lineage could be traced back to the first years when Van Diemen’s Land was set-up as a penal colony. There was a link to one of the vessels that had been in his essay and the role it had taken in transferring convicts from Sydney to Hobart.

Someone had started some kind of family tree and there were a dozen pages containing semi-decipherable notes about explorers, convicts, timber and gold. And cannibals.

The diary – or diaries to be more precise – covered a number of years. They were not in good condition. The pages were dog-eared, browning around the edges, flimsy and brittle. Loose pages were interleaved between those still attached to the spine, but these were often torn, with pieces missing. There was no way of knowing whether the pages belonged to the volume in which they were inserted. Some pages were dated, others not. Once sorted, he discovered the eleven volumes were not sequential and that one gap covered a period of five years.

Where were the other volumes?

How had the captain arrived at Macquarie Harbour?

What had happened to the captain in the intervening – the lost – periods?

It had piqued his interest immediately.

The pages from the old diary had been kept by a man called Abbotsley. The man had been a lieutenant and then a captain in Tasmania during the time the island had been used as a penal colony. One of the most notorious convict outposts in Tasmania had been on Sarah Island, a small uninviting piece of rock in the extreme south of Macquarie Harbour on the west coast of Tasmania – and Abbotsley had been posted there.

His initial research had been quite good – confirming Abbotsley’s existence and tracking down the names of some sailing vessels of the time. He’d looked further into the scrawled notes and there was a wealth of information about the time. It was like a time capsule – a treasure trove of its own.

On his desk were notes from the Royal Society of Tasmania confirming James Kelly’s discovery of Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s desolate west coast, although, as was not unusual delving back into history, the dates varied a bit. Discovery was not important, but it gave substance and perspective to the research. The Harbour was accessed by a narrow inlet, some 70 metres wide, a site of swirling tides, later called Hells Gates. The Harbour itself was twice the size of Sydney Harbour and home to the Huon Pine.

Henry Vincent knew of Sarah Island from his interest in ships. The Huon Pine was part of the reason the convict settlement was there. To harvest the logs and bring them to the Sarah Island shipyards to build ships. The Huon part was ideal for shipbuilding – dense and of excellent nail-holding quality, and particularly resistant to wood rot. In its time the shipyard at Sarah Island was the biggest in Australia, producing over 100 vessels during its life. Barques, brigs, schooners and a variety of smaller boats. David Hoy was the Master Shipwright at Sarah Island and under his influence the shipyards were highly productive.

Into this environment came the author of the diaries – Lieutenant Abbotsley. Henry Vincent needed to confirm, or otherwise, some issues associated with Abbotsley and his return from Sarah Island. First there was the ship called The Mistress of Dunrobin that had been mentioned in Abbotsley's diary. Vincent had confirmed that this was a convict ship, and there were records that confirmed its date of departure from London and arrival in Hobart. There was a complete list of the convicts and non-convict passengers. A list of those lost at sea and the appearance of a woman called Sarah Grey, who was mentioned in Abbotsley’s diaries.

And with each little piece of information, Vincent made an entry onto a large sheet that connected almost all the pieces with each other, through a maze of interconnecting lines and arrows and broken lines. Vincent now had, spread out on the desk before him, a number of books about Tasmania. There was Binks' book, Explorers of Western Tasmania, a book entitled The Geology and Landscape of Tasmania, and Lloyd Robson's authoritative History of Tasmania.

And, there was the family tree – not a prodigious tree, but he was working forwards from Abbotsley and backwards from his aunt. The branches and the roots were melding.

In the top left-hand corner of the large sheet were two names. The first was Harry Abbotsley, born 1800 in Bath, England and died in June 1880, in Tasmania. The second name was that of Sarah Grey. Vincent had written her year of birth as 1815 and followed it with a question mark. She had died in Melbourne in 1900 and he'd written in a marriage date of 1831 with a pencil note - double check this.

The union between Captain Abbotsley and Sarah Grey had produced two boys, but one had died when only five. The surviving child, George, had married young (24) to an even younger Mary and they had a daughter, Constance, a year later, in 1855. It was here that the Abbotsley name died, for they had no other children and Constance ended up marrying Henry Vincent (who, as Vincent’s grandfather, it was probably safe to assume he was named after) and they had two daughters and one son. The son was his father. David and his wife (his mother) was Dora Bruce. The eldest daughter of Constance and Henry, Prudence, married and it was this aunt who had left the books and half-finished research. Vincent had no idea why she had left the papers to him, except if it was because they had met a few times at family functions in Melbourne, and because she knew of his .... his ... what was the word? ... his analytical mind. Or was is it just anal?

As far as Vincent could tell, Prudence, who ended up having five children, still had living relatives somewhere in Tasmania. Maybe he should try and locate them? No - only if his other