Many of these early, farming families still had vivid memories of losing their freedom, then being wrenched from their country and transported in cramped, miserable conditions across the world. At Castlereagh their freedom was returned to them, they had space to move, they lived in a clean, fresh environment and they had ownership of the land they farmed. The area offered them a new beginning and for most it was worth the hardship and struggle that they often had to endure.
The early settlers were very much dependent on each other and most of them often had to develop their skills from scratch, in order to survive. There was a necessary adjustment and understanding required to cope with the strangeness of the country and its unfamiliar climatic patterns. But despite the wild isolation of the place and the roughness of lifestyle, there was a beautiful, serene quality to the landscape.
The slowly decreasing, acute angled rays from the mid afternoon sun glimmered brilliance through the foliage, highlighting some of the sandstone headstones, as I wandered between the them. These clustered like lost souls in various sections of this sacred and historic piece of land. They marked the resting places of many fascinating and extraordinary lives that no gravestone could ever document adequately.
Take for instance the First Fleet English couple, Elizabeth Pulley and Anthony Rope. Their headstones are some of the first you see, standing proudly in their restored state, due to the recent diligence of loving relatives.
Elizabeth Pulley was only twenty-two years old when she was tried at Thetford, in March 1783. She was found guilty of stealing several items of food from a home in December of the previous year. Fortunately, her initial death sentence was changed to seven years transportation.
She left England forever on the Friendship, one of the First Fleet ships, in May 1787. During the voyage, she was placed in leg irons a number of times for fighting and also for being intimate with one or more of the sailors. As early as June, Lieutenant Ralph Clark who dealt with Pulley on the ship, considered her kind to be “whores”, “a disgrace to ther Whole Sex B …s that they are I wish all the Women Wair out of the Ship”(sic). When Governor Phillip came on board in August, he gave orders that Pulley and some other female trouble makers were to be flogged like the men if they continued their bad behaviour. In October she was found pregnant and later transferred to the Charlotte.
On Monday 19 May 1788 she married Anthony Rope. Rope was a twenty- six year old labourer when he was tried at Chelmsford in 1875. He was found guilty of stealing clothing and sentenced to seven years transportation. He experienced first-hand the prison hulks, before sailing with the First Fleet on the Alexander.
The following Sunday after their marriage, the Ropes celebrated their wedding by holding a “supper party” at their tent. But even this happy occasion did not run smoothly for them. At the celebratory party “they had a sea pie, which contained fresh meat”. Five days later the Ropes were brought before Captain David Collins charged with stealing a goat belonging to Lieutenant Johnston. On 2 June a criminal court found them not guilty. The goat was found to be already dead when they, and apparently a wild animal before them, scavenged the carcass for their wedding pie filling.
Anthony Rope unfortunately did not stay out of trouble for long. During the next few years, he was punished for misdemeanours on three separate occasions with twenty-five lashes each time. Besides farming in the Castlereagh area, the Ropes also farmed near Parramatta, at Windsor and South Creek. They are remembered in the latter area by the naming of Rope’s Creek. Anthony Rope was eighty-nine years old when he died at Castlereagh on 20 April 1843. His wife Elizabeth died on the 9 August 1837. She was eighty years old.
The headstone of Eleanor Russell lies on the ground, broken in three pieces. As Eleanor Davis, she arrived in Australia as a convict on board the Mary Ann, part of the Third Fleet, in July 1791. Almost exactly a year before, she had been convicted of stealing items of clothing and sentenced to seven years transportation. She was pregnant on arrival and in September married Alexander Seaton, a convict who also came in the Third Fleet on the Scarborough. His crime had been cattle stealing and he had been transported for life. After the birth of her second daughter at the start of 1794, she took up residence with Jacob Russell. He had been convicted of burglary in 1787. Like Anthony Rope, he experienced time in the prison hulks, before sailing with the Third Fleet on the Salamander in March 1791. In 1794 Jacob was given his first land grant at South Creek where James Ruse was his neighbour. In 1791 Ruse had become the colony’s first freehold farmer, receiving a forty acre land grant at Rose Hill, near Parramatta, from Governor Phillip.
Jacob Russell and his family moved to the Castlereagh area in the early 1800s. Eleanor and Jacob did not marry until after Seaton’s death in Tasmania in 1817. By then Eleanor had given birth to four children by Russell. She was only forty-five years old when she died suddenly on 12 September 1824, “strangled in liquor”. Her death attests to the harshness of life at Castlereagh and the struggle many endured. Jacob was believed to be ninety-six years old when he died in November 1856. Although he did remarry a year after Eleanor’s death, he had no more children. He was buried near Eleanor’s grave at Castlereagh. Like many other people buried there, his grave was unmarked.
Often in the late afternoon, I take a wander through the bushland behind my place to an area known as “The Bluff”. From there I look down on the Nepean River, then across to the Penrith Lakes and on to the Castlereagh area. I envisage the little cemetery I recently visited, tucked away up on the rise. I remember the lives of the people who were buried there. I often think of how they used the opportunities and how they coped with the hardships at Castlereagh. Sometimes I wonder if they ever truly identified with the place and developed a sense of belonging.
© JL