Finally that wretched storm pass and the Moffatt sail into the safety of a place backra call Port Jackson. When the anchor finally drop, it take a long time before McDuff let us off the boat. The paying passengers depart first. The convicts like luggage, we get left for last. Must wait till the barracks men row out, come on board to look us over. Check our names off them list. See how many of us lost at sea. Wait, wait and more waiting till documents get signed, papers get exchanged. Overhear that Surgeon McKay going have him way, want Captain Bolton to get charged for neglect. With all the bother and fuss, they keep us convicts waiting a long time before we can finally leave the ship.

While I wait in line, in the far distance, I can see some small, shabby houses lined up along the shoreline. What a sad place I end up in. Me heart start to sink, but there is no time for feeling sorry for meself because McDuff shout out, ‘Buchanan, William, prisoner number one seven nine three. Step forward. Make your mark here.’

And me fate, once again, is sealed.

The Barracks

Is early morning. I been standing. Standing in a dusty pebble courtyard. Waiting. Me heart sore with longing to return even to them plantation days, if it mean I can stand on the land me birthed into. I hear the guards shout ‘March!’ and me and a line of raggedy men start to move, some in chains, clanking as we make our way out iron gates, down a street backra call Macquarie, in a town them call Sydney. And everywhere I look is another world, where even the rock, the animals, the people, the plants look strange. And this strange world on the far side of the world is a land barren to me eyes, in every way. Is a soulless place where the Mother Country send her unwanted sons and daughters. Backra call it the colony of New South Wales.

Every morning, before we march, the guards make me and all the other convicts stand in line outside the superintendent office. To get mustered, line up to say ‘yes, sir’ when him open up him big black book, when him call out you name. A name that have a number that sit beside it. He call this number you indent and every little thing you do, wrong or right, get recorded beside that number.

Is more important than your name.