Three years working in irons! I should be grateful that it is not a death sentence like Barra. Calla used to say that bad luck comes in threes. Three times I been in a courtroom, waiting with shaking knees for the sentence. Three times fate try to take me life, but once again I escape the hangman noose. Hopefully Calla is right, and maybe if bad luck don’t catch you after the third try, it never will. I send out a prayer to the Ancestors, thanking them for looking out for me.

But it’s the end for James and me. I only have a few brief moments to say goodbye. Watch as he get trundled off in the prisoner wagon to a place backra call Illawarra. James come to be like a brother to me, and the pain of losing him weigh me heart down with sadness.

After the trial, I get sent right back to where it all started. Back to the barren number world of Hyde Park Barracks. When I get there, enter through them iron gates, the place seem even more run down and filthy than when I escaped, but I see a few friendly faces of the island boys and it almost feel like a homecoming.

I look to see if John McBean still there. Wonder if him managed to keep safe that silver button, but him gone. Become a Ticket of Leave man sent off to a place backra call the Hunter River Valley to work for a master by the name of George Wyndham Esquire. Must be not too bad a life, because rumour have it that Wyndham is a kindly man, he treat his convicts well.

Holt still there and, when I see him, the first thing he ask is if I posted that letter. He finally, fully believe me when he receive a letter back. He get given Tickets of Leave to many places, but each time I see him marched back through them iron gates, sent off to solitary, accused of drinking too much, getting into fights, assaulting his master. The last time I see him, he is in the back of a cart on him way to a place backra call Liverpool Plains. He must be settle down, because he never return after that.

As to me, well, I spend me sentence cutting stone in a quarry beside a windy, sandy hilltop place called the Woolloomooloo Stockade. The place where Governor Bourke decide to build the new gaol in Darlinghurst. End up laying stone for the underground tunnel going be used to take prisoners from the gaol to the cells of the main courthouse.