Solomon Wiseman was said to be an extremely cruel man. He had a number of assigned convicts to work for him. It is said he had a big rock on his property, which was called Judgment Rock and he used to sit there in judgment on offenders. Even in a harsh and cruel age perhaps he was cruel—the fact remains he was hated and feared. Not that that prevented a rather flowery obituary from being published.

Sol had a number of children by his second wife and by this time he would have been well off, sufficiently so to give his daughters a riding master. My Auntie Rose—and I think my mother too—told the story of one of these girls being seduced by the riding master, becoming pregnant and being thrown out of the house. They thought both she and the baby died and you could hardly marvel at it—what would a girl do in those terrible days?

This story had been passed down the family from Granny Davis, through Granny Maunder and Auntie Rose and at last to my mother. Mum always used exactly the same phrases each time she told it. The story was like a little sealed capsule that couldn’t be jarred open with questions.

I was glad it was there, though. It was like Grandma’s sideboard that had sat out in the hall in our house throughout my childhood. Its drawers smelt of mothballs, the top was marked with a blue stain in the shape of Tasmania, its wooden handles were cracked. But when I looked at it I saw a penumbra of associations, memories, stories. That was what made it precious. Mum’s version of Solomon was solid like that sideboard, even though its details could seem foggy and unreal. It gave me a sense that my ship was anchored to the past by ropes of story.

3
The Mitchell Library

The Mitchell Library stands just up the hill from where the convicts were put ashore. It was built in an age when Ancient Greece was the pinnacle of civilisation and Ionic columns announced Culture. Its main Reading Room is a vast lighted box, radiance pouring down from the ceiling.

A week after the walk across the Bridge I climbed its steps and pushed through its big bronze doors. The Mitchell contains most of the documents relating to early settlement in New South Wales. If there were any information about Solomon Wiseman that might start to fill the void that had opened up in me, that’s where I’d find it.

From trips to the library as a student years before, I knew it housed a Family History Centre. I’d glanced in and seen how busy it was. Most of the people there seemed to be middle-aged women, their eyes shining, the thrill of the chase upon them as they went looking for ancestors.

I didn’t go in. I’d always thought they were a bit of a joke, those ladies in their cardigans tracking down every twig of their family tree. Now that I was one of them, I wanted even less to go there.