The Australia Stories - Short Story

Literary Review, Spring, 2001 by Todd James Pierce

6 - The Rise of a Nation

In the mid-1700s, the English understood that a Great South Land existed beyond the equator, down deep into the Pacific, where the water was turquoise and rough. Like most famous explorers, Captain Cook was not the first, but his arrival occurred at an opportune time. He charted the coast, surveyed the shore, and claimed the continent for King George III. New South Wales, it was called, soil thick with vegetation, water teeming with life, inhabited by natives who, in Cook's own words, appeared "far more happier than we Europeans." Cook returned to England with the information that the South Land was not an island of wealth, but one of rich soil and simple life. In the end, though, the continent was designated as a penal colony, the first prisoners transported a few years later.

My earliest Australian ancestor, my great-great-grandfather, was sentenced seven years for pickpocketing. By all accounts, he was a small man, barely over five feet tall, gentle hands, a face that blended easily into crowds. He was caught in Picadilly Circus, his fingers stretched into the pocket of a man who, when uniformed, was also a constable. He did not fare well in Australia, damp weather claiming his life just six months after the completion of his sentence. His one footnote in history: he helped run the first stagecoach line between Sydney and Newcastle as part of his forced daily labor.

My great-great-grandmother fared much better. A convict herself, she became a much-admired seamstress, a skill she was able to pass along to her daughter and grandchildren. My grandmother started as a seamstress, her afternoons spent in her mother's shop, but eventually other things interested her more: gardening, reading, trying to find a life of her own.

Here I see the first indication that my grandmother would be the person she became: she descended from a line of strong, determined women. While living, she could not have known about her posthumous success, but each time I read her book, I think she must have sensed it. Her better essays read like advice, a wise woman revealing what she has learned. She critiqued the government, business structures, and social customs; she criticized the nation's treatment of the aborigines. "My biggest regret," she wrote, "was that I believed the lie. I believed we, as English, were somehow better than other people, but now I see how this belief limited me in so many ways." In the end, though, she was best remembered for her advice to women, that they shouldn't be afraid of leading their own lives, that happiness wasn't limited to marriage, and that strength often came from being alone.

7 - The Blue Mountains

When my mother was nineteen, she followed my father, Robert Browne, to America where I was born. I had a good childhood, but I knew, even then that my mother was not happy and regretted leaving her family. She checked the mailbox regularly, she called home every other weekend, some days she would drive to the Pacific and look across it, her eyes scanning the horizon, where water curved around the earth and, some seven thousand miles later, connected with Australia.