Break Your Chains Read online

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2018

  Copyright © Text, Emily Conolan 2018

  Copyright © Cover illustration, Sher Rill Ng 2018

  Copyright © Interview replies on pages 263–268, Theresa Sainty 2018

  The author claims no ownership over any Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural material referenced in the story, including palawa kani language words or the important cultural practice of shell necklace making.

  Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural material used with permission from Theresa Sainty. With thanks to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation for use of the palawa kani language word ‘Waylitja’. palawa kani is the revived Tasmanian Aboriginal language.

  Every effort has been made to ensure that, at the time of publication, information in this book pertaining to Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural references is correct. Please contact the publisher with any concerns.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A catalogue record for this

  book is available from the

  National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76029 491 5

  eISBN 978 1 76063 580 0

  For teaching resources,

  explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover design by Karen Scott and Sandra Nobes

  Text design by Sandra Nobes and Karen Scott

  Photo of Theresa Sainty on page 263 © Charles Chadwick

  Vintage map on pages 280–281 © Lukasz Szwaj/Shutterstock

  Photo of Emily Conolan on page 284 © Nick Tompson

  www.emilyconolan.com.au

  To Anwen, Ben, and all those

  who call Tasmania home

  WARNING: YOU MAY DIE

  WHILE READING THIS BOOK.

  When you read this book, you are the main

  character, and you make the choices that

  direct the story.

  At the end of many chapters, you will face

  life-and-death decisions. Turn to the page directed

  by your choice, and keep reading.

  Some of these decisions may not work out well for

  you. But there is a happy ending...somewhere.

  In the Freedom Finder series, it is your quest

  to find freedom through the choices you make.

  If you reach a dead end, turn back to the last

  choice you made, and find a way through.

  NEVER GIVE UP. GOOD LUCK.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  DEAR READER,

  Let me tell you something very personal. My ancestors left England and arrived here – in Tasmania, previously known as Van Diemen’s Land, before that known as Lutruwita – when the presence of Europeans in this land was still very new.

  In 1825, when this book is set, Tasmanian Aboriginal people had already been here for at least forty thousand years. My ancestors on my mother’s side had been here exactly two years. That makes me seventh-generation Tasmanian, something that people boast about these days, but my family has been here for just a pinprick of time compared to the First Nations Australians.

  When I came to write this book, I had to face the uncomfortable truth that my ancestors’ home in Bothwell was built on stolen land. The violence, dispossession and disease that came about as a result of Australia’s colonisation (invasion by white people) is touched upon in this book, and in the fact files at the back. And my family played a part in that.

  In writing this book, I had to dig inside myself and pull out some of the messy feelings I have about being Tasmanian. I also had to ask myself: To what extent is it okay to show young readers the kind of racism and offensive attitudes people held in 1825?

  By including racist scenes and words in my book, I don’t want to help continue or spread racism. In the story, characters call Aboriginal people ‘natives’; suggest Aboriginal people need to be violently attacked in order to ‘teach them a lesson’; and show religious intolerance towards a Muslim man. That behaviour was not okay in 1825, and it is not okay now. I also didn’t want to cause hurt to any Aboriginal or non-Anglo readers, who I worried might feel upset to see those racist views in print.

  But in the end, I decided it would be more hurtful to leave out the racism and pretend it never happened. Because racist words and actions did happen, and are still happening today, and it’s impossible to deal with a problem that no one will talk about. I also like to think that, since this is a book where you choose what happens next, readers like yourself might go back and forth and try out all the different scenes – including those concerning Waylitja, the fictional Aboriginal character in this story – and see how those choices work out for you and for the other characters.

  Waylitja has the most beautiful name, meaning ‘parrot’. I have the wonderful Theresa Sainty to thank for that, as she named him. Theresa, a Tasmanian Aboriginal Elder, was my main cultural advisor on this story, generously sharing her time and knowledge to help make it better. See the back of the book for an interview with her.

  After colonisation, the Aboriginal languages of Tasmania were left in tatters. Theresa has played a big role in bringing all the fragments of language together, to create palawa kani, a beautiful and rich language that Tasmanian Aboriginal people can use today. (See tacinc.com.au/programs/palawa-kani for more information, including the permission policy for the use of palawa kani words.)

  My huge thanks go to Theresa, and to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation, for giving me permission to use Waylitja’s name and other cultural material in the story.

  My gratitude also goes to Ruth Langford, Tony Brown, Denise Robinson and Tony Burgess for their time and encouragement, and to Aboriginal cultural consultant extraordinaire Lisa Fuller for her editorial advice. I’d also like to recognise that this book is set on the lands of the Muwinina people (Hobart) and the people whose country encompassed the Bothwell area and offer my deepest respect for and acknowledgement of their countries and these Elders both past and present.

  I’m lucky that I’ve never had to fight for my freedom in the extreme way that many of the characters in this series are forced to do. Everyone in this book is searching for their own kind of freedom, and not everyone finds it. However, through my work as a refugee advocate setting up the Tasmanian Asylum Seeker Support and as a TAFE teacher, I’ve met many people from all over the world whose lives have tested them in this way, and their stories were what inspired me to write this series of books.

  In real life, the choices that are laid out in front of us are more blurry, more unpredictable, and more complex than those shown in this series. (And real people don’t have the option of flipping back a few pages and trying a different choice!) But I hope that it will lead you to think about what freedom means to you and how far you might go to achieve it – and to think about how the people you see all around you are, in fact, Freedom Finders.

  Because humans are Freedom Finders – that’s just what we do. That’s why we migrate, why we begin new jobs or families or relationships, why we try new things, or have dreams, or reach out to others. That search for freedom often plays an important role in why we make the choices that we do. We are all searching for whatever makes us feel free in our hearts.

  I hope that you enjoy the journey.

  EMILY CONOLAN, 2018

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42 – EPILOGUE

  FACT FILE: SMALLPOX

  FACT FILE: PICKPOCKETS

  FACT FILE: CHILD LABOUR

  FACT FILE: PRISONS

  FACT FILE: TASMANIAN ABORIGINAL PEOPLE

  FACT FILE: WHAT HAPPENED TO WAYLITJA’S PEOPLE?

  FACT FILE: CONVICTS IN VAN DIEMEN’S LAND

  FACT FILE: MATTHEW BRADY

  FACT FILE: IRISH POLITICAL PRISONERS IN VAN DIEMEN’S LAND

  DID THAT REALLY HAPPEN?

  WORLD MAP

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  You sque
al with delight. You are three years old, it is 1815 in Kilkenny, Ireland, and it’s the first time you’ve sat astride a horse. You feel her hot, wide body breathing beneath you.

  ‘Shall we make her walk, then?’ asks Da.

  Just then a shout comes from the master. ‘Ryan! That’s my finest mare! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  Da slips you down from the horse’s back and sends you running home to Ma, for he doesn’t want you to see him be whipped by the master. He doesn’t want you to know, yet, that this is the way things are for Irish folk like you.

  YOU’RE SEVEN, AND Da’s working for a different master now. One golden afternoon, he brings home a horse: an old mare, whiskery around the mouth, that he’s talked the master into letting him keep now she’s considered useless.

  Your ma curses your da’s lack of sense – ‘Where are we going to keep her? How will we afford the food?’ – but you and your older sister, Erin, will love this mare till her dying days. You will plait her tail and check her hooves for stones like Da shows you, and learn to ride bareback, and you will cry for days when she reaches the end of her life a year later and goes to horse heaven.

  YOU’RE TEN YEARS old. Erin would have turned eighteen, but she died last year in childbirth. The baby died too. Most Irish families are large, but your ma had ‘women’s troubles’, and now you’re the only child left.

  Da is away a lot. You’re not sure why; he’s secretive about it. But then one night he has a bit to drink, and he tells you everything: how he fought in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and how he’s now working on forming a new secret society of Irishmen to free Ireland from English rule. ‘We’ll be our own masters!’ he tells you. He’s a hero in your eyes.

  IT IS 1825 and you’re thirteen years old. Last year, Da was caught setting fire to an English government ship. Soldiers took him away to a prison hulk somewhere on the River Thames in London. His case still hasn’t been heard in court.

  After he was taken, you and Ma also left dear, green Ireland for the crowded, cobbled roads of London. Even now, a year on, you watch the horses clopping by, their carriages carrying fancy Englishmen, and you miss Ireland, and Da, and the horses terribly. You miss the sweet grassy smell of horse-breath, and the bright-blue skies.

  You and Ma found a one-room hovel in a London slum. The rats are fatter than you are. The idea of freedom for Ireland seems a distant, shiny, imaginary thing, like a soap-bubble carried on the wind. You can barely keep it in sight – but you know that you must. For Da.

  Go to scene 1.

  There’s a clatter and a scream. A wooden crack splits the air, and everyone in the narrow street whips around as if a musket’s been shot. You see it all in an instant: a carriage with a snapped axle, tilting dangerously to one side; the carriage-driver, bruised and bloody, thrown to the ground; and amid the chaos, wild and angry as a giant, the horse, rearing up on his back legs and neighing in panic.

  Mothers snatch their babies away, and little boys in braces and caps run out of their houses to look. Someone is helping the carriage driver to press a towel to the wound on his head, but no one knows how to settle the horse; a couple of people are shouting and waving their arms, trying to frighten him into submission, but they are making things worse.

  You don’t know what you’re going to do, or how – you only know that this is your moment to act. That big wild beast is only frightened because he’s trapped; because everything he knows just turned upside down. You know how he feels.

  The horse is all teeth and eyeballs, his hooves rising and falling like threshing hammers, but you dart through the chaos, right underneath the horse, ignoring cries of ‘Stop!’ and ‘You want to get yourself killed, girl?’ until you can touch his sweaty chest. His breath is coming hot and fast through his flared nostrils, and his heart is pounding like a bodhran drum.

  ‘Whoa, boy,’ you say. ‘Easy there… easy there, boy.’

  Right now, it feels as though your da is here beside you: guiding your hands as you stroke the horse’s flanks; showing you how to loosen the straps that have tangled around his neck; telling you to watch how the horse’s ears are swivelling towards you, listening to your voice as his panic subsides.

  ‘Easy there…’ you soothe, and the horse drops his head so you can scratch him behind the ears. The crowd breaks into astonished applause. The horse bristles at the sudden sound, but settles again as you whisper to him and pat his big, hairy nose.

  The carriage door opens and the crowd gasps: there has been a lady trapped inside the whole time! People rush forward to help her down. She is wearing a flowered hat and robes of blue silk. Incredibly, she does not seem angry or frightened but is smiling and nodding her thanks.

  The lady’s eyes fall on you. Without saying a word, she walks up to you and takes one of your small, grubby hands in hers. Her hands are pale pink, like the roses you sometimes see the barrow-lady selling, with delicate, long fingers that have clearly never been blistered by scalding-hot washing tubs or callused by hefting a spade.

  ‘How did you manage to calm the horse?’ she asks you. To your surprise, her accent is Irish, like your own.

  ‘My da showed me how,’ you murmur. ‘Back when we lived in Ireland.’

  ‘Ah, a fellow Irish girl.’ The lady smiles broadly. ‘Do you miss our homeland?’

  ‘How can I not, ma’am?’ you confess.

  ‘It is the best place on God’s earth,’ she agrees. ‘My heart yearns for it too. You were very brave just now – do you know that?’

  You shrug and smile. The people on the street are going back to their everyday business, but the hum and clatter of London seems to have faded around you, and when you look into this Irishwoman’s eyes, you feel as though you’re held inside a bubble of time – as though she sees something more in you than a barefoot, homesick child.

  ‘I was just like you when I arrived here,’ she tells you tenderly. ‘I had no idea how to survive. But I can see already that you’re smart, and brave, and that you have a good heart. If you follow it, I’m sure you’ll find your way.’

  Your eyes fill with tears. Kindness is such a rare thing in your life. You hadn’t let yourself admit how thirsty you were for it until now.

  ‘I … don’t know how to help my da,’ you say haltingly. You wipe away your tears fiercely. ‘He’s in prison. He was trying to make Ireland free, and—’

  The lady gasps. ‘Then I know that your da must be a hero,’ she says. ‘We must fight together, my darling, and never give up. Here.’ She slips something from her wrist and puts it into your hand. ‘Keep this, close and secret. Only use it when you must. When you understand its meaning, you’ll know it’s time to pass it on.’

  You look down. Nestled in your palm is a golden bracelet set with seven coloured gemstones. One’s as dark-green as a fir tree. The next is black as the night sky, and another clear and bright as a star. Two are emerald-green, like the Irish grass. One’s a ruby, red as blood. The seventh stone seems to hold all of these colours swirled together: an impossibly beautiful rainbow that shimmers in the light with a bluish fire.

  ‘Do you mean me to keep this, ma’am?’ you ask incredulously, raising your head. You can’t believe that such a beautiful thing could belong to you. But the lady has gone.

  You slip the bracelet into your pocket. Suddenly you’re certain that you can survive here – will survive here. You feel as light and mad and wondrous as one of those hot-air balloons you’ve heard can sail the skies.

  YOU RUN HOME, bursting to tell Ma your news. As you bang the door closed behind you, the room goes dark. Ma hasn’t lit a lamp or started cooking, as she usually would have. Where is she? The only sound is your own breath, still loud and fast from running.

  Then you notice the stink in the room, sweaty and fetid. You open the door a crack, and a strip of dusky light falls across the room. In the corner where Ma sleeps, a heap of blankets rises and falls.

  ‘Ma?’ You run to her, pull back the blankets and let out a cry. All the happiness slips out of your heart like an egg that’s just been cracked.

  Ma hasn’t been feeling well for a few days, but now her sleeping face is covered in blisters, and you know: it’s the smallpox. Dear God, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, not that.

  You get busy immediately, shaking out the blankets and smoothing them over your ma more comfortably, and putting water on to boil for a soup to feed her when she wakes.