The Potato Factory

Chapter Twenty-eight

It is one of the great paradoxes in human migration that new beginnings often take with them old and often undesirable social customs. Those fleeing affliction or a hierarchical system for a new and free environment soon develop tyrannies and pecking orders of their own. Though in a penal colony one might expect a clear distinction between the convict and the free, the dichotomies of class in Van Diemen's Land were far more complicated and carefully graded. The relationship Mary enjoyed with Mr Emmett was all the more remarkable for this.

The first two great class distinctions were, of course, the free and the prisoner populations. This was a divide so wide that it was almost impossible to leap, even in exceptional circumstances. Mary had never been inside Mr Emmett's home, nor had she been introduced to his wife, Lucy. Occasionally they would meet in the garden, but Mary would stand with her head bowed and hands clasped in respectful silence while the grand lady passed by.

Lucy Emmett's pretty daughter, Millicent, had once stopped to talk with Mary, who was pruning and shaping the standard rose she had given Mr Emmett for his daughter's tenth birthday.

'Why! That's my rose!' Millicent exclaimed. 'I had quite forgotten it. Will you shape it well and make it beautiful again?'

'Yes, Miss Millicent, it will be perfect for the summer to come. It be robust enough and not much neglected.'

'Good! It was a present from Papa and grown just for me by a drunken wretch in the Female Factory!'

'Is that what your papa told you?' Mary asked softly.

'No, Mama told me that! Papa said there's good in everyone. But Mama said the women in the Female Factory were too low to be included in everyone and were long past being good.' Millicent tilted her head to one side. 'I think there is, don't you?'

'Is what, Miss Millicent?'

'Good in everyone.'

Mary gave a wry laugh. 'I've known some what could be in doubt and they didn't all come from the Female Factory neither.'

'Millicent! How could you! Come along at once!' Lucy Emmett's cry of alarm made her daughter jump.

'Coming, Mama!' Millicent called back. She cast a look of apprehension at Mary and fled without saying another word.

Mary could hear Lucy Emmett's high-pitched chiding for several minutes afterwards. Some time later Mr Emmett's wife entered the garden and passed by where Mary was weeding. At her approach Mary rose from her haunches with her hands clasped and head bowed. Some paces from where she stood Lucy Emmett halted as if to admire a late-blooming rose.

'You will be sent away at once should you venture to talk to Miss Millicent again,' she hissed. She did not look directly at Mary and it was as though she were talking to the rose itself. Then she turned abruptly and left the garden.

Because Lucy Emmett's husband worked in the government, she was considered a 'true merino' by the free inhabitants of the colony – that is, they were among the first in point of social order. This circumstance was considered sufficient grounds for keeping aloof from the rest of the community. In fact it was considered degrading to associate with anyone who did not belong to her own milieu.

The government class were somewhat jeeringly known by the next order as the 'aristocracy'. This next, or second, order, more numerous and certainly wealthier and more influential in the colony, were the 'respectable' free inhabitants, the merchants, bankers, doctors, lawyers and clergymen who had no connection with the government above being required to pay its crippling taxes.

Below them came the free persons of low station, clerks and small tradesmen, butchers and bakers, who serviced the daily lives of the first-rate settlers. They had little chance of rising above their stations in life and were collectively possessed with an abiding anxiety that they might, through bankruptcy or some other misfortune, sink to the lowest but one level, that of the labouring class.

Below even the labourer was the emancipist, though this group was perhaps the most curious contradiction in the pecking order. Emancipists could, and often enough did, rise through the bottom ranks, past the labouring class and into the ranks of clerks and tradesmen.

The sons of emancipists, if educated in a profession and if they became immensely rich, could rise beyond even the third rank. Daughters had greater opportunities, if they were pretty and properly prepared. That is to say, if they attended the Polyglot Academy, where French, Italian and Spanish were taught by Ferrari's Comparative Method. They would also need to have been instructed by Monsieur Gilbert, a Professor of Dancing, before being considered sufficiently 'yeasted' to rise upwards.

No young woman, even if she was exceptionally beautiful and possessed the most elegant manners, could think to enter society without a comprehensive knowledge of the steps in all the new dances being practised in the salons of London and Paris.

Only then, and only if she should bring with her the added incentive of a great deal of money, was it possible to rise in due course to the ranks of a first rater. But even when the children of a successful emancipist achieved such Olympian heights, their flawed lineage remained and the whispers of the crinolined society matrons would continue for the next two generations.

The bottom station was, of course, the prisoner population and it included the ticket of leavers such as Mary. Between this class and all others, a strict line was drawn. In the presence of any free person in the community, prisoners were as if struck dumb. It was considered correct, even by the lowest of the free orders, to regard them as invisible, ghosts in canary-yellow jackets who laboured on the roads or at tasks beneath the dignity even of the labouring class. And, of course, if they were assigned as servants in a household, they were expected to exercise the minimum speech required to perform their daily duties.

Mr Emmett's courage and generosity of spirit can now be properly appreciated. He, a member of the first station, not only acknowledged the existence of Mary, a convict, but consistently helped her. Emmett was also something of a dreamer for supposing that Mary might be accepted by even the lowliest of government clerks had she taken up his offer to work in his department.

The marked contrast of Lucy Emmett's attitude towards Mary should not be drawn as an example of uncharitable behaviour. To speak to a prisoner, albeit a ticket of leaver, was beyond the imaginings of a pure merino woman, a nightmarish confrontation not to be contemplated even in the most unlikely social circumstances.

Thus, the likelihood of Mary securing a billet as a clerk in Hobart Town was very much in the order of impossible. Not only was she a woman, but such a position lay strictly within the precincts of the third class whereas she was condemned to work within the lowest of the low, the sixth class. It can only be supposed that, in bringing about Mary's appointment, Mr Emmett had favoured Peter Degraves with a government contract, or perhaps waived some building dispensation for the construction of his new brewery, or even invoked a Masonic rite in his position as Grand Master of Hobart's secret order of Free and Accepted Masons.

The gamble Peter Degraves took on Mary soon paid off. She was quick to learn, arrived early and worked late, and took no nonsense from the men, who eventually came to call her, with much admiration, Mother Mary of the Blessed Beads.

It was not only Mary's skill at bookkeeping that impressed her employers, but also her plain sense mixed with some imagination. Mary was soon aware that pilfering on a building site by the labourers was costing the owners a considerable amount each month, and that the men regarded this scam as their natural right. She requested an appointment with Peter Degraves at his office higher up the slopes of the mountain, where he and his brother-in-law owned the concession to cut the timber right up to the rocky outcrop known as the organ pipes.

Degraves kept Mary waiting a considerable time before he called her into his small, cluttered office. A large cross-cut saw of the type used by convicts leaned against one wall, its blade buckled into a gentle curve. The room smelled of sawdust and the sap of new-cut wood. Peter Degraves was a tall, fair, clean-shaven man, not given to lard as were so many men in their forties. He sat in his shirt sleeves with his waistcoat unbuttoned and his clay-spattered boots resting upon a battered-looking desk.

'Take a pew, Miss Abacus,' he said, indicating a small upright wicker chair. 'What brings you to the sawmill?'

'Sir, I would speak to you about the site.'

'Ah! It goes well, Miss Abacus, the foreman says we are ahead in time and I know our expenses are well contained. You have done an excellent job.'

'Not as excellent as might be supposed,' Mary answered.

Degraves looked surprised. 'Oh? Is there something I ought to know about, Miss Abacus?'

'The pilfering, sir… on the site. It be considerable.'

Degraves shrugged. 'It was ever thus, Miss Abacus. Petty crime within the labouring class is as common as lice in an urchin's hair.' He spread his hands. 'We live, after all, in a penal colony.'

'Mr Degraves, sir, I have an inventory and we are losing materials at the rate o' fifty pounds a week, two thousand seven hundred and four pounds a year. That be a considerable amount, would you not say?'

'Aye, it's a lot of money, but I've known worse in the sawmilling business.'

'We have one 'undred workmen on the site, each earns fourteen pounds a year in wages, that be…'

'Fourteen hundred pounds and, as you say, we are losing nearly double that! Just how would you prevent this, Miss Abacus?' Degraves asked in a somewhat patronising manner.

'The value o' the material what's nicked and sold in the taverns and on the sly be one-fifth o' the market value, no more'n ten pounds.'

'And just how do you know this?' Degraves asked, removing his feet from the desk. He pulled his chair closer and leaned forward, listening intently.

'I took various materials from the site and flogged them,' Mary replied calmly.

'You what? You stole from my site!'

'Not stole, sir, it all be written in the books. It were a test to see what the value o' the materials were on the sly.'

Degraves sat back and laughed. 'Why, that's damned clever! Ten pounds eh?' He paused then said, 'Well, that's the labouring class for you, not only dishonest but easily gulled and stupid to boot.'

'Let's give 'em the ten pounds, sir, or a little more, fifteen. That be three shillings per man per week extra in his pay packet, seven pounds two shillings and sixpence per year.'

'But, Miss Abacus,' Degraves protested, 'that's half again as much as they are paid now.'

'Sir, it ain't all the men what's stealing, most is family men as honest as the day. We make the money a weekly bonus, given a month in arrears and when we've determined no pilfering has taken place.'

'No pilfering?' Degraves laughed. 'Not a single nail or plank or brick or bag of mortar! I think you dream somewhat, Miss Abacus!'

'Well no, sir. I have allowed five pounds, that will be sufficient tolerance,' Mary said firmly.

'Twenty pounds and we save thirty, I'm most impressed! Do you think it can be made to work?'

'No, sir. It will not work with money,' Mary replied.

'Oh? How then?'

'In rations! A food chit issued to the labourer's wife what is worth three shillings a week. We pay the men on Saturdays and most of it be in the tavern keeper's hands by Sunday night with the brats starving at home for the rest o' the week. If there be the prospect o' three shillings worth o' rations from the company shop on a Monday, the family will eat that week.'

'Company shop? May I remind you, Miss Abacus, I am a sawmiller who is building a brewery, not a damned tradesman! Who will run this cornucopia of plenty?'

'I will, sir! There be enough money to pay the salary of a good shop assistant if we buy prudently and sell at shopkeepers' rates, and I will keep the books.'

'And will there be a further profit?' Degraves asked shrewdly.

'Yes, sir, to be used for the purchase of books for the orphanage school, as well as a Christmas party given to them by the brewery.'

Degraves laughed. 'Chits for workers' wives, company shops, books and Christmas parties for orphans, when will these fantasies end?' He grew suddenly stern. 'Miss Abacus, I am a practical man who has worked with rough men all my life. Mark my words, they will take your chit and steal as before. You cannot prevent a labouring man from stealing from his master.'

'You are perfectly right, sir. You cannot. I cannot. But his wife can! It's she who will be your policeman, she who will make her man deal with the thief what thinks to take advantage of all the other men by stealing from the site. Wives will make their husbands punish the guilty, for I guarantee she will let no villain take the bread out o' her little ones' mouths.'

Degraves leaned back into his chair. 'It be most clever, Miss Abacus, but I'm afraid it cannot be done. What of my reputation with my peers? Those who, like me, employ labour? They will not take kindly to the raising of a labourer's annual salary by more than fifty per cent! Let me tell you, there will be hell to pay!'

'Sir, heaven forbid! Raise in wages!' Mary appeared to be shocked at such a notion. 'It be a feeding scheme for the worker's family. The Church and the government will soon enough come out in support of you for such an act o' Christian charity!' Mary, afraid she might lose his support for fear of his peers, thought desperately. 'May I remind you that we have a large community o' Quakers what does not condone strong drink and there is them Temperance lot just started, the Van Diemen's Land Temperance Society. They's already kickin' up a fuss about the distilleries in the colony. But who will speak badly of a brewery what looks after workers' brats and cares about the education of orphans?'

Degraves smiled. There had already been several raised eyebrows in society concerning his intention to build a brewery. 'A model works, eh?' He frowned suddenly. 'Do you really think it will work, Miss Abacus?'

Mary knew she had won, and she was unable to conceal the excitement in her voice so she spoke quickly. 'Better than that, Mr Degraves, sir. We'll end up with the best and most honest workers in the colony on account o' the excellent family conditions what the boss o' the brewery Mr Peter Degraves has put into place!' She took a gulp of air and to this breathless sycophancy she added, 'Thank you, sir, I think it be most clever of you to think up such generous plans for those of us who is privileged to work for you!'

Degraves again looked surprised for a moment, then smiled. He was impressed. 'Why thank you, Miss Abacus, it's not a bad solution, even if I did not think of it myself.' His expression was whimsical when he added, 'You will, of course, let me know when I should reveal this brilliant new plan of mine to the men.'

'And to the Colonial Times, sir. The feeding scheme for workers' brats.'

Degraves nodded as he replaced his feet on the desk. 'Though I see little gain in helping the orphanage with the business of learning. These children are the illegitimate spawn of the island's scum and no good will come of it, I can assure you. Besides there is more ridicule in it than there be praise.'

'Sir, sometimes we may be allowed to take credit where no credit is due, and sometimes we deserve much more than we get. Besides, I were just like them poor little brats once.'

Degraves sighed and dismissed Mary with a backward wave of his hand. 'As you wish, Miss Abacus, I can see you do not surrender easily.'

Mary smiled and lowered her eyes to show her respect, though she laughed inwardly, thinking of the motto inscribed on her Waterloo medal. 'Thank you, sir, you have been most gracious,' she replied.

Degraves threw back his head and laughed. 'Prudent, Miss Abacus! Prudent to the tune of thirty pounds a week! I shall not think well of you if this turns out badly, and there will be little graciousness about my manner as I dismiss you from service.'

Mary continued to work for the brewery after its completion and by the time she had served out her ticket of leave she was intimate with every step in the process of making beer. She had been correct. Good men came from everywhere to seek employment at the new brewery where the practice of issuing ration chits had been continued and, as had also been the case on the work site, pilfering was reduced to insignificant proportions.

Written into the wrought-iron gate of the brewery were the words 'Happy workers make happy beer' and this motto also appeared on the labels of the bottled product. The beer they produced at the Cascades Brewery was of a light colour and very pure and, while there were a dozen other breweries in Hobart, none could match the quality of Peter Degraves' excellent light ale and pilsener-style beer. Such was its superiority that it quickly became popular all over the island and ships carrying the company's timber to New South Wales increasingly came also to carry barrels of Cascade beer to Sydney.

Mary soon realised that the difference in the beer was the quality of the malt they used and the pure mountain water. Peter Degraves had sited his mill near the confluence of the Hobart and the Guy Fawkes rivulets, damming them both to make a series of small lakes of pure mountain water. In addition to this he ran a pipeline from Strickland Falls, about a mile further upstream, which was the source of the purest water of all. The crystal-clear waters fed from a spring which began near the summit of the great mountain, well above its winter snowline.

Strickland Falls was not far from Mary's secret rock and she was determined to own the land on which the rock stood and also have access to the water in the falls. In the third year of her employment at the brewery she marked out approximately ten acres which included her beloved rock, and which led down to the bank on the opposite side of the falls to the brewery pipeline.

In 1824 Governor Arthur had granted Peter Degraves two thousand acres on the side of the mountain for saw milling, and with a further grant taken together with several judicious purchases, he and his brother-in-law Hugh Mclntosh now owned the entire side of Mount Wellington. Mary was resolute that she must somehow purchase these ten acres from Degraves and his ailing brother-in-law, though even if they should agree to sell it to her, she was still a ticket of leave convict and could not legally own property.

Once again Mary went to see Mr Emmett. They stood in his garden while she explained what she wanted.

'Mary, by all accounts you have done exceedingly well and Mr Degraves has often enough thanked me for recommending you to him. I daresay, if I can find a plausible reason for the purchase of this land, he may be friendly enough disposed to sell it, always supposing that he should receive a good price. But what possible reason could I have to purchase ten acres of useless land on the slopes of Mount Wellington?'

'You could tell him that you want some day to build a home and wish to secure a small part of the creek bank below the falls, sir.'

Mr Emmett shook his head. 'I have been to the falls but once. It is quite an expedition and, as I recall, they make a fearful racket. I should be the laughing stock of the free settlers and no one in their right mind would build among the trees so far from civilisation with the din of a waterfall drowning all conversation. Besides, I am known for the excellence of my garden and you know as well as I do that the soil under gum trees is leached of all its goodness and is infertile and not in the least suitable for the cultivation of an English garden.'

'A retreat, a place in nature to go to, sir?' Mary suggested a little lamely.

Mr Emmett ignored this remark. He was still taken up with the absurdity of the whole notion. 'Furthermore, the big trees in the area you speak of have already been cut. I would be buying a pig in a poke, half-grown trees and red gum scrub. People, who already count me odd, would think me gone quite mad! My wife would not be able to tolerate the shame of so foolish a decision.'

'Could you not do the transaction in secret, sir? Mr Degraves knows you not to be a fool and would not judge you one for this!' Mary brightened with a sudden thought. 'You could offer him a little more than what the land be worth and ask him to stay stum, I mean, remain silent. He is a man with a good eye for an extra shilling made and, as you say, he has already made his profit from the area we speaks of.'

Mr Emmett scratched the top of his head and looked vexed. 'Can you not wait, my dear? It is only a year before you obtain your freedom, and it is most unlikely that land so far from the town will prove any more attractive to a buyer in the meantime.'

Mary's eyes welled with tears. 'It be the rock, sir!' she suddenly announced.

Mr Emmett was unaffected by Mary's distress – he had seen Mary's tears before when she wanted something from him. 'The rock? What on earth are you talking about?'

Mary knuckled the tears from her large green eyes and sniffed. 'It be a rock on the mountain, a magic rock, I simply must own it!'

'A rock! Own a rock! Magic? You really do try my patience, Mary Abacus!' But she could see that Mr Emmett was curious and prepared to listen to her explanation.

With a fair degree of sniffing, Mary began, swearing Mr Emmett to secrecy for the silliness of it. She told him how she often went to the rock for comfort and how, when the blossom was out and the berries ripe, she would lie on the rock and watch the green parakeets feeding and squabbling in the trees and surrounding bush. 'Not parakeets,' Mr Emmett corrected, 'rosellas, my dear, green rosellas, they are native to this island.' Finally Mary told him how she had slept upon the rock under the stars the first night she had been released from the Female Factory.

This last pronouncement astonished Mr Emmett who, though a nature lover, had acquired a healthy respect for the Tasmanian wilderness. Mary's admission filled him with alarm. It was not uncommon for people who were inexperienced in the ways of the bush to be lost on the mountain slopes, some even perishing in a fall of rock or a sudden snowstorm. Besides the slopes were used by dangerous men who hid from the law during the day and crept down into the town at night.

It had already been noted that Mr Emmett was an unusual man and something of a dreamer, and now he listened attentively as though Mary's preposterous story made more sense to him than any logical reasons she might have. Finally, though cautioning her against the notion, he agreed to approach Peter Degraves and attempt to purchase the ten acres on the mountain on Mary's behalf.

Degraves drove a hard bargain, for despite their friendship, Emmett was a government man and no settler would wish to be bested by the government, even in a private transaction. He finally agreed to sell the title to the ten acres of light timber and scrub for forty pounds, a sum somewhat in advance of the current value of the land.

Mr Emmett had confided in him that as he grew older and the mountain became safer a small cottage in the woods seemed an attractive place for a retreat, where he might stay for short periods alone to read and write. Degraves, aware of the gossip to which such a peculiar notion might give rise in the society of the pure merinos, agreed to keep the land transaction secret and asked surprisingly few questions.

Mr Emmett handled the registration of the title deeds himself so that the purchase was not published in the Government Gazette until two years later, when it was transferred into the name of Mary Abacus, emancipist, resident, Mount Wellington Allotment No HT6784, Hobart Town District, Van Diemen's Land. With the property came the rights to use the pathway created along the Cascade Brewery pipeline in perpetuity.

In digging up and breaking open her clay pot to give Mr Emmett the forty pounds, plus two more for stamp and registration duty, Mary had taken the first proprietorial step in her new life. The money made from the Potato Factory not only allowed her to acquire a small piece of her magic mountain, but with it came the purest commercial source of water for the brewing of beer available in the colony.

Mary determined that, when the time came, she would clear and use only what land she needed for a water mill, malt house and small brewery. Though this dream was well beyond the resources she ever seemed likely to acquire, she could see the brewery clearly in her imagination, the stone buildings sitting among the trees. The rest of the land would be left as nature intended, so that tree and bush would grow to splendid maturity, giving an abundance of blossom and fruit to attract the flocks of green parakeets Mr Emmett called rosellas.

Mary remained with the Cascade Brewery for another year after she had obtained her freedom. Peter Degraves was not concerned when he eventually heard that Mr Emmett had sold his land on the mountain to Mary. He had long since decided that Mary was rather strange and that she should wish to live alone on the mountain did not greatly surprise him. With the brewery's reputation established, he had turned to another grand adventure, building a theatre for the benefit of the citizens of the town, and he was also expanding into shipbuilding and flour milling.

Degraves was happy to know that Mary was the bookkeeper and accountant at the brewery as he had come to absolutely trust her financial judgement in all matters. But he did not estimate her above his own needs. And, if he thought about it at all, he would have expected Mary to regard her security of employment at the brewery as above the price of rubies, and consequently to show her gratitude in a lifetime of faithful and uncomplaining service to him.

He was greatly surprised, therefore, when in the spring of 1836 Mary resigned. The previous year, that is the year she had gained her freedom, had been a busy one for her. She had cleared the land for almost a quarter of an acre around as a fire break, leaving some of the tallest trees in place. With a fast-running stream fronting the clearing and the rush of water over rock, the leafy glade Mary had created for herself was to her mind as close as she was likely to get to heaven on earth.

In truth the mountain, while a paradise of nature, was a dangerous place for a lone woman. Fire was always a threat and could sweep through the forest without warning. The weather on the mountain was unpredictable; sudden mists could move down the slopes, closing in the mountain and making visibility impossible. As the felling of the tall timber increased, mud slides and falling rocks became commonplace during winter storms.

But it was from man that the greatest danger lay. The mountain was also home to desperate men, the dregs of the colony's society who were frequently on the run from the law. In the summer months they would sleep on the mountain during the day and creep back into town at night to rob and steal so that they might frequent the drinking dens, sly grog shops and brothels. There they were served with raw spirits made on the premises which often enough killed them and more usually sent them mad.

Those who could still walk when daylight came would drag themselves into the bush on the slopes of the mountains to sleep until nightfall when they would re-emerge. Though most were harmless enough, their brains addled with alcohol, pathetic, shambling creatures, some were dangerous. Mary could not hope to construct a hut on her property where she might safely live, even though she had taken the precaution of learning how to fire a pistol which she always carried in her bag when she visited her clearing among the trees.

Mary was tempted to call her idyllic surrounding by some romantic name gathered from a book or taken from her native England, but in the end she chose, for reasons of sentiment and luck, to call her brewery The Potato Factory.

Mary argued to herself that the poteen still had been the true start of her great good luck. It had earned her a reputation for a quality product. Most of the sly grog available in the drinking dens and brothels of Hobart Town was more likely to kill the customer than to send him on his way happily inebriated. Her experience at the Cascade Brewery had shown her once again that quality was of the utmost importance, and she was adamant that it would become the hallmark of everything she did. When the time came to build the second Potato Factory she would boast that her beer was made from the finest hops and malt available, and brewed from the purest mountain water in the world.

If the association with the humble potato was a peculiar inheritance for a beer of quality this did not occur to Mary. While she had a very tidy mind she was still a creature of intuition, and she did what felt right to her even when logic might suggest she do otherwise. Mary was wise enough to know that few things in this world are wrought by logic alone, and that where men are often shackled by its strict parameters, women can harness the power of their intuition to create both surprising and original results.

In her mind Mary saw the chiselled stone of her malt house and the larger building of the brewery beside it with its enormous brick chimney rising above the trees. She would sometimes stand beside the falls which thundered so loudly they drowned out all other sound, and within the silence created by this singular roar, she would conjure up the entire vision. Mary could plainly see the drays lined up around the loading dock, hear the shouts of the drivers to make the great Clydesdale horses move forward, their gleaming brasses jingling as they left the Potato Factory to take her barrels of ale and beer to tavern and dockside. She looked into the bubbling water which rushed over smooth stones at her feet and saw it passing through imaginary sluice gates and along some elevated fluming and into the buckets of a giant iron water wheel which would power the brewery machinery. And sometimes, when the dream was complete, she would smack her lips and, with the back of her hand, wipe imagined froth from her mouth as though she could truly taste the liquid amber of her own future creation.

This world is not short of dreamers, but to the dreamer in Mary was added a clever, practical and innovative mind which once committed would never surrender. All grand schemes, she told herself, may be broken down to small beginnings. Each step she took, no matter how tentative it might seem, would be linked to her grand design and would always be moving towards it, if only a fraction of an inch each time. This was a simple and perhaps naive philosophy based on perseverance, on knowing that the grandest tapestry begins with a single silken thread. And so the first thing Mary did upon leaving the Cascade Brewery was to apply for a licence to sell beer. And here, once again, she had prevailed on the long-suffering Mr Emmett to help her with the recommendations she needed to obtain it.

Mary decided that even though she lacked the resources to start her own brewery she had sufficient to rent a smallish building which had once been a corn mill at the mountain end of Collins Street and which backed directly onto the banks of the rivulet. She named it the Potato Factory and converted it into a home brewery. In the front room she created a shop where citizens could buy a bottle of beer to take home. She used a small rear room in the building as her sleeping chamber and paid one of the mechanics at the Cascade Brewery to construct a small lean-to kitchen at the back. The remainder of the space in the old mill was given over to making beer.

The malt and yeast Mary used were of the highest quality, and she bought her hops from a wholesale merchant who imported it from England, as the product grown in the Derwent Valley was not yet of the highest standard. She made a light beer with a clean taste which was much favoured by the better class of drinker among the labouring classes, tradesmen and the respectable poor, and she soon attracted the favourable attention of the Temperance Society. Temperance members agreed to abstain entirely from the use of distilled spirits, except for medicinal purposes, so the society actively encouraged the drinking of beer, though in the home and not in public houses where, in the boisterous company of fellow drinkers, they might enter into the numerous evils, both moral and physical, which follow the use of spirits.

Her beer did not have 'the wallop' to appeal to the majority of drinkers, but the Temperance movement was growing rapidly in numbers, and right from the outset Mary prospered. She soon put a product on the market which she labelled 'Temperance Ale', and in six months it had become her mainstay. Mary, if only in the smallest way, was up to her eyes in the beer business, and at the same time she was favoured by the authorities for the quality of her product and the prompt manner in which she paid her taxes. There were even those within the third class, the tradesmen, clerks and smaller merchants, who considered that some day she might be admitted into their lofty and hallowed ranks.

But if Mary's great good luck had well and truly begun, the opposite to it lay waiting at her doorstep. Hannah and, eighteen months later, Ikey, were released into the community as ticket of leave convicts.

Ikey barely survived his seven years until he received his ticket of leave. He had neither hate nor dreams but only greed to keep him from despair.

Money had never meant anything to Ikey except as a means to an end. He played for the sake of the game – money was simply the barometer to show when he had won. He wasn't a gambler, for he figured his chances most carefully, weighing the odds to the most finite degree. Now, with seven years of penal servitude behind him, the game was no longer worth the candle. If he should return to his old life of crime and be caught again he knew he would certainly die, either in servitude or by means of the dreadful knotted loop.

Ikey told himself that, should he obtain the second half of the combination to the Whitechapel safe, he would retire to some far haven where he would live in peace and run a small tobacco business, with perhaps a little dabble here and a little negotiation there. But secretly he knew that he was a creature of London and captive to its crepuscular ways. He had disliked New York, and Rio even more, and judged the world outside England by these two unfortunate experiences. He knew that a return to crime in any significant way in Hobart Town would be both foolish and short-lived. Ikey was a marked man in the colony.

Three years on the road gang and two years thereafter as a brick maker in the penal settlement of Port Arthur, and another two returned to Richmond Gaol had been quite enough for him. His health had been destroyed in the damp road camps and in the brick pits. He had lost the courage for grand larceny, his bones ached with early rheumatism and his brain creaked for lack of wily purpose.

All that was left for Ikey was the determination to get from Hannah her half of the combination to the safe. He would lie in his cell at night and his heart would fibrillate with terror that he should not succeed in this. He knew that Hannah would have the support of her children when she received her ticket of leave, but that he might well be destitute, for he could not hope for mercy from his alienated family. But what Ikey feared most in all the world was not their rejection, or being forced into penury, but that people might see Ikey Solomon, Prince of Fences, had entirely lost his courage.