SS Ionic, which carried the Harms family to Australia in 1887
The weather improved considerably as their ship headed towards the equator, enough for just a thin sheet and a counterpane to keep them warm at night. The only notable events were the coincidence of crossing the line with the birth of a baby girl to one of the passengers.
John Fraser’s journals reveal the monotony of the trip, in which endless days follow each other in steady, relentless tedium.
Friday January 13th 1888
Nothing of interest to take note of today. Saw some flying fishes. Always busy reading or some such employment to pass time. In the evening there was a dance, but as I did not feel inclined to dance in this latitude I had a promenade round the deck instead.
Tuesday January 17th 1888
Nothing of interest today, indeed it is the same as other days in that respect as it is always the same thing over again with very few exceptions. In the evening there was a Bible Class which was pretty well attended. The sea has been a little choppy today but the weather is splendid.
I have lost Edith in this big, empty ship. She’s too young for the tea parties or drinking in the first-class saloon. I can’t see her running riot with her brothers. She could be at church or prayer meetings or singing, or sitting reading in silent companionship with her mother. I imagine Henry approaching, work-callused hands closed around a treasure he’s found – a dragonfly swept on oceanic winds far from home. I can see Edith wandering the decks, gazing at the rigging as the early morning light illuminates a tracery of a thousand baby spiders parachuted from the stratosphere. I wonder if Henry taught her to fish, as she will fish with her daughters – if she opened the translucent wings of the flying fish that landed on the decks and marvelled at their transition between fish and fowl.
I know that I am drawing too much from my own childhood here, at risk of losing touch with the historical record, drifting away into speculation. What else is there to do when the record is blank, the voices of history are silent and all I can hear are the ponderous murmuring of the menfolk and the riotous shrieks of boys at play?
The ship passed the Cape of Good Hope rounding the bottom of Africa three and a half weeks after leaving London, their last sight of land slipping below the horizon as they headed out across the southern stretches of the Indian Ocean. If the journey was not a fast one, it was at least blessed with fine weather. Once they left the coast of Africa they would see nothing but water, enlivened by the occasional whale or albatross, for another three weeks until making landfall at Australia’s southern port of Hobart at the head of the Derwent River.
Not every new arrival has greeted the Australian landscape with enthusiasm.
‘It is no use deluding oneself,’ declared Anna-Maria Bright in 1875, ‘by saying that it is not far to Australia – for it is – and tremendously far too.’
Most voyagers, no matter their destination, greet the sight of land after long weeks, or even months, at sea with relief. And for free settlers, Hobart was generally a pretty sight.
‘As we sail up this beautiful Derwent, every mile most distinctly marks the progress of civilisation,’ wrote Elizabeth Fenton in 1832. ‘We now are in sight of Hobarton, a small and irregularly built town, viewing it at this distance, but with an indefinable “English air”. Mount Wellington, yonder table mountain, rising abruptly over the mountain, is topped with snow . . . As we advance, pretty cottage residences are visible in what appeared impervious jungle. I wonder if these are “farm houses”. There are streaks of lovely yellow sand, fringing each diminutive bay or inlet of the waters among the hills; there are wide fields freshly ploughed, and ploughmen and sowers all busy at their labour with English smock-frocks.’
When the Harms family arrived in the Derwent on 23 September 1887, they had yet to reach their final destination. Passengers and their luggage bound for Melbourne were transferred to a coastal hooker which came alongside, most probably taking them to the three-masted barque Natal Queen, which was due to depart for Melbourne the next day. George had to be detached from his erstwhile girlfriend by irate parents who discovered them, closely connected, behind one of the aft ventilators. The final leg of their sea voyage, barely a day or two by steamer, would take much longer by sail, across the treacherous waters of Bass Strait before making their final landfall in Victoria.
‘At 4 o’clock Wilson’s Promontory was visible to all,’ announced Margaret Menzies with some relief on her arrival in 1838. ‘I got up earlier than usual to see the long wished for sight and was much gratified for although this part of the coast of New Holland is extremely bleak and barren it was delightful to see land of any kind after 3 months with nothing but the deep blue sea to feast our eyes on.’
My first visit to Wilsons Promontory, at the age of thirteen, was also by sea, sailing from the north-west tip of Tasmania with my parents. Bad weather had struck suddenly in Bass Strait. A front had arrived hard and fast, southern ocean swells forcing great tumbling roils of water into the shallow strait. The compaction drives the seas into the steep, chopping peaks that make Bass Strait one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world. Gale-force winds slammed us northwards towards the coast, threatening to drive us ashore before daylight.
We reefed back the sails, making six knots under the jib alone, lashed in the middle to reduce its pull. We threw seawarps made of tyres behind the boat,
