BUCKLEY AND HIS CREW had only just crept their way into the woods behind the encampment when they heard shouts from the sentinels followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. Their hopes of putting distance between themselves and their pursuers were foiled, but they carried on. The six men ran into the woods as fast as their legs could take them. A posse of soldiers was coming. In the race for freedom, it was every man for himself.
Buckley increased his pace, and Pye, Marmon and McAllenan responded. They’d barely covered a few hundred yards when the air resounded with thunder followed by flashes of lightning. Within seconds, there was heavy rain.
When Buckley heard the report of a rifle, he looked back to see Shore writhing on the ground, badly wounded. Page had stayed with him, deciding not to risk the run. It was now just Buckley, McAllenan, Marmon and Pye.
They pressed on, heading back onto the coastline and running north along the sand in the darkness, skirting dunes at speed, every now and then crossing minor streams that emptied onto the beaches. Occasionally a bolt of lightning illuminated the territory ahead but mostly all they could see was sea, sand, trees and rocks amid a haze of rain and sweat. The creeks slowed them as did the rocks around the headlands, and there were marshlands to negotiate as well.
Just before present-day Rosebud, they found themselves trudging across the onomatopoeic sounding Tootgarook Swamp (Boonwurrung: croaking frogs), which reached to the sea and extended several miles inland. The atmosphere cleared, the humidity dropped and, after four hours on the run, the men paused to gather their wits. They had shaken off their pursuers. Their clothes were dripping from rain and exertion, and it was only now they realised four had become three – Marmon had been unable to keep up and had turned back for the settlement.
‘We now pushed on again until we came to a river, and near the bay; this stream the natives call the Darkee Barwin,’ noted Buckley. This has been identified as present-day Kananook Creek, but that would mean they had run more than twenty-five miles, the equivalent of a marathon, in around six hours: not impossible but very difficult over wet sand, swollen creeks and wetlands. It’s most likely that they stopped at either Dunns Creek, a few miles to the north of Arthurs Seat, or Sheoak Creek, which drains from Mount Martha.
When daylight came, Buckley realised he had become the natural pivot man for his troop. It was now just he, McAllenan the Irish horse thief, and Pye – a convict who had been convicted for stealing sheep in Nottingham. Neither Pye nor McAllenan had military experience. Both were still exhausted, their bodies stiff, but they fell in line with Buckley, who was determined to move relentlessly northwards. They knew their provisions would barely last more than a few days, so they had to conserve their strength. But the weather grew steadily hotter, and their pace began to slacken. At some point, they threw away the kettle.
Buckley was leading the men into places few white men had seen or experienced. En route they passed the clifftop scrubs of Mount Martha, Mornington and Mount Eliza (Berring-wallin). Hugging the beaches were the banksia woodlands, and in other areas ancient stands of moonah trees twisted into bizarre tendrils by the heavy coastal winds. The three men were passing through Boonwurrung lands and had yet to meet any of the locals, whom they feared greatly.
By the third day they were negotiating an array of swollen creeks that drained through ferny areas, shaded forest and, in some cases, heathland that was dense with shrubs. According to the Morgan–Buckley account, at present-day Mordialloc they came to either a deep river or a swollen creek that could not easily be forded. Buckley’s immense size and strength came into play. Part-swimming, part-walking, he took all their provisions and clothes across, then returned to piggyback Pye and McAllenan. They were now about fifteen miles from present-day Melbourne.
The going was getting easier as they headed north, the heathland and scrub diminishing and the topography ahead changing to more open pastures of kangaroo grass studded with the dandelion-like murnong (a food source also known as the yam daisy), with only a scattering of trees. But as they approached the Yarra River, the ground grew wetter and boggier, dotted with lagoons and the occasional swampy impasse. They were now in the lands of the Woiwurrung. It looked like a vast green estate owned by the landed gentry, which Buckley had seen in England, only this one was studded with natural lakes, marshlands and billabongs.
Here Buckley seems to have lost his sense of time. In the memoir he reached the south bank of the Yarra on the second day, but it’s likely he and the others had been travelling for four days. The only place to cross the river was at the falls, a precarious line of rocks that could be braved at low tide. This was by far the widest river they had crossed. As they reached the other side they could see gently undulating hills. Behind these hills they would find extensive green plains running to the west and south-west, with only one prominent feature. These were the dark hills known as the You Yangs, which seemed to arise from nowhere, crowning the surrounding basalt plains. Reaching them would be about a day’s walk from the top half of the bay.
Buckley’s plan was to see the lie of the land from the top of these hills, the You Yangs that had so enchanted Flinders. But to get there, the men had to negotiate the mudflats and boggy fens around the top of the bay. While they trudged along, they came upon an intensely blue natural lagoon, only a foot or so deep, filled with clear salt water. It was here that Port Phillip Bay had found one of its last refuges, at this point giving way to the fresh water of the Yarra and its surrounds.
As the men approached the hills to the west, the ground hardened and the sparsely wooded grasslands took over. They passed the present site of Werribee township. They had walked from early that day to reach Flinders Peak by early evening, and morale was slipping. That night they finished all their provisions. ‘We had not divided our rations properly,’ Buckley stated. ‘We had not taken the precautions necessary to avoid starvation.’
On that bleak night on top of the You Yangs, the men had to make a decision. Going north to Sydney, the original plan, now seemed senseless. The only obvious choice when daybreak came was directly ahead of them: they would make for Corio Bay – the site of present-day Geelong – a neat little sandy beach that could be plainly seen from the You Yangs. They hoped to sustain themselves on shellfish. Buckley wrote, ‘I told my companions that we must make for the beach to look for food, for death was certain.’ His decision was prompted by sheer hunger. Even if he had known the direction of Sydney, all he could see were plains and bushland, and he may have known there were sealers and whalers along the Bass Strait coast who might accommodate escaped convicts.
The men didn’t know it, but they had already crossed all the clan territories that bordered Port Phillip. As they approached Corio Bay, they noted the same evenness of the green plains that appeared to be cleanly cut. Unbeknown to them, the landscape had been nurtured, shaped and farmed by the firestick. Not only did the use of fire promote regrowth, but it also stimulated the tuberous edible plants such as the murnong. This plant was a prime staple of the locals, as was the ubiquitous kangaroo grass that could be made into a kind of flour. A later settler, Edward Curr, would remark in the 1840s how the local people set fire to grass and trees as the seasons demanded. ‘[The Indigenous people] were tilling the land and cultivating pastures with fire.’ The local people understand how fire was not necessarily a killer but a giver of life. Animals such as the kangaroo, emu, wallabies and wombats were aided by the autumn burnings before the winter rains, so that new mothers would have fresh grass in the spring with which to nourish their young. This was farming of a type that Buckley, born in rural Cheshire, could not have comprehended at first. There was no need for provision, no call for winter storage or for a plough to rupture the soil, and the land never needed to lie fallow. The Wadawurrung knew exactly what their lands would yield.
We don’t know if the three escapees were spotted by locals around this time, but it is more than likely. These people would perhaps have been as upset at the intrusion as any European farmer who sees a stranger trespassing on his land. Access to country had to be negotiated. Normally they would punish transgressors, but many Wadawurrung were still greatly reticent to approach white men. The invaders were still generally believed to be supernatural, the ghosts of possibly hostile ancestors. The three men may have been avoided, but they were probably tracked and closely watched.
After another day’s walk, the escapees arrived at Corio Bay extremely hungry, but Buckley’s decision proved sound. They followed the coast as it headed south and then wrapped around to the east. While they walked they collected mussels and oysters, and discovered a well of fresh water; they made an unsatisfyingly small meal of the shellfish, but they had no skins with which to retain the water. They drank as much as they could and moved on. At one stage they noticed a little village of sturdy huts, but this only filled them with apprehension. They were constantly afraid that they would encounter local people. They pressed on both wearily and warily.
The next day they skirted the Bellarine Peninsula as it thrust east and then curved south towards Indented Head (Bengala) and St Leonards (Nearnenenulloc). They kept to the beaches, passing the area now known as Portarlington while combing the sand for anything edible. At night they forded Swan Bay at low tide, wading across to Swan Island (Barwal). They had almost come full circle, the first white men to have walked the circumference of Port Phillip Bay from the south-east to the south-west.
At Swan Island, Buckley said they found an edible gum – it may have been that naturally rendered by the acacia tree – which they placed over the fire until it was soft and palatable. When morning came, they could survey much of the terrain they had crossed on the other side of the bay, but there was something else. Almost due south, they could clearly see the Ocean sitting calmly just off Sullivan Bay. It was now a few days into the new year. The ship was only about ten miles along their line of sight. This was all too much for McAllenan and Pye – that way lay food, shelter and survival.
All three men tried to attract attention by starting fires and hanging their shirts from trees. It seemed to work: a boat left the opposite shore and was moving in their direction. Halfway across the bay, the boat stopped dead, tacked to starboard and headed back to shore. The currents may have been too strong. McAllenan and Pye started screaming at the boat while it kept pulling away. ‘The dread of punishment was naturally great,’ Buckley recorded, ‘yet the fear of starvation exceeded it.’ It was later reported that the fires had been seen at Sullivan Bay, but as the soldiers in the boat had approached they’d changed their minds, believing it to be started by the locals. The escapees’ fires were henceforth ignored.
Buckley wrote they lasted another six days living on whatever they could scavenge from the coastline, before McAllenan and Pye resolved to return by foot. They had continued signalling to the camp across the bay but to no avail. ‘They lamented bitterly,’ Buckley wrote. The two men strongly entreated him to return with them, but the big man remained steadfast. He believed that with a bit of luck and perseverance, he could make his way through this country. It was a case of them needing him far more than he needed them. ‘To all their advice and entreaties to accompany them, I turned a deaf ear, being determined to endure every kind of suffering rather than again surrendering my liberty.’
Buckley’s companions left with some bitterness but no acrimony. He had made his decision. He was now alone, it seemed, in this strange but beautiful landscape, the untarnished England of his imagination.
McAllenan made it back to Sullivan Bay. He surrendered on 13 January, reportedly suffering from severe scurvy. As Collins noted: ‘Upon the 13th January, one of the wretches surrendered himself at the camp, having accompanied the others, according to his calculations, upwards of a hundred miles round the extensive harbour of Port Phillip.’ McAllenan brought back the Commissary’s fowling piece and stated that he had subsisted chiefly upon gum and shellfish. Pye was never seen by white people again.
It didn’t take Buckley too long to recognise his extreme vulnerability. He fell into a severe melancholy. Any idea of making it alive to Sydney had been sheer folly, and even if he had succeeded he would probably have been incarcerated.
The liberty Buckley had so hankered for had now become the source of his pain. He was, he wrote, experiencing ‘the most severe mental suffering for several hours’. Freedom, as he put it, ‘now made the heart sick at its enjoyment’. It carried heavy penalties. He would continue his ‘solitary journey’, he wrote. He would not speak to another white man for the next thirty-two years.