My Year with Bluestone: breaking out with Winifred Johnson

I'm slowly finding my feet and my way into the writing of this book. My fabulous research assistants Helen and Anne have located a terrific mass of materials, and the evidence is often irresistible: the voices of the past are crowding in thick and fast.

At the moment I'm working through a report to the Legislative Assembly and a series of interviews dating from 1857. There are two accounts of a woman breaking out, and I am guessing it is the same woman.

The first report comes from Claud Farie, the sheriff in charge of the Melbourne gaol: 

There is one most unruly woman there now [i.e. the Eastern Hill gaol]: I cannot keep her in the western gaol from which she broke away; I have had her in the main gaol ever since she got her last sentence. She tried to break through the cell into one of the other prisoner’s cells, by means of a spoon; she got out the whole of the lime and mortar round one of the large stones; she took an immense stone out of one side of the cell…. Last Sunday afternoon her language during Divine service was most horrible; the clergyman was obliged to stop; and without gagging her, it is almost impossible to keep her quiet.

The second longer interview is with John Price, a settler who became Inspector of Penal Establishments, after working at Norfolk Island and Van Dieman's land. He was eventually murdered  [more to come later on him, I hope].

It is not long ago that Winifred Johnson broke out of the female gaol. At the time they were putting up a portion of that building I said any woman who know how to go about it will break out of it. [ ... ] That woman was removed up to the western gaol, which I look upon as a strong building, and she made a hole there the size of this fire-place, through those heavy stone walls.

I'm presuming this is the same woman. Winifred Johnson was unruly in every sense; breaking out of the prison both physically and verbally.

I have come across several stories about prisoners removing a single large bluestone block, which would have given enough space for a person to climb through. I like the comparison with the fire-place, though it's not all that helpful in this context: how big was the fireplace?

There is a great deal of discussion about the quality of workmanship; Price also describes some walls for another building that looked great till the roof was put on, and the walls collapsed.

So bluestone looks strong and hard, but there are human skills involved in assembling walls, and also in disassembling them, with a humble spoon.

My Year with Bluestone: Friday House Day (3)

Several years ago, we undertook a big remodelling of our garden. When Paul bought the house over twenty years ago, there was a big cement section and a big grass section and that was about it. He planted lots and lots of trees, then later dug up the cement section (after keeping a big sandpit there several years for Joel and friends — I well remember the "volcanic panic" he built with his cousin Imogen there), and grew vegetables, but it was time to introduce some kind of water feature, and get rid of the grass. Yes, the house still has lots of unfinished parts and there are always more things in an old house that require attention, but a garden takes longer to get established. It's all about the priorities. We love our home and plan to stay here forever, so while it was a "grand design," we were building for the future. The very first things Paul planted when he moved in were a couple of lemon-scented gumtrees and a little copse of silver birches down the side of the house and they now tower up, and frame the garden. The big manchurian pear has come and gone and the maple now shades the back door. The trees had given the house its own history already, and this design would give the garden a new frame to grow into for the next couple of decades.

Anyway, back to bluestone. I'm not going to post big pictures of the garden but today I'm focussing on the bluestone retaining walls. We worked with a garden consultant who used to have a regular TV spot, and later wrote about our garden in a book, and a brilliant team of builders (and a rather bigger budget than we had planned), but now we have a mini-system of fishponds and retaining walls that control the slope of the land. I was also very keen to have ledges to sit on for parties (note also the little light)...

We're not sure where this bluestone came from, but it came in big chunks that often had to be re-cut and shaped, and then chipped again into rough shapes if they had been sliced into a smooth edge. It took a few weeks of the team cutting and laying the stone to size. To cut it they used a diamond-tip bench saw that ran water across the stone and screamed with a high-pitched intense whirr. There was dust and noise and water for weeks as they cut the stone for the pond and the walls. (We bought several cases of wine and went to visit and apologise to some of the neighbours later.)

The garden plan became a bit gothic in appearance (more on that next week), and we broke up the darkness of the bluestone walls with sandstone paths, which are lovely to walk on. (The sandstone is another story: it came in large slabs in wooden crates, imported from India, we realised to our horror, but with lots of plant fossils embedded in it.) We also wanted little nooks and crannies for plants to grow, so these spaces were part of the construction, while the walls themselves were supported by concrete.



From the front, then, they look like drystone construction (without mortar), but David saw the first version of the walls without reinforcement and said they would only last five to ten years, and made the builders re-do them.

The ledges came as smooth rectangular slabs, but David also got the masons to chip along the edges. They are smooth and comfortable to sit on at parties, though not immune to stains from melting candle wax... Looking at them again in the light of this project, I observe the fineness of their construction, and the way the masons have been able to make lovely round curves from this very blocky stone.



Its "affect" here is domestic, home-bound, built for us.