Difference between revisions of "David McDonald"

From eurekapedia
Jump to: navigation, search
(Created page with "David McDonald (1823-c1910) In the Days of Old, St Mary’s NSW, S J Turnbull 1989, 24pp. First published in the Bombala Times in 1917. David McDonald arrived in Australia wi...")
(No difference)

Revision as of 18:22, 30 May 2020

David McDonald (1823-c1910) In the Days of Old, St Mary’s NSW, S J Turnbull 1989, 24pp. First published in the Bombala Times in 1917.

David McDonald arrived in Australia with his family from Scotland. With other Highlands families his had been prompted to emirate by a visiting NSW government official, who promised opportunities for people who were ‘thrifty’ and of ‘good moral character’. He seems to have been struck by the violence of his new country: he remembers how, on the day his party landed in Sydney seven men were hanged for the Myall Creek Massacre, and how, as a messenger boy, he was unnerved by the convict gangs and their overseers. In 1839 his family moved to a property south of Sydney to work as shepherds, taking the place of two convicts who had been hanged controversially for alleged murder. His own family was soon robbed of ‘everything we possessed’ by armed men from nearby stations (they later returned the goods in gratitude for the humanity shown by the McDonalds in refusing to testify against them). The author became acquitted with the local Aborigines, and relates his memories of their culture with respect and affection, including the dramatic sight of a tribal ‘Doctor’ diverting an approaching thunderstorm. In spite of the rural depression of the time, his family were able in 1846 to buy, with two other Scots families a ‘moderate squatting station’ where the families lived separately but worked cooperatively. This ‘commune’ with the author’s father as acknowledged head , broke up after several comfortable years because of differences of outlook. The real energy of the narrative begins with he advent of ‘gold fever’, which because of the labour shortage it created, made the colonies a ‘Paradise of the working man’. The author vividly describes life on the diggings at Eaglehawk, with its crime, camaraderie and dreams of fortune with entire police forces and ships crews abandoning their jobs overnight to look for gold. A journey on foot to Melbourne brought him into contact with a mysterious and powerful network of highwaymen. Melbourne itself was crowded and frenetic and he later compares it unfavourably with Sydney as a ‘rude social element’. He returned to try his luck at the Ballarat Diggings just before the Eureka stockade and gives a sympathetic yet detached account of events there including comment on the public feeling surrounding the trial of the diggers. (‘These infatuated yet deeply provoked men’). From Australian Autobiographical Narratives Volume 1: To 1850