The Flood

The Flood

The north house of the brothers Ferguson was a slab house built solidly by the men, and therefore something they relied on while the flood waters first swirled through the main room and three side rooms and increased in volume till the roof was the only dry area. The roof they were less certain about. The roof was made of shingles. The water lapped against the facia line and already the shingles were beginning to lift and float like loose bark on the riverbank. The two brothers, their wives, and their collective ten children, six to the brother Robert and his wife Mary and four to the brother John and his wife Elizabeth, huddled together and squatted over the pitch of the slippery roof. The brothers correctly assumed that the pitch would provide the best support for the collective weight of the two well fed families.

The water was gentle and very gradual. It was as if the families had built the younger brother's house in the middle of an abnormal lake, with water gentle and still and with tall trees growing out of the water. The older brother Robert and the wife Mary had lived in the cool, substantial, sandstone residence in the next paddock, which they called the south house. The husbands were proud that they had provided for their families. The families pooled their resources in the early days of their Australian beginnings, when they were raw immigrants, and built the sandstone manor, or the south house. Both families had lived in it, enjoying two cool summers and the homely warmth, which the thick stone walls contained during the one cold winter. Timber was hewn for flooring. Then John and Elizabeth and progeny moved to the slab house, or north house, which would do till the collective could afford to build another sandstone house like the monumental south house. But the plan changed. Twelve hours ago, flood water weakened the sandstone structure and the monumental south house fell. The old pig mortar dissolved like shit.

While the footing washed away, the Missus carried the two babies, one younger, one older, a child to a hip, through the waist high water. Her load would have been easier to manage if she held the children at water level, and let the water float them. But the Missus held the children above the water line and thereby kept them dry. Robert followed with the older children, who half swam in places and half walked in other places. His arms were free to carry the lantern as well as six large loaves of bread and four family blankets, all of which the approaching night and cold water threatened to swallow up in a moment.

They joined the others in the slab residence. The children of the combined families were reunited, as were the women, and as were the colonial brothers, while the flood water spilled through the windows of the slab house and rose quickly. This is where the families would have to stay, however. The foothills were five miles to the west and could not be reached without a boat. The nearest neighbours were two miles away, and undoubtedly had their own dramas to face. Also the water current was strong in places; it sent large toppled trees along like boats with sails on the Harbour. On contact, a floating log would crush a human body. In other areas the water was deep. Snakes! Snakes swam everywhere for their lives, and towards anything that offered refuge. And it was dark. This day, night came early. Nor was it a night for the moon. The waters had not parted and behold there was, as yet, no light.

The families reasoned as follows regarding their immediate opportunities. First, one of the passing river craft would rescue the collective, maybe in two voyages, the children and women first. Or secondly, the water would subside, by morning, maybe. The families could then descend to a muddy terra firma, but terra firma nonetheless, and one illuminated by dawn. They could recommence digging out their niche and re-establishing their farms. But the guts of the brothers foreboded worse.

For seven months the rainfall had been unusually insistent. Before the rain came, a drought threatened to ruin the settlement. For twenty six months the drought continued. The fertile earth cooked like a desert and died. Livestock died. Kangaroos and emus did enter the settlement and eat the few green shoots. Then seven months ago, the rain fell, but then the rain was very welcomed. The rain, the rain, the rain, the rain, the rain, the rain, oh the rain. Water tanks, dams, and water ways were filled. Rivers were filled. There was fresh water to drink again. The dry skin was moistened. Immigrant Australia believed God answered prayers. Then it stopped. Then it rained, and so on over the course of the last four months. Then for three weeks it didn't rain in the Hawkesbury. This was May 1867. Then it rained heavily for two weeks, and stopped for a week. On the sixth day of no rain, nonetheless the river broke the Richmond Bridge and flooded over the farming basin and all the crops were destroyed. On the seventh day rain fell heavily and rained for four days before slowing to sparse, heavy drops that could soak you with a single drop. The rain increased again. Not a thin man could walk without being soaked. Not a blade of grass, thin as grass is, could escape a heavy drop. The rain fell in the nearby mountains and in the nearby Nepean basin and water flooded from the high Grose River and spread from the Nepean River and filled the Hawkesbury basin like a bathtub.

Five hundred ton shipping vessels were anchored at Richmond. They couldn't moor at the river jetties as the jetties had been washed away days ago. Their captains and crews couldn't navigate down river either, as the river channel was undistinguishable from the hilly riverbanks and land covered with shallow water. It would be the last time that large vessels would come as far as Richmond. The flood sediment broadened and flattened the riverbed and rendered the upper Hawkesbury unnavigable by the big steamers and tall masts.

The local farming and agricultural implement supplier and manufacturer known as Bowden had set up a refugee camp on the grounds of his majestic residence in the foothills of the Kurrajong. It was not a place of charity. It was a place of necessity. The crews of the shallow hulled river craft met there and restocked their rescue boats with dry blankets, food, milk, fresh water and rum. The lantern wicks were replaced. The crews refreshed themselves. All except the man Lewis refused to take a long break. The crews pushed off in their respective river craft when it next left for the black water and night. The man Lewis stayed ashore only because he went feverish with snakebite and his crew would not let him continue. Old Bowden and his son Christopher got to work on other things too and opened the warehouse and let the men prepare a dry mound. The peas ready for shipping were tipped from the shipping barrels. The barrels were freed up and strapped together with planks to make large pontoons, which were also pushed into the water and used to rescue stranded livestock and the odd farm dog. Food was prepared in the residence ballroom, which was at best used for a jig during normal times in any event, and the anteroom was set up as a sleeping quarter. Fat Mrs Bowden controlled this area of operations. One thousand and forty people conducted affairs upon the Bowden grounds this night. From the records of the deed poll, four families were as yet unaccounted for and God have mercy on the blacks, though God knew the land was the Dharugs' and they would know better than the colonialists how to survive the flood. Of the four families unaccounted for, two were that of the families Ferguson.

Therefore eight men set upon the water with provisions and an agenda to look out for the brothers Ferguson and their families. There was James Higgins who held the light, Christopher Newman, Adrian Higgins, Anthony Hambour, Gregory Hanson, the men Dodman and Mickam, all who rowed, and Jackie Jonson who was partly drunk but could hold a rudder. The small craft was navigated between floating trees, pieces of houses and bridges that had been destroyed, and between the strong, tall eucalypts that remained standing and would splinter the small vessel on contact and reduce it to debris, together with its crew. Darkness precluded vision and the fast logs and eddying pockets of swift water made navigation hard. Mr James Higgins held the lantern high and spied the course but his cousin Mr Adrian Higgins was the first to see the free standing walls of the modest family home once the Newberry's, neighbour to the families Ferguson. The house was empty now and its occupants were safe upon the hill at Bowden's. The armchair, horse-hair divan, serving table, and upright pianoforte bobbed upon the water within a room of the roofless house, as if in their normal places. Other contents of the house, including the chamber pot heading the way, floated on the wide floodwater in single file. Further behind floated a library shelf filled with mostly dry books. The slow water transported the demise of this house. Sheep, cows and horses floated by dead and bloated. A half living cow clamoured to submerged slip rails. The crew couldn't do anything for it, and had to leave it with rifle shot. The river was no longer a river, for it was an inland ocean, for it was no longer a lake. But one dog was caught in the lantern light and was smaller than half a man and could be fitted upon the board. Its living thanks gratified the men. They felt they could pull more than nothing from the water. Their movements became collected and animated again and their blank hours on the water were something to pass through rather than be absorbed by. The yapping dog was good company to have. He was a good dog, the dag. But it was yet before they found a sign of the houses Ferguson.

Awhile later, two bloated bodies were observed, and this was a very tragic moment. It was hard to make them out in the distance. The bodies dunked under the water and rose again, caught in the pressure of the current, but they were held by what looked like the net of eucalypt branches of a standing tree. Remorsefully and with sunken trepidation the men rowed closer and pulled the bodies out of the water. They were both the bodies of babies, which broke the hearts of the men, and saddened them. Emptiness sank like an interminable well. They were grateful their children were safe at the Bowden's hill, and were probably sleeping now. The rudder man Jackie Jonson wrapped the bodies of the infants in woollen blankets and laid the bundles on the large cushion. He knew the infants well, and their families, as did the other men, and it was now dutifully and reluctantly that they rowed on.

Distance was hard to measure but the watch of the lawyer showed that over five hours had elapsed since the crew had rowed from the hill at Bowden's. They rowed upstream. It was two twenty in the morning.

As the brothers Ferguson suspected would happen, the shingle roof collapsed. It had collapsed at around one o'clock.

''It's all right, my Mary, it's all right, my Mary and her children. It's all right my brother's wife and her children", said the brother Robert Ferguson. But he had cried it out as the cold water froze him and washed into his open mouth and as he held weakly to a splintered rafter. A log had crashed into the roof, and in its over burdened, fragile condition, the roof fell apart. ''Hold to me", he shouted out. But the two babies, one of the younger boys and Mary had already been swept away. No one knew how to swim beyond a paddle. His family was washed away from him, and what his eyes could not make out in the awful dark, knowledge in his heart told him. He let go of the rafter to catch his wife and save her. He followed her and drowned also.

''Hullo, hulloa", yelled out John. "Hulloa!", he heard his daughter yell out. "John", his wife called. John pulled a shingle to his chest and paddled a few yards downstream to the voices, which were still calling loudly.

He found his wife and children and his brother's three daughters at the chimney. They had joined hands and formed a chain around the chimney. But without the supporting wooden roof structure, the chimney was decaying rapidly, like the unprotected stone of the south house. John Ferguson, the brother of the deceased brother Robert, took off his belt and looped it around his wrist and around Elizabeth's wrist. Supporting himself by holding onto the forged flute sticking out the end of the chimney, he took off his sodden trousers and quickly tore them into strips. With everyone's help, he tied everyone's wrists so that the nine people would not part each other's company inadvertently. The floating log, which had finished the roof off thirty minutes earlier, now pushed down the chimney and dislodged the family. They floated, did the remainder of the families Ferguson. But the log was a bushy tree of considerable size and the people were able to cling to it. Branches got jammed in the remaining house structure and the floating log held and provided refuge.

The crew arrived at about four o'clock. At first they saw only the remaining walls and the ghost white trunk of the enormous lateral, bobbing gum. The men were disappointed generally. But Hanson was a sceptic and ran against the grain of the communal disillusionment. He demanded to get closer. One of the children saw the lantern and tapped John on the arm. The father saw the lantern too and called out in a hoarse, quiet voice barely noticeable. The dog heard and barked madly, which, against the dearthful expectations of the men, barring the sceptic, whose expectations required fact and, therefore, were not dearthful as yet, motivated the crew to fight the current and their own exhaustion and disillusionment, and row to the house remains. James Higgins prayed for life but dreadfully expected that he prayed for the dead. It was the balance of life that answered his prayers, but.

Once aboard the river craft, underneath the lantern light, the babies were shown to Elizabeth, upon her request. The living children slept. Later Elizabeth slept. The crew found the bodies of the drowned brother and the drowned wife-sister against the branches of the yard tree, which yesterday had provided cover for the livestock not fifty yards from the remains of the slab house, and which still stood strong as nature's tower. They had not found the boy. The bodies were pulled into the vessel and rudimentarily cleaned and wrapped in woollen blankets and placed at rest at the far end of the boat near the dead infants, away from the children and Elizabeth, should they awake before reaching the hill at Bowden's. John looked on. Next it was dawn and sunny. The crew was respectfully quiet as it rowed back to the hill at Bowden's at the foothills of the Kurrajong.