The Secret River

13 November 2009

Last stop out of Sydney, and we've opted to come a bit north of the city and stay in the Hawkesbury River area for two days. Both of us have read Kate Grenville's really excellent novel 'The Secret River,' set in this area circa 1806-1826, about a convict family from London. It's brilliant and you should all go read it. The bloke is a Thames boatman transported for a bit of honest theft, and ultimately must make his way on the Hawkesbury. The two rivers are so much a part of the book and as we know the Thames pretty well, we felt like we needed to see this place. It's not disappointing. This is definitely more England than anywhere else we've been—the towns were laid out by Georgians and it shows, lots of brick and narrow streets and names like Windsor, Richmond, Wilberforce, and Pitt Town.

It's lushly green and full of winding little country roads and calm water—albeit populated by waterskiers. I sort of thought people stopped waterskiing in about 1983. Apparently I was wrong. It's huge here. The Hawkesbury itself is twisty and full of coves and inlets and creeks, amber coloured water, and old stone houses called things like Primrose Hill perched on hills overlooking their verdant fields.

We drove up from Windsor today to St Albans, a tiny village housing what is without a doubt the nicest pub in Australia—the Settler's Arms, circa 1836, of blonde sandstone and with chunky wood tables and wonky doors and stone fireplaces and room-temperature real ale. Even a bog shaggy dog called Jamie who laid about the place waitng on leftover pate. Makes me more than a bit homesick for Blighty.

To get there, we had to take a ferry across the river, because we are obviously in the 19th century. It's an actual chain ferry, with the cables pulling it along visible next to you as it goes, and free to boot. Back across the other free ferry in this town of about 500 (on the other side), and here we are at a little campground on the water again. A convict could do worse.

On the way out of St Albans, we stopped for a few minutes at the tiny cemetery tucked in a curve on the unpaved road. These are the graves of convicts and their families, mostly, as well as a few free settlers. As Australia has recently decided not to be ashamed of the whole convict thing, they've cleaned up places like this and put new labels up to tell the stories of their ancestors. So pretty and such a good story.