Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 281

Transcript

Hadley’s were the first who grew chicory in the District with all due respect to Mr Trent, and the original Trent, when he kept the grocer’s shop over the bridge in company with or sold to Mr Holland, and before Mr Knapman went in company with him. Bless you, Mrs Bligh, who is the fond mother of so many, was not in existence then as a cook shop. Some of us remember Mrs Bligh’s first effort in that line. She has been very persevering.

And just by there, turning round the corner to the Supreme Court and Wesleyan Chapel, which then did not exist – Jack McCosker built the latter and there were some funny financial peculiarities in connection with it – in an old cottage lived the Vandemonian Bushranger Martin Cash. Just by lived before that a lady well known to many of the wise men, not only of the East, but of the West, Mrs Hollingsworth. Didn’t she Doctor? And going along towards what is now the front of the Supreme Court towards the Govt. buildings, gum trees and willows, there used to be an old relic of a man of war gun and this gun Jimmy Ballard, landlord of the Golden Fleece, undertook every Saturday to regulate the Sun by. At noon punctually, Jimmy, attended by old Charley Turner’s chum, and neighbour, Pop Adams, an old Man of War’s man, who lived in a cottage where now is Shand’s Bonded Store, would load and fire. Anything did to ram home with, a tussock, block of wood or a shingle pebble, and on this particular occasion at noon punctually, by his time, Jimmy let fly and sent part of his charge into a bullock team passing along the other side of the River and the remnant into Jimmy McCardell’s shop opposite the Govt. bridge window, killing one or two images there exhibited and generally playing havoc all round. That amused James B. In a few minutes old Goodacre who then kept a ready made clothing shop on Gloucester St next to where now is Joynt’s, who then by the way was client to T.S. Duncan and Joseph Baldwin who did his mattrass [sic] making on the other side of the road, and old George Clark, not the Soda Water but the other, and a few more of the old sticks, came out to see what the war was. Jimmy McCardell’s best specimen Nigger had received a severe mauling and some other fancy exhibits were spoilt and the end was an adjournment to the Golden Fleece where that most original character Mr Ballard from Cork, shouted for all hands. Dick Taylor, the original Swankey man of the Phoenix, was not far away. He was a nut. And Dr Catlin, lived somewhere opposite the Brewery. One night, about that locality, there was an alarm like the dynamite business of to day. Firewood was not only dear, but scarce, and people were just as honest as they are now. Some man who had been favoured by visitors put a charge of powder in one of his pieces of firewood, the result was a neighbour’s chimney went upwards.

[Note that in the original, pages 5 and 7 are on one page, and 6 and 8, on another. In this transcription they have been re-placed in correct order]