Eliza

What I'm doing

I'm letting someone else tell this story, by pulling the parts from his biography* that relate to her. It got a bit long, so I'm splitting it over three posts. Still, I find it interesting, so if you only read one of this series, I'd make it this one (or this three).

I hope it makes senses. It does to me, but I've read a lot of missing bits. If it doesn't, I can add notes to clarify things

(The conventions I've used: I put quote marks around each extract. So the closing quotes mark effectively means "there's something missing after this". Sometimes that's is a few sentences, sometimes pages, but using ellipses was getting messy. Although I've used them within a paragraph where it's only part of a sentence missing. I added some comments in [] to clarify the passage of time or summarise missing bits. Italics means it's a passage from the latest version, which has differences to the original published text.)


Meeting

"Shortly after our arrival, we were introduced to the newly appointed store keeper's missis, who, by the by, appeared to be at the time the most beautiful person I had every beheld. She was a finely proportioned woman with a very fair complexion, light blue eyes, and dark auburn hair and appeared to be about twenty-two years of age. I could not take my eyes away from her, and I felt embarrassed on one or two occasions when she appeared to be conscious of my admiration, not having the presence of mine to conceal it. I felt completely lost in a reverie of blissful anticipation, building castles with a very unstable foundation, and imaging how happy I would have been in having such a piece of property as the residing goddess."

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Parramatta

HMAS Parramatta, at the Wooden Boat Festival. I don't have a vertical photo to use but that isn't too wide?


The website is being screwy on me, so I'll type up a bit from the leaflet we were given.

"HMAS Parramatta is the fifth of eight ANZAC class frigates built for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) by Tenix Defence Systems, Williamstown, Victoria.

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Eliza: Part II

What I'm doing

Part I: Meeting

On The Run

[A few months of wandering about, working in various places]
[Being arrested over a stolen watch, but as it was apparently planted "I and my companion were therefore acquitted".]
[Punching out the traps and getting compensated for it]
[Then things turn a bit more serious...]

"One evening after work, and while in conversation with Mr Kane [former employer], I was accosted by a man named Miller, who requested that I would let him stop at my place for a night or two as he was out of employment but expected work on the following day. My knowledge of this man was very limited, Mr Kane having some few days previously employed him in clearing away the rubbish from the new building at which I had been at work. I took him home that night and permitted him to remain the night following. The next day I went into the township with a view of paying my landlord (Mr Hamilton), the rent, leaving Miller in charge of the house until I returned. I had scarcely concluded my business before I was arrested by a party of constables who, it appears, had searched the house in my absence and found the articles which Miller had stolen, the later have decamped on seeing the constables approaching the house, leaving me, as the occupier of the house, to answer for his delinquencies. I was fully committed and arraigned at Launceston, Mr Mulgrave being then Chairman, where I was sentenced to seven years' transportation, and forwarded to a station known as Malcolm's Huts, distant some two miles from Richmond."

[From which he escapes.]

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