The Mayne Inheritance Read Online Free Page B

there was life, bustle and promise.
    Earning a pound a week as a slaughterman gave young Mayne some reasonable independence. Close to the boiling-down works, other settlers offered cheap lodgings for the artisans and labourers employed there or at the nearby tannery or workshops ancillary to Campbell’s factory. Many of the recently arrived Irish labourers who dossed in these houses proved congenial company in the evening hours, usually dissipating their wages with the boisterous mob at Sutton’s Bush Inn. Very few had wives, and there was almost no unattached female company. It was a rough workingman’s world.
    Contrasted with the poverty and social restrictions of his youth, this new life gave Patrick a feeling of freedom; he could relax in the homespun camaraderie at the Inn. Licensing laws were lax and often disregarded, and drinking was the leveller common to all classes. The man whotethered his horse outside, or the bullocky who left his shambling team to graze some distance away might be the squatter, his son, or a trusted employee. It was impossible to tell. They all wore sweat-stained moleskins, red or blue flannel shirts and cabbage palm hats. Sometimes when a man spoke he might be recognised as a toff, but the chance of company in some sort of civilisation and the release of prolonged loneliness led many such travellers to roister uninhibitedly with the noisiest labourers. For a poor Irish immigrant this place had a smell of opportunity; it was a place where he could mix with all-comers and unrein his fierce energy and ambition. Strong on ambition, young Patrick also had an innate efficiency and business sense.
    His employer, John Campbell, was soon deep in debt to the now financially embarrassed and pressing Kangaroo Point entrepreneur, Evan Mackenzie. In addition, Campbell was experiencing production difficulties at the boiling-down works. This was temporarily solved when he sold some land he had purchased earlier and was able to set up his own new boiling-down works on the downstream side of Kangaroo Point. It had a new wharf to accommodate ships and a tidal creek to swirl away the stinking effluent. But within a year Campbell’s finances again deteriorated to a point where he could not meet the wages of some twenty of his staff. Without wages, Mayne and the other employees were destitute. They had nothing to fall back on. On 7 October 1846, with their pay six weeks overdue, some of them took Campbell to court to recover their money. Patrick was owed £6.1.3d. InNovember he had to sue Campbell again, this time because his employer’s promissory notes for £10 and £2.13.4d had been dishonoured. Campbell’s insolvency was complete when his creditors forced him to sell and the new owner, Richard J. Smith from Sydney, took over on 27 February 1847.
    Without pay, it had been a lean and difficult three months for the lad from County Tyrone, but he gained something from the experience. In Ireland, land was everything and here in Australia it was the same. For Campbell, land had temporarily provided a bulwark against trouble. But with insufficient land to give him long-term security, Campbell’s entrepreneurial bubble had burst. It was common talk that despite Campbell’s failure, the Kangaroo Point boiling-down works provided a new product and was valuable to the pastoral industry. Patrick knew that he was becoming a proficient butcher, and despite the monotonous routine, this was a trade he could follow anywhere. He did not seem to mind the fact that, except when an animal broke loose and they enjoyed the chase, the daily routine was soulless. Day after day he and his fellow butchers, William Lynch and George Platt, stunned the sheep with an axe, placed it over the blood gutter and cut off its head. The hind legs were cut off for sale at sixpence apiece, and the rest of the meat chopped into slabs and the bones broken. Other workmen jammed the pieces into large steam boilers to