Ideas at dawn--Tricia McGill

 

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I’ve lost count of the times my Muse has jogged my early morning thoughts. My mind seems to work overtime between 4 and 5 am. The past few weeks have not been the best, so consequently writing has taken a back seat. My eldest sister passed away, just a week or so after her 100^th birthday. Then just last week my little shih tzu went to doggy heaven and the house is so empty without my companion. But true to form, before the sun came up this morning, the first line of my next book popped into my head, thus also giving me something to write about here.

I already knew the setting, which would be Tasmania (then Van Diemen’s Land), more specifically the convict prison at Port Arthur. Around 1848 the first stone was laid for this prison. The grand idea at the time was to shift from physical punishment to mental subjugation. Britain could no longer send convicts to America after the American War of Independence; therefore, male and female convicts (some who committed trivial crimes) were sent to Port Arthur. Every country has their own tragic history of such places. The prison closed in 1877.

Of all the tasks that convicts were forced to carry out at Port Arthur, timber cutting was perhaps the worst. Enormous trees were felled (no heavy machinery in those days) and a sawpit was dug under the log so that it could then be cut into smaller lengths. One man stood on the top of the log and one beneath in the pit—where, as they sawed across, the sawdust would land on him, filling his eyes. Once the timber was cut into rough pieces as many as 50 convicts (nicknamed the Centipede Gang) would carry this great weight to where the timber was then cut into planks, boards, spars etc.  over a larger sawpit. Large tracts of bushland were harvested in this way to feed a growing timber industry.

Years ago, my husband and I visited Port Arthur, and one of the tour guides, after ushering a group of us into a small cell that had been used as solitary confinement for misdemeanours committed by convicts, closed the door, switched off the light, and left us in total blackness. I screamed to be let out as my claustrophobia kicked in. Imagine how men must have suffered, and doubtless some went insane—I know I certainly would have after just a short time. The site for the prison was carefully chosen, for the 30-metre-wide isthmus of Eaglehawk Neck, the only land route to the rest of the island, was fenced and guarded by soldiers, man traps, and half-starved dogs. The prison closed in 1877.

So, there you are, I have my first line and my scenario mapped out, which just leaves the rest of the story plus characters to be created. Which doubtless will come to me from early morning.

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