Transportation and how it has changed through the decades—Tricia McGill

 

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Here I am again deep into research about certain aspects of the 1800s, especially Australia in the 1860s, and because of seeking a particular type of horse-drawn vehicle I became engrossed by the differing means of transport throughout the years and how it has changed. I grew up in North London, so our travelling from one destination to another was by the underground (what we called the ‘Tube’) or a good old double decker bus. I regularly used the underground and to this

day in my dreams where I often seem to be lost, I follow my mother’s advice
and search for the nearest tube station to find my way home. People who study the meaning of dreams no doubt have an explanation for that, but that’s something for another day.

In Book One of my Settlers Series, Mystic Mountains, I had my characters making the horrendous journey from Sydney to Bathurst in 1823 across what became known as the Blue Mountains, a journey that would take weeks instead of hours as today. At that time bullocks pulled the drays carrying the settlers’ belongings as well as the wool bales among other things. Of course horses went along on this journey, but the oxen were more sure-footed and reliable across rocky and unsafe territory.  

Horses pulled the various types of carriage, whether it be a two wheeled cart or a four wheeled carriage. The mail was delivered between colonies first by a horse rider and later by the mail coach, perhaps sometimes more reliable than the current postal deliveries. A man who was a’ courting would likely drive a one-horse jig or cart, its rate of splendidness depending on the owners standing in the society.

My mother was born before 1900 so would recall the horse drawn buses in London. I often wonder how she would cope with the traffic in this modern day and age. I find it depressing at times. Everyone is in such a hurry as they rush around in their huge four-wheel-drive vehicles which would have certainly made life a lot easier for the early settlers as they set out across unchartered territory. She hated motorbikes and it worked out that two of my early boyfriends owned one. Her warning as I left home to go jaunting with them was to ensure they did not speed while I was riding pillion.

I think I would have probably been better suited to those far off days, or perhaps not. No running water—especially hot when needed, would not sit well with me, or no proper sewerage system. But I could certainly cope with the idea of riding or driving a small buggy to the nearest store. In this current climate with the rising cost of fuel, who knows, perhaps we will eventually regress and return to horse transport.

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How long is long enough?

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What prompted this question was a comment made by a reviewer recently about my Mystic Mountains. This reviewer gave the book a much-appreciated five star rating but said, “I felt it was a bit over drawn in length.” This surprised me, as at 304 pages it is not overly long for a historical.

Asking a writer how long their book is going to be, or should be, is like asking the age-old conundrum, “How long is a piece of string?”

I envisioned a very different ending for Challenging Mountains, my recent release, where Tim’s family would have a get-together, but then as I drew near the final scene it told me that was enough and that is where I should sensibly leave my characters. Publishers have certain rules about the length expected for each genre and most contemporary stories are termed as ‘quick reads’ I guess, and Historicals and Time-Travels are expected to be longer.

One benefit of writing a series, especially one containing members of one family or clan, is that you can always catch up in the next book with characters you have taken a fancy to or hope those you disliked would have a not so happy ending. I fully intended Challenging Mountains to be the final book in my Settlers series, but as happens often with us writers, one of the characters started to play with my mind and insist I write her story next. Because Tiger and Bella (Book 1, Mystic Mountains) ended up with eight offspring I could be stuck with this family heckling me until I am in my dotage (which I fear is not too far away).

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The life of a female in the past—Tricia McGill

Now available for pre-release--on July 3rd

I’ve said it many times, much as I admire the women who were full of spirit and gumption in the past, there is no way I would like to share their lives other than in my books. I have often thought it would be great fun to be a time traveller so that I could return to the ages I have written about, just to be sure it really was as horrible, nasty and unhygienic as the historians tell us it was. But be sure, I am glad I live in a time when we have mod cons and the niceties in life.

When commenting on my historicals and time-travels I have always stressed my admiration for the women, especially those who had to endure tremendous hardships as the wives of the early settlers, regardless of what continent or time period. Even today, there are still women who have to endure all kinds of deprivation in certain countries where they have no running water or sanitation.

The inspiration for book one in my Settlers Series came from a book I happened upon at the library. This gem contained letters sent home to the country of their birth by women who, whether by choice or circumstance, were forced to follow their menfolk into what must have seemed like the gates of hell to them. Most of these women left comfortable lives in Britain, brought up in genteel households that possessed, if not running water and heating at a touch, in some cases housemaids to pander to their needs. Elizabeth Hawkins sent letters home telling of the journey across unfriendly seas and then the trek in 1822 across the Blue Mountains west of Botany Bay to a fledgling Bathurst, where her husband was to take up a position as Commissariat Storekeeper. This family were the first free settlers to cross the barrier of the mountains. They travelled with eight offspring aged from I to 12, and Elizabeth’s 70-year-old mother. If you read Mystic Mountains, you will see just why I hold women like Elizabeth and her mother in such high esteem. On top of enduring the constraints of a corset in much hotter weather than they were accustomed to, there was the lurking threat of snakes and venomous creatures they would never have encountered in their homeland.

Love, as the song goes, is a many splendoured thing. It convinced many women to get on a sailing ship that would take them and often their children to a far off country on the other side of the world. Apart from the odd snippet garnered from newspapers or the like, of the conditions in this New World, they had sparse knowledge of what awaited them. I’ve seen enough movies set on sailing vessels in the 1800s to understand the horrendous conditions aboard a ship that took weeks upon endless weeks to reach its destination. I recently viewed “To the Ends of The Earth” a series on TV with Benedict Cumberbatch. As a naïve young gentleman, his character is on his way to take up a Government post in Australia. This movie brought home more than some just how horrendous the conditions were aboard a sailing vessel, even if you were a man of substance assigned a cabin of your own.

Life in the fledgling colony was horrendous for the women who were transported, in some cases for petty crimes, such as stealing a loaf of bread to feed their children or perhaps taking a fancy to a strip of ribbon or a bauble of little value that wasn’t theirs to take.

My third book in this series starts in 1840 when certain improvements had been made, but even so, conditions were still unsanitary. My characters take off from Sydney Town on a trek to seek out adventure in a new colony recently settled down south in Port Phillip. The journey took a month—that’s four weeks travelling over a barely surveyed land on horseback. The threat of escaped convicts turned bushrangers lurked, even the scattering of inns along the way were ill prepared for travellers. Forget bathrooms or hot and cold running water. Then there was always the other inconvenience shared by young women—imagine a life with no sanitary products.

My heroine appreciates the magnificent achievements of the earlier settlers and her wish is to do something similar with her life. Women such as Caroline Chisolm, who recognised the need for assisting migrant women who arrived in Sydney but could not secure employment. Apart from sheltering many new arrivals in her own home, she took groups of them out to the bush where they easily found work with the settlers. By 1846 when she returned to England she had helped about eleven thousand people to either find work or establish themselves as farmers in outback New South Wales. Without her assistance, many of these women would have been forced to walk the streets as prostitutes in order to survive.

I guess my admiration for strong women stems from the high regard I hold for two special women in my life. Our mother reared ten children through two world wars and depressions, without the help of a washing machine, or any of the other appliances we take for granted these days. She struggled daily to make ends meet but always put a meal on the table for her children and our father, probably surviving herself on a mouthful or two. I rarely heard her complain—women just ‘got on with it’ in those days. The other woman was my dear sister whose life I have written about in “Crying is for Babies.”

Could be the reason why I have little patience for people who moan about their lot in life, as they chatter on their mobiles—or drive about in their cars.

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How much detail is enough? Tricia McGill.

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When I am writing a historical or time-travel it always causes a bit of a holdup while I work out just how much of the day to day details to put it. Of course, it’s imperative to show just what life was really like in the early days of say, settlement in Australia, and I always feel that the biggest load was put on the females. Imagine life in the bush without all the personal aids us females need. Then there is cleanliness to worry about. It’s all very well letting our characters take a dip in the nearest river or creek, but just supposing it is freezing cold, or you have nothing to dry yourself on but a piece of rag, or worse yet, there are crocodiles, snakes or worse to worry about. Even when they reach a town there will not be any of the amenities we take for granted. No nice warm baths, showers or inside toilets. Melbourne did not have a sewage system installed until around the late 1890s.

By 1838, Melbourne was composed of 3 churches, 13 hotels, 28 places of business, 64 homes, making a total of 108 structures. On August 12th 1842 Melbourne became a ‘Town’ by order of the Governor and Legislative Council of New South Wales. Is it any wonder that in 1850 the river became so polluted a typhoid fever outbreak killed many people.

After gold was discovered in the Melbourne surrounds, it became one of the richest cities in the world. The population in the 1880s was around half a million, yet they gained the reputation of being called Smellbourne, due to the fact that all waste was still being emptied into open drains along the streets. These drain channels then flowed into the Yarra River, and therefore ended up in the sea. That included all kitchen and laundry wastewater, the contents of chamber pots, not to mention the run off from farms and subsequent industries. 

I have to imagine myself in the period I am writing about. Currently my characters are in the early 1840s of Australia. They have travelled the 600 miles overland from Sydney to Melbourne (Port Phillip as it was first called) on what could only roughly be termed a road. At that time it took around a month, so I guess wasn’t much different to the travellers of America who headed west on the wagon trains. I loved those old Western movies in my youth but never once considered the inconveniences they had to endure.

In our travelling days, we would be away from home for at least four months a year and after trying camping out in a tent once I insisted I would never go anywhere again unless it was with a camper trailer or motor home. All that we needed was stashed away in the van and I would always insist on staying at a camp park where we could connect up to water and power. Sleeping rough was not for me, thank you.

So that brings me back to how much detail to insert in my stories, never forgetting that I am basically a romance writer and not a historian who must stick rigidly to fact. I am not the outdoorsy type but did a lot of horse riding in my younger days, yet could not imagine being in the saddle for 600 miles over a month. The road in 1840 was not so bad for a while, once they left Sydney, and there were even a few bridges across some rivers.  There were a few inns to be found in the sparse newly settled towns along the way, but after the first 178 miles the hostelries became scarcer and then the travellers had to sleep rough. There was always the danger of attack by bushrangers, whose gangs often consisted of escaped or ex-convicts.

When researching for my stories it never ceases to amaze me how far we have come in a short space of time. I often feel that some things have not changed for the better—all the traffic clogging our highways and roads for one thing could be improved on. In the suburb where I live there is so much building going on—which is great—but the roads are not keeping pace with the traffic, causing congestion—one thing the early travellers did not need to worry about. Some folk have to spend a few hours each day in their cars, probably an hour or more waiting for the traffic to move. There is a supermarket on almost every corner, making it hard to envision going weeks on the road without a handy store to stock up. And that brings me back to the niceties of life—and the lack of them in the old days. Is it any wonder the settlers were made of tough stuff—especially those women who followed their menfolk over treacherous tracks to build a life for themselves and their children. I salute them.

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Challenging Mountains (Book 3 in my 'Settlers' series)
is coming soon.

The birth of a book in a writer’s head—Tricia McGill

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For the past few weeks I might have been getting on with life here in the present, but my mind has been dwelling way back in the past, as research takes over my life once again. For some time people have been asking me when I am going to write a third book in my Settlers series. The early pioneering days in Australia seem to capture the imagination of almost as many folk as the early days of settlement in America. I guess most of my fellow writers are just like me, and can only work out what book to work on next by the voices in our heads urging us to get cracking and get their story down.

For me I have always needed to know who the main characters are going to be, which means finding out from those pesky voices who wants to be the leads. For the hero I had a few choices this time. There was always Carlo O’Shea, brother of Remy (Book 2) and Bella (Book 1), who arrived in the settlement of Sydney Town in the 1820s, or their younger brother Bob, who came out as a free settler later on. Bella and Tiger ended up with eight children so any one of them could be the main character. At one stage I thought of sending Remy or Carlos back to Spain to trace their father’s heritage, but no, my mind refused to leave Australia and decided to force me to remain here and entrench myself back into its past. I guess, in the end, the best and only choice of hero had to be Tim, Bella and Tiger’s eldest son. I was there at his birth so know him well. After all, I created him, know exactly where and when he was conceived and know his parents inside out.

Problem number one fixed, now the female lead must tell me who and what she wants to be. That has been trickier. The story will begin in 1840 when Tim is 21. Unlike his ex-convict father, mother, and uncles, Tim was born free. The Australian continent has changed considerably in the past 15-20 years. Explorers have ventured further inland, forging new roads to traverse, finding new rivers that need bridges built across them. This means a new set of research for me the writer. New South Wales has a different Governor, rules have changed. Port Philip that will become Melbourne is a fledgling city. Travellers are setting off across the country in search of new pastures for their sheep and new lands to claim as their own.

Tim was a small child when his father, Tiger, decided to embark on the tremendous trek across the Blue Mountains with Bella and Tim to set up a sheep property on green pastures around Bathurst so it is inevitable that Tim will have inherited itchy feet—but which direction will he take, and why? And the woman who travels with him will be feisty and a tomboy, I know that much by now. No wilting, tittering, blushing damsel in distress for Tim, she must be his match. Only one small drawback by this time—she simply will not let me know her name—yet. It will probably come to me around five am as many of my other ideas do. Mistress Muse seems to work the best around that hour when I am half-awake. Oh, and there’s just one other small thing missing—a suitable title.

I look forward to my next journey of discovery.

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