A long revision of one of the South Coast’s most disreputable historical characters
What was going on at Albany between January 1835 and December 1836
Continued from Part 2b
Cheyne, Albany and the root of James Stirling’s Swan River quest.
Okay, before we go on to the four Anderson related court-cases of 1835 and 1836, we need to lay the groundwork beneath them as far as the town is concerned.
When we left off at the end of 1834 Cheyne had brought a settler collective from the Buffalo (Henry Townsend), Gem (Gordon & Sinclair), Jolly Rambler (R. H. Maddocks) and James Pattison (et al) together at his cottage for the purposes of petitioning the Colonial Secretary in London. The door to that position, however, had become something of a revolving one. The incumbent Secretary had changed five times since Stirling began campaigning for the colony in December 1826, the latest switch occurring just five months prior, so it’s likely Cheyne’s group didn’t know in particular who they were appealing to. A scenario in keeping with the general state of affairs vis-a-vis the troubled colony.
Cheyne was exasperated on multiple fronts and desperate to get things moving. Already, he was into his fourth year at the Sound and the best chance yet to kick-start the economy was withering before his eyes. The petition begged that Albany be reinstated as a convict depot in order that prisoners carry out essential road works, even though the idea was a breach of the social and economic precept upon which the colony was established. It might have taken a year, at best, if the plan worked, but it was more the impetus to try something than lean back and do nothing at all.
On the surface of things, Cheyne’s tactic had little to no chance of success. However, despite the urgency he was clearly trying to address, it begs the question as to why he thought it might. The answer to that lies in the frustration he felt toward the town’s agricultural prospects, but also with Stirling’s fundamental motivations for commencing the colony and the fact that Albany was not, originally, part of it.