The English think when Australians talk about chooks we mean a cooked chicken.
( If you don't believe me, seehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/20/australia-authors-territorial-copyright )
Not so. So far as European Australians are concerned, since 1788, chooks have always been with us. Along with dogs, cats, horses, goats, sheep and pigs. I'm going to keep you in suspense about the monkey.
It was not unusual for British men-of-war to carry a fair quantity of poultry, pigs, goats and cattle for fresh food, though some captains would not allow pigs because they thought them too dirty. Others permitted the pigs so long as they were washed daily. One captain had them running amok about the deck. [N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean, A Naval History of Great Britain, 1649-1815,London, 2004]
Commodore Arthur Phillip, the newly appointed Governor of the convict colony of New South Wales, in his Instructions, was told that on his way to the new gaol he was to 'take on board any number of black cattle, sheep, goats, or hogs which you can procure, and the ships of the convoy can contain in order to propagate the breed of these animals ...' [Historical Records of New South Wales, I,2, Mona Vale, 1978, p.86.] This he did, at Cape Town, during his stay there in October/November 1787. To be precise, he bought six cows, two bulls, one of them a calf, one stallion, three or four mares. each with a young colt, somewhere between thirty to forty-four fat-tailed sheep, four to one hundred and twenty goats, twenty-eight hogs (who would eventually take over the Sydney streets for a time) and a large flock of poultry. The figures for some of the stock are imprecise because different numbers are recorded in the various First Fleet Journals. All up they cost him over 2000 pounds of the Government's money.
There were 247 marines embarked on the First Fleet. [Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia. A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet, Sydney, 1989, p.445.] Their officers, too, bought livestock, for they had dreams of establishing farms in their new country, and perhaps visions of becoming landed gentry. All refrained from slaughtering their animals for shipboard use, enduring a diet 'wholly of salt provisions' [John Hunter, An Historical Journal .. ' p.21.] for the last leg of the journey, rather than be landless and without stock. Judge Advocate Collins, for example, had 'three sheep, a goat, two pigs, ... eight fowls, two turkeys, two ducks' and 'two geese.' [David Collins, An Account of the English Colony ... I, n.44, p532.] Captain James Campbell, friend and confidant of the Lieutenant Governor, Major Ross, and a company commander, had a cow. [Arthur Bowes Smyth, Journal, p.55.]
The bulls and cows were embarked on the Sirius. These were 'black cattle, large, very strong, and remarkable for the great spaces between their horns'. [Collins, op.cit., p. lxxxiv.] Many of them were Phillip's private stock. [William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales, p.44.] They took up so much room that each of the main gun decks had to be stowed in the hold so 'Stalls, etc.,' could 'be built fore and aft the Deck, just leaving room to work the Cables.' [ibid., p.42.] The master's mate, Daniel Southwell, grumbled the ship had become 'a livery stable' 'where the people are much crowded, for the cattle are to occupy a deck which ... was theirs'. [Daniel Southwell in HRNSW, Volume 2, pp.675-676.] The horses went aboard the Lady Penrhyn, the rest of the government stock distributed to three other vessels.
Before leaving Portsmouth Phillip had ordered all dogs 'belonging to the men and officers to be put ashore.' The order was ignored. The Englishmen would not part with their dogs. They even bought new ones at the ports-of-call on the way to New South Wales. The younger brother of the Judge-Advocate, David Collins, Second Lieutenant William Collins's bitch, Flirt, had pups on the voyage. [John Currey, David Collins, A Colonial Life,Carlton South, 2000, p.39.] Apart from Flirt, there were at least Phillip's own thirty to forty dogs, two of which were greyhounds, and the Lady Penrhyn's carpenter's dog, Jockey, 'a great favourite of all the Ship's Co.' [Bowes Smyth, op. cit., p.142.]
The chaplain, Richard Johnson, had with him two small kittens, 'a little present' for him and his wife, Mary, which delighted them both and provided them with much amusement on the long voyage out. Once in New South Wales he set his cats free to kill the native wildlife, sending one to Norfolk Island because it dug up his garden, and letting the other loose in Sydney Cove. Both cats were most effective in their slaughter. [Richard Johnson, Some Letters ...Pt.1, pp. 13, 25.]
The First Fleeters brought rabbits (though these were not to become a pest for another sixty to seventy years after sheep had destroyed the native grasses and the pastoralists had decimated native predators like the dingo, native cats, crows, eagles and hawks leaving a niche for the rabbit population to expand exponentially. With the rabbit, the colonists had brought a little bit of England with them.
Finally, from Africa, there was that monkey. Named Pug, he was the only monkey on the First Fleet (at least one other came later) and lived till 1804, 'Devoid of talent ..../Uncensored to0 ....' [Michael Connor (ed.) Pig Bites Baby!, Stories from Australia's First Newspaper. Volume 1, 1803-1810, Pott's Point, 2004, pp.34, 36.] Apparently he occupied a high post (presumably chained) in a colonist's yard for many years, and was not the epitome of public decency.
The monkey might have fared well on the First Fleet voyage to New South Wales, but the Government stock did not. Six horses, two of them colts, four cows, one calf. three goats, some sheep, hogs and poultry were all that was left alive. In the rough passage from Capetown at least two cows, one bull and two calves had died, along with 117 goats. The losses among the sheep, hogs and poultry were not recorded. [The figures come from various First Fleet Journals.] Those marine officers, though, made sure they looked after their own interests - their stock was 'tolerably well preserved.' [Philip Gidley King, Journal, p.37.]
[The above is an extract from a microhistory of the First Fleet's first week at Botany Bay, on which I am presently working.]
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