The Exiles

After four months at sea, the Medea finally reaches Van Diemen’s Land. As the convicts prepare their personal items, Dunne reminds Hazel that he needs to fill out Ruby’s birth certificate. If he puts her down as the baby’s mother, Hazel can visit Ruby in the prison nursery. She agrees, although it feels strange to her, but Dunne reminds her that she has “earned the right to call [herself Ruby’s] mother” (212).

Before the women can make their way to land, they must be inspected by other doctors and quizzed about their skills and aptitudes to place them for work purposes. Dunne speaks on Hazel’s behalf and recommends that she be placed in the nursery due to her capabilities in a medical setting. As they wait for the skiff to take them to the mainland, Dunne gives Hazel a copy of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, which Evangeline was using to teach Hazel how to read.

As Hazel and Olive sit in the small rowboat ferrying them across, Hazel notices Buck being led down the ramp towards the skiffs. She nudges Olive, who remarks that they should have killed Buck when they had the opportunity.

Hazel and the rest of the women stumble as they walk onto the dock, unaccustomed to being on solid ground. As they make their way across the wharf, large groups of men begin leering at them and grabbing at their skirts while making inappropriate sexual comments. They walk for what seems like hours, hungry and thirsty, startled by the odd animals that make no sense to them—the kangaroos and the emus. Finally, the large, imposing figure of their new prison rises before them.

Once all the women enter the prison, called the Cascades Female Factory, the superintendent, Mr. Hutchinson, comes forward to speak to them. He goes over their strict schedule and routine along with all the rules and protocols for staying there. A few women, who are well-behaved and presentable, will leave the Cascades “to work in free settlers’ homes and businesses” (221). They break for lunch, and Hazel spits the disgusting broth back into the bowl.

After lunch, the women wait in a line to see a doctor once more. He goes over their vitals and discusses with them their preferred line of work. Because his office is understaffed, he allows Hazel to stay on in the nursery, but to her dismay, he takes Ruby from her. Ruby must stay alone in the nursery from here on out. Though Hazel protests, the doctor reminds her that she “relinquished that right…when [she] committed [her] crime” (223). She hands Ruby over to him reluctantly and leaves.

The required church service that evening proves to Hazel why she was never a religious person. The pastor talks of their “depraved and vicious habits” (225) and calls upon them to make their lives decent once more. Unfortunately, the night gets no better—the women are forced 12 per cell into hammocks crawling with fleas with the smell of urine, blood, and feces permeating their nostrils. Hazel sits on her moldy hammock and thinks of Ruby, all alone. She pulls out Evangeline’s tin ticket necklace and puts it on to feel closer to Ruby.

As she walks to her first day of work in the nursery, Hazel ponders her early life back in Scotland. It wasn’t easy—poor living conditions and child labor kept most children her age from ever progressing. Still, she misses those hours spent working alongside her mother, learning from her and sharing intimate moments with her. Hazel quickly angers when she thinks of how her mother’s silence put her in these horrible conditions.

The nursery reeks of vomit and feces. The children, most kept in cages, peer out at Hazel as if asking for help. She finds Ruby and sees that her diaper is full of greenish waste. The infant is silent, like all the others. The designated wet nurse comes to feed Ruby, but because she has to nurse four other babies as well, she does not let Ruby feed very long. That night, Hazel begs Olive to come back and nurse Ruby once again. Olive initially refuses, but Hazel asks her to do it for Evangeline. The next morning, Olive is waiting to walk to the nursery with Hazel.

As they move toward the nursery, Hazel spies some sage growing wild near the road and runs over to pick some, intending to make a poultice for rashes on the babies. A woman behind them asks why Hazel is picking sage, and when Hazel responds, the woman reveals that she, too, is a midwife. Her name is Maeve Logan, an Irish woman accused of being too outspoken and mouthy. When her landlord died a day after she “cursed him for starving his tenants” (232), she was sentenced to seven years labor. Over the next few weeks, Maeve teaches Hazel about all the different plants and herbs native to Australia and how to use them in healing doses. She also warns her of the dangers of many of these native plants—including the Angel’s trumpet, a name so given because “it’s the last thing [anyone] will see before ascending into heaven” (233).

Months go by, and eventually, the nursery doctor forcibly weans Ruby from Olive’s breast. Hazel remains very careful in her words and actions so she can stay in the nursery: “Nothing else matter[s]” (237) to her besides staying alive and keeping Ruby alive.

One morning, Hazel arrives at the nursery to find Ruby gone. She has been sent to the Queen’s Orphan School four miles away. This sudden change devastates Hazel, but the guard tells her that Hazel can visit Ruby every Sunday. When Hazel visits the following Sunday, she finds bruises and scabs on Ruby’s arms and legs.

With Ruby no longer in the nursery, Hazel decides to join the other women who are eligible for placement in good homes as housemaids. She lines up with all the other women one morning to await the arrival of the housekeepers from fine homes who come looking for word. This morning, Mrs. Crain, the housekeeper for the governor of Hobart Town—Sir John Franklin—chooses Hazel to come work with her. They travel by carriage to the Government House, and Mrs. Crain shows Hazel to the quarters of the servants. The other maids there speak of the native girl who lives with the Franklins as a “strange kind of experiment” (243) as a whim of Lady Jane Franklin. Hazel is curious to meet the child.

The next few weeks at the governor’s house are filled with menial labor and keeping up the household. Every day is just another day on the way to Sundays when she can see Ruby again. She collects scraps of cloth so that she can use them to make a quilt for Ruby. One morning, as she sweeps the hearth, she overhears Lady Franklin say that Sir John has invited a guest for dinner—a Doctor Caleb Dunne. The rest of her words shock Hazel—Dunne “recently moved to Hobart Town and set up a private practice” (247). Though she offers to stay to help with the dinner, Mrs. Crain sends her back to the Cascades.

Every Sunday, Hazel travels to the Orphan School, but Ruby becomes “indifferent, examining Hazel coolly under her eyelashes” (248). Their time apart takes a toll on Ruby’s memory of Hazel, and she treats her “like a benevolent stranger” (249), which breaks Hazel’s heart. As she returns to the Cascades one night, Olive warns her that the other prisoners think Hazel is getting special treatment.