Ticket to Paradise: A Journey to Find the Australian Colony in Paraguay Among Nazis, Mennonites and Japanese Beekeepers

NEW

AUSTRALIANS

AUSTRALIAN STORY

Another type of slave is the working-

class foreigner who rather than

live in wretched poverty at home,

volunteers for slavery in Utopia.

Thomas More, Utopia

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I’m shaking with anticipation as I depart Kingsford Smith International Airport to embark on an adventure off the map and into the wild. International travel is more achievable than in the 1890s, though Paraguay is one of those places that has slipped through the cracks. Despite my in-laws being Argentinian I don’t know anyone who has been to Paraguay; the pitiful section in my guidebook advises me to watch out for thieves and water-borne diseases and to get out as quickly as possible, and the only online advice I can find is a YouTube video from a tourist warning of giant cockroaches and plentiful handguns.

I’ve packed sensible shoes and diarrhoea medication along with A Peculiar People, the account of Australian journalist Gavin Souter’s 1965 exploration of Paraguay. Surely nothing much has changed in forty-six years?

I scan the shelves of the airport bookshop and purchase the nearest thing I can find to a self-help guide, Bear Grylls’s Man vs Wild: Survival techniques from the most dangerous places on earth, learning that I can drink my own urine as a last resort; and I should avoid the Amazonian catfish while I’m urinating because it is so cunning it can swim through the eye of my penis and into my bladder.

My aim is to travel to Uruguay, then across the river to Argentina, where my wife Laura’s family lives, and up into the heart of Paraguay, mirroring the journey of the original pioneers.

The airport in Sydney is a perfect representation of what I’m about to leave behind. The public toilets are more than the side of a car or a hole scuffed in the mud, people obey queues and there is a calmness to the efficiency of everything, which I don’t fully appreciate. I sit at an over-priced airport café and read in the newspaper a full-page discussion on whether tracksuit pants are in fashion. The radio announcers have a nasal drawl that I find strangely comforting as they report that the traffic is running smoothly and when the loudspeakers call, ‘Aerolineas Argentinas flight 1182 is now boarding’ I turn my back on Australia.

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The New Australian story starts with its imaginer. William Lane was born in the port city of Bristol, England, in 1861 the son of an Irish alcoholic landscape gardener and a long-suffering English mother. He was forced to make his own way from a very young age and the struggle of his parents (especially his young mother) inspired him to look deeper at the wrongs he saw in society. Lane was an extremely gifted writer who was excited by the power of the written word. He escaped to Canada when he was sixteen, and later met his wife, Anne McQuire, working at a newspaper in Detroit in 1884. With a new baby in tow and looking for a fresh start, they immigrated to Australia with William’s brothers in 1885.

William Lane. Cosme Colony Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Sydney Library

Lane started out reporting on the dances in Brisbane, even getting his wife to pawn her wedding ring to buy him show tickets as he reported for Figaro under the pen name Lucinda Sharpe. Needing something a little more inflammatory, though, he started the rag The Boomerang in 1887 with Alf Walker and used it as a platform for his ideas on Utopia, socialism and race relations. Lane didn’t shy away from controversy, writing burning articles on the ‘almond-eyed mongols’ infecting Australia and the race war in which modern Australia had a choice between ‘white or yellow’ if it wanted to succeed.

William Lane was a little man with poor eyesight and a clubfoot and, as meek as this seems, ‘he learned early to ponder the sufferings of the labouring class to which he belonged’ and his optimism and drive for a fairer life became infectious. Lane’s views struck a chord with the workers and he was one of the chief instigators behind the formation of the Australian Labour Federation. He began writing for the Labour paper The Worker and by 1891 he was already dreaming of a Utopia far away from Queensland as a solution to the injustices he saw in Australia. He made contact with a colony, Topolobampo, in Sinaloa Bay, Mexico, for advice on how to begin, and wrote to a friend who had lived in Uruguay for information on South America as a possible location.

When the shearers’ strikes began, Lane saw them as the perfect opportunity. He worked under the pseudonym ‘John Miller’ and wrote the book The Workingman’s Paradise to further spread his ideas about socialism and to raise money for the families of the prisoners arrested in the Queensland strikes.

The Sydney Morning Herald said of Lane that after failing as an apostle of the universal strike in Canada, he came to Australia to enlist ‘human material more quickly flammable’ for his socialist cause. Lane found that flammable material during the strike.

The Murray Pioneer said that Lane was a writer ‘whose pen had power to lift the hearts and stir the souls of men as no other has ever done in Australia’. And reviews of Lane said that ‘If Henry Lawson was the national poet of the nineties, Lane was unquestionably its political prophet’.

Twelve of those arrested in the shearers’ strikes were sentenced to three years hard labour on St Helena, an island prison at the mouth of the Brisbane River. Of those arrested, Edward Murray, Hugh Blackwell, Henry Smith-Barry and Alec Forrester would be stirred by Lane’s words and follow him to Paraguay.

Another of those arrested during the strike was the nuggety Irishman Gilbert Casey. He was locked up for arson for two weeks during the troubles, before being released for lack of evidence. Casey would become one of the biggest players in the adventures to come. He loved a pint and picking a fight.

William Lane’s vision in print. Caption reads: ‘He felt that they had made a mistake at the outset by painting their picture in too bright a key.’ Cosme Colony Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Sydney Library

Australia was tainted for the shearers and they wanted to succeed on their own terms. During the upheaval, the New Australia Settlement Association was created and in May 1891 members decided to send Alf Walker to South America to look for suitable land for their Utopia. The association set about recruiting members while Lane did what he did best with the pen to stoke the fire:

DID YOU KNOW

That all our modern social ills – poverty, unemployed, prostitution, ignorance and all the evils attending these wrongful conditions – arise wholly and solely because selfish greed more than counter-balances all the advantages of civilization?

That the wealth production of the world is vastly in excess of all ordinary requirements, but that the greater part is carelessly wasted by the rich who do not work while only a comparatively small portion goes to give a scanty subsistence to the poor who, roughly speaking, produce it all?

That in what are called barbaric times, among our own race, every man had a home and a wife and every woman a home and a husband, every man was sure of opportunity to live free and of seeing his children grow up free and equal; and that civilization takes from us this freedom which must be the basis of all happiness and gives us wage slavery and degradation in return, only because we have not realized true co-operative conditions suited to modern civilization, as the common ownership of land and cattle was suited to the barbarism of our forefathers?

That all the energies of earnest and determined men and women are necessary, not only to convince the world that things are wrong, which is very easy, but to show the world by practical means what is the best way out, which is very hard, and the best way is certainly to build up a community enjoying plenty and happiness and individual liberty, which will be an object lesson and an example to all who seek a better order of things, proving to all nations that better things are possible?

That such a community can only be built up by those who give their lives to the work which will live after they are dead and gone and forgotten, and who for the sake of that work, and in the faith of winning humanity, are strong enough to take every precaution towards success no matter what such precautions may cost – are ready to ‘go out into the desert’ to live in their own way?

DO YOU BELIEVE

That though some men are unreliable and selfish and brutal, having been made so by the unnatural conditions under which we are forced to live, that many men are square and straight and honest, particularly if they have anything like a chance to be?

That there is pluck enough and honesty enough in the straight men to enable them to trust one another through difficulties and discouragements and pull them through to a state of industrial organization in which every man will be a mate and which no man would dream of taking advantage of another?

That there is intelligence enough and power of organization enough among the workers to enable them of their free will to organise the present conditions of industry and to give the world an example of a peaceful and self-sustaining industrial community in which there are none but workers and in which all are equal?

DO YOU FEEL

That the weakness of social movement is in men themselves, in their lack of faith, in their hesitation of thought, in their doubts as to what is best to be done?

That year by year, generation after generation, demoralizing conditions are having an effect upon men equally with the degenerating influence of modern ideas?

That the greatest gift which men could bring to their fellow men would be faith, absolute unalterable faith in a tried and proved form of industrial organization and in the divine truth that happiness is only possible so far as we care for one another?

That you can make one of an association whose members are pledged to give up everything and to join one another in earnest effort to help one another live a life worth living as an example to the world?

IF YOU DO, JOIN THE ‘NEW AUSTRALIA’ MOVEMENT

Lane struck a chord with the workers when he proclaimed that they deserved a ‘leader with the brain of a Jay Gould [a prominent US property developer] and the heart of a Christ’. And he took it upon himself to become that man and lead them to paradise.

‘It is almost unanimously agreed, by all who have considered the movement, that Australia does not offer for the purpose the advantages offered by other continents,’ said William Lane on 19 November 1892. Lane’s propaganda had the desired effect and by the end of 1892, the movement had signed up more than 2000 potential colonists.

Like Moses establishing the laws that his people would adhere to in the promised land, William Lane wrote up the association’s strict rules, influenced no doubt by his father’s alcoholism and his own visible racism; these could not be broken if there was to be success in Utopia. ‘It is right living to share equally because selfishness is wrong; to teetotal because liquor drinking is wrong; to uphold life marriage and keep white because looseness of living is wrong.’

They could have chosen to pack up and start again within Australia; they were offered private land for their project near Wilcannia, and a group of shearers even attempted a colony on the banks of the Alice River in central Queensland, though the Australian Government was unwilling to help them realise their objective of independent living. With labour conditions as they were, the bushmen looked to Lane for something better. After the shearers’ strikes, the socialists wanted a completely fresh start. They wanted to do something radical.

Representing the organisation, Charlie Leck, William Saunders and Alfred Walker set out on horseback with Englishman Arthur Tozer as their interpreter searching South America for the location of New Australia. They scoured the Argentinian provinces of Neuquén and Rio Negro on the Patagonian grasslands. They rode across the plains to the snow-capped Andes and found the land too barren; they even baulked at the prospect of becoming neighbours to the prosperous Welsh colony of Chubut.

Their attention turned north, to the place some said was the original location of the Garden of Eden. It was even said that ‘Paraguay was a misprint for paradise’. They were sold.

Slightly smaller than Iraq, this humid country is crossed by the Tropic of Capricorn. It provides a home for jaguars, anteaters and cannibals, and had recently endured one of the bloodiest battles in human history.

The Paraguayan Government was eager for new arrivals to re-populate its ravaged country, so it granted the settlers 463,100 acres in the centre, free of charge. The only condition the Utopians had was to settle 1200 families within six years.

With money raised from each member’s £60 subscription to the Association, the New Australians bought the Royal Tar and began to make arrangements for their departure. Seaman James Molesworth purchased the Tar for £1200. At least from a sailing point of view, the colonists had no doubts: ‘As a sailor she is considered one of the fastest of her size,’ they commented in the New Australia Journal.

After numerous delays imposed by the Australian Government to stall their departure the colonists were finally ready to leave in 1893. The shearers and socialists shook ‘the dust of Queensland from their feet in disgust and cast their eyes to a land where at all events, men and women will have equal opportunity.’

The Royal Tar. State Library of Victoria, H99.220/1021

Adelaide accountant John Sibbald, who was amongst the group on this first voyage, remarked that they were ‘Like a swarm of bees with no clear idea of any destination. They were merely frantic to get out of the old step.’

William Lane said to The Bulletin in 1893, with a puffed chest and utter confidence in his dream, ‘The world will be changed if we succeed, and we will succeed! We cannot help succeeding!’

WELCOME TO

SOUTH AMERICA

The sole cause of man’s unhappiness

is that he does not know how to

stay quietly in his room.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

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On a grey Sunday morning on 16 July 1893 the first batch of 220 Utopian pioneers made up of ‘Bushmen, labourers, artisans, sailors, with a sprinkling of professionals’, ignored the spitting rain across Sydney Harbour and refused to be intimidated by the storms rolling in across the Heads. In defiance of the conditions they sang ‘Homeward Bound’ as they departed on the Royal Tar for the long trip to Paraguay. Australia disappeared behind them and the government escort turned back. The New Australians filled the deck and cheered for ‘Freedom, Lane and Paraguay’.

As John Sibbald put it, the pioneers of New Australia ‘tumbled straight into a heavy sea with no wind, and for three days rolled about in unspeakable discomfort, with bruised limbs and aching voids for bodies’, while the heavy swell pushed them slowly away from Australia. It took eleven days to sight the Three Kings Islands off the north coast of New Zealand.

The weather became fine and the colonists, still giddy with optimism for what lay ahead, all pitched in with every chore aboard. The Lanes would wash dishes and peel potatoes like the rest and, for a time, they all endured the cramped quarters and life in the dank, smoky hold with good humour, while passing the time on deck with skipping ropes, chess games and book readings.

As they ploughed through the blue troughs of the Pacific, William Lane began to exert his authority while cabin fever and isolation began to niggle at the passengers. Single woman Clara Jones and bushman Dave Stevenson had been spending their time canoodling in the lifeboats and being ‘spoony’ in each other’s company watching the Southern Cross in the starry night sky. This bristled Lane and he promptly put up a notice forbidding single women from being on deck after 6 pm unless accompanied by their parents. Lane knew full well that Clara Jones was alone on the voyage and many of the colonists confronted Lane that evening with Jones in tow (after 6 pm for good measure) and threatened to turf him overboard if he didn’t change his mind.

The next morning Lane tendered his resignation as chairman, though it wasn’t accepted, as the colonists feared it would send a sour message back to those waiting to leave in Australia. For the remainder of the trip Clara Jones continued to stroll above deck after 6 pm and with whichever gentleman she pleased, and Lane shut himself away like a scorned child in his cabin until they sighted land.

The Utopians on the first Royal Tar voyage, 1893. Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, MPG/14

They rounded Cape Horn on 24 August 1893 without incident, navigating around the house-sized icebergs of the sub-Antarctic waters. The weather was not as cold as they expected and the colonists danced on the decks well into the evening as they inched closer to South America. They were too far south to see land yet, though after nearly a week navigating the ice channels they encountered one of the most foreign sights they’d ever seen. ‘An iceberg, about 200 feet high and crystal nearly a mile long; precipitous cliffs on one side and a sloping snow field on the other,’ remarked John Sibbald, who had surely never seen anything like it in his life. They toyed with the idea of towing the ‘crystal cliffs’ of the iceberg back through the Heads in Sydney to give the Association a much needed cash injection, but before they could do anything about it the iceberg drifted away and they continued into the warmer waters of mainland South America.

The new chapter in their lives began as they sighted land for the first time in nearly two months. It was Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, and their first view of wild South America. Suddenly their ‘feather-headed expedition’ had become real and New Australia was within reach.

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The Australians arrived in Montevideo on 11 September 1893 and British scallywag Arthur Tozer was there to greet them. Tozer had arrived in neighbouring Argentina four years earlier looking for adventure and he often spent his afternoons picking off Argentinian revolutionaries from his balcony in Buenos Aires with a Smith and Wesson pistol before William Lane and the New Australians came looking for an interpreter. The opportunity to support a cause was what Tozer wanted and it was nearly love at first sight when he met William Lane.

There were no docks in Montevideo so the Royal Tar dropped anchor out in the choppy froth of the Rio de la Plata, and William Lane, treasurer John Sibbald and the purser EC Watson accompanied Tozer, who gazed at Lane ‘with the shining eyes of an acolyte’ as they rowed into Montevideo.

To flaunt his authority once again Lane posted a notice forbidding the other colonists from entering Montevideo as he left to pay his respects to the authorities. He was worried about the trouble a shipload of foreigners could find themselves in, in a South American pirate port. With forty-three single men aboard, though, many of them salt-of-the-earth shearers and labourers, the temptation for a tipple and a look at the swivelling hips of Latina women on dry land was too much after two months of a fibreless diet and only the company of married women with body odour.

The next morning several members, including Fred White, Arthur Brittlebank and Tom Westwood, ignored the orders and boarded a boat for shore. William Lane had announced that the Association would not cover the cost for any disobedient members, but they jumped in anyway and to their delight found the boat was free, a service run by the Montevideo port authority. Lane’s bluff didn’t work, and it was another instance of disrespect by followers who harboured doubts about their messiah and his ability to lead them to paradise together.

While the rebels explored the vibrant port, the Paraguayan Consul, Dr Alonzo Criado, came aboard to present the Australians with a Paraguayan flag and gave a speech to welcome them as brothers and worthy immigrants to his country. They would be replacing the men who had perished in the Triple Alliance War of the 1860s in which Paraguay had lost ninety per cent of its adult male population, leaving only 28,746 men to manage 106,254 unsatisfied women.

Media opinion of the voyage of the Royal Tar. The caption reads: ‘When the ship dropped anchor, it was deemed necessary for someone to go ashore to communicate with various people. A few passengers went ashore and came back more or less the worse for drink; four of them, indeed, Mrs. Lane says, roaring drunk.’ National Library of Australia

Perhaps the Australians didn’t pick up on Criado’s line that the Paraguayans were interested in the Australians planting a seed slightly different to those that the naive and wholesome Australians expected. Criado even went so far as to give John Sibbald a letter of introduction to the President of Paraguay in which he asked Dr Juan Gonzalez and his wife to be the godparents of the first child born in New Australia.

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Uruguay’s capital has long been a cultural melting pot, and the dissenters quickly found solace in the portside bars of the Ciudad Vieja. The group returned to the ship later that evening and were immediately lambasted by the do-gooders on board, who declared them to be ‘roaring drunk’. John Rich countered that they were only ‘a bit merry’, though the abstainers weren’t having any of it, and cries of ‘Scabs!’ flew across the decks and good old-fashioned fisticuffs broke out on board, the accumulation of eight weeks of bad food, no grog and cramped living with no release in the damp quarters