Peter FitzSimons. Photo: Wilk
Yes, yes, yes, I know. These days, it doesn't matter where you're driving in Sydney, you can't help but notice that the purrrr of your motor is regularly accompanied by the ping, ping, ping of the toll thingammy going off from behind your rear-view mirror. And by the end of the month it rather adds up, doesn't it? And now they're even talking about turning Parramatta Road itself into one massive toll road!
Oh, settle, people-my-people. Whinging about the tolls is, in fact, one of the greatest Sydney traditions of all. Patron saint in the field is Judge Jeffery Bent (pictured), a rather troublesome English jurist of high forehead, sharp nose and sharper tongue, who arrived in this fair city in late December 1809 to take up his appointment as NSW judge advocate.
Ah, but there is a problem from the first. For Judge Bent refuses to get off his ship, the HMS Dromedary, in Sydney Cove - refuses, do you hear me? - until such time as an official welcoming party is formed on the shore, together with soldiers to fire a salute.
Judge Jeffery Bent ... sharp tongue.
And he will be damned - damned, do you understand, sir? - if he will open the new Supreme Court as the only lawyers available to appear before it are ex-convicts.
From the first, the only thing that comes close to Judge Bent's disdain for convicts is ex-convicts, who presume they can re-enter polite society after serving their time.
Well, not on his watch!
An Englishman more than a little proud of his impeccable pedigree, most particularly in this den of thieves, there are so many things he doesn't like about life in the colony he practically has to put another man on just to keep track.
And there is another thing now! For in September 1815, on George Street, just off Haymarket, he is appalled to see that the authorities have built a toll gate at the beginning of Parramatta Road, and they want money off him before they will allow him to pass.
Do they not know who he is?
Yes they do, but they still want a ha'penny.
Judge Bent will not pay. An Englishman, he insists on his right to pass on the highways and byways wherever he pleases, without limits being placed upon him. Indeed, he is so insistent on not paying, and behaves so badly, that he is issued with a summons to appear before the Court of Petty Sessions.
Still he will not appear, on the grounds that, as judge of the Supreme Court, he was "by no means amenable to any criminal jurisdiction in this Territory".
Of course, it becomes the talk of all Sydney Town, to the point that Governor Lachlan Macquarie is embarrassed that his leading legal official is refusing to obey the law.
Finally, Judge Bent is persuaded to appear and for his trouble is fined £2 by the magistrate D'Arcy Wentworth.
Judge Bent is apoplectic with rage. Two pounds! A Supreme Court judge, fined by a mere magistrate, a man who though not technically an ex-convict had been charged for being a highwayman four times in England and Ireland only to - unfortunately, in Bent's view - get off each time. He had nevertheless come to Australia on the last judge's strong advice from the bench, and was now passing judgment on him.
A jumped-up highwayman, insisting that he, a Supreme Court judge, and all Sydneysiders pay organised highway robbery!
Two centuries, my people. Two centuries of this carry-on. As great a Sydney tradition as drinking too much, getting snooty about living in the eastern suburbs and feeling sorry for those merely camping out down Melbourne way.
With thanks to Fairfax Media legal counsel Richard Coleman and The Australian Dictionary of Biography.
No comments:
Post a Comment