Explore "Red O'Shaughnessy" by J.H.M. Abbott on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
SUCH expeditions as that to the Green Hills, O'Shaughnessy was soon to realise, were not weekly diversions. Life at the Coal River settlement early resolved itself into a monotonous round of wearisome repetition not at all easy to endure.
Every day the prisoners worked from sunrise until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, with an intermission of an hour for breakfast at eight, but no midday break for dinner. That was supposed to be eaten after the day's work for the government was at an end, anything in the nature of earlier refreshment being taken without any cessation of whatever task upon which the prisoner happened to be employed. On Saturday afternoons the coal-miners washed the grime and sweat from their weary bodies in the ocean, and Sunday morning had its court of petty session, presided over by the Commandant, and after that its resultant flogging parade. There was a parody of Divine Service in the afternoon, and in the evenings, round a big fire near the gaol--this relief had been instituted by Captain Axthorpe--a sort of public concert was held which would hardly be described as entertainment.