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consider it a personal favour if you did take the post as Governor-General of New South Wales.
    Although it has not been revealed to the country or even to Parliament, the King’s health is failing badly and it is quite probable that the Prince of Wales will be taking over his duties as the King’s Regent very soon.
    Lachlan looked up from the letter, realising he had no further choice in the matter. If a Regency Bill was approved by Parliament, and all royal power was vested in the Prince of Wales as Regent, then refusing his request would be tantamount to refusing the King himself.
    And for a soldier … an officer in His Majesty’s Army to do that …
    But first, even before the King, Lachlan chose to give priority to consideration of the views of his family.
    *
    Over the previous week, Elizabeth had given long thought to the matter of New South Wales. A grim place from all accounts, and certainly not a place for a gentle-bred lady. She knew that most army wives in her position would choose to stay behind in the comfort of their own homes while their husbands were away on service.
    But she also knew that if her husband was forced to go, and to a place so far away, no matter how awful it was she would still go with him, even to the ends of the earth, because she loved him.
    *
    Lachlan understood the baffled expression on George Jarvis’s face.
    ‘Why not?’ George asked.
    ‘Because if I did get you commissioned into the 73 rd , George, all your freedom – and assistance to me – would be lost. You would be under the control of your superior officers, going out into the field, marches, parades morning and night. And it won’t be anything like India or Egypt – all deployed soldiers will be there simply to guard the colony and the convicts.’
    George at last understood. He nodded, ‘Yes, yes, I understand now.’
    A silence hung in the room before George finally asked, ‘So what is it you wish me to do?’
    ‘Just to … come with me, George. Be my personal and private aide … Help me in this trial that I’m sure New South Wales will be. It’s only for a couple of years, and you are still very young. When we return, then – ’
    ‘How soon do we go?’ George asked quietly.
    In blank silence Lachlan stared at him … He knew George Jarvis had no reason that would compel him to go with him to New South Wales. Years ago, from the money left in Jane's will, a trust had been settled by her on George which he had received from the day of his twenty-first birthday. So he was financially independent now and could go wherever he pleased.
    He said: ‘George, it’s a hellhole of convict colony … are you sure?’
    George looked at the man who had rescued him, brought him up through his childhood years and educated him, the man he would follow anywhere, because he loved him.
    ‘Yes, my father,’ George answered with certainty. ‘I am sure.’
    *
    Two weeks later, Elizabeth and George accompanied Lachlan down to London where he was officially presented by the Duke of York to the King, who officially appointed him as Governor-General of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, and all islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean.
    Unlike previous Governors of New South Wales, the new vice-regal powers that King George the Third gave “ To our trusty and well-beloved Lachlan Macquarie ,” were almost those of a Monarch of the entire antipodean region.
    Elizabeth could not stop herself from feeling extremely proud of the honours bestowed on her husband by the King and his sons, but Lachlan was not nearly so impressed.
    ‘ We are shortly to be transported to a penal colony ,’ he wrote to his friends in India, ‘ but myself and the 73 rd Regiment have now become reconciled to our banishment to Botany Bay.’

PART TWO
    This fifth part of the Earth
    Which would seem an after-birth
    Not conceived in the Beginning,
    But emerged at the first sinning,
    When the ground was therefore curst;-
    And hence – this barren