Sunday, 13th May, 1838

I had mail from England this week, including a letter from Sir Pultney Malcolm who writes

"You have had a bad set to deal with. Had I been aware of the powers of the Commissioners, I would not have advised you to accept the Government. You are considered an ill-used man and when your case is known, will have the sympathy of all good men."

which, let's be honest, is all well and good, but damn all use to me now.

Ned Stephens is cutting up rough and accusing the Government of not paying Company bills.

Last year I ordered the company whaling boat to Boston Bay with a view to warning new arrivals to proceed to Nepean Bay, as there was sod all to be doing at Port Lincoln. Fisher, in his usual manner, countermanded my order and made other arrangements. I have since been informed that no-one ever so much as lifted a finger to prepare to sail for Port Lincoln and there was never any intention to do so. And yet I was presented with an account, which I refused to pay, for the chartering of the boat and the cost of the crew to the Company. 

I also have to hand an account for the loss of a mare, borrowed from the Company by Tom Cotter, Government Surgeon, to go and visit a patient, probably to make the man drink senna pod tea. He returned the horse to the Company yard where two days later it gave birth prematurely to a foal and promptly died.

Stephens, naturally, blamed Cotter and presented me with a bill for the dead animal. Yet when I referred the account to Gilles, he discovered that the day before Cotter rode it, it was borrowed by David McLaren, a man who rides a horse as well as you might expect a Scottish Baptist to ride - that is: badly. Gilles advised the Company that responsibility for the death of the mare was disputed as it could easily have been McLaren's lack of equestrian prowess that brought on the birth.

Now Stephens is using my "non-payment" to try and have me over a barrel. A group of Cornish miners arrived in the Colony and I set them to work digging for water at Port Adelaide. With the exception of Methodist hymns, there is nothing a Cornishman likes so much as digging a hole and the lot of them set to with a will, drilling for water. 

But before they managed to proceed too far they ran out of pipe and, having had their hole in the ground taken away from them, sat around looking even more glum and miserable than Cornishmen do normally. 

To cheer them up I ordered more materials from the Company stores, only to be told that there'd be no more supplies "on tick" while there were outstanding accounts to be paid.

So now I'll be needing to bring supplies in from Sydney or Hobart, with increased expense and fingers smacked by the misers in the Colonial Office in London. Damnation! 

Here at Government House we continue to be beset with George Milner Stephen blighting our lives. It occurred to me to set baits or lay traps in order to rid ourselves of him, but Mrs. Hindmarsh and the girls have taken quite the shine to the man and his easy charm.

The man cheats at cards. It has been my habit of an evening to spend time with Mrs Hindmarsh and the girls playing a harmless game of Five Card Loo, playing for buttons. Once Stephen started playing it was "shall we make it more interesting?" and we were playing for pennies. And damn me if he didn't win the lot. We caught him several times peeking at Miss and just as many times playing a low trump when he had a higher, which he clearly was "saving for later". At the time I took his reminders to "hold your cards up Governor. I can see every last one you have!" to be friendly advice, but later realised that I was sitting in front of the mantle mirror and holding my cards up just gave him a better view. 

Mary assures me that with his talent at musical instruments, his singing, his painting, his poetry writing and his interests in Science he could be described, as she puts it, as a "Renaissance Man".

Sadly, what he could not be described as is "a lawyer", a deficit that might seem fatal in a man occupying one of the chief law offices in the Province. Still, charm outweighs talent I gather and such seems to be the principle Milner Stephen operates under.

Mary tells me that he has offered to take her on as a student of drawing and water colours, which I find suspicious. I spoke to him about it and he tells me that he hopes to "expand her aptitude", which I find doubly suspicious. I don't know about aptitude, but Mr Stephen may well find that I "expand his arse" with my military boot doing the expansion.

A terrible thought struck me during the week. There is still much speculation about the town as to the identity of the Hangman in the Magee execution. The rumours seem to favour the notion that the Cook of the South Australia Company was co-opted into performing the deed. The Cook, however, denies all knowledge of the matter and has produced an alibi for the time of the hanging. However, all seem to agree that "a cook" was involved.

So it seems we are looking for a heftily built cook, incapable of any degree of competence. And for that description there can be only one candidate: The Mad Poisoner herself, Hangman Harvey!