Black Randall (ePub)

As the American Colonies whisper of liberty and freedom, a young slave boy listens and dreams.

When war with Britain finally comes, John seizes his chance to escape and joins the Red Coats. The British Army, in return for his service, promise him freedom. After the English concede defeat in 1783, John once again faces enslavement in the newly independent United States of America. He escapes to England, only to have his new-found freedom give way to a life of poverty and petty crime in the grey slums of industrial Manchester.

Convicted of theft, John survives for months in a rotting prison hulk on the Thames, before being sent in a fleet of 11 ships to a new penal colony on the other side of the world - a vast, unknown land later to be called Australia. He is one of 11 Africans, including his friends Caesar and John Martin to step ashore in Sydney Cove.

Supported by his friend, Lieutenant Johnston, John is given a rifle and sent to hunt to keep the fledging, starving colony alive. Though he is eventually granted land, finds love with the vibrant Mary Butler and, once again, is granted his freedom - he must face fire, famine, and the loss of his firstborn child to survive.

But can a man so brutalized by war, grief, trauma and racism ever really be free?

Jo Braithwaite, a direct descendant of John Randall, explores this question in what is an evocative and moving reimagining of an extraordinary life. Black Randall tells the previously untold story of one the few Black convicts brought to the penal colony of New South Wales on the First Fleet, putting a lie to the notion that Australia was 'settled' by only white people.