A CONVICT HERO.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4910, 2 December 1925, Page 4

A CONVICT HERO.

YEARS AGO IN NEW SOUTH WALES

PROFIT FROM LIFE STORY.

Sir Benjamin Fuller and one or two other Sydney gentlemen have interested themselves in a somewhat curious. task, that of recutting into a

gravestone what is practically the compendium of a man’s life-—and they are doing it that all. men may read that story and profit by it. The' town of Windsor, on the Hawkesbury, is, with Botany Bay and Parramatta, one of the cradles of Australian history. Lachlan Macquarie was inordinately' fond of -the place, and when Governor had some idea of making it the capital of New South Wales, believing that greater safety lay in having the chief town well inland from the seaboard, anticipating -the Canberra, idea by a century. It wais there he established one of the first convict settlements.and the district is rich in memories of those queer dead days. There is still the beautiful Church of St. Matthew’s, a fine rectangular red brick structure, constructed of hand-made bricks by the convicts. That church, under the eaves of which the swallows have built their clinging nes.ts, and where the oldest Bible in Australia is still used every Sunday, was built in 1820, and is a splendid monument to the architectural and constructional skill of those far-away days. There in the old churchyard, surrounding the square-towered house of God, repose many who. lived and died in Windsor in the first quarter of -the nineteenth century. Some of the inscriptions on the graves go back as far as 1817.

* It was in that year that one Alfred Stevens, a. youth, was convicted in England for setting fire to a isaystack, and for that dreadful offence —possibly a boyish prank—was. sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude, to be served in Australia. - Alfred Stevens duly served, hi-s sentence, but early proved himself to be a young man of exemplary character, so that’when the time came for him to be discharged he had already established himself as a man of sterling qualities He remained at Windsor, farmed, the land, and prospered. On one occasion, when the valley became flooded, and there were lives in jeopardy, it was Alfred Stevens who played an heroic part, and saved many lives. He rose to be chief magistrate of the Hawkesbury district, and became a personal friend of Governor Macquarie, to whom he left, on hi-s death when only thirty-s.evfen years of age, one-fourth of his -estate, which was not inconisiderable. Time had partly obliterated the inscription on the old sandstone slab when the story of this brief but exemplary life w,as brought under the, notice pf certain people, and at once it was decided to have .the whole of the life narrative recut, that all might read and profit thereby.