The Quiet Invasion : A History of Early Sydney [1 ed.] 9781922454591, 9781925588972

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Tim Ailwood has been a teacher, actor, musician and director. He has lived in Sydney all his life.

Australian Scholarly

For Jack and Grace

© Tim Ailwood 2018 First published 2018 by Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd 7 Lt Lothian St Nth, North Melbourne, Vic 3051 Tel: 03 9329 6963 / Fax: 03 9329 5452 [email protected] / www.scholarly.info ISBN 978-1-925588-97-2 All Rights Reserved Cover design: Sarah Anderson

Contents For the Reader vii Preface: The Enterprise

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Part One: 1788 Prologue: Lunch, 18 January 1788 1: Australians on the Beach 7 2: Botany Bay 12 3: Never Saw Any Like It 22 4: Warrane 28 5: The Camp 38 6: Abandoned Wretches 47 7: Meeting the Locals 56 8: Phillip’s Commission 62 9: The Visit 65 10: British Justice 68 11: Evites and Elders 72 12: Albion 80 13: The Crescent 91 14: Australian Justice 93 15: Lonely Winter 99 16: Spring 106 17: Abduction 114 Part Two: 1789 18: Arabanoo 119 19: Troubled Village 124 20: Ambush 131 21: Military Machinations 135 22: Galgal-la 140 23: Deerubin 148 24: Outposts of Empire 155 25: Crime and Punishment 165 26: Heat and Dust 173 27: Most Unpleasant Service 178

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Part Three: 1790 28: Gloom and Dejection 185 29: Bennelong 194 30: Two Weeks with Ralph Clark 197 31: William and Patye 201 32: Solitary Silence 206 33: Second Fleet 214 34: New South Wales Corps 223 35: No Going Back 227 36: Lookout 230 37: Payback 234 38: Kirribilli Agreement 240 39: Rose Hill 248 40: Coming In 252 41: Pemulwuy 259 Part Four: 1791 42: Three Years On 271 43: Daringa 279 44: Departures 288 45: Land Grab 298 46: Gonin-patta 304 47: Parramatta 311 48: Tench and Dawes 316 49: Botany Bay Rangers 319 50: Third Fleet 322 51: Barangaroo 329 52: Harmless Fellow 332 53: Collins 335 54: Unfinished Business 339 55: Walking to China 344 56: Goodbyes 347 57: Balooderry 353 Epilogue 357 Notes 363 Bibliography Index 380

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For the Reader

This book was written in Gadigal and Wangal country and the author acknowledges the traditional custodians of these lands. For the sake of clarity, the Indigenous people of the continent we now call Australia, the original occupiers and custodians of the land for millennia, are rightfully designated as ‘Australians’. The members of the first and subsequent fleets are collectively referred to as ‘British’, while acknowledging the small number of men from different cultural backgrounds who arrived with the first ships. In terms of spelling and punctuation, most quotations have been modernised. The use and spelling of the Australian words are based on the notebooks or journals of William Dawes, Watkin Tench and Daniel Southwell. Regarding the use of suffixes in the language of the Eora: ‘-gal’ at the end of a word means ‘man from’; ‘-galeon’ means ‘woman from’. This book is a celebration of Australia and its history. Whether you are a descendent of a First Fleeter or a more recent arrival; whether you’re Indigenous or otherwise, we all should remember: we came on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.

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Preface: The Enterprise

The year 1783 was a watershed time for England and her burgeoning empire. In the decade before the Botany Bay enterprise, Britain had been hampered by a government paralysis at the top and the rapid increase in her urban populations, leading to a deterioration in conditions for those at the bottom rungs of society. After over twelve months of constitutional struggle and interference by King George III into parliamentary affairs, William Pitt was elected Prime Minister in December. Known to history as Pitt the Younger, he was indeed only twenty-four years old. Earlier in the year, the American War of Independence – which had cost the British Empire thirteen colonies and a huge amount of money – had finally ended, with the peace ratified by the Treaty of Paris. After eight years of conflict, it was a bitter blow to British pride. The American colonies had been mostly established in the previous hundred years. Of the thirteen, ten had become Crown colonies or provinces prior to the Revolution. Georgia was the last to be founded, in 1733, chartered by the King’s Privy Council and established as a sanctuary for debtors, previously wealthy ne’er-do-wells and gamblers. These colonies, as they grew and prospered, provided enormous commercial opportunities and great wealth for the mother country. English shipping dominated the commodities market and slave trades. The colonies were also a source of revenue for the government coffers through taxation. That led to England’s undoing. As well, the American colonies had been handy dumping grounds for the convicts that overpopulated British gaols. For decades, the appalling conditions in the streets of British cities, most notably London, only increased. The Inclosure Acts, first legislated in the seventeenth century, had as much impact on the country as the subsequent Industrial Revolution. What had been, for centuries, common land became enclosed and the enforcement of legal property rights was strictly applied. The Act of 1773 resulted in tens of thousands of people leaving the rural countryside and

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pouring into the newly establishing industrial cities. Ten years hence, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris, huge numbers of soldiers discharged from the Army were arriving in London’s streets and alleys. Over 100,000 men were disbanded, with most trying to find accommodation and employment in the capital. Wardamaged, crippled soldiers begged in the streets. Women, now out of work with the return of the soldiers, were left destitute, with increased prostitution as the result. In overcrowded London, the rich rubbed shoulders with the desperate and robberies soared, leading to massive congestions of felons in the courts and subsequently in the gaols. It was a direct result of draconian punishments for petty theft. But the authorities would not be deterred. James Adair, the Recorder of London, avowed: The offence of servants – robbing their masters – is a crime which so entirely cuts up every bond of civil society that it is the duty of the Courts of Justice at all time to punish it with severity.1 And punish they did. These people were the criminal class, after all. The penal codes of late eighteenth-century England were brutal and ineffective. Developed over the last two hundred years, the laws were inadequate to deal with many crimes that mostly today would be viewed as petty offences. Capital offences in that era included – apart from the usual murder, treason and rape – arson, forgery and stealing from a dwelling house. For these crimes, according to the penal codes, you would be hanged. However, many judges commuted sentences and most felons were damned to transportation. Banishment from the mother country in the eighteenth and nineteenth century was not only considered a desirable form of punishment but, up until the loss of the American colonies, an economic benefit. England merely handed over her convicts to a contractor who would ship them out and sell them to American planters and farmers. The government did not pay for their deportations and they no longer had the expense of guarding, feeding and clothing them. The convicts’ labours also bolstered the colonial economy. It was a win–win situation. But now there was no viable location for banishment, prisoners were left to rot in prison. When the prisons were full to overflowing, decommissioned ships – hulks – were moored on the Thames and elsewhere to accommodate the

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country’s convicts. This was at considerable cost – not only to government coffers but to the health and well-being of both the convicts and law-abiding citizens. The government was not getting very good press. Something had to be done. As a remedy to the overcrowded gaols, the government suggested that the inmates all be sent to British Canada or some island in the West Indies. Small shipments of convicts were sent to Canada, even after the Botany Bay fleet sailed, but they faced much resistance from the Nova Scotians. It was then suggested that convicts be shipped to tropical West Africa, but that would mean certain death. In July 1785, a parliamentary committee recommended the temperate coast of South West Africa and identified Das Volta Bay near the mouth of the Orange River. Here the convicts could be employed to grow food to victual passing ships. The naval sloop Nautilus was sent by a committee of the House of Commons to inspect the site. It was barren and dry, and completely unsuitable. The government wanted its convicts out of the country, not dead. The newspapers, growing in power, would have a field day. It has been said that the enterprise to transport convicts to New South Wales was akin to the Moon landing last century. But to compare an eighteenth-century empire-building plan to banish 700-odd people to the other side of the world, to the cutting-edge science and technology used by NASA in 1969, is nonsense. More importantly, astronauts Mike, Neil and Buzz were never sent on their journey to colonise the Moon. Nevertheless, the First Fleet enterprise was an amazingly ambitious project: in reality, it was a plan to create a new British society at the other end of the world. The first proposal to establish a settlement in New South Wales was made by James Matra, who had sailed with Cook. He was an American loyalist who had fought on the British side in the American War of Independence. Matra suggested that the country, having ‘no sovereign’, could become ‘an asylum to those unfortunate American loyalists’, like himself. After correspondence with Thomas Townsend Lord Sydney, Home Secretary in the Pitt Government, his plan was quickly altered to be ‘a very proper region for the reception of criminals’. Tommy Townsend had political motives. Lord Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty, immediately discredited the idea due to ‘the length of the navigation’ and the cost.2 But the plan remained. The question is: why was New South Wales selected as the location of a penal

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settlement? Why, on a coast more remote, more unknown than any other and which had been seen by just one British navigator? The debate among historians raged on in the 1950s and 1960s. England needed a new sea base in that part of the world to protect her commercial interests from the Dutch, Spanish, French and Americans. But this reason is not stated in any documents of the period. Matra and others referred to Botany Bay’s proximity to China and the trade that British ships could attract. What was known, and referred to, was the French expedition to the Pacific that began in 1785 under the leadership of La Perouse. There is the ‘tyranny of distance’ angle, which was also the enterprise’s very disadvantage. Although it added to the expense, Botany Bay as a site for a penal colony meant that most convicts would never see England again. Banishment to Botany Bay was to act as a deterrent. In terms of severity, transportation was second only to the death penalty. On 6 December 1785, Orders in Council were issued for the establishment of a penal colony in New South Wales. Lord Sydney, in his correspondence to the British Treasury on his decision to send convicts to Botany Bay, in August 1786 argued that the settlement, besides easing the pressure on gaols and prison hulks, would furnish the mother country with timber for ship masts and flax for ropemaking – two very important commodities for the Royal Navy in the eighteenth century. These could be found in nearby Norfolk Island. This last idea was a leftover from James Matra’s original proposal. He got a Sydney suburb named after him for his trouble. This is all in the document entitled ‘Heads of a Plan for Effectually Disposing of Convicts [to Botany Bay]’. It called for a fleet of convict ships with, among other things, two companies of marines in whose ranks would be found the necessary carpenters, smiths, sawyers and so on needed to establish the settlement. That never happened. Permission was given to procure South Sea Island women, as ‘it is well known that [without women,] it would be impossible to preserve the settlement from gross irregularities and disorders’ – in other words, sodomy.3 Governor Arthur Phillip would ignore this idea but did contemplate getting the most abandoned of the convict women and setting up a red-light district in the future settlement where the women would be ‘permitted to receive the visits of the convicts in the limits allocated to them and under certain restrictions’. As to

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whether this plan was put into action, no official correspondence attests.4 Sir Joseph Banks was all for the idea of a convict settlement at New South Wales and confirmed the bureaucrats’ belief in the viability of Botany Bay for such a settlement. It was the recommendations of this man that helped to seal the deal. He further said that they wouldn’t have any problem with Indigenous people. There is no mention in the ‘Plan’ of the Indigenous people whose land the fleet was about to invade. It is not surprising. According to philosopher John Locke, writing in the century earlier in his Second Treatise on Government, the ownership of land could only be assumed when the occupants cultivated the land and lived in fixed abodes. Ownership of hunter-gatherer populations of their lands could be disregarded as their country is defined as ‘uninhabited’. The concept of terra nullius, used to justify the dispossession of Native American lands by the British, has its foundations in this belief. For a nation to properly claim so-called ‘uninhabited’ land, they needed to settle the land. So although Cook had announced the ‘claim’ of New South Wales (as then defined – that is, the entire east coast of Australia) for England, another nation could easily settle there and claim actual sovereignty. The plan for Botany Bay was quickly put into effect and eight months of intense activity began. The urgency was such that no ship was sent out to survey Botany Bay, unlike Das Volta Bay. The entire enterprise was predicated on the journals of a dead navigator and the recollections of one twenty-eight-year-old, untrained botanist of their week-long visit some eighteen years earlier. Eleven ships would be assembled for the convoy, including six large transport ships of between 280 and 455 tonnes and three store ships for the carriage of food and provisions. Each of the transports had a detachment of marines on board to oversee some 760 convicts of whom only 193, or around 15 per cent, were women. One cannot help thinking that the macho, ocker image of modern Australia probably began in these times of female paucity in the infant colony. The men and women sentenced to transportation on the First Fleet had been convicted for such offences as theft, fraud, perjury or assault. But mostly they were thieves. You name it, they stole it, from cows to handkerchiefs, from horses to watches. No convict found guilty of murder or rape was ever transported. The murderers and rapists were summarily hanged.

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The human population of the fleet – comprising convicts, officers, crew, marines, marine wives and children – totalled approximately 1,050 people. No complete muster has survived. Apart from the human cargo, the convoy also carried livestock, food mostly preserved in barrels, as well as rope, tools, axes, farming equipment, building materials, sewing equipment, crockery, medical supplies, seeds, spirits, handcuffs, leg irons, grindstones, saws, clothing, canvas tents and a prefabricated wooden frame for the house of the colony’s first Governor. You get the picture. The First Fleet was actually an early form of a public–private partnership. Five of the transports were commissioned by the British East India Company to carry cargo from China to England on the return voyage. This helped to offset the cost of the voyage. The enterprise was big news in London in the spring of 1787. Many column inches were inked and even a stage show entitled ‘Botany Bay’ was written. The total cost of outfitting and dispatching the First Fleet would be around $20 million in today’s money. Two months following Lord Sydney’s plan, on 12 October 1786, Arthur Phillip was appointed commodore of the fleet, commander of the flagship HMS Sirius and first Governor of New South Wales. He was forty-eight years old. His salary, paid by the Home Office, would be £1,000 per annum – not an inconsiderable sum. The statue of Arthur Phillip, looking serenely over the harbour that he once adored, today stands close to an expressway at Sydney’s Botanical Gardens. As the statue attests, Phillip was not the most handsome of men but the large, almondshaped eyes staring out in bronze exude a certain calmness and compassion amid the bustle of Macquarie Street today – a street that never existed during his time here. Yet his eyes are also little hardened, as if scanning the horizon in search of a supply ship that never comes. Phillip is often acclaimed as the founder of Australia and he was an enlightened choice to lead an enterprise like this, to start a colony from scratch in a country barely known and little understood. This was not going to be like setting up a trading post in India or on the Malay Peninsula. Phillip had, up until his appointment, a solid but unspectacular naval career. He was born into poverty in East London in 1738 (yes, Arfur was a cockney), to a German-speaking father. It was his mother’s second marriage. His training

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for the sea began when he was thirteen, when he was accepted into the Charity School of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, thanks to his mother’s first husband who was a naval man. He was then employed in the mercantile service until 1755, when he transferred to the Navy and saw active service in the Seven Years’ War. His appointment as a lieutenant was confirmed in 1762 then he was retired on half-pay, upon peace being declared, the following year. Shortly after, Phillip married a widow in an unsuccessful partnership that ended in separation five years later. It was during this time that he farmed on properties in Hampshire, garnering some knowledge of agricultural practices and the rural people who worked on the land. Between 1774 and 1778, he served in the Portuguese Navy, also reputedly working as a spy before returning to the British Navy in 1778. Phillip was made post-captain and given the command of the Ariadne and, later, the larger Europe. He was again retired on half-pay in 1784. He was doing survey work for the Admiralty prior to his appointment in October 1786. How Arthur Phillip was offered the appointment is not fully known. It is thought that he was recommended by Sir George Rose, Treasurer of the Navy. Rose knew Phillip when he farmed in Hampshire. But we do know why he was appointed. Phillip had, for his time, benevolent, philanthropic and surprisingly egalitarian views in keeping with the most enlightened opinions of his age. He hoped to have no dispute with the ‘natives’ and believed the transport crews (the sailors) should not have any contact with them. He would never regard himself as an invader. In his eyes, he was always cloaked with the best intentions, however – in our eyes – misguided and stupid. Throughout the eight months between his appointment and the disembarkation of the fleet, Phillip negotiated tirelessly with the various agencies and departments necessary to fit out the ships and secure supplies. In that time, he wrote over 800 letters and attended hundreds of meetings. There was the Naval Board, responsible for the purchase and refitting of the ships; the Victualling Board, providing stores and provisions; the Sick and Hurt Board, responsible for the appointment of surgeon and providing medical supplies; the Board or Ordnance, supplying armaments; and finally, the Board of Longitude. Phillip, the cockney boy made good, even had an audience with King George III. Following consultations with the Home Office, Phillip’s instructions were

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finalised in April 1787 – a month before departure. He was instructed to ‘open an intercourse with the natives and to conciliate their affections’. He was authorised to emancipate deserving convicts and to grant them land. No land grants would be made to the marines. He was also instructed to settle Norfolk Island as soon as possible, ‘to prevent its being occupied by the subjects of any other European power’.5 The enterprise attracted some media interest. Below is an extract from a poem published in the Whitehall Evening Standard on 19 December 1786: Of those precious souls who for nobody care, It seems a large cargo the Kingdom can spare; To ship off a gross or two may not delay, They cannot too soon go to Botany Bay They go to an island to take special charge Much warmer than Britain and ten times as large No custom-house duty, no freightage to pay And tax-free they’ ll be at Botany Bay. The fleet of eleven ships was headed by HMS Sirius accompanied by HM brig Supply. The six transport ships were Scarborough, Alexander, Charlotte, Prince of Wales, Lady Penrhyn and Friendship. Behind them were three store ships – Borrowdale, Golden Globe and Fishburn. Convicts were taken on board mostly from the Thames hulks and Newgate Prison. Departure was delayed several times as Phillip pressed for more supplies and better conditions for his charges. He wanted fit men and women for his new settlement. Instead he watched as a number of old, crippled and insane convicts were shifted aboard. Around 15 per cent of his convict workforce would be too old and unfit for any labour. The marines boarded at Portsmouth. Although no accurate numbers exist of those who travelled out of Portsmouth in May 1787, it is known that the fleet carried 174 marines and 42 wives. Navy men were not allowed to bring their wives, so married men like the young lieutenant, William Bradley, would travel alone. The fleet sailed from Spithead on 13 May 1787, on the beginning of a 19,000-kilometre voyage. Conditions on board the First Fleet – as in all the convict transportations – were, by modern standards, vile for the convicts and moderately better for

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everyone else. This convict fleet would be later acknowledged as one of the better ones. The Second Fleet, two years later, would be the worst in the history of convict transportation. Many of the convicts on board had already spent up to two years on prison hulks, so they were no stranger to the vermin and parasites such as rats, fleas, lice and cockroaches that made shipboard life a misery. Phillip understood this and ordered that the convicts be unshackled, regularly fed and able get fresh air. However, violent storms along their way across three oceans meant that the convicts could not go on deck to exercise. As the ships rocked and rolled, the convicts’ clothes became permanently sodden. The fleet reached Rio de Janeiro and stayed a month, taking on provisions including 10,000 muskets and balls – a year’s supply.6 While the convicts were confined to the ship, the officers and crew enjoyed the town. As some of the female convicts’ clothes were found to be riddled with lice, they were burnt and the women were supplied with new garments made out of rice sacks. The convoy arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on 13 October, its last port of call. Here, they stocked up on plants, more seeds and more livestock. The convicts were issued with fresh meat and vegetables to fortify them for the final leg of the voyage. A week after leaving the Cape, Phillip transferred to the Supply and, accompanied by Alexander, Friendship and Scarborough, the fastest transports of the fleet, left the rest of the convoy and bent their sails for Botany Bay. His fellow officers were surprised at Phillip’s seemingly sudden departure from the rest of the fleet and some criticised the decision as reckless and unwarranted. He was eager to get to Botany Bay and establish the location of his settlement and keen to look closely at the south coast of New South Wales to see what Cook might have missed. He reckoned that would have at least a week to find the right location and begin to establish a camp before the rest of the fleet arrived. That didn’t happen.

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PART ONE

1788

P RO LO G U E

Lunch, 18 January 1788

It had been a mild summer so far and this day was no exception. Despite being midsummer, temperatures barely reached 24 degrees on the coast. It was one of those beautiful January afternoons for which Sydney is famous. In the wide bay, waves crashed across rocks or glided gracefully in arcs across the many sandy beaches. On this near cloudless day, the birds were out in the milder temperatures. Parrots chattered in huge trees above the mangroves and white beaches while shrieking cockatoos circled above. The Australians knew that the wind would pick up later in the day, for another big storm season was approaching. But it was not the weather that was occupying their minds on this particular afternoon. Days earlier, a strange ship had appeared off the coast to the south. They had been tracking her progress for days. Many fires were lit all along the coast; the older Australians had seen this before. What they didn’t know was that it was only one of eleven ships about to converge on their world. When HMS Supply, the smallest and fastest of the First Fleet at just 172 tonnes and 21 metres long, rounded Cape Solander and entered Botany Bay, there was a welcome party. The Australians appeared on both sides of the bay calling out from the headland and along the shorelines brandishing their spears. The next day, they were still ‘shouting and making many uncouth signs and gestures’.1 It was the same reception James Cook had received eighteen years before. It must be remembered that no one on board Supply, nor anybody else who would soon arrive on this continent, had ever seen this land or its people before. The validity of the whole enterprise was determined by the journals of a famous navigator, now deceased, and an aristocrat who, eighteen years before as a young

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man, was more obsessed with the outstanding botany of the place and his name in history than anything else. Lieutenant James Cook’s journals described the natives of Botany Bay as being few in number. Sir Joseph Banks told the British Government that the people of Botany Bay, and indeed those of the entire coast of New South Wales, were docile and cowardly – hardly a problem for British invasion. When, in April 1770, Cook directed his Endeavour longboat towards the southern shore of Botany Bay, he was confronted by Australians crying Werra werra! – ‘Go away!’ or something equivalent. He ordered an officer to fire a musket into the air; the Australians threw rocks. When Cook landed, spears were thrown, muskets were fired again and an Australian was shot. Cook stayed in Botany Bay for just eight days while they buried a colleague and Banks and his crew took hundreds of plant specimens away. There was no further contact. They would have seen the strangers – Banks and his crew – picking flowers, leaves and digging up whole plants. The Australians became bushes with eyes. But they were there. They always have been. Cook observed: ‘All they seemed to want was for us to be gone’.2 Indeed they did. Now on 18 January 1788, Arthur Phillip watched the Australian welcome all along the shore as Supply’s captain, Henry Lidgbird Ball, steered the ship into the bay. On the south side, at present-day Kurnell, the Australians were particularly numerous and loud. The crew members of Supply, hard at work getting the ship situated, certainly didn’t expect a mob of blokes waving pointed sticks. But not all Australians were showing their presence. We saw 8 or 10 of the natives, sitting on the rocks – we could observe them talking to one another very earnestly, at the same time pointing towards the ships – each had long spears and a short stick in their hands. The Australians looked on as the ship swung to the north of the bay and men climbed the rigging like possums, before Supply eventually dropped anchor near an island that Cook had named Bare Island. Though prone to the stiffening ocean breeze, Supply was visible to the incoming ships that Phillip judged would be days away. It would allow plenty of time for this forward party to select the best location for a settlement.

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The British looked out across the water at the bay they had travelled so long to see. They saw sandy beaches, low-lying scrubs and huge trees. They were also looking at a new world, clearly occupied by seemingly primitive-looking people. All of them were naked men carrying wooden spears. Now, with the ship at anchor, most of the ‘savages’ had disappeared except for a small group of Australians standing on a beach to the northwest, watching them. The British looked out across the vast country they were about to invade. And they were invaders; they just didn’t know it. It was around two o’clock in the afternoon –time for lunch. The officers and sailors on this Friday afternoon in 1788 had just travelled halfway round the world in the service of an imperial power rapidly expanding and on the verge of becoming a global empire. England had long been a maritime nation, but the Royal Navy, as such, had only existed since the Restoration of King Charles II, a little over a century before. By this time, it had become the leading naval force in the world thanks to a huge bureaucratic machine that trained men for the sea and the numerous skills needed to sustain such an enormous enterprise. The Royal Navy dominated every level of English society, culture and government capable of attracting men of merit. The officers on board His Majesty’s brig on this day were such men, whether sailor or marine. Highly capable and intelligent, these men adhered to the Articles of War. This was not a hollow code. Just thirty years before, Vice-Admiral Byng was executed for failure to do his utmost to retain Minorca in British hands as it had been since 1708. The uniforms they wore had only been adopted by the Royal Navy some forty years before. Captain Arthur Phillip was nearly fifty years old. Born into genteel poverty in East London to a German-speaking father, his origins were not far removed from those of hundreds of people in his charge. It was his mother’s second marriage and it was through her first husband, a naval man, that young Arthur began his life at sea at the age of thirteen. He had forged a solid career in the Royal Navy. Up until his appointment to command a fleet of eleven ships in this extraordinary voyage, he had been doing survey work for the Admiralty. He was diligent, mostly calm in temperament, dogged and methodical in his approach, intelligent and relatively enlightened for his era. Having spent some time on the Continent, possibly as a spy, he was well acquainted with machinations of the British establishment. He spoke five languages but, more importantly, Phillip brought to the enterprise a sense of fairness borne out of the Enlightenment and his own naval career.

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The commander of Supply was Henry Lidgbird Ball, barely thirty-one years old. A powerfully built man, he came from a prominent Cheshire family and was a more than capable seaman. Lieutenant Gidley King was twenty-nine years old, having joined the Navy as a cabin boy aged twelve. He had already served under Arthur Phillip on a number of occasions and it could be said he was the commander’s protégé. Midshipmen Daniel Southwell and David Blackburn were both in their thirties, and naval men by profession. Blackburn, the eldest son of a clergyman, had only entered the Navy nine years before at the late age of twenty-six years. As he looked out from the deck of his ship, he was not impressed by the landscape or its inhabitants. He later described the Australians as the ‘lowest rank among the human race’.3 His attitude would barely change. Whereas Southwell was somewhat more enlightened. He had joined the Navy as a sixteen-year-old and was far less dismissive of the Australians. By contrast to all the other officers, Lieutenant William Dawes had never boarded a ship before he embarked on Sirius, some eight months earlier. Only twenty-five years old and recommended for the voyage by the Astronomer Royal, Dawes was a remarkable man, skilled in engineering and surveying as well as being a classical scholar, astronomer, linguist and a wizard with a compass. He was a most unlikely recruit. He seemed to make few friends, but those who did acquaint themselves with the man were never disappointed. Dawes was also deeply religious – an evangelical. For an hour, these officers and the small crew of Supply remained on board, congratulating themselves with a mixture of relief and pride: they had made it to Botany Bay. Phillip, Dawes and the other officers probably feasted on the last of their fresh provisions from the Cape. They no doubt washed it down with a mug of porter, toasting the accuracy of Cook’s charts if not the man himself. Meanwhile, the Australians waited on the beach. Around half a dozen men ‘lit a fire and sat around about it as unconcerned as though nothing had occurred to them’, or ‘as if nothing new had happened’.4 They were waiting to welcome these strangers to their country. But, you can imagine one of the elders saying to himself: ‘Bugger, it took us a week to get rid of the last lot’.

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CHAPTER 1

Australians on the Beach

The Australians sitting by the fire were members of a culture that have lived on this part of the coast for around 20,000 years (some contend they were Bidjigal men; others say they were Kameygal). Their ancestors had arrived on the continent more than 60,000 years ago. Historically, let us say, they have always been here. The language they speak is one of a large group that is referred to today as Eora, a Darag word meaning ‘person’ or ‘land’ – the terms are interchangeable. Darag is also said to derive from the word ‘yam’, a staple food for the Hawkesbury clans living inland from the coast. The two other language groups are the Ku-ring-gai, from which we get the word koori, and the Dharawal, to the south of the bay. These groups in turn are divided into clans. Each clan’s respect for customs, rituals and the value of clan loyalty over individual supremacy are what bind their society together. Everything is shared within the clan: food, tools and knowledge. Over two dozen clans, or extended family groups, live in the greater Sydney area and they trade with each other and join together for special occasions. Bidjigal country stretches from the northern shore of Botany Bay to the land between the Cooks River and Georges River. They carry with them a complex system of beliefs that today we call ‘the Dreaming’, which connects them to the past, present and future. It also ties them intrinsically to their land. Just like everywhere else on the continent, songlines or networks of tracks and knowledge covered the Sydney basin, connecting sources of food, water and significant cultural sites. The land embodies ancient beings of great spirituality that personify country. The land and the people have developed a mutually dependent relationship. The Dreaming, as Thomas Keneally elegantly puts it,

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binds people, flora, fauna and natural phenomena into one enormous inter-functioning world.1 The Dreaming is not only important for survival but also incorporates the spiritual and temporal lives of the people into the land itself. The Australians and the land are indivisible. It is the ultimate collective. One of the most important aspects of this relationship to the land is the Australians’ use of fire management, developed over thousands of years. Controlled burning of the landscape has allowed the Australians to create sustainable and productive environments where their own needs are in harmony with the needs of all living things. Areas were burnt to allow grasslands to flourish, to regenerate the soil, to encourage new shootings which the Australians know are so favoured by kangaroos and provide excellent hunting grounds. Hilltops are cleared in this way. Below, the land left untouched by fire is dominated by dense clumps of trees: a natural fence and a natural trap. This close link to country would be almost fatal to them in the decades to come, when the British decided to forcibly remove them to somewhere else. Although unified in a social sense, the Australians are not a unified people in a political sense. They have a clan-based warrior culture. For the Australians on the beach, the chief weapon is the spear, variously barbed. Some are designed for lethal purposes, others merely for wounding. Four-pronged spears are used to catch fish. The British would call them ‘fish-gigs’ or ‘fizz-gigs’. The Bidjigal spears are crafted from a variety of sources. The grass tree or the yellow gum provided some weapons but, more importantly, these trees were the source of a resin that fixed their spears with barbs and sprongs. The grass tree is known as cadi or gadi, from which this mob to the north of Botany Bay adopted its name – Gadigal. Spears are sharpened using specially designed stone tools, oyster shells and finally the rough leaves of the wild fig to sand it down. Their spears are either non-barbed or armed with sharp prongs or stones or shells. They also have the woomera or spearthrower, which increases the power, accuracy and velocity of the spear. These woomeras are about a metre long, made of bark and brightly painted on both sides. Shields are mainly used to thwart spears but are often brightly coloured and also used in ceremony and dancing. Shields and serrated spears are used as percussion instruments. Some clubs are crudely made only for violence but others are carefully sculpted from wood, often

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with a mushroom-shaped head, and decorated with a striped pattern. In warrior societies where physical strength and combat are paramount, violence against women is common. Publicly beating your wife was not only accepted but would be advantageous in the hierarchical scheme of things. This is not the norm with the clans of Sydney. For, despite being a warrior culture, the Australians live mostly in harmony. It was violent but there were limits. Men, their wives2 and their children would spend all day together fishing, eating and resting. The clans swap and share their resources and goods. With only small numbers of men in each clan, large-scale warfare is uncommon. Most violence is due to sacred violations and disputes over women rather than land. There is little point in conquering another clan’s land over which you have no spiritual connection. Communication between the clans is widespread and has been for thousands of years. Deeply held rituals and customs are maintained, covering a myriad of social interactions including the impact of each person’s footprint on their country. Corroborees allow the clans to come together for major events such as marriages, burials and adult initiation. These meetings are important times for trade where stone implements, for instance, can be swapped for fishing nets. Materials and tools can be found thousands of kilometres from their sources. The Sydney clans can be regarded as hunter-gatherers. However, they are scarcely nomadic, needing to travel little to where food is abundant. For most of the year, that means the seashore and harbour. In the cooler months, the clans may move further inland to hunt. While the men hunt or spear fish, the women harvest tubers, flowers and fruits of many kinds and grind seeds into cakes all year round. They also collect birds’ eggs, insects, honey and medicinal plants. By 1788, the Sydney clans have established their homelands along the harbour for centuries, living mostly amiably with each other and respecting each other’s country. They sleep in simple shelters made from bark and other materials as well as under the many sandstone rock shelters that dot the harbour and coast. Fire has been used for millennia to manage the land. Cool burnings allow the Australians to clear the undergrowth, promoting young growth that will attract kangaroos. Some areas are left untouched, creating a mosaic landscape, a patchwork of different

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habitats for plants and animals – essentially creating paddocks without fences. Their complex society belies the simple manner in which they live. In order to connect with their Dreaming, each Australian’s path is defined through gender – what’s called today ‘men’s business’ and ‘women’s business’. Men’s business is to hunt and fight. Women’s business is just as important or more so. Women are the conduits in this society. It is they who sustain the clans and the land for which each are the custodians. A man would marry a woman from another clan, and she would then be adopted by that clan without losing her identity. Among Sydney clans, tooth extraction (the right front tooth) is a final male initiation rite after knowledge has been acquired through generations of experiences and Dreamtime stories. These extractions are done during corroborees and performed by the most dominant clan, the Cammeragal from the north side of the harbour (the suburb of Cammeray is named after them). The young men are also scarified on the chest. Music, dance, song and story-telling form the basis of their celebration. A watercolour by the enigmatic Port Jackson Painter depicts one musical instrument. Fashioned like a narrow shield but with elongated holes on either side, it is accompanied by a decorative spear with a serrated edge. Other paintings show what looks like a drum stick. Thomas Watling portrays a young Australian family. The woman nurses a baby while tending their meal. An older son is playing the rhythm of a dance using what are probably his father’s click sticks. The father is posed in the picture, as someone later described it, ‘standing in an attitude very common to them all’. He is clearly dancing, with the stance being a dance position and not one of rest. The iconic attitude of the Australian with his cocked leg may be a complete misunderstanding. The Australians have been sustained by the land and sea for millennia, even through climate change. Everything is provided for them by nature. For the Sydneysiders, fish are plentiful during the warmer months as well as mud and rock oysters, mussels, prawns, crabs and lobsters all year round. Middens, thousands of years old, litter the Sydney area in 1788. The Australians’ methods of fishing are also based on gender. The men fish from the rocks or sometimes from their canoes, their heads fully immersed under the water with their four-pronged spears poised. Apart from collecting shellfish, the women work exclusively in canoes or nowies using fishing lines ingeniously

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made from the inside bark of cabbage trees and with hooks manufactured from turban shells. Using paddles not unlike pudding stirrers, they venture out into the middle of the harbour – sometimes with a small fire smouldering on a clay pad and with a young child on their shoulders. The women would spit out chewed-up mussels into the water as berley. In some Sydney clans, women have the last two joints of the leftmost finger of their left hand removed. The custom is known as mal-gun and is practised by many clans on this coast. The finger is tightly bound and, it has been told, when the tip falls off, it is dropped into the water to attract the fish. The convict artist Thomas Watling has left us a pencil sketch of the Australian woman, ‘Dirragoa’. She is shown a young girl clad in the barin – an apron-like covering of possum fur denoting that she was unmarried and virginal. The missing joint of the little finger of the left hand can be seen clearly. In the cooler months, the Gadigal would occupy the nearby open grounds to the west created by careful fire management. These stretched into the interior for kilometres, and allowed them to hunt for kangaroo as well as emu, possums and any number of marsupials and birds. The Australians keep a favourable balance with their environment: little effort and intervention affording the greatest gain. This allows them to live in difficult circumstances but in good times provides opportunities for song, dance, feasting, story-telling, painting, carving, sculpting. It gave them time to rest, trade, love, fight, travel and battle. It is estimated that around 1,500 Australians live around Sydney, but this is an estimate only. There could have been many more.3 Every Eora over the age of twenty-five would know of the event or remember the time when Cook had appeared on their country. It would have been incorporated into the oral history of the people on the coast, and passed down to the next generation. Now, after eighteen years, those they termed Berewalgal – meaning ‘from far away’ – had returned. On 18 January 1788, the Australians on the beach were sitting by a fire, waiting for the strangers to present themselves and to accept their welcome to country. How could they have known that this time the Berewalgal were here to stay? They have their culture and their world in the palm of their hands. They will have to cling on tightly to keep them.

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CHAPTER 2

Botany Bay

By 3 o’clock on 18 January 1788, lunch was finished on board HM tender Supply and the curiosity of the British could be contained no longer. The Australians on the beach stood and watched as sudden activity broke out on the ship and two boats were hoisted out and lowered to the water. Arthur Phillip, William Dawes, Philip Gidley King, Henry Ball, along with Daniel Southwell and David Blackburn and crew, rowed towards the northern shore of the bay now dominated by container terminals, industrial sites, sprawling suburbs and the country’s busiest airport. No doubt Phillip, as he edged towards the northern shore of the bay, would have had the journals of Cook and the recommendations of Banks ringing in his Navy man’s ears: an antipodean paradise of fine meadows and flowing streams. A wilderness to build a British dream on. Cook originally called the place Stingray Harbour, due to the enormous rays that the Endeavour crew speared effortlessly in the shallow waters. It was child’s play. The Australians on this coast never hunted rays. Scientist and writer Tim Flannery surmises that spears tipped with stingray barbs were too dangerous in battle and ‘outlawed’ by the clans. Some of the rays caught by Cook’s crew weighed an astonishing 200 kilograms. It would have taken decades or centuries for these creatures to grow to such sizes. There are no giant stingrays in the bay today. But instead of naming his first Australian landfall Stingray Harbour, Cook decided – with the abundance of new and exotic flora collected by Banks and his assistants and taking up more and more deck space – that Botany Bay would be the name. He had remarked that the country around Botany Bay was like the moors of England. Cook was referring to the thick, heath-like grasses on the Yorkshire dales with its rocky outcrops and the tall stands of trees. He was

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obviously not a keen bushwalker or he would have noticed the swampy nature of most of the terrain around the bay and its infertile, sandy soil. As the boats rowed towards the beach on this day in January, the Australians left their fireside, came to the water’s edge and began to shout, pointing to the west. We do not know if Pemulwuy, a leading member of the clan, was present but he would soon know about these strangers amongst them. The British complied and the boats headed further down the bay as the Australians walked along the beach following their progress. One of the British on the boat mimed the need for water by taking off his hat and pretending to scoop up water and putting it to his mouth. He needn’t have bothered; the Australians were way ahead of them. They were performing a typical welcome to country, something that Phillip and other Berewalgal would experience in the months to come. The boats landed near a small freshwater stream. The Australians stood some distance away as some of the British sampled the water: it was delicious but hardly a reliable source for the thousand souls who were about to descend on the lowlying bay. But, of course, the Bidjigal did not know this. They had not threatened the strangers or resisted their landing in any way. Indeed, they had guided them to water and a place to stay during what they expected to be a short visit. As the Australians stood watching, maybe they thought that if they quenched the strangers’ thirsts, the strangers then would leave. Not so lucky. Phillip alighted from his boat. As he had been taught, he laid his musket on the sand and approached the men with open arms and beads draped from his outstretched fingers; it had worked with the South Sea Islanders. Cook was advised from the Royal Society to offer gifts like colourful ribbons and mirrors. So Phillip did the same. The doling-out of trinkets was the preferred form of greeting ‘primitive’ peoples. The Australians made signs that they should lay the gifts on the ground. The British did so and men came and picked up the baubles one by one. Eventually ‘a very old man’ – an elder – gave his spear to a younger man and stepped forward. The elder ‘probably remembered’ Cook’s visit. The elder was suitably adorned. He did not ‘show the least signs of fear or distrust’ but ‘our toys seemed not to be regarded as very valuable’. George Worgan would later say that the Australians looked at their gifts with vague indifference. Indeed, one might wonder how any of these strange objects could be of any utility. Phillip realised

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the fact soon enough; hatchets would become the preferred inducement but even metal tools did not excite them at first. George Worgan’s attitude towards the Australians in these early days is typical. He assured his brother that these rude creatures of nature ‘walked very upright’. He had suspected that they would more ape-like, perhaps. It is important to remember that few of the First Fleeters had ever seen a non-European. With regard to the Australians themselves, their only frame of reference was provided by the shallow perceptions of Cook and Banks. When David Blackburn encountered the Australians, they approached ‘without any appearance of hostile intention’. He came to an elder and ‘put a piece of blue cloth round his neck and a string of glass beads round his arm’. He then ‘shook him by the hands which he seemed to take as a mark of confidence’. He later broke a ship’s biscuit in half and offered it to the elder. Blackburn later found the biscuit untouched in the bush.1 Gidley King reflected on his first day at Botany Bay. He conceded that they found ‘very good grass and some small timber trees’ but little water and the bay provided no shelter from the winds. It didn’t look too promising on first inspection. Surgeon White, somewhat disappointed, wrote: ‘The fine meadows – I could never see though I took pains to find them out’. Early the following morning – to the surprise of Phillip and the crew of Supply, and to the greater astonishment of the Australians – three of the convict transports suddenly appeared off the coast carrying hundreds of men, women and children. Worgan described ‘each ship like another’s Noah’s Ark’. Phillip had not expected the fleet’s arrival for days.2 Alexander was the largest at 455 tonnes, a leviathan carrying around 200 convicts including Samuel Peyton; John Wilson, who would spend years living with the Australians; and John McIntyre, who was handy with a shotgun. The care of the convicts on board was in the hands of Assistant Surgeon William Balmain. Scarborough, at 427 tonnes, carried Private John Easty of the marines, who would keep a sporadic diary of his stay in New South Wales. Scarborough also carried the eight-year-old son of the marine commander, Major Ross. Eight-yearold John was sailing as a volunteer. The fact that John Ross didn’t sail on Sirius with his father on this long, arduous journey is an indication of the character

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of the parent. The transport carried 208 convicts, almost all men, including a Cornish farmer named James Ruse and the resourceful Thomas Barrett. Friendship was the smallest transport of the fleet, weighing 282 tonnes. She carried about seventy-six convicts along with Captain James Meredith of the marines, and Lieutenant Ralph Clark, who confessed to kissing the portrait of his wife and son almost every night. He would later be kissing more than that. Also on board Friendship was Assistant Surgeon Thomas Arndell, aged in his late forties. He had left England having abandoned three women, two marriages and six children. Among the convicts were John Sidaway, who would open the colony’s first theatre, and Henry Kable, who would become one of the most successful businessmen in the colony in the decades to come. Friendship furthermore held what were considered to be the very worst female convicts in the fleet. At Rio de Janeiro, six of the most recalcitrant women from Scarborough, including one Mary Phillips, were exchanged for the best behaved on Friendship. Others were transferred to other ships to make way for livestock. Mary Phillips would end her voyage to Botany Bay on board Prince of Wales. These much larger vessels had anchored next to the diminutive Supply by 10.30 that morning. The Australians had no idea that these floating monstrosities contained hundreds of heaving and sweating men and women just arriving at the place designated for their banishment. Jonathan Easty, our private on the Scarborough, observed that a ‘great many’ of the locals ‘shouted at us and held up their weapons over their heads’. You can’t really blame them. Later on their second day at the bay, the visitors crossed a sand bar on the north side of the bay, beyond where the runways of Sydney’s Kingsford-Smith Airport now stand, and entered the Cooks River. They travelled down it for about 10 kilometres. Landing on the shore, they had a picnic of salt beef and porter. It was around today’s suburb of Dulwich Hill. They had unwittingly entered the southern margin of the Gadigal clan but the British saw no sign of them on this little excursion, though there can be no doubt they were being observed. The Australians had become bushes with eyes. Over the course of the next day, the remainder of the fleet arrived: seven more ships were safely at anchor by ten o’clock that Sunday morning. The flagship of the fleet was HMS Sirius, a 548-tonne vessel that would play a significant role in the colony during the next two years. She carried the four leaders of the enterprise.

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Besides Arthur Phillip, there were two Scots – the fifty-year-old captain of Sirius, John Hunter, and commander Major Robert Ross, of similar age. Hunter had over thirty years of service in the Navy. He would become the Governor of New South Wales in a little over seven years. Ross had joined the Army at the age of sixteen. The corps under his command had a total strength of around 212 men, including 160 mostly inexperienced privates. Accompanying them was thirtyyear-old David Collins, the judge-advocate designate. He would become Phillip’s secretary and confidant. Also on board Sirius was first lieutenant William Bradley. At just twenty-nine years of age, he had already served on at least half a dozen ships. A sensitive man, he was a fine cartographer, surveyor, draughtsman, a competent watercolourist and a protégé of John Hunter. Sirius’ quartermaster was the older Henry Hacking. Also handy with a gun, he would become the boat crew’s game hunter – an enthusiastic one at that. Years later he would have a river and a port named after him by Matthew Flinders, as he had earlier discovered them on one of his game-killing excursions. Hacking soon gained a reputation among his peers and the Australians as a man of action, questionable morals, a heavy drinker but a crack shot. Sirius’ midshipman, Robert Watson, would much later become the old harbour master of Sydney, while the bay in which he lived would receive his name. Assistant Surgeon George Worgan, the son of a piano teacher, was on board too, as was young surgeon’s mate, Thomas Jamison. Worgan would befriend as many people as he could, entertaining them on the piano he had brought out on Sirius. The young Jamison would eventually make a small fortune as a shopkeeper on Norfolk Island. There were two men on board Sirius who were unknown to all except Arthur Phillip. They were both middle-aged men with little knowledge of the sea. Henry Brewer had signed on as a midshipman. An acquaintance of Phillip’s from years before, many would wonder why this dishevelled-looking man was on board. The other unlikely passenger was Henry Dodd, whom Phillip had met in his years in Hampshire. These two men would be of major importance in the months and years to come in establishing the settlement. Indeed, these two Henrys are unsung heroes of the British invasion. Sirius carried as well the colony’s future commissary (storekeeper), Andrew

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Miller, and the twenty-eight-year-old purser, John Palmer, who would later take his job. Surgeon’s mate John Lowes was only twenty-four years old and it was his first major voyage. An adherent of the writer Swedenborg, he promoted what was called the ‘New Church’ – one of the many subversive Protestant sects of the time. Lowes came aboard with a stack of books which he happily distributed among his comrades, including young midshipman Daniel Southwell, and the Assistant Surgeon George Worgan. Of similar tonnage were the transports Prince of Wales and Lady Penrhyn. Prince of Wales carried forty-seven female convicts, a contingent of marines and their wives. Travelling with them was the elderly Augustus Alt, having the title of Surveyor of Lands. Lady Penrhyn was commanded by Captain James Campbell, with 101 female convicts under his supervision. The ship also transported Surgeon Arthur Bowes, a curious man in his thirties who would write letters to his brother from New South Wales, and Lieutenant George Johnston of the marines, just twenty-three years old. George had fallen in love with a convict girl named Esther Abrahams, a cockney Jewess from the East End. She was one of dozens of women who formed relationships on the voyage. In fact, the women of Lady Pen helped to shape the pattern of the early camp. The transport 340-tonne Charlotte held the thirty-year-old unmarried Surgeon-General John White, who Phillip also knew from previous voyages; White’s twenty-year-old ‘servant’, William Broughton; and twenty-eight-yearold Captain Watkin Tench of the marines.3 White was only thirty-one years old and had been in the Navy for eight years. Among the convicts below decks were William Bryant and Mary Brand, who would shortly marry, and James Bloodsworth, a young brickmaker. Sailing behind them were the three store ships: Golden Grove, holding Yorkshire-born Reverend Richard Johnson and his wife Mary; Fishburn, captained by Robert Brown; and Borrowdale. Johnson had arranged for over a thousand books to be transported with him: one hundred copies of the King James Bible, 350 New Testaments, pamphlets on the dangers of crime, spelling manuals and hundreds of other instructional volumes. To the Australians, watching from the shores of the bay, the sight of all these ships would have been a wonderment, a spectacle beyond imagination and a

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horror. It was also clear to them that, in the short term, the impact of these strangers on their country would be significant. This was something that no one had ever witnessed before: one ship was bad enough, but eleven! The Australians immediately adopted the policy of a guarded welcome of the Berewalgal to country, followed by an unwillingness to engage any further with them and a general desire for them to be gone. The discovery of the invaders’ loud, dangerous weapons only confirmed their attitude. On board the transport Charlotte arriving that morning, Watkin Tench marvelled that they had all arrived in one piece. He wrote: ‘Ithaca itself was scarcely more longed for by Ulysses, than Botany Bay’. His head would never be quite out of the clouds. The search for a suitable site for the colony continued. The south side of Botany Bay was explored and it was the turn of the Gweagal to be confronted. They had felt the brunt of Cook’s visit a decade and a half earlier. The British Museum still displays a Gweagal shield, with a hole from a musket ball, that Cook had returned after his voyage. They landed near today’s Kurnell and explored the land to the south. Gidley King wrote that, upon climbing a hill with William Dawes, he then saw some distance off, several Australians with a ‘red fox dog [a dingo] who haloo’d and made signs for us to return to our boats’ and ‘one of them threw a lance’. The place was promptly named Lance Point (probably Kangaroo Point on the Georges River).4 What did the Australians think of these beings arriving in their Unidentified Floating Objects, their UFOs? They would have appeared on the horizon like clouds, but it would become clear they were ships soon enough. It would not have helped that the soldiers’ uniforms were red and white in colour. For the Australians, these colours dominated their rituals. They were symbols of danger, fire, blood and death. Did they think the strangers were ghosts? Certainly Tench thought that they reacted towards the British ‘with fear and trembling’ but their behaviour didn’t equate with fright or terror. Possibly, he was commenting on the naturally shy demeanour of the Australians, as they were being confronted by outlandish-looking outsiders for the first time.5 Some First Fleet journalists and later historians noticed that Phillip was missing the same right front tooth that some coastal clans removed from young

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men as part of their initiation. So, to the Australians, was Phillip an ancestor returning? There’s no evidence that they treated him with any more regard or interest than the other strangers except that he was obviously the one in charge. Moreover, Australians dealt quickly and thoroughly with their dead – either by cremation, burial or exposing the body to nature where no trace of the deceased would remain. Indeed, to even speak the deceased’s name was taboo. If the Australians thought these intruders were spectral beings, their reaction to them would have been much more profound. Gidley King recorded that on this Sunday in January, he met another group of Australians, probably near today’s suburb of Oatley. They were offered wine, which they immediately spat out. It is an interesting moment in European– Indigenous relations. Another interesting moment followed: ‘They wanted to know of what sex we were’. The British officers were clean-shaven and clothed but the sailors manning the oars probably were not. Nevertheless, Gidley King ordered one of the soldiers to ‘undeceive them in this particular’. These pale creatures were not ghosts, as the Australians knew all along, but sexual beings like themselves. The Europeans also noticed that the Australian men, in their encounters with the strangers, always kept the women and children apart. The Europeans saw this as a mark of chivalry and they became intrigued by the female Australians. After the Australian men had been ‘undeceived’ of the sexuality of the men, the Europeans wanted closer contact with their women. King wrote that a woman ‘put her child down and came alongside the boat and suffered me to apply the handkerchief where Eve did the fig leaf ’. To the Australians, this must have been a bizarre thing to do, as only those women who are not yet sexually active wore aprons covering themselves and this woman was clearly a mother. What did these people mean? While all this was happening, a party of men were sent ashore ‘to clear away to a run of water on the south side of the bay’. Preparations were being made to establish the colony. Pits were dug in the sandy soil. William Bradley writes: The natives were well pleased with our people until they began clearing the ground, at which they were displeased and wanted them to be gone.6

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Coming amongst them was one thing, but to grossly interfere with the natural order of things was something else. Surgeon White, from his first landing, delighted in participating in shooting parties in the bush, firing at anything he saw, notably birds. While at Botany Bay, he was keen to make the Australians sensible of the power of their firearms. He took a man’s shield and, propping it up against a tree, fired his pistol, perforating it from some distance. The Australians had just learned a valuable lesson they would not forget. ‘I am well convinced that they know and dread the superiority of our arms.’ The Australians called the intruders’ Brown Bess muskets goorooberra, ‘fire sticks’. They became quickly aware that the muskets’ awesome power, collectively, could not be matched by their spears. Ambush and surprise would become their tactics. They soon learned who to avoid and who to set upon. But attacks of this kind didn’t happen immediately. George Worgan noted that the British were careful not to show the Australians that you ‘put anything in the gun’ to make it fire. He writes that ‘it is a weapon that keeps them in great awe’. The Australians had learned not to approach the armed intruders ‘till you have laid it down, which they will make signs for you to do’.7 Throughout these first two days at Botany Bay, the British hauled their seines and caught ‘an abundance of fish, all excellent eating’, no doubt much to the consternation of the locals. Chief among the fishermen were the crew of Sirius.8 On 22 January, after another haul of fish was landed by the Supply crew, some Australian men were given some of the catch and they happily walked off into the bush. Shortly after, on perceiving that they were being stalked, they stopped and confronted two officers. They ‘did not like to be followed’. They were letting these strange newcomers know that they should remain where they were and not intrude any further into their country. By this time, Phillip had seen enough of Botany Bay. It was flat country, with sandy soils and, despite the long grass, mostly swamp. The sources of fresh water were scarce and the bay exposed ships to the winds. It was not a safe anchorage and was totally unsuitable for a colonial outpost as had been envisaged. So much for Cook and Banks. But Arthur Phillip always had a Plan B; Michael Pembroke calls it his ‘genius’.

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Captain James Campbell on board Lady Penrhyn, never a friend of Phillip, called it his ‘Don Quixote scheme’.9 After Cook had sailed out of Botany Bay in 1770 and headed north, he observed, kilometres out to sea, two breaks in the coastline. Next to what would appear as just dints on his map, he had inscribed the names Port Jackson and Broken Bay. Cook would never explore these indentations, but Phillip – determined that Botany Bay was not fit for purpose and knowing that he had over a thousand souls still on board, half of them sweating in unsafe conditions below decks after a voyage of more than eight months – intended to do so.

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CHAPTER 3

Never Saw Any Like It

As dawn broke the next day, Monday 21 January, three small boats left Botany Bay and turned north. Apart from Phillip, the boats carried John Hunter and David Collins, ship masters James Keltie and David Blackburn, and Lieutenant William Dawes of the marines. Their intended destination was Broken Bay, but they would have a look-see at Port Jackson. The boats were crewed by hardy men from the Supply, including Jacob Nagle. How these sailors felt as they rowed those 13 kilometres north up a coast dominated by beautiful, sandy beaches and clear, green headlands, is not hard to imagine. With each stroke, the white expanses and rolling surf would reveal themselves as well as Australians crying out from the cliffs between these beaches. Will Bradley would soon advise would-be maritime visitors that the entrance to the harbour lay just north of the places now called Maroubra, Coogee and Bondi. Around late morning, the boats passed through the sandstone cliffs that frame the entrance to a harbour that no European had seen. What has become known as Sydney Heads are a huge sandstone gateway: the north head – Garangal – is almost perpendicular rock; the southern point – Burrawarra – is lower and slopes away to the southwest. Past the Heads, the British found themselves in a wide blue expanse of sheltered water stretching off in three directions for kilometres. Today, a trip on a Manly ferry still gives the sense of wonderment and surprise they must have felt as they glided along the sparkling waters of the harbour in the noonday sun. They were more than impressed, then and later. Phillip described it as ‘the finest harbour in the world’ and he should know, having visited most of the great harbours of the world. Surgeon John White declared it ‘the finest and most extensive harbour in the universe’. Daniel Southwell stated that ‘nothing can be

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conceived more picturesque than the appearance of the country while running up this extraordinary harbour’. David Blackburn thought it ‘as fine a harbour as any in the world’. It should be remembered that they had all just recently stayed at the magnificent harbour at Rio de Janeiro. Lieutenant Ralph Clark simply said of the harbour: ‘I never saw any like it’. Unfortunately for the Australians watching above from the headland, they had never seen anything like them.1 It was a landscape almost completely alien to the British. Arthur Bowes described the harbour shores as having [the] finest terraces, lawns and grottos – the tallest and most stately trees I ever saw – the singing of various birds – made all around appear like enchantment. At first sight, Bowes was clearly smitten with the place.2 What the British were seeing for the first time was country under the custodianship of dozens of different clans who have, for centuries, lived in, worked in and shaped their environment. Without acknowledging the Australians’ prior occupancy of the land, though the evidence was clear, the invaders’ belief in their right to take possession of it was unwavering. The notion of land ownership is a complex one for the Australians and at the same time fundamental. Land could not be owned. The land owned them. Their entire sense of self was predicated on country. The land was no passive space, ‘but the Dreaming’s timeless gift, wondrous bounty, and ageless duty’.3 As the British rowed down the harbour, they were viewing a truly unique environment. They did not see houses and boats as we do today, nor the dense, unbroken forests of eucalypts that most people in modern Australia think of when envisaging the Australian bush. The landscape around Sydney Harbour was hardly like the scrubby woodland, untouched by fire, and the majestic, centuriesold eucalypts that rise above the walking trails in today’s National and State parks. This is not what the British saw in January 1788. George Worgan and others noted the park-like quality of the land around the harbour; that the headlands were thickly wooded with mangroves; that there were seemingly random mosaics of grassland with little timber, then dense woodland with little underwood or widely spaced trees with a brilliant and lush undergrowth

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of flowering shrubs. Worgan commented on the variety of ‘romantic views, all thrown together in sweet confusion’.4 This landscape had been uniquely formed over thousands of years using complex fire management and care. Surgeon White noted: Every part of the country appeared as if, at certain times of the year, it had all been on fire.5 He had yet to understand why. The British had entered the ‘biggest estate on Earth’6 where every type of environment and landscape has either been retained or enhanced by fire management. The watercolours of the Port Jackson Painter (PJP) and the other early colonial artists reinforce the reality of the patchwork nature of the harbour landscape, in the early years of occupation, as seen by the first invaders. Many historians deduced that the landscapes depicted in the works of the PJP were the result of the artist’s inability to present the land as he saw it. Many writers of the last century concluded that the Sydney portrayed by the early colonial artists reflected a desire to present this strange antipodean land as a European vista. While some of the works of the PJP cannot be rated as fine works of art, his depictions of the backgrounds to his paintings are carefully realised, if not stylised as most of the works from this period. Works like those of the ‘Cammeragal’ warrior (Watling 53) and ‘Bark Canoes of Port Jackson’ (Banks Ms 14:43) clearly show evidence of fire management of the Sydney landscape. The land is dominated by grasslands; large trees sparsely scattered and mangrove areas around the harbour are defined, as well as broad green hills upon whose heights are incongruous-looking thick woodlands used as animal traps. These watercolours were not attempts to impose a European sensibility upon the new landscape, but authentic endeavours to portray the Australian bush around the harbour as it was in 1788. The British had also entered one of the largest open-air art galleries in the world. From the distant mountains to the west, north to Pittwater and south to the Shoalhaven, the Sydney basin still contains over one thousand rock engravings or petroglyphs and stencil art. In 1788, on the western side of the cove later called Dawes Point, a large carving of a fish or probably a whale was prominent on a huge flat rock near the water’s edge. Some artwork can still be seen in Ku-ring-gai

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Chase National Park, Blue Mountains National Park, Brisbane Waters National Park, at Bantry Bay, North Bondi and Grotto Point. At Balls Head Reserve on the harbour, a rock carving of a man inside a whale can readily be seen. More hidden are the hand stencils of a woman and child, thousands of years old. Many more artworks lie undiscovered or unrevealed by a deeply spiritual people with a cosmology as profound and significant as the Protestant doctrine of most of the new arrivals. Phillip and his crew knew nothing of the people who had lived for tens of thousands of years on this harbour as they rowed west down the waterway for the first time. Clear of the Heads and taking in the wide expanse of harbour, the British noticed to their left a rocky outcrop close by. The Australians call it Birrabirra. It is the favourite fishing spot of the women living on this harbour. It would later be called the Sow and Pigs Reef, an important feature for incoming ships to avoid. Decades later, explosives were used to reduce the reef but it remains a favourite spot for recreational fishers. Today, a beacon can still be seen there at night. Moving northwest down the main passage of the magnificent waterway in the early afternoon on this beautiful Monday, the British boats turned around near the prominent point jutting out into the passage. To the original inhabitants this was called Booragy. It would shortly to be named Bradley’s Point and later Bradleys Head, after young Will Bradley who had yet to see the harbour but would soon get to know it well. The British now rowed back down the harbour towards the first arm that they had discovered branching to the north. They were heading towards the country of the Kay-ye-my clan of the Guringai or Ku-ring-gai people. Their country stretched from the north shore to the middle harbour and north to Pittwater, the Hawkesbury and the central coast. They shared this large country with the powerful Cammeragal clan, who dominated Middle Harbour including the point of land called Kirribilli. These people probably didn’t hear the ‘coo-ees’ coming from the south. The British men’s arrival would be a total surprise to them. As the strangers approached, they saw men on the beach, armed with spears and shields, shouting, just like at Botany Bay. ‘When I first went in the boats to Port Jackson’, Phillip recalled, ‘the natives appeared armed near the place at which we landed, and were very vociferous’. Then, as they approached a beach, now

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Spring Cove, around twenty Australian men waded out into the water to greet them. They were unarmed and curious. The British encountered no aggression. Again, the Australians guided them to a nearby fresh spring of water: Australians welcoming to country. Their behaviour, Phillip later wrote, ‘gave me a much higher opinion of them than I had formed’. Banks had described the natives of New South Wales as cowards. Cook had said they ‘appeared a very stupid race of people – void of curiosity’. These people clearly were not. Phillip honoured the northern branch of the harbour by the name of Manly Cove. Later that afternoon, having explored this part of the harbour, the British rowed back to Spring Cove, landed and began to prepare their lunch. They built a fire and relaxed. The Australians sat nearby watching them, their spears lying on the beach. They had not come to fight these strangers necessarily. They merely desired to observe them, to satisfy their curiosity about them. They inspected their metal cooking pots and the other paraphernalia in the Europeans’ possession. One Australian’s hand was scorched by boiling water. Having never experienced such pain, his reaction was predictable, causing some amusement among the enlightened British. Phillip decided that ‘as their curiosity made them troublesome’, a circle in the sand was to be drawn around their temporary encampment. He noted that they had ‘little difficulty in making them [the Australians] understand that they were not to come within it, and they sat down very quiet’. He saw this as ‘proof of how tractable these people are’.7 To the British, even relatively enlightened people like Phillip and Tench, the Australians were simple and childlike. In all probability, the Australians sat in a stunned silence. They knew what the circle in the sand signified. It meant ‘we’re not sharing’. They would have been confounded by the rudeness and audacity of these clothed men in hats, feasting without sharing their bounty, even if it smelt strange. To Australians, sharing food was a common courtesy, like offering water and shelter. The Australians disappeared into the long shadows of the bush in the late afternoon. The British packed their boats. It would be the last time for months that many of them would have a close encounter with the Australians. As the sun began to disappear over the western horizon, dappling the water with streaks of amber, the three boats headed south across the harbour, admiring the sandy beaches and the park-like quality of the terrain on the southern side of the harbour. Worgan later described the ‘soft vivid-green shady lawns’, ‘lofty trees’

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and ‘now and then a pleasant chequered glade opens to your view’. At this magic time of the day, they could clearly see kilometres of sparkling water. Avoiding the rocky outcrop Birrabirra, in the smooth waters below South Head, they landed at a place just within the southern headland, part of what is now called Watsons Bay. It is Gadigal country. It seemed uninhabited. They saw fires in the distance but none here. They pitched their tents for the night at a place the Australians call Kutti. They named it Camp Cove. They were the first Europeans to camp out in Sydney Harbour.8 Lying in their blankets on the soft sand, the men would have mulled over the happenings of the day; the beauty and extent of the harbour; the tractable natives they encountered. They had an early night. The Gadigal were totally aware of the presence of these strangers from far away. They would have got word days before of their arrival at the bay to the south. They were the custodians of the land on which the British slept. Cadi (or gadi) is the name for the grass tree (Xanthorrhoea resinosa) that proliferated all along the southern shores of the harbour and beyond to Pittwater. From the long spines and leaves of these plants, the men manufactured their spears, which were prized possessions. Gadigal country stretched west from present-day South Head to the area known by them as Tumbalong and south to the northern shore of the Cooks River. Like most clans, they were made up of those who lived a coastal life and those who spent most of their time inland. The Gadigal had landscaped their country to suit both lifestyles and many families would adopt both lifestyles easier than a holiday. The clan to their west, whose country follows up the harbour shore, is the Wangal. They are closely related, bound by language and family, delineated by country. The following day, the Gadigal would follow the strangers’ boats as they began to explore their country.

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CHAPTER 4

Warrane

They were up before dawn. It was 22 January and Jacob Nagle, one of the boat crew, complained that they had to ‘eat our breakfast on our seats’, they were off so fast. Phillip was in a hurry. With one boat leading the other two to make soundings, Phillip conducted a quick but systematic exploration of the bays and inlets on the less steep, southern shore of this extraordinary harbour; from what he had seen, the northern shore showed little promise as a place of settlement. As the Gadigal watched on, the British examined Kutti, then entered Panerong, the wide expanse later called Rose Bay. They explored Diendagella (Double Bay), Kogarah (Rushcutters Bay), Carragin (Elizabeth Bay) and the beautiful valley of Wallamolla or Woolloomooloo. They passed the three islands of the lower harbour: Boambilla (Shark Island), Belanglewool (Clarke Island) and Baringhoe (Garden Island). In the early afternoon, passing between the southern shore and the last rocky island, called Mattewanye, the boats entered a little cove around 10 kilometres from the entrance to the harbour. The eastern headland of the cove consisted of a tidal island off a rocky point. The Australians called it Tubowgule. It would be called a number of names before its final designation. The western point of the cove was called Tarra. From there, you could see the harbour from the north, east and south. It was also the closest point they had seen between the south and north shore of the harbour. The Australians called the place Warrane. The little arm of the harbour was barely a half-kilometre wide and one kilometre deep, but what Watkin Tench and others would later call ‘the snug cove’ allowed a deep anchorage where boats could be loaded and unloaded easily. Even more accommodating, on the west side, a rock platform was situated right near the water’s edge, partially covered by a little

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sandy beach that was exposed when the tide was out. Phillip enthused: Ships can anchor so close to the shore that, at small expense, quays may be built at which the largest ships can unload. It is still remarkable to see the largest passenger liners disgorging their human cargo there today at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in the snug cove. But most importantly for Phillip, the location had a run of fresh water that ‘stole silently along through a very thick wood’.1 He loved the place immediately, even after he found out that the source of this beautiful, cascading stream flowing gently down smooth sandstone ridges was just over a kilometre away. It began as a small spring, bubbling up through the porous sandstone below what is now Hyde Park, not too far from today’s Archibald Fountain. The spring formed a natural watercourse and, following rain, the creek flowed into a series of small pools formed by sandstone erosion in the area occupied by today’s Pitt Street Mall. The water trickled north and slightly west to form a stream near the future King Street, then it flowed to the cove. The whole catchment area was only around 65 hectares at the very most in bad weather. It extended from near present-day Macquarie Place and to the west around Customs House. Other springs fed into the stream, notably at present-day Spring Street. The harbour was, in fact, dotted with little springs running down its various little gullies to the sea. George Worgan records that ‘two or three rivulets empty themselves into most of the coves’, but this one, in this snug little cove, was the best. On this January day, at the height of an end-of-cycle El Nino summer, the little stream was flowing freely, cascading gently down rocks towards the cove. The east coast of Australia had had a good bout of spring and summer rains the previous year. But La Nina was on her way. The Australians had cared for and protected this precious little waterway for millennia by maintaining thick foliage around it: banksias, scribbly gums, red ash, melaleucas, red bloodwoods (from whose bark the Australians constructed their shelters and shields), coral trees, peppermints, angophoras, Sydney red gums, Port Jackson figs, native bush mint, ferns, wattle, flax-lily, orchids and lilies. These are both damp-loving and fire-welcoming plants that the Gadigal had maintained by selective, careful, cool winter or early spring burnings around the perimeter of the creek. Phillip describes the vegetation as

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being interrupted by barren spots and bare rocks, then areas full of lush grass and flowering shrubs below enormous trees. He was describing a land managed by fire. Many observers noticed that the trees were blackened. They conjectured it was caused by lightning strikes, but in fact it is evidence of cool burn made by the Australians to keep the undergrowth down, to promote new shoots and to gain easier access for women to dig up nutritious tubers. There were no ‘weeds’ in the Australian landscape in 1788. From contemporary accounts of the landscape around Warrane, it is obvious that the cove and its little stream formed a significant if not a sacred place to the Australians. This contention is reinforced when you understand that the place and the next cove west – today’s Darling Harbour – was the boundary between the Gadigal to the east and the Wangal to the west. But just a short distance away from the harbour shore, the trees were huge, widely scattered with little underwood. Further on, there were dense areas of vegetation seemingly randomly placed or designed, as in a park. Phillip thought the arrangement of the trees perplexing. He had no knowledge of the fire management that the Australians had been practising for millennia. Some areas near the cove were clear enough of large trees to afford some pasturage. Everywhere were signs of recent fire. George Worgan and others noticed that all the trees ‘appear to have been partly burnt’.2 They were right. To the east of the pretty creek, trees were more widely scattered on grasscovered, sloping ground that rose up to a ridge along what is now Macquarie Street. Beyond that, the country had a mosaic landscape all the way to the next cove to the east. Closer towards this cove, the area was almost clear of any trees and covered in grass. A smaller spring was also there. Today, at the Sydney Botanical Gardens, a series of pools are the relics of this little stream. On some afternoons, you can still see eels wriggling up from the harbour to fresh water. It is the only stream left on the harbour that has not been entirely buried underground. In fact, the country around today’s Farm Cove and adjacent Woolloomooloo had been used as places of ceremony since forever. It was and would be the location for Australian corroboree and initiation ceremonies until the 1830s. The western hillside above the cove was dominated by large sandstone outcrops, smaller plants, a few large trees and tall grasses. This steep incline would become known as The Rocks. The Australians call the area Tallawolladah.3 The

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top of this ridge affords grand views of the lower harbour, including what the British would first call Long Cove, later Cockle Bay, later again something else. The Australians had various names for the place depending on who you talked to. It was part of Wangal country. At that time, the little hill and ridge above the western side of the cove were covered in huge eucalypts, coral trees, angophoras and blackbutts, as well as acacias, grevilleas and many of the common bush plants still available today and others lost from the Sydney area forever. All along the harbour, mangroves at the water’s edge were maintained by the Australians where, in the tidal zones, essential habitats existed for the rock oysters, periwinkles, cockles, prawns, mussels and crabs that the Sydney clans relied on as valuable food source. The mangroves were also valuable fish nurseries and rarely touched. The Australians harvested the harbour’s fish stocks as well, comprising over 500 varieties of seafood. Several hundred metres south of the cove, beginning where the corner of King Street and Margaret Street now stands, the ‘thick wood’ around the creek gave way to a grove of widely spaced trees and a clearing obviously used as a camping area. Indeed, the cove’s name, Warrane, is thought to come from the Gadigal word meaning ‘camp’. Recent excavations have found thousand-year-old campsites and evidence of tool-making around the area where Angel Place now stands. But Phillip did not know this. To him, the place was uninhabited. He saw no vestiges of campfires or habitations. If he did, he mentioned nothing. To him, it seemed like virgin bush. Yet it was neither virgin bush nor uninhabited. This area was probably burned more intensely and more often than further down the stream towards the estuary. Nearby was another stream, Blackwattle Creek, that runs into the harbour at Long Cove. This area and for kilometres south were habitats for kangaroos, wallabies and emus. Unfortunately, the newcomers didn’t base their settlement at this clearing but further down at the harbour’s edge. As a naval man, Phillip understood that he needed to protect his acquisition and he couldn’t do that if he settled this far south of the harbour, however more practical. The Australians’ old campsite in a few years would become a burial ground for the camp and, later, a place for corporal punishment. Part of the area is now occupied by Sydney Town Hall. From there, further south the British came to the top of a steep descent, around present-day George Street and Bathurst Street. It had a winding path

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leading down to a wooded area where trees were large and widely spaced, leading up to a higher hill. It was here at the base of these two hills that the British would set up brick kilns, utilising the abundant clay in the vicinity. This area, comprising today’s Haymarket and Chinatown, eventually moving further up the hill to Central Station as the clay deposits were exhausted, became known as Brickfield Hill. It was bounded by the head of Long Cove and Blackwattle Creek. It would become the camp’s first outpost. Blackwattle Creek, like the soon-to-be-named Tank Stream and many others along the harbour, was a freshwater spring that seeped out of porous cracks in the sandstone in what is now the grounds of Sydney University, and flowed west to form a swamp near the present-day suburb of Glebe. The estuary would be reclaimed and filled in and become today’s Wentworth Park. Archaeological records show that the creek was a favourite camping spot for the Gadigal. Another source of fresh water nearby was the spring that became known as Tinker’s Well, which seeped up and flowed over a rocky outcrop in the area that became known as Pyrmont. Protected by a covering of flowering shrubs and ferns, this little spring survived into the twentieth century. Near today’s Macquarie Place was also a tiny spring protected by a small sandstone outcrop. Macquarie would eventually use that water source to feed a grotesque fountain three decades later. Only a few kilometres south and west of the cove, a little beyond Brickfield Hill, they would later discover the extensive kangaroo grounds. They covered the area around present-day Sydney University, Petersham, Leichhardt and Drummoyne. The Australians called the area Bulamaning. Careful fire management by the Australians meant the area was a narrow strip of grassland perfect for kangaroo grazing, surrounded by thick groves of gum trees. It was a large paddock without fences. Before long, the kangaroos would move further west and south to avoid the invaders’ guns. The peninsula that we now called Drummoyne became known as Kangaroo Point.4 The British also noticed other wildlife about the harbour: an abundance of possums, kangaroo rats, bandicoots and quolls (which the British called quails), as well as the gnar-ruck or the white-footed rabbit rat which is now extinct in the Sydney region. And the birdlife: cockatoos, parakeets, parrots, eagles, hawks. ‘No country can boast a more charming race of winged inhabitants.’5 Many other bird

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species have vanished from the Sydney area: brolgas, magpie geese, blue-faced honeyeaters and the glossy cockatoos. Phillip and others climbed the sandy ridges to the east of the cove to view the sweep of land to the sea and the valuable wetlands that would later be called the Lachlan Swamps and eventually Centennial Park. Following the Australian track west, they skirted Blackwattle Creek and travelled south to look down upon the Cooks River estuary, including a creek that arose from swamp land just to the east that flowed into Botany Bay. Later named after Captain Shea of the marines, it was teeming with birdlife. On this day in January when Phillip and his party surveyed the area, there wasn’t an Australian in sight. After all the vociferous yelling from the ridge tops at Botany Bay and later at the Heads, here the intruders were seemingly alone. There was no armed confrontation, just bushes with eyes. In fact, no record of any contact with the Australians was made during these first days but that does not mean they didn’t know what was going on. What is certain is that almost immediately, Phillip decided on this snug little cove as the future site of the colony. As Hunter pointed out, he ‘had little time to look about him’. He named it Sydney Cove after the British Home Secretary with whom he had worked closely throughout the enterprise. Daniel Southwell noted that Phillip ‘did not think himself at liberty to continue his searches after he had seen Sydney Cove’.6 His decision to occupy the little cove was for the exact same reasons why the Australians valued and cared for it: an open, grassy area ideal for a camp, with a good reliable water supply. What the Australians lost, the British gained: good hunting and fishing grounds. While Phillip and his party were exploring Warrane that day in January, young Jacob Nagle stayed with the boats in the cove. He whiled away his time fishing and was the first of the strangers to catch a fish in the harbour. It was a bream. Phillip and his crew rowed south back to Botany Bay on the evening of 23 January, as quickly as they could, after staying another night in the northern harbour. It is not known where they spent that second night but it was probably at the site of their discovery or back at Camp Cove. That evening, he announced that preparations for the transfer of the fleet to the newly named Sydney Cove would begin immediately the next day.

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Little did they know that, just kilometres out to sea, two strange ships were slowly tacking towards the coastline. In Phillip’s short absence, at Botany Bay, work was begun onshore with parties preparing the ground, much to the consternation of the Australians who would have been astonished at the land clearing and the digging up of the earth. They had no idea that the British were making a sawpit and a latrine. The British also did more than a spot of fishing: ‘bream, mullet, large rays, besides many smaller species’ were hauled in. Dr Worgan reported that they made a ‘very successful haul of fish’ from the nets at Botany Bay, which caused much ‘astonishment’ amongst the Australians.7 Outrage more like it. Meanwhile, Arthur Bowes got lost in the bush and feared for his life: Having wandered some distance into the woods in search of insects and other natural curiosities, I lost myself and could not find my way back to the wooding party, which threw me into no small panic lest I should meet with any of the natives before I could extricate myself from the labyrinth I had got into – but, I crawled along gently and had the good luck to escape being noticed by them; and to my inexpressible joy I shortly after got sight of the Bay.8 He needn’t have worried. The Australians would have left him alone or guided him back to the shore. This fear of the Australian bush began early. A whole subgenre of nineteenth-century Australian art and literature became devoted to the subject. It is a fear and apprehension that still exists today, buoyed by sensational films and a more sensational media. David Collins never lost his fear of being lost in the Australian bush. He reflected: When sitting at my ease with my companions in a boat, I have been struck with horror at the bare idea of being lost in them.9 While Phillip was away, Watkin Tench was walking down a beach in Botany Bay, hand-in-hand with a small boy from his ship. They saw a group of about a dozen Australians coming in the opposite direction. They were ‘naked as at

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the moment of their birth’. As he advanced, he opened the boy’s shirt to reveal ‘the whiteness of his skin’. A ‘hideous ugly’ Australian man – an elder – ‘with great gentleness’ put his hands on the child’s hat and felt his clothes. After an hour, ‘they repeated several times the word “werra” which signifies “begone”, and walked away from us’.10 Tench would describe the Australians as strongly muscled, nimble and curlyhaired, with skin the colour of coffee. Their ‘large black eyes are universally shaded by the long thick sweeping eyelash’.11 Like all the British, he was repulsed by their dirtiness and bodily stench. Fish oil was used to ward off the cold and as an insect repellent. An unwashed, sweaty Englishman in dirty woollen clothing would give off a terrific odour as well and might easily have offended the Australians. Young Watkin was fully aware that one of the major outcomes demanded by the enterprise was to convince these people that their primitive way of life was no longer necessary as a superior race was now amongst them and, anyway, it didn’t really matter if they liked their presence there because the Australians didn’t really matter – though the newcomers weren’t going to tell them that until it was too late. While there’s turmoil in Europe, reasoned the British, we’ll just invade this unknown country and take it over because we can. Tench put it delicately: Our first object was to win their affections and our next to convince them of the superiority we possessed.12 Last century, this was called ‘winning the hearts and minds’. It could also be called a quiet invasion. Phillip’s hurried return to the fleet at the bay and his announcement of the discovery of the little cove in the large harbour that would provide most of the short-term needs of the settlement, immediately terminated all public works at Botany Bay. The tools and equipment were reloaded and all endeavour was bent towards the new location to the north. Thursday 24 January dawned as a cloudy and windy day, with a temperature around 24 degrees. Bowes recalls ‘to the infinite surprise of everybody, we saw two large ships in the offing’.13 There was much conjecture about which country these ships belonged to. Phillip ordered that no person should contact the ships, as he did not want them to know his intended plans. It is likely that, while everyone

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else was trying to guess the identity of the two vessels, he had already surmised that they belonged to La Perouse, on a scientific expedition around the world. He had been informed of the French expedition before he sailed from Portsmouth. How the Australians reacted to the sight of another two ships about to invade their shore, we can only guess. The next day, it was still blowing a gale. However, with the French ships about to enter the bay and a sense of urgency for the British to decamp and sail north as quickly as possible, at daylight, the Supply, with Phillip on board and commanded by Lieutenant Ball, weighed anchor; due to the fresh gales blowing, could not get out of the bay until noon. The fact that the usually cautious Phillip would attempt to move the fleet in such conditions reinforces the urgency that now presented itself with the imminent arrival of the French. Supply arrived at Sydney Cove at seven o’clock that evening. Phillip and the Supply crew wasted little time. Early the next day, Saturday 26 January, a party landed and began clearing the ground. Early that evening, the crew of Supply – just a few dozen men – assembled on the western shore, where a staff was erected and the Union Flag displayed. The marines fired volleys and the officers drank to the health of His Majesty. The location of this little, hastily convened ceremony is near today’s Cadman’s Cottage. It is this event that we celebrate every Australia Day: a drab little salute with just a handful of officers and sailors. The famous depiction of the scene painted by Algernon Talmage in 1937 gets a few things right: the small number of people who witnessed the event and the huge trees depicted at the cove, although none had yet been felled at the time shown in Talmage’s celebratory painting. That this flag-raising was the first order of business indicates Phillip’s concern with claiming the harbour and the country before the French – or anyone else – could do so. As La Perouse’s Astrolabe and Boussole at last laid their anchors in Botany Bay at nine o’clock that morning, the rest of the British fleet, excepting one of the ships, had begun to work their way out of the bay. In normal circumstances, in such windy conditions, Phillip would not have ordered the fleet’s removal up the coast; these were exceptional circumstances. It took most of the day for the fleet to make it safely out of the bay, although a collision between Prince of Wales and one of the other transports resulted in damage to two sails. Sirius remained behind, welcomed the French, then sailed north. The French would remain at Botany Bay

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for almost six weeks. During that time, they would build a stockade and mount it with two guns. La Perouse’s attitude to the Indigenous people of Botany Bay was less enlightened than Phillip’s. Spears were quickly replied by guns, with deadly consequences. On Monday 10 March, La Perouse and his two ships would leave Botany Bay, sailing northeast. They were never seen again. Before evening fell that day, the entire convoy – all eleven ships – had finally anchored in the little cove. First impressions count: ‘I am quite charmed with the place’, Ralph Clark decided from the deck of Friendship.14 Sydney Harbour has never lost its allure. The voyage of the First Fleet was over. To the British, it was an outstanding success. In terms of the convict cargo, the mortality rate was one in seventeen – around 2 per cent of convicts died on the voyage. The ratio of deaths among the marines and seamen on board the fleet was the same. This was later regarded as a major feat compared with convict voyages to come. In contrast, 20 per cent of the livestock did not survive. Worgan called the voyage ‘tolerably pleasant’. Later, a female convict would describe her trip to New South Wales as ‘tolerably favourable’. Others had different opinions. The voyage of the First Fleet – the first stage of this audacious British imperialist enterprise – was over. It had taken 252 days.15

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CHAPTER 5

The Camp

From that Saturday evening of 26 January, when all eleven ships of his fleet were finally anchored in his little harbour-side acquisition, Phillip knew that he was no longer the fleet’s commander but now had to establish and govern a penal colony on land he had just invaded. He had to create a civil administration to supervise approximately 1,000 souls (not including the seamen) – most of them reluctant campers. Phillip did have some distinctly egalitarian ideas when he got the commission to establish the most isolated outpost in the world. These concepts about how to go about his governorship derived from both his naval background and his own humble beginnings. Arthur had spent the early years of his life living on Bread Street, not far from many of the poor convicts, his present charges, who still remained in the heaving ships in the cove. Nor was his early life removed from those of many of the marine privates who were about to find diggings on the western side of the cove he was now surveying. It was only family connections which gave him the opportunity to escape a life not dissimilar to that of those men and women now aboard these ships. But for the connections of his mother, whose first husband was an honoured Navy man, he would not be here governing this antipodean experiment. Arthur Phillip originally had a vision of establishing a community based on utopian notions of a rural past that was already fast disappearing in England. Instead of willing colonists, the convicts would be the workforce. This rural idyll was not only anachronistic but completely impractical: it required that hardworking, peaceful farming village communities be established by those whose lives had been grubbed out on the streets of London and other English cities. This was to be achieved, of course, by threats of severe corporal punishment and death.

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At the same time, Phillip’s camp was to have no stockade, no prison walls and no leg irons (unless convicts re-offended). It would have no currency, no shops or trade, and certainly no ale houses. As for tea, only those with money and privileges would own such a luxury, having brought it out stashed in their personal baggage. Phillip was given no detailed instructions about town planning or the granting of leases. It was envisaged that convict society would develop as small, isolated, peaceful villages of agricultural workers. This would create a society where the state would provide for the people, and the people would provide for the state. Even the tools and utensils supplied reflected these ideals. Instead of shipping out, for instance, ceramic tableware, the fleet carried only tin plates and wooden bowls for the convicts, even though the ceramic product was comparable in price. Similarly, the saws brought out were crude and out of date. Most of Phillip’s notions of government for this unique colony of thieves were, for a time, realised. Faced with a generally belligerent convict population and difficult working conditions, he was also severely hampered by the lack of cooperation from his nominal second-in-command, Robert Ross. Before the fleet had left England, Ross made it known that no marine under his command would supervise any of the convicts. The detachment would guard the settlement’s population from attack, from home and abroad. He declared that his detachment would protect the boundaries of the camp as specified by the Governor, but they would not supervise or regulate the convicts. To Ross, this was extra duties for which his soldiers would not be paid. He also thought it beneath the dignity of his officers and privates to engage with the criminal class. Fundamental to the dysfunction of the administration of early Sydney was the historical rivalry between the British Army and the Royal Navy. The tension between these two sections of the armed forces would continue to simmer for years, fuelled by the tyranny of distance and isolation. However, at the beginning of the differences between Phillip and Ross, it was almost palpable. Even before the fleet sailed, Bowes on board Lady Pen, noted in his diary: NB. If the Governor should die, the charge would be devolved on Capt. Hunter – not Lt Gov. Major Ross.1

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Despite his seniority in rank, Ross was thought not to be the right person to take over if Phillip became incapable of command. The decades-long schism between naval governors and the military detachments at New South Wales began here. The fleet had also sailed without a Provost-Marshall. This role entailed the supervision of the convicts and serving as the sheriff or bailiff for the colony – the arresting officer. On the second day of the settlement, Phillip appointed his ‘clerk’, midshipman Henry Brewer, to the task. Around the same age, he had been a carpenter. After studying architecture, he had worked as a clerk in a building firm back in England. He lost this job for reasons unknown and joined the Navy aged forty. Phillip met him several years later and, despite his rather unkempt appearance, found his skills in drawing and clerical work valuable. He found his ability in dealing with the convicts, his plain speaking, invaluable. Few of the convicts had ever visited a farm, let alone worked on one. Phillip engaged the other Henry, the one surnamed Dodd. He would establish a farm below the Governors’ future residence, originally situated where the Intercontinental Hotel now stands on Macquarie Street. There, the surviving plants brought from Rio de Janeiro and the Cape were put into the ground: oranges, pears, apples, figs and a grape vine. Most of the plants died. Sometime in March, Dodd would also begin another farm at the adjoining cove, planting maize and grains. His convict gardeners would include a Cornishman named James Ruse and Sydney’s first bushranger, a Madagascan named John ‘Black’ Caesar. With no assistance from the marines, Phillip turned to worthy felons. With the help of the surgeon, George Worgan, he had earlier acquainted himself with the professions and skills among the transportees. Worgan was the son of a well-known organist who performed at Vauxhall Gardens – one of the more fashionable playgrounds for those with money in their pockets. Among the convicts, they identified twelve carpenters, a brickmaker, two bricklayers and a stonemason. This was better than nothing. Phillip ordered Henry Brewer to divide the male convicts into gangs and appointed the most reliable convicts as gang supervisors. He also recruited from their ranks men to act as constables to apprehend malcontents. This last plan was not so successful at first. Convict Henry Kable was appointed supervisor of the female convicts (one of whom he married on 10 February) and convict James Bloodsworth, assisted by

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bricklayer William Edwards, became master brickmaker at Brickfield Hill, where the clay soils were suitable for brick manufacture. Bloodsworth and his convict crew including Samuel Wheeler would manufacture thousands of bricks over the next few years, supplying most of the building materials for the camp. Phillip also appointed Charles Peat to supervise the timber-getters. Three convicts – John McIntyre, Patrick Burn and John Randall – were made his official ‘game killers’. He had already marked out the lines of encampment with a stick. The marines and convicts would occupy the west side of the cove, while the Governor and his staff – with a small number of convicts – would reside on the eastern side of the stream. A tent or a hut was constructed ‘wherever chance presents a spot’. His residence would be a pre-fabricated, timber-framed canvas tent erected on the slope of the ridge on the eastern side. Today the site, on the corner of Bridge Street and Phillip Street, is occupied by the Museum of Sydney. It had spectacular views of the entire cove as well as the neighbouring cove. Further down what is now Bridge Street, the camp’s lumber yard and forge would soon be established where timber would be milled and metal worked. The convict tents would be located at the present corner of George Street and Essex Street and nearby in Spring Street. Convicts also settled north of the hospital and on the rocky slope above that soon had the name The Rocks. Eventually, the convicts were left to their own devices in providing shelter for themselves. On the rocky outcrops that dominated the western slope above the cove, convicts constructed wattle and daub hovels using tree branches and leaves, with clay to fill the gaps. These were barely satisfactory and would often be destroyed during the frequent Sydney summer downpours. Later, they would use the tall trunks and leaves of the cabbage tree (Livistona australis), and many expeditions to the north shore and further west down the harbour were made to plunder this resource. The marine encampment would be located nearby at the corner of today’s George Street and Grosvenor Street. On the east side behind Phillip’s canvas house, female convict tents were raised near the present corner of Bent Street and Phillip Street. Indeed, Bent Street became one of the first thoroughfares in the camp taking convict workers to the government farm at the nearby cove that became the Sydney Botanical Gardens.

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Phillip gave orders that until shelters were erected, some convicts would be landed each morning to work, would go aboard their transport vessels for dinner (lunch) then be put ashore again to work until evening. Bowes recorded that no boats were allowed to leave the cove without permission and no sailors were allowed to be on shore after sunset. And so the transformation of the cove began. The hospital was the first major building to begin construction. It was sited on the western side of the cove, below the rocky ridge and above the beach. The location today is the corner of George Street and Argyle Street. It was a 25 metre by 7 metre, wood-framed structure to accommodate patients. The walls were formed from the trunks of the cabbage tree, covered in shingles made from casuarina bark. The hospital would not have a decent roof until April. Over the next two weeks came the inevitable chaos of the disembarkation of all the stores, provisions, equipment and livestock, along with the rats and Arthur Phillip’s greyhounds. In true British fashion, the unloading of the eleven ships was done steadily and systematically. It is not hard to imagine hundreds of soldiers, sailors, officers and convicts crammed into a small area, trampling bushes, chopping down trees, pitching tents, rolling barrels, digging sawpits, clearing precious ground cover, establishing latrines, preparing the soil for cultivation, grappling with heavy casks, boxes, rope, sails, canvas tents– a scene of semi-organised chaos. In terms of livestock, the fleet carried over 200 ducks, geese and turkeys, 150 chickens, as well as horses, cows and bulls. Most distressingly for future native animal populations, it transported to the coast of New South Wales the continent’s first cats of the non-marsupial kind. Captain James Campbell of the Lady Penrhyn, ever the pessimist, later wrote: All hands were set to work, but without order or regularity – a scene of confusion ensued which we have not yet got out of and I fear never will. He would describe Phillip as a man ‘totally unqualified for the business he has taken in hand’. He would never be a fan of the Governor.2 Lieutenant Ralph Clark says he ‘never saw so much confusion in all the course of my life’. Captain Watkin Tench remembers ‘the scene to an indifferent spectator – would have been highly picturesque and amusing’. Collins described

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‘the rude sound of the labourer’s axe and the downfall of its ancient inhabitants’. One wonders if the bushes with eyes found it so funny. To the Australians, chopping down trees and digging holes in the ground for no obvious reason was appalling. It was vandalism. But ‘none of them has approached since we anchored’.3 The chopping and rooting out of trees on the cove was enormously difficult. Not because of the great quantity of them but because of their enormous girth and height. They were dealing with centuries-old trees with girths over 10 metres. The tools brought out from England were no match for these majestic hardwoods. It must also be remembered that the colony’s workforce was suffering under a less than nutritious diet, had just completed an eight-month voyage and was unaccustomed to manual labour in the field. Despite Phillip’s efforts to enforce camp boundaries, several convicts absconded almost immediately, walking to Botany Bay in an attempt to get passage on one of La Perouse’s ships. They were, however – as related by King, who with Lieutenant Dawes visited the Frenchmen – ‘dismissed with threats and given a day’s provisions’ for their trip back to the settlement. Two week later, on 12 February, four convict women were found ‘straggling about the rocks’ in a cove above the camp. One ran off and was never heard of again.4 An area of cultivation was also begun on the small island just below this cove, for the crew of the Sirius. This island the locals called Bainghow. To the British, it was originally Island No. 3 but became Garden Island. Today carved into a block of sandstone can be seen a number of initials including ‘WB 1788’: a legacy of William Bradley’s time on the island? The first white man tag? Garden Island would be used to supply naval provisions for decades. This quick expansion of the Berewalgal would have been more than a little disconcerting to the Australians as a shot rang out and another beautiful parrot fell dead from the sky. On Wednesday 30 January, the livestock – the animals that survived the voyage – were landed and left to graze on the eastern side of the cove named Cattle Island and later Cattle Point. Fishburn and Friendship disembarked 7 horses, 29 sheep, 74 pigs, 6 rabbits and 7 cattle. Most of the sheep subsequently died, the rabbits probably didn’t last long before they were eaten, but the pigs survived. In a month, after exhausting the grass on the point, the stock was moved to nearby Farm Cove, next to the recently turned-over bit of ground. What the Australians

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thought of these beasts, as they paddled past the cove on their fishing trips, can only be imagined. To them, the place was getting weirder by the day. Meanwhile, during this first week at the camp, enormous amounts of fish and other seafood were harvested and hauled up from the harbour in nets – much, no doubt, to the chagrin of the Australians. The keenest fishers were the crew members of Sirius. Less than a week after their arrival, the crew ‘were opposed by a party of natives, who pelted them with stones’ near Camp Cove. The Gadigal were outraged at the amount of fish hauled by their nets. It was not the last time the Australians challenged the Sirius crew. At the same time, back at Botany Bay, La Perouse reported that the Frenchmen would haul 2,000 light horsemen (snapper) in a single day. The British had observed the Australians’ favourite fishing spots and simply commandeered them. Orders were issued on 31 January: If any officer wishes to go out of camp shooting or fishing, they are to apply to the Commanding Officer who will point out the places where they may shoot and fish, and no officer is to leave camp without permission.5 One wonders if this edict was ever adhered to. On the same day as this proclamation was released, more rains came. The storms on Thursday 31 January were something that few at the fledgling camp had ever experienced – a good old Sydney summer thunderstorm. Ralph Clark simply said, ‘what a terrible night it was’.6 Strong winds, terrible lightning, frightening thunder and torrential rain lashed the camp. Throughout the intermittent storms, the invaders doggedly worked to establish their camp. Not all of the eleven ships of the fleet could be accommodated in the snug cove now called Sydney. The Sirius and the store ships lay at anchor close to William Dawes’ soon-to-be erected observatory, not only to protect the invaders from possible attack but to allow the transports access to the landing point next to the stream. The invaders were experiencing the end of a meteorological phenomenon known as the El Nino Southern Oscillation cycle, typified by cooler temperatures but also by wild, unpredictable weather. El Nino would determine the weather in the camp for the next few years. It would slow its progress, contribute to the

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ruination of crops and hamper inland exploration – not to mention the effect of the weather on the health of the campers. The fluctuations of this El Nino weather cycle also badly affected the people of Europe at the same time, contributing to the starvation and unrest that led to the French Revolution. Over the first six months of 1788, the camp would endure weeks and weeks of torrential rain and, interestingly, lower than normal temperatures. Severely damaging storms occurred on 6 February, on 15 March and in the first two weeks of August. In the months of March and July, over half of the days saw heavy rain. The runoff from the newly cleared ground would have been terrific. Before long, the precious estuary at the head of the cove would be in danger of silting up. Food storage and rationing were key preoccupations for Phillip now and over the next three years, as would be expected for the Governor of a colony clinging to an unknown distant coast, with no notion of the next supply ship’s arrival date. One of his first decisions was that food rations allocated from the public stores were to be the same, regardless of a person’s station. Convict, marine and Governor would receive equal rations. As a Navy man, he decided to ration the food, doling it out on a weekly basis. This was 3.2 kilos of salt beef or 1.8 kilos of salted pork; 1.7 litres of dried peas; 3.2 kilos of flour; 170 grams of butter and 227 grams of rice. This was a daily ration equivalent to 250 grams of pork or 450 grams of beef, 450 grams of flour, I cup of dried peas, 30 grams of rice and 25 grams of butter (ghee). The women’s ration would be two-thirds of this. As the months and years went by, the government’s ration would be altered continually, mostly in the downward direction, leading to starvation conditions in the camp. Though some items in the food allocation would disappear as the stock was depleted, the ingredients would remain much the same. If one had to nominate modern Australia’s first ‘national’ dish, it would be pea and ham soup with a slab of bread. Today, this dish is known as the ‘London special’. The marines, of course, would always get a daily quota of rum, whatever the situation. It would rarely waver. What they did with the pint was up to them; although giving it to or trading it with the convicts was outlawed, it clearly went on, as court evidence shows. Major Robert Ross, the commander of the marines, was outraged at Phillip’s decision to allocate equal rations to convicts and marines. He would not have left England if he knew. It is a pity that he didn’t. Phillip knew from the moment he

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met Ross that they would not get along and so it proved to be. Ross’ detachment would protect the camp, but not supervise the convicts in their labours. His marines would only intervene or interact with the convicts if their own interests or livelihood were threatened. Despite this, the marines would still allocate convict labour to build their huts and clear land for crops. These marine gardens, with the possible exception of the Garden Island plot, were highly unsuccessful, hardly harvesting enough grain to feed the stock under their care. Major Ross’ decision not to fully co-operate with Phillip in the camp’s establishment alienated members of his corps – not only from the colony’s civil administration but from himself as well; he found himself estranged from his own detachment. The soldiers were reduced to mundane sentry and garrison duty. Ross had made himself irrelevant. Despite having a naval Governor in Phillip, in terms of law, the colony was a military establishment. David Collins, a marine captain who had received no legal training, was appointed judge-advocate to deal with the behaviour and discipline of the soldiers. Criminal offences were dealt with by court-martial under Articles of War. Standing as a criminal court, it needed six members – either naval or military officers. The marine detachment at Sydney Cove had only nineteen officers. Phillip needed them to fulfil that duty. Ross believed that this was extra duty and so was against the use of his officers as members of the court, but what could Phillip do? On the first Sunday 3 February, after two nights of stormy weather, any watching Australian would have witnessed Richard Johnson holding his first divine service under a tree approximately where Lang Park stands in today’s CBD. One wonders what they made of a strangely frocked man speaking loudly in the centre of a large group of people standing bowed and silent. This was as bizarre to them as their noisy corroborees would be to the British. Over the next two nights, the British experienced yet more tremendous Sydney thunderstorms. Jonathan Easty recorded ‘very heavy tempest, with thunder and lightning’.7 The campsite was washed out. Many of the convicts’ just-built huts were destroyed or damaged by the rain. There was concern about the safety of the recently disembarked stores, with only thatched roofs to protect them.

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CHAPTER 6

Abandoned Wretches

While the camp was being established by the male convicts and the marines and their wives were settling in an area near the little stream, the female convicts continued to swelter aboard four ships in the cove. The delay in their disembarkation was due to the time it took to set up their tents and other accommodations for them. In all, around 190 female convicts remained on board while gangs of men cleared ground and erected tents. The weather was not a help. These women would be instrumental in the development of this fledging convict community on the edge of the Australian continent. Within two years, half of the women on Lady Penrhyn, for instance, would be either married or living as part of a family. Of those fifty-five women, almost half would form relationships with marines, seamen and even those in the top hierarchy of the settlement. Lady Penrhyn was the transport with the biggest number of female convicts, followed by the Prince of Wales. Lady Pen, originally built as a slave ship, conveyed around 104 women and young girls (like all transport records, the number is disputed). They ranged in age from a thirteen-year-old to a woman in her eighties, including others also too old and feeble to contribute anything to the colony. All of the women on board had been done for theft – whether house-breaking, shoplifting or the many crimes involving assault. Two women were transported for ‘assault occasioning acid being thrown in the face’. Most of these women knew how to look after themselves. Three-quarters of them had been sentenced at the Old Bailey, indicating that most had come from the East End, Covent Garden and the other inner-city precincts of London, some having previously lived elsewhere in the country. These women were no strangers to poverty. Living in absolute squalor, with little or no education, they had worked as washerwomen, prostitutes and thieves, often all in one day – anything to survive.

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Most women on Lady Pen had come from Newgate Prison in the heart of London or across the river at Southwark. When the convicts were finally put on board the transports in 1787, over half of these poor women had been incarcerated for over eighteen months. A number of the younger ones arrived on board accompanied by babies, while some arrived pregnant. But most of the women to be transported across the seas were in their late twenties and early thirties. They had been round the block a few times. Recently built, Lady Pen had never been to sea before and she was not a good sailor. Throughout the voyage, the remaining fleet would have to tack around so she could catch up. Circumstances for the women on board Lady Pen were difficult from the beginning. Most had never been on board a ship, let alone a lighter on the Thames. As the transport moved down the river, seasickness was rife. They were miserable. The marine captain on board, James Campbell, was no friend of Arthur Phillip. Shortly before departure, four convicts were found with men including the second mate. He ordered the sailor to be booted off the ship and one of the convict woman to be put in irons. Arthur Bowes, who signed on Lady Pen as the assistant surgeon to attend the convicts, was reassigned as the only competent surgeon on board following the sickness of Turnpenny Altree, the doctor first assigned to tend the women. How much assistance Bowes actually dispensed during the voyage is debateable. During the fleet’s first port of call, at Teneriffe, Bowes records that the crew from Sirius got into an ‘affray’ on shore with the seamen from a Dutch East Indian ship. No doubt Worgan and others had to deal with ‘some broken pates and bloody noses’. It’s noteworthy that these brawlers were Navy men. These sailors for the King would make merry in the months to come. Yet most of the seamen on board were not members of the King’s Navy but had come from merchant ships like the East Indians on slave runs across the Atlantic. Interestingly, as Lady Pen was being prepared for sail in Rio Harbour on 14 August, a slave ship newly arrived from the coast of Guinea moored alongside. The human cargo on board was to service the burgeoning slave market. Bowes was awoken next morning by the Africans’ singing: a chorus of lament, plaintive and uplifting at the same time – an early form of the blues. It would have sent a chill up the spines of the women. After making room for the loading of several

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horses and other provisions, Lady Pen continued on her voyage. On 2 December, the convict sent on board to tender the horses – Thomas Kelly – was caught giving ‘considerable quantities’ of rum to some of the women. He was not punished as the matter was thought to be all the women’s fault. The misogyny displayed by Bowes reflects the general attitude on board. He described the women in his care as being ‘never a more abandoned set of wretches’. He called them ‘prostitutes’, the most ‘profligate wretches in London’ who were ‘calloused to all sense of shame or even common decency’. He wrote that, during the voyage, it was ‘indispensably necessary to inflict corporal punishment upon them’. After liberal use of the cat-o’nine-tails, other punishments were subsequently inflicted – not because the whippings were judged to be too severe but because the men believed it to be indecorous to strip a woman half-naked in order to inflict them. So, Captain James Campbell of the marines ordered the use of thumbscrews and iron manacles, while unruly women were tied to a mast. Women were gagged and bound for ‘abusive language’. Arthur Bowes thought that one of the most effective punishments delivered on board was the shaving of women’s heads, humiliating them and making them the subject of ridicule. And what were the crimes of the women on the voyage to Botany Bay? Mostly insolence to marine officers, belligerence, fighting amongst themselves and using the language of the streets. Bowes believed there was nothing ‘to induce them to behave like rational or even human beings’. This is the mentality that would confront the women in the months and years to come. Campbell, the colony’s future most senior captain, would make his presence felt in the fledgling camp, but he was never happy. Of course, Arthur Bowes was all too aware that shaving a woman’s head would render her unattractive to both men and women. He was also well aware of the rampant sexual couplings taking place on board between convicts, marines and sailors, under his nose. While his letters to his brother give no indication of any carnal activity going on during the voyage, he notes that at every port of call, the sailors of the ship spent their hard-earned on their convict mistresses. But, according to Bowes, all the men got from the women was ‘base ingratitude’.1 Over twenty babies were born in the seven months of the occupation of Warrane, having been conceived on the voyage out. Over thirteen children would disembark

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from the ship at Sydney Cove to begin with. We know that four babies were born during the passage. Once such birth was that of John Downey, whose mother was convict Sarah Bellamy. The father was also a John: John (or Joseph) Downey. Sadly, baby John died a little over a month after landing. He was not alone. Mary Abel conceived a child by Thomas Tilley, a convict transported on Alexander. The baby was born just before the fleet set sail. Little William Tilley survived the arduous voyage. Thomas and Mary would marry on 4 May. Their son would die just two weeks later and Mary herself died of a broken heart two months after that. She was thirty-one. Most of the babies born during the voyage of Lady Pen would subsequently die. Other romances bloomed on route, notably between young mother Esther Abrahams and Lieutenant George Johnston of the marines. Esther would become the mistress of the Annandale Estate in the 1830s. Ann Green had begun a relationship with the captain of Lady Pen, William Severs. By him, she would bear a child. In the first years of the infant settlement, more of our Lady Pen women would be punished for crimes with the lash (and worse) than any of the other women transportees. They were involved, as either witnesses and/or as givers of evidence, in a dozen or more of David Collins’ criminal court sittings. The convicts of Lady Pen, along with the other women apprehensively waiting on the ships to disembark in early February, would establish the first British families on the continent and produce many children. Of course, the younger women aged seventeen to twenty from the transport were those who would be the most vulnerable and desirable in the male-dominated camp. Besides young Esther Abrahams, women like Margaret Dawson, Sarah Bellamy, Ann Yates, Mary Marshall, Ann Inett, Milly Levy, Mary Turner, Ann Martin and Ann Ward would lead precarious lives in the colony. Others would prosper. Phoebe Norton had fallen overboard during the voyage and was rescued by two sailors. In a little more than three years, she and her husband would have their own farm. Young girls like Mary Mitchell and Elizabeth Cole would, very quickly, begin families with members of the marines. Ann Yates would eventually bear a brood of children with the camp’s judge-advocate, but for most of the women of Lady Pen, camp life would offer only a harsh and insecure existence.

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Prince of Wales was the smallest of the convict transports and the last ship to be contracted for the voyage, assigned to the fleet by the Navy Board. Master John Mason and First Lieutenant James Maxwell steered her out of Portsmouth with a crew of 25, carrying 47 convicts, 31 marines, 17 wives and 14 children. Later, two male convicts were transferred from the Scarborough following a failed mutinous plot. Prince of Wales was not your usual convict transport – or maybe she was. James Scott, a marine on board, portrayed, in his diary, the problems on board – not necessarily with his female charges but with his fellow marines and their wives. He had embarked along with his wife, who would give birth during the voyage. Before that occurred, one month into the voyage, a marine sergeant in the state of extreme inebriation fell through an open hatchway, damaging not only himself but injuring Scott’s pregnant wife. Things got worse from there. Drunkenness was rife on board, as with all the transports. The second mate of Friendship, who got drunk and fell overboard, in just one example. In July, one of the Prince of Wales’ longboats fell from its booms, killing a young convict woman. On 5 August, the ship needed assistance to be brought safely to anchor in Rio Harbour. After taking on fruit, vegetables and a quantity of rum for the marines, she continued on her voyage. Weeks out of Rio, First Lieutenant James Maxwell was discovered incoherently drunk while on duty. He would be relieved of duty at the camp and was eventually declared insane. Inspections during the voyage found Prince of Wales to be one of the healthiest ships in the fleet. Nevertheless, in November, two seamen fell overboard and drowned. By mid-December, the ship had run out of their assigned provisions of flour and butter, so the stores set aside for the future colony were raided. Petty drunken brawls between marines and their wives persisted for months, with couples refusing to eat together or converse. During the voyage, two children were born to wives of the marines. Prince of Wales was the last ship to arrive at Botany Bay on 20 January. Days later, at the entrance to Botany Bay, attempting to sail north to Port Jackson, Prince of Wales collided with another of the transports, resulting in damage to two sails. On 30 January, it was proclaimed that Lieutenant Philip Gidley King had been ordered by Phillip to proceed to Norfolk Island – an even more remote location some 1,400 kilometres away in the South Pacific and discovered by Cook

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on his second voyage. The plan to establish a settlement on the island was part of Phillip’s instructions, and the British also hoped that the flax plant discovered by Cook on the island might have maritime uses and serve in the manufacture of rope and cordage. Phillip was aware of La Perouse’s presence in the Pacific, so the sudden appearance of two French ships off Botany Bay made the occupation of the island imperative to British interests. He was partly right to be concerned. While Supply and the oncoming ships were battling their way up the coast of New South Wales, La Perouse had already arrived at Norfolk Island. However, finding no safe anchorage, the French couldn’t land and so sailed off to Botany Bay and their chance meeting with the British occupying force. Gidley King had two weeks to prepare before sailing. The aptly named Supply would carry six months’ provisions, some livestock and seeds to the island. Just two dozen souls, more than half of them convicts, were to set up this secondary colony in the middle of the South Pacific. The departure of this small number of convicts hence was later describes as a ‘second transportation’.2 While Supply was preparing to set sail, Gidley King was sent south to meet up with La Perouse, still at Botany Bay. He followed the Australians’ track along the ridge to the bay that soon became known as the Cooks River Road. Shortly before his departure, King boarded Lady Penrhyn and, with Arthur Bowes’ assistance, handpicked six female convicts to sail with him to the distant Norfolk Island. They would be the first of many Lady Pen women to be shipped to the island. Two of the women selected on this day were Ann Inett – who would become Gidley King’s lover, producing two boys by him, named Sydney and Norfolk – and Elizabeth Colley. Six months before, Elizabeth had given birth to a still-born baby on board. Now she would form a long-term relationship with the island colony’s new surgeon, Thomas Jamison, and produce a family of five children over the next decade. Jamison would also make his fortune on Norfolk Island. Supply weighed anchor on Thursday 14 February and set sail down the harbour. While the windswept colony would survive, the plan to use the flax plants and the stately Norfolk Island pines for masts never eventuated. Not only were the materials of little use to the Navy, being unfit for purpose, but the lack of safe anchorage on the island, as La Perouse had earlier discovered, also made the plan impractical.

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Before all this, the women would have to disembark. On 5 February, from the bowels of the transports, the convicts’ possessions – mostly clothes – were hauled up and the women did their best to present themselves for landing. Most of them looked towards their prospects in the camp. Heavily outnumbered, the women would mostly have to rely on men for protection or patronage. Some would rekindle shipboard romances: Esther Abrahams would be reunited with Lieutenant George Johnston who had recently been made Phillip’s aide-de-camp and Margaret Dawson renewed her relationship with William Balmain. There were many others. Some women were already pregnant; some were already with children. But for most of the other women, it was necessary to land with as much dignity and appearance as could be mustered: They were dressed in general very clean, and some few amongst them might be said to be well dressed. Bowes was loath to complement them: he was happy to see the ‘long wished for pleasure of seeing the last of them’. It’s certain that the women felt the same. Early in the morning of 6 February, longboats began to appear alongside the transports to receive them. It took most of the day to get the women ashore. Some regarded as well behaved on the voyage out were camped on the eastern side of the cove, downhill from Phillip’s canvas house. Most were sheltered in the ‘women’s camp’ adjacent to the ‘men’s camp’, separated by a cleared piece of ground save for a very large gum tree. Late that afternoon, before all the female convicts could be put under shelter, the heavens opened again, the fourth time in as many days. Bowes called it ‘the most violent storm of thunder, lightning and rain I ever saw’. The storm was so severe that sentries left their posts to gain shelter. It rained incessantly all night. The lightning was terrific. At around midnight, lightning struck a tree in the middle of the camp. It crashed on to an animal enclosure and several sheep and pigs were crushed to death, some belonging to Major Ross. Of this night, Bowes wrote: The men convicts got to them very soon after they landed and it is beyond my abilities to give a just description of the scene of debauchery and riot that ensued during the night.3

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This has become the foundation myth of the birth of Sydney, and it is a myth. Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore retells the legend. According to Hughes, the women were ravaged, man-handled and: Draggled as muddy chickens under a pump, pursued by male convicts intent on raping them – the couples rutted between the rocks.4 In actual fact, no one else except Bowes records this ‘orgy’ and he was not even on shore that night. He was aboard Lady Penrhyn the whole time. With the thunder, lightning and rain during the night, what could he have seen or heard – ‘some swearing, others quarrelling, others singing’. As Hughes describes the scene, the male convicts, sailors and soldiers were all brutal rapists and the women ‘damned whores’. This was not the case. Most of the women had formed partnerships and even families. There is no doubt that there was a paucity of women in the camp. Even those who had despised and condemned the women as irredeemable whores would later establish longstanding relationships with female convicts. These men include David Collins, Ralph Clark, Philip Gidley King and John White, to name just a few. In reality, the alleged goings-on on the night of 7 February were merely the women and men reacquainting themselves with old friends or meeting new ones after nine months on board ship. This is not to say that sex was not rampant in the little camp, as future outbreaks of venereal disease in the camp testify. Five days after the landing of the women, Ralph Clark wrote to his beloved Alicia, whom he calls Betsy: Good God what a scene of whoredom is going on there in the women’s camp. He continues: No sooner has one man gone in with a woman, but another goes in with her. He was clearly describing a brothel tent. He was observing the social interactions of a class which he felt was beneath him. Yet it’s nonsense for Clark to see these women as all being prostitutes by choice; indeed many from Lady

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Pen, Prince of Wales and other transports had a variety of professed skills and their contribution to the early years of the colony would be significant and unsung. These women and girls had intelligence and a sense of community that helped to lay the foundations of early European society in the colony. However, it is true to say that the landing of the women did cause some consternation in the barely established camp. On 9 February, Bowes records: Our carpenter, one of our sailors and a boy belonging to the Prince of Wales were caught in the women’s tents. They were drummed out of the camp with The Rogue’s March playing before them and the boy had petticoats put on him. They had all of them their hands tied behind them. Ralph Clark delighted in it and declared ‘I hope this will be a warning to them’. He wrote, ‘I would call it by the name of Sodom’. A fortnight later, he recorded that sentries shot at two female convicts who had scarpered into the bush after they did not ‘come back when they called to them’. One was a Lady Pen woman. He malevolently added ‘but neither of them, I am sorry to say, are hurt’. Clark was not only a hypocrite but a misogynist as well. In time, he would become reconciled with his duty at Sydney Cove and come to enjoy it. In later years, he would have a daughter by one of the members of the ‘whoredom’ whom he had derided and name the girl after his wife.5 On the same day as the cabin boy, mentioned above, was forced to wear petticoats and ‘drummed out of the camp’, Private Bramwell was sentenced to receive 200 lashes for assaulting Lady Pen woman, Elizabeth Needham. Bowes regarded Elizabeth as ‘a most infamous hussy’. Bramwell obviously had connections with her on the voyage out and now she was rejecting his offer to go ‘into the woods with him’. At the time of Bramwell’s assault, this ‘infamous hussy’ had already formed an alliance with convict William Snaleham and was three months pregnant with his child.6 There would have been many more disgruntled ex-lovers than just this lonely soldier vying for the precious community and companionship of a woman. But Elizabeth, like many other women, had moved on.

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CHAPTER 7

Meeting the Locals

On Monday 28 January, as the first buildings including the tent hospital were being established and the first cesspits dug on the western side of the cove, and a week before the women finally landed, John Hunter and William Bradley, with two soldiers and a rowing crew from Sirius, began a two-week survey of the harbour. This would be the first examination of the harbour to ascertain the true extent of this significant waterway and to make soundings to determine its navigation.1 It was during this fortnight that the British would encounter the Sydneysiders for the first time. Australians had yet to enter Warrane. Daniel Southwell notes that ‘the inhabitants had – kept at so great a distance as never seen but by our boats’.2 Hunter and Bradley had a unique opportunity to meet the locals. Their first encounter with the Australians took place below Gooragal, near today’s Clifton Gardens. The Cammeragal ‘made a great noise and waved to us to come on shore’. The Australians showed them where to land and seemed ‘pleased with us’. It was another welcome to country. This place is now known as Chowder Bay. Bradley noticed that the women would not come near but ‘peeped from behind the rocks and trees’. This was just two days after the fleet had arrived in the harbour. When their boat put off, the Australians, including the women, began dancing and singing while some men followed them along the shore. Later that day, they crossed the harbour to Camp Cove where they were ‘cordially received’ by three men, while two women remained in their nowies (canoes). They laid their spears on the sand between their women and the British then watched while the intruders made a fire and lunched. They didn’t need a circle in the sand. The next day, they rowed down Middle Harbour to what is called today the Spit, where they met up with a party of Australians that Phillip had met on his first visit. Again, their presence was welcomed. These men only carried woomeras.

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As usual, the women and children were safely placed some distance away. Bradley famously wrote: These people mixed with ours and all hands danced together. Bradley was struck by the Australians’ warm welcome and their sense of confidence. The protective nature they displayed towards their families, he thought was admirable. The explorers in their longboat stayed the night at a place Bradley would name Grotto Point. On 30 January, they rowed to Shell Cove (Karraba Point) before travelling down the harbour to Spring Cove. Three men in nowies came to meet them. Upon landing, over a dozen men descended on the beach, welcoming the strangers. Will Bradley noticed that three of the Australians had the trinkets that Phillip had bestowed days before. It was here that Bradley provides the first close examination of the Australians’ technology. He had earlier described the men as being not tall but ‘straight well limbed people and very active’. Their beards were long and their hair ‘much clotted with dirt’.3 He notices their body scarification and the missing front right tooth of most of the men. Their watercraft he describes as ‘by far the worst canoes I ever saw or heard of ’. Watkin Tench later described the canoes as ‘despicable as their huts, being nothing more than a large piece of bark tied up at both ends with vines’. But he did concede the skill and dexterity with which the Australians, including women and children, could negotiate even large surf in these flimsy craft. Bradley, a man who knew boats, was amazed at their skill. ‘I have seen them paddle through a large surf without oversetting or taking in more water than if rowing in smooth water.’ He described their paddles as being like ‘pudding stirrers’. He described their spears as being about 4 metres long, with four barbed prongs, used for fishing. The British referred to them as fish-gigs (or fizz-gigs). Other spears were single barbed. Bradley also described their throwing sticks or woomeras which ‘they apply to throw the lance any considerable distance’. Within weeks, the theft and/or destruction of Australian weapons, tools, baskets, fishing gear, nowies and much else would commence, perpetuating virtually unabated for decades. Despite hundreds of stolen items, the Museum of Sydney – founded in 1827 – today has very few artefacts from the Sydney region.

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It was only in the late nineteenth century that it began seriously to collect such pieces. By that time, they were all gone. It is an unalloyed tragedy. Will Bradley knew he was witnessing a people and a way of life that none of his contemporaries had yet seen. His feelings towards the Australians over the next three years would shift between abhorrence and admiration, fascination and confusion, sadness and disappointment. There always seemed to be a conflict in Bradley’s mind about the Australians. He was greatly interested in them but never allowed himself to feel a full affinity with these odd but welcoming people. He revealed the shadow hanging over him in his journal. It seems that Phillip’s policy to gain the Australians’ ‘confidence’ and friendship’ was to abduct someone. Bradley makes it clear just days after his arrival: We could not persuade any of them to go away in the boat with us. One suspects he didn’t try too hard. As a naval lieutenant respected by all, he knew already that one day he might be ordered to kidnap by force. Bradley’s next meeting with the Australians would leave lasting memories. The surveyors were travelling down to the most northerly arm to take measurements against their bass line. The Cammeragal were ready for them. They approached a beachfront, located today in the suburb of Fairlight at what is now North Arm Reserve. Hunter and Bradley landed their longboat and a smaller one and began work. Meanwhile, their crew began to prepare lunch. As the pair worked, the men built a fire at the other end of the beach. The encounter began when two unarmed men arrived, greeting them openly. After showing great interest in what the surveyors were doing, they walked across the beach to greet the men stoking the fire. Shortly after, as Bradley and Hunter approached the fire, a female elder ‘feeble with old age, very dark and ugly’ came out of the bush accompanied by a young warrior. Bradley then noticed women standing a short distance away with a group of ‘very stout armed men’. They all continued down the beach towards the fire where the elder settled herself. She would remain by the fire throughout. Intrigued by the strangers’ clothes, she affirmed that they were men when one of the sailors bared his chest. Several times they tried to induce the group of women to come to the campfire. Their entreaties to the

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men fell on deaf ears, despite showing the trinkets that they insisted only the women should accept. By the time Hunter and Bradley finished their measurements, the old woman had been joined by a male elder and a number of young men all sitting about the fire. Another twenty men had converged on the spot, all of them leaving their spears on the beach. Hunter, nevertheless, ordered muskets to be primed and ready. Hunter and Bradley returned to their longboat held close to the shore. When their lunch was ready, rather than eat with the Australians, they dined in their boats. Now we have the odd scenario where the British sat in their boats eating and not sharing their food, while the Australians – notably the two elders – sat around a dwindling fire, talking. Suddenly out of the bush appeared a large group of men, each holding a green branch of a gum tree in one hand and a poised spear in the other. They were all decorated in red ochre. Behind them came the women who walked towards the fire. After the warriors formed a phalanx, the smaller boat, carrying Hunter and Bradley, paddled to the beach. Under the supervision of the male elder, the women approached to accept their colourful baubles. Some of the Cammeragaleon refused to advance. Bradley gave the rest of his trinkets to the elder. Bradley described the women as ‘well featured, the voice a pleasing softness’. Some of them accepted their gift with smiles, some with their eyes averted. The meeting on this day greatly impressed him. It is the first lengthy encounter between the Old World and an even Older World.4 Hunter, for his part, called the Australians ‘abominably filthy’. But he also noted: Whenever we laid aside our arms – they always advanced unarmed, with spirit, and a degree of confidence scarcely to be expected. Both he and Bradley had little idea that the demeanour of the Australians was the result of the confidence borne from millennia of living in their country and never taking it for granted. Bradley quickly understood that the Australians lived in clan groups and had an attachment to their land. Blackburn believed that each cove contained

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‘separate families’.5 He was sort of right. Hunter would later note that each cove of the harbour had ‘one fixed resident’, believing that each clan had ownership of the cove which they occupied. He was almost right. What these naval officers all acknowledged was that they were intruding on the land of an established people. The large rock carvings or petroglyphs they saw and sketched were testimony to the Australians’ longevity here. What these officers never acknowledged was that they were invaders and, though their presence on country demanded welcome, most Australians were not happy about it. What Hunter and Bradley quickly realised during their survey of the harbour is that they were not just dealing with one people but a range of peoples with different attitudes towards them. The Australians saw the men in their boats as non-threatening and harmless so long as it was weapons down. They quickly understood the power and noise of their weapons. The British tried vainly to disguise the fact from the Australians that their muskets were useless when they had to be reloaded. Soon, it was the guns – the firesticks – and the people who possessed them that the Australians abhorred. The British had begun shooting birds from the sky, hauling huge numbers of fish in nets from their harbour and ripping up grasses, rushes, flowers, important medicinal plants, chopping down trees and desecrating the land. The Australians would see and smell the smoke from huge campfires across the harbour. In the following days, Bradley and Hunter continued their harbour survey on the north shore, encountering several Australians out in canoes and some sitting by a fire, but as the camp expanded at Warrane, the behaviour of the Australians seemed to change. When they visited Lane Cove, the Australians scattered with haste: We could not by any means get these people near us. The fright was so great that they went off without taking their fishing lines, spears or anything with them. Not all clans or all Australians welcomed the strangers. Later, Bradley and Hunter began charting the upper harbour when they were suddenly confronted by ‘an astonishing number of natives, all armed’. As a precaution, the surveyors spent the night on what they called Dawes Island – today’s Spectacle Island. It seems as if William Dawes might have been on this survey trip.

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Early the next day, this time with a marine guard, Bradley returned to the upper reaches of the harbour. They landed on a point of land close to the opposite shore where a group of men were diving for shellfish. David Blackburn observed that the Australians ‘dive for fish and oysters with great dexterity’.6 The British lit a fire and cooked their breakfast. They called across the water to the Australians and waved green tree branches as they had observed the Australians doing previously as a sign of amity. Soon seven Australians paddled across the harbour in two canoes and landed near their surveyors’ boats, again leaving their weapons behind. Bradley writes that we ‘left them our fire to dress their mussels which they went about as soon as our boats put off’. I’m sure the gesture was appreciated. The surveyors continued up the harbour, noticing it becoming more shoal, and arrived at a large shallow bay, far enough to see the termination of the harbour as far as navigable for ships. It would become Homebush Bay. Bradley writes that the initial survey of the harbour was completed ‘in as accurate a manner as time would admit of ’.7 Bradley commented: ‘we found fish plenty altho’ the harbour is full of sharks’. The modern Sydneysiders’ fear of the fish is nothing new. Tench described sharks ‘of an enormous size’. The harbour today still has an abundance of sharks, especially in the last few years since commercial fishing has been banned. Outside the Heads, the waters are dominated by white pointers. Just inside the Heads, tiger sharks roam but the bull shark proliferates throughout the harbour, along with the relatively harmless wobbegongs. Sharks, as a food source, were forbidden to the Australians. They ‘testify the utmost horror on seeing these terrible fish’. Bradley remarked on the Australians’ abhorrence of sharks: ‘I have seen the natives throw away – and often refuse them when offered’. We have no way of knowing how many sharks frequented the harbour waters before 1788. A shark was later caught on 23 March that measured at nearly 4 metres long and 2 metres round.8 Bradley and others also mention the great quantity of shellfish in the harbour, with ‘oysters very large’. Of all the resources plundered by the invaders, the vast hauls of fish trawled from the water over the next three years would have the biggest impact of the coastal people who lived around the harbour.

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CHAPTER 8

Phillip’s Commission

The day after the landing of the women and the night of the supposed orgy on 7 February, the members of the camp gathered to hear the reading of the Governor’s commission by Judge-Advocate Captain David Collins. The convicts were huddled to one side. The marines were all under arms and received Phillip with flying colours and music. Three loud volleys were fired before Collins spoke. The camp heard for the first time Phillip’s powers to administer oaths, pardon offenders, appoint constables and other officers and convene a criminal court. Ralph Clark ‘never heard of any one single person having so great a power invested in him’.1 His instructions concerning the Australians were precise: ‘You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections’. Here lies the major dichotomy: most of the British did wish to live amiably with the Australians, but they could not see that they themselves were invaders. The edict concerning the Australians was ‘to cultivate an acquaintance with them’. But this would be difficult when they were rarely seen. What were seen, in these early days, were their spears, shields, bark containers, fishing gear and canoes, which they simply left on the ground in full expectation that they would be there later when they returned. Phillip would write that the Australians were – among themselves perfectly honest – [they] often leave their spears – upon the beach in full confidence of finding them untouched. These seemingly abandoned articles were irresistible to the convicts and sailors, who would pilfer them to trade with sailors to sell back in England. This naturally

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outraged the Australians, who relied on their spears, canoes and fishing gear for their livelihood. Phillip warned that if anyone ‘shall wantonly destroy them’ or interfere ‘in the exercise of their several occupations’, this would result in ‘such offenders to be brought to punishment’. He also declared it forbidden to raise arms against the Australians except in times of potential danger.2 But this would not stop the thieving or probably the killing. Phillip’s desire of conciliating their affections was genuine. He believed it was only a matter of time before the Australians would begin to recognise the benefits of the material things the British possessed and the freedoms borne of British justice. But it is hard to know if his compassionate attitude towards the Australians was adhered to by all convicts and marines. Sydney, it must be remembered, was a gaol without bars. The people of the camp roamed the bush on a regular basis. Game hunters, like Henry Hacking and John McIntyre, were daily engaged in shooting at whatever they could find to feed the camp. As Worgan commented: ‘Our gentleman [Hacking] sometimes goes out for a whole day’ and yet did not manage to shoot down a single bird. It is not hard to conceive that an indiscriminate murder or wounding of an Australian here and there could easily be concealed. Tench related a story where one of Phillip’s game-killers, ‘a surly fellow’ as he described John McIntyre, was out in the bush trying to shoot something for the Governor’s table when some Australians – for amusement, harassment or revenge – allowed one of their dingoes to harass him by constantly snapping at his heels. McIntyre kept walking, the dog attacking his ankles. After a short time, McIntyre quietly turned his gun on the dingo and summarily shot it dead. The Australians quickly scattered.3 To them, McIntyre would become evil incarnate. McIntyre was a convict with special privileges. But he was not the only one, as those who had access to a gun freely wandered the bush in search of game. George Worgan described one day out with a shooting party when they came upon two Australians. By this time, the locals well knew the power of the strangers’ firesticks. At the moment Worgan took aim at a particular bird, one of the Australians leapt forward and covered the muzzle of the rifle with his hand, yelling in a remonstrative manner. Worgan lowered his gun and attempted to laugh off his offence. They both laughed together. The bird’s significance or

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insignificance to the Australian is not known, but it was a brave move on his part. Meanwhile on 7 February, Phillip continued his address to the members of his camp. After another three volleys from the marines, he addressed the convicts – ‘harangued’, Bowes thought. Over half of the convict population – over 400 – had wandered into the bush beyond the designated limits of the camp in the first two weeks of settlement. He again reminded them of the boundaries of the camp but this did little. The convicts and soldiers would be constantly ranging about looking for plants to pick. While some convicts would later abscond, most would re-emerge from the bush half-starved. A few convicts disappeared. Others became more and more familiar with the landscape, especially to the south of the camp – the trees, the tracks and the creeks. Phillip then spoke plainly and forcibly to the convict population; whilst not exactly cockney to cockney, he nonetheless read them the riot act in a way all could understand. He warned them that those caught stealing even the most trifling article would incur severe punishment, including death by hanging. He told them that idleness would not be tolerated and if they did not work, they would not eat. He would give them Saturday afternoons off to allow them time to build their huts and tend their own gardens. He also warned the male convicts that they would be shot if they were found in the women’s camp and he encouraged couples to marry. He knew that he did not have the most motivated workforce. He also knew that he would garner little assistance from a stubborn and irascible Major Ross. The reading of Phillip’s commission and the Governor’s speeches was followed by a small supper for officers and officials only, despite the fact that the mutton prepared the previous day for the feast had already begun to putrefy in the hot summer sun. Phillip’s address had some effect. On the following Sunday, five convict weddings were held, including those of Henry Kable and Susanna Holmes, and William Bryant and Mary Brand. Thirty-one-year-old Bryant would shortly be assigned the camp’s main fisher and was allowed to build a hut at Farm Cove for himself and his family. Many more marriages would take place between female convicts and men from every echelon of the tiny society.

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CHAPTER 9

The Visit

Two weeks passed since the First Fleet had arrived at Warrane. The serene cove and its little valley had been transformed into a waterlogged camp of tents on either side of the stream. The cove itself was cluttered by enormous ships that jostled to unload their cargoes, blocking any access by a nowie. While the Australians would view the camp from the ridges above, no one entered. They had seen the smoke from multiple fires signalling to them that this was a major camp; heard the gun and cannon fire; seen men wandering in the bush. With the summer rains, they saw the disorder with each ship’s transfer of cargo to land, their storage in makeshift shelters. They felt the British bootprint on the landscape. The Australians also surmised that there were more of them than their warrior numbers in all of the clans around the harbour. While they were at Botany Bay, the Australians ‘paid us frequent visits’, observed Watkin Tench, ‘but in a few days they were observed to be more shy of our company’. It was only William Bradley who had the privilege of meeting the locals. But this all changed on Saturday 9 February, when two Gadigal elders surprisingly appeared on the ridge above Phillip’s prefabricated residence: two men ‘pretty much advanced in life’. They stood on the ridge near the turnoff to the present-day Cahill Expressway, both carrying long spears, probably single barbed, and looked down on Warrane. Bowes and others approached them but they stopped short when the elders all but ignored them. Phillip was informed of their sudden appearance and he walked out his door and gallantly met the two visitors. He ‘presented one of them with an axe and bound some red bunting about their heads with some yellow tinfoil’. It is an image to conjure with: did these elders regard these ridiculous gifts with appreciation? It’s doubtful. Were they insulted by the pathetic gesture? Probably. Phillip proudly

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indicated his large house nearby, expecting the men to be impressed with its size. He demonstrated his desire of having them enter his humble adobe. The elders remained where they were. Phillip returned to his house unaccompanied. Eventually, the two old men walked a short distance and sat under a tree below Phillip’s house, on the ridge above the cove. One of them spent his time sharpening the top of his spear with an oyster shell, although others say he used his newly received hatchet. They both sat and gazed over the camp. And what did they see? William Bradley got out his watercolours weeks later and gives us a view of the camp a few weeks after this visit.1 It is painted with the perspective of a Navy man from the deck of a transport. Bradley was never really a part of the camp, being a seaman; he would have rarely spent a night on shore. He portrays the camp as a scattering of huts and tents on either side of the stream, amongst huge trees that dwarf the recent, man-made structures. Many tree stumps can be seen, but on either side of the cove. On the eastern side, much vegetation clearing has been done. Bradley reveals large enclosures for animals, a farm on the slope below Phillip’s temporary house. A flag flies on the eastern end of what is now Circular Quay. Just to the western side, the hospital is perched closer to the shore line above the small sandstone outcrop. Above the hospital and adjacent to its northern side, Bradley depicts clearings gouged out of the bush to accommodate the camp’s inhabitants. Near the hospital, the area used to disembark the myriad stores can also be seen clearly. Further down the western side of the cove, the huts and tents appear insignificant, dwarfed beneath the centuries-old trees. In Bradley’s watercolour, the mysterious bush seems to loom over the camp. It has a bleak, almost forlorn feel to it. This might be due to homesickness or maybe he missed his wife. Probably, the painting is a reflection of Bradley’s own natural disposition of mind. Around the same time, he produced a map of the cove and its soundings, with placements for the convict and marine encampments clearly outlined. It reveals the limited dimensions of the camp in those first few months. Bradley’s watercolour was completed in late March. At the time the elders appeared on the outskirts, they would have seen the camp up close. It was a slippery, clay-filled quagmire after two weeks of heavy rain. The elders would see for the first time what the Berewalgal had brought forth: tents, huts, sawpits, cesspits and men in redcoats who were obviously in charge. The Australians saw men yelling at other men, men pushing barrels, women burning oyster shells,

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women washing clothes by the stream, men tending huge fires, men marching, the noise of another falling hardwood, the sound of axes ringing in their ears. The elders saw a camp whose inhabitants were obsessed with individual wealth and power and scourged by class and privilege. They could easily recognise the social divide even in these early days of invasion, discerning the more powerful of them occupying the higher ground while most were relegated to the rocky western slopes. The social and political structures of the British were anathema to the Australians’ beliefs. They had little to offer the Australians. Each group thought the other uncivilised. While the old men were sitting under the tree, an African boy from one of the fleet’s ships approached them. They ‘appeared pleased to see him’. One of them opened the boy’s shirt and gently felt his skin. This tenderness and affection for the young seemed to be a common trait among the Australians, as most people. Tench’s meeting a week or so earlier on the beach with the young boy is an earlier example of this. One of the elders ‘by signs expressed a wish to have a lock of his hair’. This was done. Bowes wrote that he cut off some of the old men’s hair. Then one of the men took the hair and wrapped it ‘in a wreath of grass’ twisted around his spear. One wonders about the significance of this. The two Australians remained in the camp for at least an hour, quietly sitting under the tree. They seemed unimpressed by what they saw: vandalised trees, a violated stream; hundreds of strangers trampling the ground; pigs, sheep, turkeys and chickens digging up the earth. There were many theories among the British as to why the Australians did not come a-knocking in the early days of the invasion. Watkin Tench believed the reason was their ‘over-repeated endeavours to induce them to come among us’. He thought: They either fear or despise us too much to dare be anxious for a closer connection.2 But I think the continued silence from the Australians was simply because what they saw of the British – people who to them were immoral and violent – made absolutely no sense to them.

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C H A P T E R 10

British Justice

On Monday 11 February, the first criminal court in Australia was convened, not far from the sparkling stream so important to the fragile colony’s livelihood. This first bench of officers was formed to deal with the petty thefts and assaults not only among the convict population but among the ranks of the sailors and the military as well. Whatever their standing in the camp, all offenders were brought before a bench. The members of the court were appointed by Judge-Advocate David Collins and usually consisted of six officers – three from the Navy and three from Army ranks. The first person to face the court was not a convict but a marine named Thomas Hill (or James Tennyhill). He was convicted of stealing biscuits from a convict. He was sentenced to be confined in chains for one week on the rocky island close to the cove. This was originally Island No. 4 but was later called Pinchgut. It is now the location of Fort Denison. It was once Mattewanye and, before February 1788, was a favourite picnic spot for the Australians. Not anymore. Twenty years later, John Hunter as Governor would order the corpse of murderer Morgan to be hanged in chains on the island for three years. During February 1788 alone, the criminal court was convened nine times, resulting in an equal number of floggings amongst both marine and convict populations. Most of the convicts’ sentences were for theft of food. Most of the marine or seamen’s convictions were for interfering with or attempting to molest the female convicts, for drunkenness or supplying alcohol to convicts. Many members of the Marine Corps, notably James Campbell and Robert Ross, were appalled at the severity of the punishments dished out to the soldiers, believing that their corporal punishments should be more lenient. Bowes thought ‘the severity shown to the marines and lenity to the convicts has already excited great murmuring and discontent among the Corps’.1 68

On 27 February, the criminal court sat again to try four convicts charged with stealing food. Three were sentenced to be executed. Phillip needed to give a severe warning to the convict population. These were to be public hangings. On his orders, at five o’clock that evening, a party of marines and most of the convicts assembled at the place of execution: the tree situated between the men’s and women’s camp. This was at present-day Harrington Street near The Rocks. Today, the site is surrounded by luxury hotels. At a quarter past five, the men were marched to the spot where a large party of marines and most of the convict population gathered. This was to be a piece of theatre. At the last minute, Ross announced that two of the men were reprieved and would be banished to Mattewanye. But the third man, Thomas Barrett, was not. Barrett, formerly from the Charlotte, was first convicted at the age of twelve for stealing clothes. He was later involved in a mutiny, escaped and was then recaptured. On the voyage out, while in Rio, he and Private James Baker of the marines were caught passing counterfeit coins to local boatmen. Surgeon White was amazed at the skill of the workmanship. Baker got 200 lashes; Barrett got off relatively easily. Barrett was also a talented etcher, as his ‘Charlotte Medal’ on display at the National Maritime Museum demonstrates. Probably commissioned by White, the medal celebrated the safe arrival of the Charlotte on 20 January – just the month before. On the day of his execution, Barrett confessed his guilt and requested that he might speak to a convict friend. This was Robert Sidaway. Bowes wrote that the condemned man showed no signs of fear until he mounted the ladder ‘and then he turned very pale’.2 His hangman was another convict, who had previously been reprieved for stealing on the condition that he be the camp’s executioner. His name was James Freeman. He and William Sherman were accused of pilfering flour. Sherman denied everything. Freeman said he found the flour in the bush – not a very good excuse. Sherman was given 300 lashes. Freeman was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. It seems that either he did not know of his pardon until the last minute or he was a very good actor, for he was escorted to the hanging tree and told of his reprieve just as he was facing the rope. According to contemporary accounts, he hesitated before accepting his fate as a common hangman, but accept he did. From that moment on, the ironically named Freeman would have his social life in the little camp suddenly curtailed. Freeman didn’t have to wait long for his first gig. 69

With the noose around Thomas Barrett’s neck, Freeman was reluctant to do the deed. Henry Brewer had to intervene and it was not until Major Ross threatened to give the order to the marines to shoot him that Barrett was quickly dispatched. After the initial flurry of criminal court sittings in February, the number of times the court convened in March fell – although the thieving and whoring continued. Private John Easty wryly mentions in his diary on 10 March: ‘This day John Easty – tried by a court martial’. He was caught bringing a convict woman into his tent. Several days later, he ruefully records ‘this night, at 5 o’clock, Easty – received 150 lashes’.3 John had made the biggest mistake – he got caught. By March, the courts were dominated by more military matters. Major Robert Ross, in this short time, had managed to alienate most of the people around him including his own subordinates. He disapproved of his men acting on civil courts even though the procedures adhered to were mostly compatible with a court-martial. Phillip would eventually have to deal with Ross through gritted teeth. Collins wrote of his absolute hatred of the major while Clark believed him to be the most disagreeable commanding officer he ever knew. The marine detachment consisted of only eighteen officers: captains and lieutenants. Two of these were sick upon arrival and unable to perform any duties. Captain Marshall had become deranged and was kept in the hospital. On 18 March, a criminal court was convened and presided over by Watkin Tench and four other officers to determine the case of a soldier accused of striking another. Private William Dempsey had been accused and found guilty of striking an officer. The court decided that he would either publicly apologise for the assault or receive 100 lashes. The bench was trying to give the accused an option to easily resolve an issue that was fairly trivial. Major Ross believed alternate sentences such as these were unlawful. He was dissatisfied with the option given in the sentence, believing that the bench was wrong to impose two sentences for the one crime. He demanded Tench and his cohorts alter their judgment. When they refused to do so, Ross court-martialled all five officers and informed Phillip. With Tench and four lieutenants now court-martialled, the proper administration of the camp was in jeopardy. Phillip wrote to Ross, refusing his request for a general court-martial as there was insufficient evidence. He ordered all five officers back to duty. However, they would be technically under arrest for the rest of their time in New South Wales. Major Ross’ attempt to impose the 70

camp to martial law had failed. Interestingly, Tench never mentions in any of his writings his troubles with the commanding officer. Young Worgan, never really a part of the camp, tersely sums up the state of British justice in the camp in April 1788: We have had a few trials and plenty of flogging, but I believe the Devil’s in them, and can’t be flogged out.4 In fact, most convicts were occupied with constructing decent housing for themselves and developing relationships they could rely on. Most of the men were organised into gangs that worked five and a half days. Collins and others like Tench would more than once contend that the convicts ‘conducted themselves with more propriety than could have been expected from people of their description’.5 It was faint praise. They were, after all, the criminal class. But Phillip was also concerned about other problems amongst the felony that might disturb the harmony of the camp. It was beyond Phillip or anybody else to deny the men – sailor, marine and convict – or the women the need for sex and the desire to bond. Unfortunately, the increase in cases of venereal disease skyrocketed. Most of the men blamed it on the poxy sluts off the transports. More likely, the sailors and marines were equally culpable. At the end of April, Phillip decreed measures to combat the scourge, ordering that any convict having and concealing this disorder should receive corporal punishment [that is, a good flogging] and be put on a short allowance of provisions for six months. But even festering genital sores couldn’t stop the pilfering from the public stores. Phillip then resolved to drastic measures: Condemnation of any one for robbing the huts or stores should be immediately followed by their execution. He was true to his word. On 2 May, the court convened to decide on the fate of eighteen-year-old John Bennett, accused of stealing bread and sugar from the tent occupied by former members of the Charlotte. It was a petty crime, but Easty reported that the man taken ‘to the place of execution and was hanged immediately’.6 Another job for James Freeman. 71

C H A P T E R 11

Evites and Elders

In the early morning of 15 February, John Hunter and Will Bradley took Phillip on a tour of the harbour; their initial survey was complete. Just three weeks before, the brief was to determine the depth and extent of the harbour as far as large ships were concerned. Phillip inspected the harbour that, on the King’s behalf, he had invaded. It was agricultural land that he was wanting. At this stage, he may have considered moving the camp to a better location. He found lush, grass-covered hills with few trees but none better than Warrane. Moving up the harbour, Bradley put to shore on the same point he had visited before. As ten days earlier, the men alighted from their boats, lit a fire and cooked breakfast for themselves. Phillip was little impressed despite the picturesque scene before him. Bradley had already named the place Breakfast Point, but unlike the earlier occasion when he had shared his fire with a couple of Australians, no one this time was seen on the land or water. After their meal, Phillip continued his inspection, moving further up the harbour. Will Bradley could not understand the absence of Australians on the harbour whereas a fortnight before they had appeared in numbers – aloof but friendly. He was, of course, referring to the men. The event on 30 January when the women approached his boat was unusual. Bradley noted ‘we were some distance up the harbour before any of the natives were seen’. They saw an armed Australian watching them from a low point of land. The boats slid into a beach close by and the British stepped out. The man laid down his spear and began closely to examine the newcomers’ boat. The man was a serious nowie-maker. Phillip was impressed enough to give him a hatchet and a looking glass.1 They seemed surprised when the Australians instantly understood not only the effect and function of the mirror but also found it amusing, if not a

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bit silly. It was certainly better than the uninspiring baubles that most Australians got. The earliest maps named the place of the encounter as Looking Glass Point. The name remains. You would have to wonder if any of the Australian women brought that looking glass to their faces. Now, after several months occupying the harbour, the British began to obsess over the relative absence of women and children among the ‘savage’ men. They had only had glimpses of these exotic naked women. Tench affirmed that nothing of the behaviour of these people ‘puzzled us more, than that which relates to their women’. It only made the British more curious. Worgan had earlier described them as: Wood nymphs (as naked as Eve before she knew shame).2 Hunter and Bradley continued up the harbour until they reached the flats, where Phillip could easily see that no seafaring ship could proceed. They left today’s Homebush Bay and rowed back to Sydney Cove along unpopulated shores. The British soon accorded the Australian women the name of ‘Evites’. At most encounters, women and children were kept at a distance or hidden ‘with every symptom of jealous sensibility’.3 Daniel Southwell noted that the women ‘are seldom seen’ and he believed the Australian men had ‘dispatched [the women] away into the country’ when they had arrived.4 The British found this an honourable and chivalrous trait of the Australian men. However, it did not diminish their interest in making contact with the women; rather, it increased it. Bradley summed up the situation thus: To speak of the virtue of the ladies of this country, I believe no one in the colony can boast of having received favours. He believed the Australian men were: Very jealous of the women being among us – and that the women are kept at a distance – and a guard with several lances always ready for their protection.5 The next naval assignment for Will Bradley and John Hunter was to make accurate longitudinal observations of the magnificent harbour they had just

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explored. This project entailed regular trips to the South Head, close to the place where Phillip had camped just a month or so ago. This was Kutti, close to both Birrabirra – an important place for Australian women – on the opposite shore of Manly Cove – the first place named by Phillip for the proud and chivalric nature of the people. On their journeys there, despite a well-worn Australian track that would become Old South Head Road, Bradley and Hunter, being Navy men, would travel down the harbour by boat. Unlike on land, the Evites were seen in most inlets and coves, fishing in nowies, often accompanied by their children. But they scattered when Bradley’s longboat appeared. A little over a month after arriving and three weeks following the camp visit of the elders, Phillip with William Bradley and a longboat crew left the camp at daylight to examine Broken Bay to the north – the other thumbnail dint on Cook’s map of the coast. It was 2 March and they intended to be gone for a week. Slowly and quietly, the expansion of the Berewalgal would continue. With favourable early autumn winds, the boats moved down the harbour along its northern shore, avoiding the island some call Pinchgut. They were heading for Spring Cove below the North Head. This little inlet on the east side of Manly Cove would become the favoured rendez-vous point for departing and arriving ships for the next five years. Passing Bradley’s Head, the British were astounded to see large groups of women (they were probably Cammeragaleon) fishing in their nowies with their lines. As they approached, they heard the women singing loudly. They had been caught unawares and, sighting the longboat, the women darted away with great speed towards the beach. The British followed, calling out to them. As they approached the shore, they stayed in their boat and attempted to cajole the women to come forward to accept their gifts. After a while, curiosity overcame their reserve and some women slowly advanced. Now we have the odd scene of Australian women standing waist-deep in water while the intruders draped beads and strings around their necks. This odd meeting of two cultures had an impact. In the first map of Sydney Harbour, Manly is named ‘Eve’s Cove’. After this strange ritual, they landed and greeted the men. It was a friendly meeting until a misunderstanding took place. Phillip had bartered a straw hat for an Australian’s spear. It was a trade. When he returned to the boat, another

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Australian tried to grab the spear from him until the recipient of the hat tried to explain that the exchange was mutual. This still did not satisfy the outraged Australian, who probably viewed the swap as unequal – which it was. This tribal encounter, if anything, demonstrates that not all Australians had the same attitude towards these strange intruders. Many Australians were happy to be left to themselves. Phillip and his crew continued on to Broken Bay, rowing up the coast and rounding the southern point of the bay now known as Barrenjoey Head. They landed on what is now Pearl Beach around midday. One could not but be impressed with what they found. It was a massive sheet of water, despite the western shore being steep, rocky and covered with trees and shrubs. A man and three women in three canoes suddenly appeared and headed straight for the beach. Bradley recorded that they all acted ‘quite familiarly’. The following day, the British struck out into the northern branch of the bay but were hit with foul weather. Northwesterly gales followed by heavy rain, thunder and lightning swamped the boat. It would be this bad weather that would destroy a number of recently constructed convict hovels in Sydney and curtail labour back at the camp. The next day, again in heavy weather, the boat was met by a male elder and a young boy. In the most welcoming manner, he guided the strangers to the best landing place. This is today’s Resolute Beach. Once ashore, he brought them a stick of fire as a gift, a welcome to country. He also presented the intruders with fish. Later, the elder tried to entice the explorers to come out of the rain. He mimed a large space to seek shelter from the rain. Phillip was sceptical and declined the invitation. This was, he later wrote, ‘rather unfortunate, for it rained hard’. The elder stayed with the explorers until late into the night. The next day, after a restless night, they discovered the elder outside a large cave ‘found to be sufficiently large to have contained us all’. The ‘cave’ was a large sandstone outcrop. The elder was only trying to be generous and welcoming. The longboat continued on its survey accompanied by the elder and his boy in their nowie. In the next cove, the old man insisted on showing them a source of fresh water. They then spent the day exploring what Phillip would name Pittwater, describing it as ‘the finest piece of water I ever saw’.6 It is now dominated by luxury yachts and expensive real estate. They found women fishing in their nowies in

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almost every cove. In one, Bradley noticed what he nominated as the ‘handsomest woman I have seen amongst them’. She was also heavily pregnant. They would spend the next night on an island in a northern branch of the bay; they would call it Mullet Island for the bountiful catch of fish that served as a meal. Today, it is known as Dangar Island on the Hawkesbury River. After another night of torrential rain, the exploring party returned to the spot where they had encountered the elder days before. They met him, the boy and several other Australians. Gifts were made ‘with a dance and a song of joy’. Dancing with the Australians was mentioned a number of times by the First Fleet diarists. These occurrences are examples of a kind of a celebration, an enjoyment of a shared humanity. There was, at least for a few moments, no invading army and no native resistance. William Bradley has left us a pictorial record of their stay at Pittwater. Titled View in Broken Bay New South Wales March 1788, it depicts the Australians ‘dancing with strangers’. The view is from today’s Taylor’s Point. It’s a striking image: men in redcoats clearly arm in arm with the Australians. Looking more carefully, you can still feel a tension in the scene. The British cutter can be seen on the water, strategically placed; the ‘Evites’ in their nowies are safely floating some ways off. The figures ‘dancing’ seem staged. It was not dancing as the Australians understood. In one pair hand-in-hand, the soldier’s musket is slung over his shoulder. Bradley would have completed the picture at a later date after making sketches on the day. Although not drawn to scale, the contours of the Pittwater shore can be delineated clearly. But then something happened and concord gave way to confusion. Returning to Pittwater in anticipation of departing for Sydney the next day, the British met up again with the friendly elder and his young companion. In the course of the evening, the old man took up a spade from the British campsite and began to leave. Phillip confronted him, ‘pushed him away and gave him two or three slight slaps on the shoulder’. It wasn’t as if the British were short of such implements – Fishburn had arrived with 1,400 of them. The old man disappeared into the bush, returning with a band of warriors with spears poised to strike. Two muskets were fired and the Australians fled. ‘This circumstance is mentioned to show that they do not want personal courage, for several officers and men were then with me’, wrote Phillip.7 There are two versions of this event. Bradley’s is the most

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believable. In the other rendition, Phillip remains impassive in front of just the elder’s quivering spear, staring the old man down. As writer W.E.H. Stanner noted, it showed his mixture of ‘calm, courage and wrongheadedness that was to characterise most of his dealing with them’.8 The following morning, as the party were about to leave the bay and return to Port Jackson, the elder arrived back at their campsite ‘as if nothing had happened’. The Australian had understood that there had been a misunderstanding even if Phillip had not. The British had spurned the old man’s welcome: he had offered shelter and given them water and fish. They had taken the Australian’s bounty and had used the resources of the land of which he was a custodian. A spade seemed fair recompense. Misunderstandings abounded. Phillip was bartering with some Australians in one of their huts, exchanging a large fish for a hatchet and other gifts. As before, when he was walking back to the boat, one of the Australians ran up to him and snatched the fish out of his hand and ran back with it to his hut. As the Governor got into the boat, the man returned, yelling and holding the fish. The man had assumed that he had taken the fish without giving anything in return. He had been disabused of this idea and was returning the fish to Phillip, but he would not accept it. He walked back up the beach, returned to the huts, took back all his gifts and rowed away. Worgan writes ‘this conduct was a great matter of surprise and mortification to them’.9 The Australians could not understand Phillip’s behaviour. The expedition could hardly be called a success; no substantial discoveries to assist the fragile colony had been made. On his return trip to Sydney, Phillip and his party stopped at Camp Cove where he had spent his very first night on the harbour. Here, he found the Australians who had previously approached him with confidence, now they seemed to be shy and afraid of them. The exploration party was much fatigued and soaked from the constant downpours. During the previous night, Phillip had developed debilitating pains in his sides that would continue for most of his life.10 The Australians continued to be elusive. On 27 March, while Hunter and Bradley were taking their longitudinal measurements on South Head, they noticed two women in a nowie quietly fishing at Birrabirra. ‘They remained til near sunset but would not come to the ship’, Bradley recalled. The women were left alone to

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sing, socialise and feed their families. Three days later, the pair were preparing to make observations on Tarra, at a place they called Point Maskelyne. This was named by William Dawes after the Astronomer-Royal who was responsible for his appointment to New South Wales. By this time, Dawes had just erected his wattle and daub observatory and was preparing to construct a stone building to set up his equipment. As Bradley and Hunter arrived at the northern tip of the point, Bradley records that ‘on our boat going towards them, the Australians paddled to the shore and ran into the woods and came out again as soon as our boat left’. Bradley adds ‘we did not interrupt them again’.11 It is clear that in these early months of the invasion of their land and harbour, the Australians had adopted an attitude of avoidance and separation from the strangers, which only led to further encroachments and intrusion by the British. Phillip’s health did not deter his zeal for more exploration, despite his despair at finding no arable land at Broken Bay. Shortly after he arrived back, the food rations were cut. The crops planted shortly after their arrival had, for the most part, looked miserable. The soils around Warrane were obviously not suitable for mass cultivation. The water supply that they relied on was inadequate. Already, ships were journeying down the harbour to seek water from the springs in other coves. Phillip needed to find better land with available water. What land he had seen at Broken Bay was not promising, and the heavy rain during his trip had stopped him from venturing northwest of Mullet Island. So on 15 April, barely a month after returning from up north, Phillip, Collins, Surgeon White, lieutenants Ball and Johnston with a small contingent of soldiers landed at Manly Cove and began marching northwest. Finding the bush too thick and impenetrable, they shifted to the coast near Manly Beach and followed a well-worn path made over centuries by the Australians. This track is further evidence that the Indigenous people had lived on this coast for thousands of years and moreover that they didn’t move randomly through the bush but kept to traditional paths, thus keeping their environmental footprint on the land to the absolute minimum. Phillip and his party shortly came upon a large saltwater lagoon teeming with birdlife. Today it is known as Narrabeen Lakes. The British were amazed at the great number of black swans and other water fowl which, of course, they tried to shoot down with little success.

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Travelling further, they arrived at a freshwater creek fed by a swamp and beyond that they found themselves in ‘an immense wood, the trees of which were very high and large and a considerable distance apart, with little under or brush wood’. Lush grass gave it the appearance of a ‘meadow land’. It is interesting to note that, in less than two days, the travellers had encountered impenetrable bush followed by a ‘meadow land’. This is not the rugged, scraggy Australian bush of cultural memory. It is a clear illustration of the land management undertaken for millennia by the Australians with the use of fire. The next day, the party headed west, noting extraordinary rock carvings of animals and fish, but finding the land rocky and inhospitable. They eventually fell in with a northwestern branch of the harbour, probably around present-day Forestville or possibly the Pymble–Turramurra area. Following up that branch, they came upon a freshwater creek. Today, in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, you can follow the Governor Phillip Walk. After journeying westward for some 22 kilometres, they were provided with a grand view of the mountain chain to the west. Phillip was convinced that a large river would be found at the base of the ranges. This vista of the Blue Mountains was around present-day West Pennant Hills. The travellers returned to Warrane on 18 April. One day, George Worgan, on one of his jaunts down the harbour, was looking from the top of South Head when he saw ‘5 or 6 canoes’ with ‘8 to 10 of the damsels of the country, jabbering and fishing’. He called out to the Cammeragaleon and they responded. Worgan recorded that the women seemed amused by him. He threw down a handkerchief tied to a piece of wood. An Australian picked it up, looked at it and tossed it on the bottom of her nowie. Worgan thought there was ‘something singular in the conduct of these Evites’ for they appear as shy and timorous one moment then act like a ‘Covent Garden strumpet’ with ‘the airs of a tantalising coquet’ the next.12 These comments, made in a letter to his brother, typify the titillation that some of the intruders felt about the Australian women. But, on this day, the Australian women were confidently fishing off Birrabirra; they had no time for Worgan or his handkerchief. It would not occur to him that the women were laughing at, joking at and ridiculing him.

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C H A P T E R 12

Albion

Following the elders’ visit on 9 February, most of those in the newly formed camp at Sydney Cove had no further encounters with the Australians, who regarded the place as off-limits. The closest they would come to the strangers’ camp was when fishing in the harbour near Tarra. It was close enough; they didn’t need to see anymore. From the beginning of the camp’s existence, the desire for fresh food was always present. Without knowing when another ship carrying provisions would arrive, food and feeding the camp were serious issues. Today, the term used is food security. The appearance of kangaroos in the early months was always noteworthy. Apart from fish, this was one of the campers’ only sources of fresh food and great excitement surrounded the trapping and killing of them, not only for their meat but for the unique anatomy of the animals. Hunting them wasn’t easy. Phillip’s game killer John McIntyre, as well as good shots like Captain Shea of the marines, found it a challenge to trap them. Even Phillip’s greyhounds could rarely keep up with them. Of their meat, most greatly favoured it though some said it was not quite as good as venison. Others found it too lean, with not enough fat. These animals, to the British, were the strangest they had ever encountered. The word ‘kangaroo’ was unknown to the Sydney clans. Cook had bestowed the name at Cape York. These marsupials – kangaroos and wallabies – were called a variety of names, patyegarang among them. The British would soon come face to face with an emu but it would be decades before the platypus would amaze the world. Captain Shea brought freshly shot kangaroos into the camp on 8 February and again three days later. Were these the first kangaroos shot at Sydney Cove?

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Possibly, but by this time, numerous birds had been dispatched. David Blackburn, writing months later, recalled that birds were ‘frequently shot’, including ‘large black swans’. He also commented that the fish was ‘very good’.1 Some brave convicts absconded from the camp and ventured to Botany Bay, with the plan of escaping with the French. Like Shea and others authorised to roam the land beyond the camp, they naturally followed the Australian tracks that mainly followed the ridges to the west and south. Indeed, it was the only expedient route to the southern bay to avoid the wetlands. At the top of a ridge beyond the brickfields, the road forks to the south. Today’s King Street at Newtown and the Princes Highway to Tempe and the bay follow ancient Australian tracks. Leading from Warrane, they skirted Blackwattle Bay and the wetlands around today’s Victoria Park. From there, the path follows a southern ridge that finishes close to the present Sydney Park at St Peters. From there, the modern Princes Highway traces the ancient track to the shores of Botany Bay where the Cooks River and its tributaries end. Today, the view from the northern hill of Sydney Park reveals the tall residential towers of Waterloo, the light industrial and residential suburbs of Alexandria and Mascot. In the distance is the city’s international airport. In 1788, John Shea and others looked across an extensive area of natural beauty. From the freshwater lakes at Waterloo, what became known as Shea’s Creek meandered over a wide area, teeming with abundant birdlife including black swans and ducks, abundant fish, other wildlife and the occasional visits by thirsty kangaroos. Within half a century, Shea’s Creek would become an open sewer. By 1880, it became the site of the city’s main sewerage treatment plant. Even later, the watercourse was concreted to form a canal. The rest of it has now disappeared under new roadways. On 15 February 1788, mobs of kangaroos were seen again near the camp and at least one more roo was killed. This fresh food would be for the officers and the privileged few only, of course. By this time, the British had discovered Bulamaning, the Australians’ extensive kangaroo grounds to the south and west. They had observed that the Australians, working in groups, would chase the roos into a specially maintained wooded area, usually halfway down a slope where they would be trapped and surrounded. The fire-managed landscape is depicted by the Port Jackson Painter. In hunting, the Australians used tactics and planning; the British took pot shots.

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And not only kangaroos – emus were also good eating, as well as the myriad of birds and marsupials in the trees and on the ground. Over a two-kilometre radius from the cove, there would have been any number of possums of various kinds, kangaroo ‘rats’, bandicoots and even tree kangaroos. These populations would disappear from Sydney forever within months. On 15 February, Bowes recorded bizarrely: ‘an alegator 8 feet long has several times been seen near the camp’.2 It was probably a goanna. He saw another one on 3 March, the same day that the first emu was brought down by the busy ‘gamekeeper’, John McIntyre. It was described as ‘a remarkably large bird – as big as an ostrich’.3 Around the same day, a sailor from Lady Pen went missing in the bush. He was found three days later by McIntyre, naked and beaten. Weeks later, McIntyre himself disappeared and did not return for five days. He told the camp that he was carried off into the country by some Australians. No details of this incident are available. Its veracity could be called into dispute, but it is clear that, from the earliest days of the invasion, the Australians had a problem with this man. Despite the activities of the official gamekeepers and trigger-happy officers, the camp’s rations of beef and pork were reduced by a quarter on 13 March by the ever-careful Phillip. The weekly allocation was reduced to 2.4 kilograms of salted beef and 1.3 kilograms of salted pork. In these early months, the convicts trapped smaller prey around the camp to supplement their diets. They snared kangaroo rats and other nocturnal marsupials until there were few to be seen. The meat was described as ‘like mutton but much leaner’.4 Since the arrival of the fleet to the cove, sickness had increased among the convicts and marines, with cases of scurvy and deaths caused by dysentery. A number of convicts were transported old and infirm and of course arrived in the same condition. The longer sick lists were the result of the lack of fruit and vegetables on the voyage and the physical shock that some of the convicts experienced on disembarkation, after months in confinement. The fresh air and water of Sydney provided such a contrast, and eating fresh food again, including fish, brought on sudden gastrointestinal shock. The recent torrential rains would not have helped.

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Foraging in the bush for medicinal herbs and greens became a daily operation. Convicts were regularly sent on expeditions, picking flowers, leaves and whole plants to use as medicine or as a substitute for tea. Modern pharmacologists have found that many plants used by the Australians as medicine have a sound chemical basis. With very few fatal diseases among the Australians, due to their isolated clan societies, they were probably in better health than most eighteenthcentury Londoners or people living next to the ‘satanic mills’ of Manchester.5 Daniel Southwell from Sirius rattled off the cornucopia of pickings: ‘salutary herbs – balm – spinach – parsley – a sort of broad bean’.6 The British invaders were very fond of what they called ‘tea’ – Smilax glyciphylla – which had been used by the Australians for centuries as a medicinal herb. This valuable little plant was nearly wiped out in the Sydney region within two years of the invasion as it was thought to ward off scurvy.7 Other favourites were the native sarsaparilla (Hardenbergia violacea), pennyroyal (Mentha satureioides), tea trees and a native currant (Leptomeria acida). Nevertheless, scurvy and dysentery remained rife, as well as venereal disease among the convicts. The importance of native plants to the early well-being of the camp dwellers was vital. Through trial and error, or rather picking and choosing, the British had found what they thought were medicinal remedies for the sick. There is no doubt they found ascorbic leaves around the cove as well as those already mentioned. The scientific value of these native plants is only now beginning to be understood. If only the invaders had had the ability or inclination to communicate with the Australians, we could have understood the properties of these plants, some now probably extinct. By July, John White at his prefabricated hospital began to distil eucalyptus oil to treat his patients. He had noticed the therapeutic fumes coming from the fire of certain gum trees. Others believe that White took the credit from a fellow surgeon, Dennis Considen. The Australians had understood the properties of eucalyptus oil for centuries. Today the oil is still used in cough suppressants and throat lozenges throughout the world. The Europeans’ presence would be felt across the entire harbour – not least by the work of the ships’ seines, notably that of Sirius, whose nets were utilised on an almost daily basis. With just one boat, William Bryant’s fishing enterprises on the water to feed his convict brethren would have been extremely modest. The relations between the convicts and the Australians in these first few

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years are a mostly untold history. Their encounters with the Australians during their foraging expeditions were their only point of contact with them and would soon lead to confrontation. In many respects, the convicts banished to this shore had much in common with the locals. Firstly, although the majority of the convict population was literate, they like the Australians received most daily communication – news and ideas – from word of mouth. Both peoples were wary of strangers and had a capacity for self-preservation. Both enjoyed social occasions – singing, dancing and joking. The Australians’ staged fights with spears were just as violent and ritualistic as a bare-knuckle fight among the convicts. During the course of March, several of the convict foragers would stagger back to the camp badly bruised and beaten. One convict was ‘dangerously wounded by a spear.’ This was a warning by the Australians to stay away and leave their country alone. The encroachments would continue and the clashes would escalate while fishing crews hauled their seines almost daily. The Sirius crew hauled the seine at least thirteen times in February alone. If Australians were present, they would receive a share of the bounty as it was deemed only fair. These ‘rude children of nature’, wrote Worgan, ‘have a generosity about them, in offering you a share of their food’. They would expect the same in return, but it didn’t always happen. Worgan described the Australians to his brother back home as: Naked and not ashamed, and I may add, they are nasty and dirty and not ashamed.8 But not all of the invaders suffered ill-health from their diets. Daniel Southwell found that his diet of fish and herbal pickings agreed with him – ‘I impute the full establishment of my true health in part to it’.9 On 19 March, the Supply returned from Norfolk Island after depositing Gidley King and his little community there. Lieutenant Bird reported that it was with difficulty that they had landed on the island as the coast was extremely rugged, with the surf dangerously high and no natural harbour. Even today, ships can only safely unload cargo one kilometre out at sea onto smaller boats, whose load is then winched on to land. Whatever maritime industry that could develop on the island, exploiting the resources of the Norfolk pine or the New Zealand flax, would be extremely limited. On the voyage, Supply had sighted Lord Howe’s Island. Ball and others landed on this unexplored paradise and found a great

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number of turtles, which they killed in great numbers. Turtle would be a welcome change to a diet of salted pork and fish, at least for a while. In May, Supply would sail to Lord Howe’s Island to procure more turtle for the struggling settlement. Unfortunately, she came back empty. By late February, the convicts had been organised into work gangs. Phillip, with little assistance from the detachment of marines in the supervision of the convicts, established regular patterns of work. The three biggest work gangs were the farm workers under the supervision of Henry Dodd, the timber-getters organised by Charles Peat, and the Brickfield brickmakers headed by James Bloodsworth. In late February, it was discovered that the bark of the Casuarina glauca (she-oak) made very good shingles for roofing. By March, James Bloodsworth’s brickmaking enterprise was becoming increasingly successful, with hundreds of bricks being produced every day. Teams of convicts grappled with heavily laden carts up and down the steep rise of the hill into town.10 With the absence of lime to produce mortar, a substitute was found by crushing shells from middens found around the nearby bays and coves, notably today’s Farm Cove and Darling Harbour (then called Long Cove). These middens, piles of shells accumulated on the water’s edge, were thought by the Europeans to have been formed naturally. They are in fact leftovers from tens of thousands of meals over ten of thousands of years. They are evidence of long residence. They are also a testimony to the efforts of Eora women over the centuries, for it was the women who would have gathered the seafood for group consumption. Now, a female convict gang was given the task of collecting the shells and burning them for lime, then crushing them into powder. The drawing by Francis Fowkes, dated 16 April, shows the camp from a convict point of view. Prominent in the picture is Governor Phillip’s house. More importantly, it shows the locations of the convict work gangs. At Brickfield Hill, one gang is busy making bricks. The construction of Phillip’s new residence and other buildings was just under way. Several smaller gangs are employed at sawpits, while other teams are employed in chopping trees, clearing ground or tending the farm. The clearing party would spend their days grubbing out stumps and the twisted contortions of roots from centuries-old trees. Another group of convicts served as water carriers, trudging up and down a well-trodden Australian track. A small number of masons were hewing the local stone on the eastern shore of

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the cove, for the construction of Phillip’s and Major Ross’ residences on the main road south. On 10 March, six weeks after landing, the first storehouse, albeit made out of green timber with a thatched roof, was finished. The foundations for the stone and brick buildings for the Governor and Major Ross were under construction and Augustus Alt was supervising the building of a wharf being fixed below the Governor’s garden. The British were desperately trying to impose some semblance of order on to a landscape they knew little or nothing about. Nor did they have any real understanding of the evasive Australians and their relationship with the land, deeply imbued in their culture; nor of confronting a new society where the divide between the convict and soldier was blurred. After Phillip’s recent trips north and northwest of the camp, he began to understand the extent of the land around him. He had seen the blue-tinted mountains, the vast expanse and variety of country. To him, it was vast wilderness; for the Australians, it was home. For people like David Collins, the fear of being lost in the Australian bush would never leave. As the camp slowly took some sort of shape, Phillip began to think about a plan for the settlement. Towards the end of March, he made the first conservation announcement for Sydney. He gave an order: forbidding the cutting down of any trees within fifty feet [15 metres] of the stream to protect the water supply.11 This directive was originally adhered to and early watercolours of the cove by William Bradley clearly show two corridors of trees on each side of the stream. However, nothing would keep roaming pigs from breaking down flimsy fences and despoiling the precious water supply. These animals were not the responsibility of the convicts; the swine were owned by the men of money and position in the camp, their private property. In the next three years and beyond, pigs of all kinds would feature in many colonial court cases. As for Phillip’s conservation measure, by 1795, the green corridor around the little stream was completely gone. Hoping to dispel feelings of alienation and isolation, Phillip contemplated naming the settlement Albion – an ancient name for Britain. He envisaged the main street being 30 metres wide – an antipodean Pall Mall. He looked down

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from the slope below his house and saw a rough, clay-filled track disappearing into the bush towards Brickfield. A grand boulevard it wasn’t. From the day the first tent was pitched, the site of the future hospital, government house, convict tents and marine encampment had been planned. Every other dwelling was situated where it was most convenient. Even in these early days, The Rocks area was beginning to take on an atmosphere of its own. With the assistance of ‘the ingenious William Dawes’, the principal street was marked out.12 It began just to the west of the stream as it flowed into the cove and then followed it south towards the Brickfields. It was initially called Spring Row, as this was the road the water-carriers would use. After a number of names it eventually became George Street. It was already a welltrodden Australian footpath. According to Dawes’ map, the hospital on the western shore of the cove now boasted an oven and a bakehouse. The convicts had also dug two wells next to the hospital garden. It was along the track that the intruders collected water from pools that lay near today’s Martin Place and rolled casks down to the camp. Although Dawes’ map also delineates a street that crosses the stream leading up to Phillip’s residence and various other features, much of what Dawes sketched was only proposed constructions and locations. Little had yet been done. Prior to that, William Dawes had been appointed officer of artillery and engineers, and given charge of ordnance. He had been discharged from the Sirius and had begun his stone observatory on Tarra. Nearby, Henry Ball had a small hut and garden that he tendered when not sailing in the Supply. As the months went by, cliques began to develop in the camp: at the top was Phillip, with Collins as his secretary and John White; the Navy men, Hunter, Southwell, Bradley and Waterhouse; then the eclectic bunch of Dawes, Tench, Worgan and Henry Ball. Robert Ross’ capricious approach to leadership left his officers in constant disputation, resulting in one faction playing against another. Ross was not a happy man. He wrote to Phillip deploring the state of the camp and his decision to settle there. He recommended that he abandon the site immediately and look elsewhere for a better location. His hatred of the place would never diminish. Nevertheless, by April, he was occupying a house near the present-day southern corner of George Street and Gloucester Street and would soon have a home built of Sydney sandstone.

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An inventory of the camp in May recorded that it had seventy pigs, a couple of hundred chooks as well as ducks and geese. By now, these animals were caged or fenced in and carefully guarded against the inevitable thieving by their neighbours. Also, in May, the boat departures began. Up until this time, the ‘snug little cove’13 was dominated by up to eleven tall ships whose masts could be seen from the ridge above Cockle Bay. Lady Penrhyn sailed on 5 May. Her surgeon, Arthur Bowes, was happy to leave. He died not long after arriving home, aged thirtynine. Scarborough sailed the next day and Charlotte on 8 May, to complete their trading ventures in China before returning to England. The foundation stone of the Governor’s house was laid at the same time. Phillip’s present canvas residence was neither waterproof nor windproof. The new stone and brick building’s construction would take over a year and be comprised of 5,000 bricks brought out from England as well as thousands more fired in the kilns at Brickfield Hill. Being His Majesty’s birthday on the ‘Glorious June 4th’, Phillip decided to celebrate the first four months of occupation in this strange and beautiful land. He treated his officers and colleagues to a festive lunch, allowing every soldier an extra pint of porter and for the convicts ‘half a pint of rum a man, the women half that quantity’. He also released the four prisoners chained on Pinchgut weeks earlier. Phillip ‘received the compliments of the day and the officers dined with me’, he reported. The festivities began at midday and continued into the night. George Worgan described the veritable feast that day. It consisted of ‘mutton, pork, ducks, fowls, fish, kangaroo, salads, pies and preserved fruits’. There would have been more, but a sheep, marked for slaughter, was stolen the night before. Phillip offered the reward of a full emancipation for any information that might uncover the culprit. No one came forward. And to celebrate King George III’s birthday, they drank lots of grog. Grog was the term used for any watered-down spirits, usually rum. ‘These sent merrily round in bumpers’, remembered a guest.14 In the evening, massive bonfires were lit. What the Australians thought of all this celebration and noise can be rightly imagined. On this celebratory day, Phillip announced that the land from Botany Bay to Broken Bay and west to the mountains would be henceforth known as Cumberland County.

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On the following morning, amid many a hangover, officers awoke to a camp in turmoil. A massive thieving spree amongst the convicts had occurred during the previous night, and fights were breaking out amongst the convicts and privates. Much more distressingly, the colony’s only surviving cattle from the voyage – four cows, one bull and a bull calf – were gone. Whether through neglect or from being spooked from the noise of the celebrations, the livestock they had intended to breed from and service their expansions were missing from their enclosure at Farm Cove. They were presumed lost in the bush forever, to be hunting game for the Australians.15 The convict Edward Corbett, in charge of the herd, panicked and absconded from the camp before sunrise. The finger was immediately pointed at young Eddie as the rebellious convict who drove the cattle into the wilderness. Parties were sent out over the next few weeks in search Corbett and the missing stock but failed to find any sign of either. While the bonfires burned on the night of the ‘Glorious June 4th’, the convict stonemason Samuel Peyton was, according to Captain James Meredith, discovered in the marquee of Lieutenant James Furzer. It is reasonable to ask what they were both doing in this officer’s tent. Samuel had recently started excavating the rock face that rose up above Cattle Point. He was supervising crews in cutting and shaping the versatile sandstone of the region to form foundations for most of the houses of the elite in the camp. James Meredith was a vicious man. On the voyage out on Friendship, he revealed himself as a drunken sadist. On this night, they were both drunk. Meredith punched Peyton to unconsciousness with his fists. His head was severely battered. The assault resulted in Peyton spending two weeks in hospital recuperating before he was able to stand trial. A week later, on 22 June, Edward Corbett stumbled back into the camp and gave himself up. While he had been absent, ‘he frequently fell in with the natives’. ‘One of the natives gave him a fish, but they made signs for him to go away’.16 Phillip also stated that ‘he saw four of the natives who were dying and who made signs for food’.17 Both Corbett and Peyton were tried on the same day. Corbett denied letting loose the cattle. Peyton could not recall being near Lieutenant Furzer’s tent. Like most campers on the night, they were both intoxicated. Captain James Meredith was never charged with grievous assault. He merely sat there as the two convicts were sentenced to death. Both were executed on 25 June. Peyton was only a teenager. Ross had lost the stonemason who was

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constructing his residence – yet another reason for him to grumble. A convict friend of Peyton wrote a letter to his soon-to-be-grieving mother. Tench included it in his journal, adding: It affords a melancholy proof, that not the ignorant and untaught only have provoked the justice of their country to banish them to this remote region.18

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C H A P T E R 13

The Crescent

While Pittwater and the rest of Broken Bay was a magnificent waterway, it was of no immediate benefit to the half-starved colony. Phillip needed more arable land and fresh sources of water. He had seen the springs around the cove and the harbour dry up over summertime. Having travelled north and south, he decided that they had to go west. After all, his knowledge of the interior ceased at the flats of Homebush Bay. In late April, he travelled by boat with John White and others. White enjoyed the Australian bush and would accompany him on many journeys of exploration. The presence of the camp’s chief surgeon on many of Phillip’s travels, at times when his hospital was full of the sick and dying, could possibly have been the source of the tension between himself and his assistants, particularly William Balmain, who was already upset about White’s regular absences from the camp on his shooting parties. On this particular trip, White informs us that they had a delightful meal of freshly killed duck stuffed with slices of salt beef, which he regarded as delicious. Rowing up the harbour, passing the shoal waters of Homebush Bay that he had visited with Will Bradley the month before, Phillip and his party arrived at what is now the Duck River, near the suburb of Clyde. Remnants of the original bushland can be seen today in Watego Reserve. Travelling down the river, they realised that it was only a tributary and began to follow the other waterway. Arriving where the tide ceased to flow, they stopped by a large series of broad stones over which fresh water ran. A little further up, the river slowed as it negotiated a crescent-shaped bend in the river. The soil on either side of this river looked, to the British, far more suitable for cultivation than the barren, sandy soils around the camp. Here they found trees ‘immensely

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large and at a considerable distance from each other’, in which the cries of the parrots and lorikeets ‘of exquisite beauty’ were so loud that they ‘could scarcely hear each other speak’. These were a different type of parrot, unlike those on the harbour. This would be the location of the first inland settlement, originally named The Crescent, later Rose Hill – after Phillip’s patron in England. The beautiful birds that populated the area would become ‘rosehillers’ and eventually rosellas. Phillip, on this trip, again glimpsed the mountains from a hill he dubbed Belle Vue (Prospect Hill), just to the southwest of the river. The party also heard the lyrebird’s song for the first time, with White noting that it sounded like a human voice. On 14 May, a few weeks after Phillip’s return, George Worgan went up the harbour himself, which he wrote as having the appearance of a river. At the place of the future settlement, he noticed that the soil was better than around the cove and the land resembled a beautiful park. Again, this is evidence of the Australians having applied their judicious use of fire to create this landscape made perfect for kangaroos and kangaroo hunting. The local people, the Burramattagal, had less than six months before they would come face-to-face with the quiet invaders.

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C H A P T E R 14

Australian Justice

It wasn’t the lack of tolerance and understanding of Australian tribal society shown by the British that created the unequal relationship that continues to this day. It was the invaders’ complete disregard for their worth as a people at all. To the British, the Australians’ society was primitive and crude; filthy in appearance, its members seemed unimpressed with ‘civilised’ culture. But most notably, the British had nothing really to gain from these ‘savages’ apart from learning the best places to fish and what was good to eat in the bush. The British attitude to the Australians, their complete dismissal of any rights they may have with regard to their land, is now encapsulated in the term terra nullius. This legal term, however, was not used in reference to the British invasion of Aboriginal lands until the 1830s, when then Governor of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Brisbane, attempted to revoke the treaty that John Batman had ‘signed’ with the people of the Yarra valley. He would have created ‘Batmania’, but it was never allowed to happen. It was about a month after the British arrival that the Australians realised the strangers were not going to leave any time soon. Hunter and Bradley noticed that the Australians they had encountered earlier now behaved differently towards them. They had become evasive, elusive and more indifferent. About ten days after the two elders visited the camp – on the day after Phillip and Bradley’s encounter with the Wangal at Looking Glass Point and on the same day as Phillip moved into his new canvas home on 19 February – the Australians began to retaliate against the theft of their lands. Tench would later refer to it as ‘petty warfare’.1 It wasn’t petty but it was certainly a type of guerrilla warfare. The camp was growing slowly, metre by metre, with the British occupying harbour islands and convict foragers and government-sponsored game

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shooters encroaching on country. Meanwhile, of course, huge numbers of fish were being hauled up by any number of ships’ crews; mangrove sanctuaries were being disturbed; important flowering plants were being ripped from the ground. The theft of Australian spears, shields, fish-gigs and canoes by the convicts and sailors continued despite Phillip’s instructions forbidding the activity. Will Bradley recorded the beginning of the Australians’ retaliation. Two Australian men in canoes, he wrote, ‘went to our Garden Island’ – their Bianghow – and stole two iron shovels. It was a typical guerrilla tactic to disrupt and disable, but the warriors did not get off lightly. They escaped with the shovels ‘but not without their shins being well peppered with small shot’. Clark commented: ‘they are the greatest thiefs that ever lived’.2 It’s a bit rich; the irony is palpable. It did not occur to him that they themselves had just appropriated the Australians’ lands and food resources. Not only that, these invaders were stealing the very things they depended on for their livelihood. Why shouldn’t they run off with a couple of spades? At least it might stop them digging up the ground and destroying habitat. The behaviour of the Australians tended to flummox the British. Encountering them in the bush, they were often treated kindly. Sometimes they helped those lost in the bush to find their way back to the camp. Other times, they were hostile and threatening. Sometimes, they would injure and kill. The British could not understand the seemingly capricious nature of the locals. What the invaders didn’t realise and historians fail to this day to acknowledge, is that the British were not dealing with a homogenous group. Each of the clans would react and behave differently towards them. Phillip thought that the acts of violence were revenge for previous harm. He could have been right, but the majority of Australian acts of retaliation were focused on the herb-gatherers, the rushcutters and the musketfirers. It was they who might get the spear. The Australians were protecting their country from vandals. The Navy’s David Blackburn put it succinctly and accurately when he described the Australians as a ‘quiet inoffensive people’ but who display a ‘quick sense of an injury’. At this time, Collins despaired of the Australians ever reconciling to the British invasion. To him, the British were just ‘amusing ourselves with these children of ignorance’.3 He thought the two ‘races’ should be kept separate. Leaving was not an option. The Australians fought against the invaders on two fronts, on sea and on land, but they never actually entered the camp at Sydney Cove. Surgeon John White,

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always a keen exploiter of fish stocks to feed his patients, related an incident out fishing in the harbour, when ‘no sooner were the fish out of the water, than they began to lay hold of them, as if they had a right to them, or if they were their own’.4 Indeed. The Australians would have been aghast at the amount of fish taken by nets for a people that relied on fizz-gigs and fishing lines. To them, the fish were a part of country, just as the birds, grubs and flowers were part of the land, just as they themselves were part of the land. They did not own the fish but they did have a right to them by virtue of the fact that they had lived on the harbour for thousands of years. This conflict between the concepts of ‘right’ and ‘ownership’ is one of the defining misunderstandings between the British and Australians. What the British failed to understand was the Australians’ concept of reciprocity. The plunder of fish stocks was massive. On 30 April, Will Bradley recorded: At one haul of the seine we caught fish enough to serve the ship’s company, hospital, battalion, and a great part of the convicts.5 This must have been a huge catch for so late in the season. It is not hard to envisage the ecological balance of the harbour being compromised. After three months of net fishing in a waterway that had never experienced that technology, the invaders were seriously diminishing a valuable food source not only for themselves but for the custodians of the land they had usurped. Within a fortnight, Hunter noted that he ‘found the natives to decrease in their numbers considerably’.6 On 10 May, Bradley noted ‘the fish caught for several days past have been very trifling’. He attributed this to the cold weather. The next day, he ‘met with several of the natives who appeared to be very hungry’. A week later, he writes, ‘they seemed to be very badly off for food, not having any fish’.7 During March, April and May, there were several incidences of convicts going out on foraging expeditions into the bush – to ‘peaceably engage in picking of greens’, as Tench put it – or cutting rushes for thatching their huts or collecting aromatic/medicinal herbs, only to return carrying injuries inflicted by the Australians. Stones and spears were thrown and some convicts were bashed. These were warnings: don’t steal our precious resources without giving something in

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return. Pretty ribbons and the odd axe didn’t cut the mustard. Tench originally thought that the Australians attacked due to their ‘spirit of malignant levity’ but later viewed the aggression as a result of ‘unprincipled individuals’ from the camp.8 Then, on 22 May, the toleration of the Australians to British encroachments on country reached a breaking point. Two convicts, William Ayres and Peter Burn, were ordered to collect ‘greens’ for the hospital patients. They were attacked by a ‘party of the natives’. Bradley wrote that ‘one of the convicts (Ayres) escaped with a barbed spear’ in his back.9 Peter Burn’s body was never found. His clothes were found in the bush a week later. The spear was extracted and Ayres recovered. The murder by Australians of Peter Burn is the first recorded by the British. Worgan noted that the wounded man had given no offence. One cannot be sure. Then, a short time later, two convicts were sent down the southwest arm of the harbour to collect rushes for the roofing of convict huts. They arrived on Wangal country intending to stay overnight with tools, provisions and a tent. The next day, the tent was found but not the men. They were eventually found in the mangroves, both dead. One convict, William Okey, had three spears in his body and his head had been bashed in. The other, a youth named Davis, had only received a blow to the forehead. They were not stripped of their clothes, nor was their tent destroyed, but the tools were gone. The location of these murders was for many years erroneously thought to have been the area of the harbour known as Rushcutters Bay, but it was probably just west of Long Cove (Darling Harbour). The next day, Phillip and others visited the site of the murders. Calling at Major Ross’ farm on the present-day peninsula of East Balmain, close to the sight of the murders, he was informed that a convict (one of Ross’ convict workers) had killed an Australian a few days before. Again, he thought the attack was an act of revenge and clearly the motive for the killings, but it was probably only a contributing factor. Some suggested that the killings were made in retaliation for the destruction a canoe. The truth is that the Australians just had enough of the strangers stomping through fresh waters, stirring up the sediment, cutting rushes and disturbing the valuable marine habitats. On another occasion, two convicts on a foraging trip encountered a large group of Australians who pointed back to where they had come from, gesturing that they should go back to the camp. The two convicts ran off into the bush. One was speared and the other escaped by swimming across a small arm of the harbour. The Australians, instead of

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attacking him, laughed uproariously. Once across the harbour, another Australian would guide him home. The British were bamboozled by the seemingly contrary behaviour of the Australians – one minute they were spearing a defenceless convict, the next they were guiding another back to his ‘home’. Days after the night and fireworks of the ‘Glorious June 4th’, a large gathering of Australians – ‘300 and upwards all armed with spears’ – was seen outside the camp, probably near today’s Victoria Park. David Blackburn reckoned the large congregation formed because of the noise of the celebration at Sydney Cove the night before, regarding the event as a declaration of war.10 But no battle took place. A small group of British soldiers and convicts were travelling through the bush around the same time when a large group of armed Australians appeared out of the blue. In single file, they walked past the British, some themselves armed, without incident. Nevertheless, retaliations did continue with convicts being attacked while tending gardens or collecting plants, and fishing crews were harassed, notably members of Sirius. Another convict was speared on 27 July, and the following day, a sailor, being pursued by Australians, ‘presented a stick at them in manner of a musket’ in order to make his escape. But for the most part, Australians ‘seemed studiously to avoid us’.11 On 16 August, ‘a convict who was collecting sweet tea – met 14 natives about a mile from the camp’, who ‘beat him and made him strip’. On the next day, on a trip down the harbour with Phillip and Captain Hunter, Will Bradley reported that they met with ‘67 canoes, 94 men, 34 women and 9 children’. They landed amongst the crowd and ‘one party of them – took the shellfish off the fire and brought us to eat’.12 No violence here, just welcome. This was a large collection of families on a winter’s day when many Australians often travelled west to source the trees used in the manufacture of their canoes and the edible tubers and other plants. Days later, two well-organised raids were executed on the outskirts of the camp. Two canoes laden with men landed to Will Dawes’ observatory, where some of the colony’s goats were grazing. While the Australian in one canoe distracted a marine, the men in the other canoe expertly speared a goat, bundled it aboard and both canoes took off. They did it again a couple of weeks later. Were they committing these offences in retaliation or because they were hungry? Maybe it

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was just for the sheer fun of snatching these animals right in front of the noses of these ‘incompetent hunters’?13 On 22 August, young Daniel Southwell, as mate on Sirius, arrived at Manly Cove with Phillip on the Governor’s first leg in his overland expedition to Pittwater. Seventy or eighty Australians were assembled on the beach. He wrote perceptively: They affected a deal of good humour and unconcern; but ’tis believed they do not much like our coming amongst them. He was right. Whilst waiting for Phillip’s return from Broken Bay, he remained at Manly where he witnessed a mock combat or possibly a war game among the Australians. He recorded that ‘several of the men engaged in warm combat’ and then the women ‘came running down with every appearance of terror’. Then, ‘all at once’ they ‘desist from the attack, and talk together as though nothing at all had happened’. He was baffled by this behaviour. He conjectured that when the Australians have a falling-out, they resort to spear fights instead of ‘fistycuffs, as with us boxing Britons’. On second thoughts, he decided that the performance was their attempt to ‘impress us – of their native savage bravery’; or that it was ‘a stratagem to draw us on shore’.14 By October, Phillip’s frustration with the Australians was increasing. While mostly amiable and welcoming, they retained an aloofness that perplexed the British. Now, random but effective guerrilla tactics had injured and killed a number of them, mostly convicts, hampering his plans for quiet invasion through the natives’ acquiescence. On 24 October, ‘a party of natives, meeting a convict – threw several spears at him’. The Governor and some soldiers charged to the spot and fired at some Australians walking nearby: It having now become absolutely necessary to compel them to keep at a greater distance from the settlement.15

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C H A P T E R 15

Lonely Winter

In July, with Phillip’s expectation of an incoming ship from England any time soon, a flagstaff was erected on the western ridge above the camp that soon became known as Flagstaff Hill. But it would be almost two years before a ship from England appeared on the harbour. An observatory would be built there half a century later. On Monday 14 July, the Alexander, Prince of Wales, Friendship and Borrowdale, finally cleared of all cargo, sailed for China. Besides the flagship Sirius and the ever-reliable Supply, which would sail to Norfolk Island in three days, only the two store ships, Fishburn and Golden Grove, remained in the cove. Their holds were yet to be completely emptied. Will Bradley accompanied the four departing ships as they sailed down the harbour to South Head – ‘to see them off’, as he said. On his trip down the harbour, he noticed a man who: had many sores about him and was really a miserable object.1 He attributed it to the harsh winter weather and lack of food, not helped by the plunder of fish stocks by his countrymen over the last six months. This distressed man was a harbinger of things to come. In one of Phillip’s letters home to Nepean stashed on board one of the departing ships, he urged for more people with agricultural knowledge to be sent out to the settlement as well as supervisors to deal with the convict workforce. For the last six months, the camp’s work gangs were, with few exceptions, supervised by men of their ‘criminal class’. Phillip, although noting the settlement’s meagre achievements, warned that unless competent tradesmen and others skilled in managing a reluctant work force were provided, he feared that the colony ‘would

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remain for years a burden to the Government’. But it was the amount of food and general provisions left in his hardly adequate storehouses that worried him most. Early in July, he also wrote to Lord Sydney: Your Lordship will excuse my observing a second time that a regular supply of provisions from England will be absolutely necessary for four or five years. [However] if fifty farmers were sent out with their families, they would do more in one year – than a thousand convicts. He had ‘no doubt but that the country will hereafter prove a most valuable acquisition to Great Britain’, but he bemoaned the fact that the Australians still avoided the camp and blamed their wariness on their treatment by La Perouse, who, earlier in the year, was ‘under the disagreeable necessity of firing on them’. Phillip was barely cognisant of the impact of his usurpation of Warrane on the Australians in the last six months. By July, apart from the still partially built storehouses, the marine barracks were also still not completed ‘though from 70 to 100 convicts have been almost constantly employed’. Phillip hoped that it would be completed by the end of the month – but he wasn’t sure. He often despaired of his convict labourers, many of whom, he wrote, ‘have been brought up from their infancy in such indolence that they would starve if left to themselves’.2 He exaggerated and failed the mention the efforts of the convict workers. He glossed over the conditions of the convict encampments, diminishing the difficulties of the first six months, especially for the convicts. After the torrential rains in February and March, where many first dwellings were destroyed, some of the convicts were permitted to build again but most remained under canvas. Some were beginning to build new accommodations in between the hospital and Dawes’ place, and between a male convict camp and the military’s half-built barracks. Much activity was bent towards providing better accommodation for civic, military as well as the convict populations as the cooler weather approached. Boat crews were sent ashore to build huts for the female convicts and numerous trips up the northwest arm of the harbour were made to collect cabbage trees for hut construction.3 William Dawes’ observatory on Tarra was near completion.

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An anonymous female would write home in July from Sydney Cove telling of the ‘inconveniences – suffered for want of shelter, bedding etc. are not to be imagined by any stranger’.4 She did not know that more wild weather and hardships were to come. By the end of July, the camp began taking on a forlorn appearance. Tench would report that the ‘attention to the parade duty of the troops gradually diminished’. Now, every marine and convict was wielding an axe or a hoe.5 The need for fresh food became paramount as winter set in, when the fish stocks in the harbour would naturally diminish. This season especially so, after six months of plunder. Besides the odd kangaroo, the camp was without fresh food. Scurvy and dysentery cases in both convicts and marines and their families increased. The hospital was under strain. John White, in between distilling his magic oil, wrote of his great concern over the lack of medical supplies at his hospital. His sick list increasingly included marines and sailors as well as convicts. On 10 July, George Graves, boatswain of the Sirius, died and was buried at Dawes Point. His gravestone, the oldest in Australia, was found in 1871 being used as a paving stone somewhere in The Rocks. White also wrote to Major Ross, informing him of the considerable time and expense imposed in treating the wives and children of the marines, portraying the corps as a burden on the settlement. It is true that many of Ross’ men had contributed little to the colony apart from intimidating the convicts and everyone else. Then in late July, the storms came again. The camp was hit with extended downpours and strong winds that put a halt to most of the convict labour around the camp. During June, July and August, rain was recorded on most days. Moreover, during this period, there were at least five heavy weather events. With these rains, the mass felling of trees and the boots of hundreds of men trampling over the exposed soil, massive erosion and run-off occurred at the camp site, reducing some areas to clay-filled quagmires. The stream at Warrane became a raging torrent, sweeping away more wattle and daub huts of the convicts and marines. Ross’ partly built house, being constructed of stone, also partially collapsed to the ground – another cause of disgruntlement for him. The brick kiln collapsed as well, and a large amount of bricks were destroyed. Surveying the storm damage, Phillip had no idea that this would be the last decent rain the camp would get for eighteen months.

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Ross was understandably not sanguine about his first winter in Australia. He would write a number of letters in the final months of 1788, all in the same vein. The following are his litany of complaints to the Admiralty: The detachment is at this hour without any kind of place of defence to retire to in case of alarm. This is not quite true. Will Dawes, as master of ordnance, had just off-loaded several cannon from the ships, and plans to build a fort beside his observatory were well under way. Ross wrote: We still remain under canvas. This was true: most members of the marine detachment were still in tents, but Ross’ stone-built house was partially constructed. The country seems totally destitute of everything that can be an object for a commercial nation – This is a sweeping statement from a man who had hardly participated in any inland exploration. The quantity of provision served to the detachment is short of what it used to be – could I possibly have imagined that I was to be served with, for instance, no more butter than any of the convicts. It is obvious that Ross did not share Phillip’s more egalitarian views. No troops in the King’s Service ever had such severe duty – should their [the detachment’s] grog be stopped I dread the consequences. The only person who could stop the marines’ allocation of rum was Ross himself, but he was worried about the detachment’s ample supply of alcohol running out without a store ship from home.

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There were other ructions amongst other leaders of the camp. The birthday of the Prince of Wales was celebrated on 12 August by the cessation of all labour. Little work had been done for days anyway, due to rain. Ralph Clark recorded that Phillip ‘gave a dinner – and we seemed to enjoy ourselves much more than we did the 4th June’. So much so that, following an argument between Surgeon White and Surgeon Balmain, both ‘went out in the middle of the night to decide it with pistols’. They shot five rounds at each other but only Balmain received a slight flesh wound in the thigh. They were both probably drunk. Phillip broke up the impromptu duel, the first of many to take place in New South Wales over the next few decades.6 The animosity between White and Balmain would simmer for years. There were more disgruntled men. Robert Ross was obviously not happy with their situation but nor was one of only a handful of captains at his disposal, James Campbell. Writing to his patron Lord Ducie, Campbell (an ally of Ross) described Phillip as ‘selfish beyond measure’. The Governor was naturally tightfisted when it came to the allocation of tools to the marines. Campbell referred to the country as ‘vile’.7 There is much evidence to rightly apply the same term to Campbell’s character. Campbell’s standing in the camp and that of the marine detachment in general, at least among some of the convicts, was clearly demonstrated when Phillip was away exploring the Hawkesbury in late August. A marvellous scam was hatched back at the camp – a marvellous wind-up. A convict named James Daly – transported on Scarborough – announced that he had found a gold mine down the harbour and produced a rock to prove it. He told Ross, then in command, that he would not tell anyone of the location of the mine until he was pardoned and given a reward. When that scheme didn’t work, he agreed to show any officer where it was. Suitably convinced, Ross ordered a boat from Sirius, dispatching Daly and James Campbell to proceed to the location of the supposed gold mine. While Campbell was inspecting the supposed veins of gold, Daly sneaked off into the bush and made his way back to the camp, leaving Campbell stranded. When he arrived, he told Ross that Campbell had ordered him back to get another guard. Ross congratulated him and ordered him a meal. Eventually at 4 o’clock that afternoon, Campbell stumbled into the camp but Daly couldn’t be found. Later

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he was apprehended, receiving fifty lashes for his treatment of Captain Campbell. But then, Ross was duped again. Daly was given one more chance to reveal the site of the precious seam. He was told he would be shot if his report were found to be false. So, off they went again looking for the ‘el dorado’. On the way down the harbour, Daly finally confessed that there was no mine and he had manufactured the ore from brass, copper and a guinea coin. He was given another 100 lashes and made to wear the letter ‘R’ sewn on his jacket. James Daly pops up again in this history. The misery of the Europeans’ first winter was marked by disappointment at the end of the season when, on 26 August, Supply returned from Norfolk Island. The initial reports of the flax and pine for Navy purposes were not promising. However, the ship provided seedlings from the tree which would loom large in the Sydney landscape for decades – the Norfolk Island pine. During the voyage, Henry Ball had stopped off at Lord Howe’s Island in the hope of snaring some turtles, but unlike his previous visit he was unsuccessful this time. They we all gone. The most significant event of this first winter at the camp was the convening of the first civil court. Both Phillip and Collins were convinced that two convicts, Henry and Susannah Kable, who had married five months prior, had a valid complaint against the transport Alexander’s captain. This landmark case requires explanation. Henry Kable (or Cable), caught red-handed with half a household’s goods and chattels, was imprisoned in Norwich Castle when he met Susannah Holmes, also done for stealing. Eyes meet across a filth-laden cell. Three times they applied for permission to marry, only to be denied. Meanwhile, Susannah gave birth to Henry junior in prison. Months later, a desperate Henry watched as Susannah and her baby were turned over to John Simpson, who was charged with seeing them off on the Charlotte transport at Plymouth. However, her captain, Thomas Gilbert, refused to allow the young child aboard. Simpson returned to shore with baby Henry, took a coach to London and pleaded with Lord Sydney, Home Secretary. It worked. The child was returned to his mother and the father was ordered to sail with them. London newspapers picked up the story and a public subscription raised £20 for the young family. With the money, they bought a parcel of goods – non-perishable foods, clothing and household goods – to be entrusted to Richard Johnson until such time as they safely arrived in Botany Bay.

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So the child was reunited with Susannah on Charlotte, Henry sailed on Friendship and their parcel of goods on Alexander. The family arrived at Sydney Cove but their booty did not. In the first civil suit in Australia (Cable v Sinclair), Duncan Sinclair was sued for the sum of £15. The court found for the plaintiff.

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C H A P T E R 16

Spring

In the second week of September, ensconced in his newly built stone observatory, William Dawes began a weather journal that he would maintain right up to his sudden departure from the colony in 1791. Meanwhile Major Ross began another court-martial procedure, concerning a petty dispute between himself and Watkin Tench involving planks of wood. Tench had neglected to tell the sawpit workers about some minor change of procedure ordered by the major. Ross wrote again to the Admiralty requesting Tench’s removal from the settlement for ‘disobedience of orders, neglect of duty, and contempt to his commanding officer’. He complained: He acknowledges giving the order the men mention prior to my order of 31st August, and his having neglected to recall that order on my giving the order – taking care that all orders issued by the commanding officer shall be made known – especially explaining to those who such order may immediately concern. Nothing came of the charge but it illustrates the dysfunction amongst the officers in Sydney at this time. It would be enough to give any man a pain in the kidneys. Despite the ache in his side, Phillip began to take stock of his situation. No long-wished-for sail had arrived and if one didn’t appear soon, the camp would be in danger of starvation. On 30 September, the camp had only a year’s supply of food left – the rice was already exhausted. To compensate, he ordered an increase to the flour ration by an extra 450 grams per week. He was praying for a ship, but it would take another twenty months for one to arrive. These were the circumstances behind Phillip’s decision to send Hunter and Sirius to the Cape

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Colony for supplies. The ship would set sail at the beginning of October. Shortly before the adjustment in rations, Phillip made a momentous decision. Collins recorded the announcement of the first encroachment on to Darug land: His Excellency made known his intention of establishing a settlement – at the head of the harbour – he had named the Crescent.1 It was the place in the upper harbour that Phillip and his party had discovered in late April. By the end of September, it was clear that the crops planted in the blaze of summer at Farm Cove and on the slope leading down to the cove, in front his partially constructed stone and brick house, were an almost total failure. The corn was not looking too bad, but it was too late in the season and produced miserable cobs. The soil was sandy, barren and ill-prepared. There had been too much rain, too little rain and then the small marsupials and imported rats finished off most of the crop. What was salvaged was kept as seed for the next year. But the camp was growing, ‘if four rows of the most miserable huts you can possibly conceive of deserve that name’.2 Although the hospital was complete, medical supplies were running low as well as basic items needed for the whole camp, notably clothes and shoes. Some 933 men, women and children were being victualled by the government stores. By late September, fifty-two people had died since arrival. These people were buried on the western ridge, near today’s St Phillip’s Church. As spring arrived, labour resumed. September had been surprisingly mild, with the temperature only reaching 22 degrees on the harbour. A map of the camp dated October 1788 shows the little settlement’s progress. There are rows of tents along the main road, the hospital can be seen clearly, as well as convict huts at The Rocks. The plantings at Farm Cove are identified as ‘cornfields’. Mattewanye is identified as Convicts Island. Meanwhile, Robert Ross was at it again, instigating court-martial proceedings against another of his officers, Lieutenant Furzer, whom he had accused of neglect of duty, contempt, and disrespect to his commanding officer – the same crime of which Tench was accused. The validity of the court-martial, based on spurious evidence, was called into question and it came to nothing. Ross withdrew his complaint. Phillip had better things to do than deal with Ross’ inferiority complex.

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In November 1788, Ralph Clark wrote to his friend back on the Plymouth docks: I never was so sick of anything in my life as I am of this settlement.3 On a cooler than normal spring day, Tench wrote to a friend: ‘In Port Jackson all is quiet and stupid as could be wished’. Hunter had just set sail in the Sirius to the Cape of Good Hope to obtain supplies for the camp, and Golden Grove, with David Blackburn, departed for Norfolk Island with supplies for that settlement, carrying thirty-five convicts on a second transportation – fewer mouths to feed in Sydney. In the meantime, as the fish stocks returned in the harbour, the salt meat ration was again replaced by fish. On the same day as Sirius departed, a convict named Cooper Handley was found brutally murdered and mutilated in the bush. It was a familiar scenario: he was out picking ‘greens’ near Botany Bay when he had fallen behind the other forage-gatherers. The Australians were intensifying their attack, determined to convince the British that they were serious about the depredations on their country. This was reinforced when, over successive days following Handley’s burial on the road to Botany Bay, the body was repeatedly exhumed by the Australians as a solemn reminder to the British: stay away. However, convict and marine forays into the bush continued and so did the attacks. The Australians were fighting a battle of containment, trying to keep the invaders from taking any more country. Weeks later, a convict near the outer limits of the camp, constructing a fence to enclose non-existent livestock, managed to avoid several spears thrown at him. As usual, Phillip with an armed party converged on the spot. Again, he ordered men to fire upon some Australians. Whether any were hurt or killed is unknown, but it shows that his attitude towards the Australians was changing; the use of firearms had once been a last resort. Just months earlier, he was deploring the use of muskets by La Perouse at Botany Bay. During these early spring months, construction continued. Although the buildings for the battalion were not yet built, the cellar for the detachment’s precious grog was completed and secured ‘for the reception of the spirits that were on board the Fishburn’. At last, the final store ship was clear to sail. The first bridge over the stream was constructed. It was a simple affair made by rolling

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timbers together.4 Although it would soon collapse, it would give Bridge Street its name. November began with a series of hailstorms, the weather described as dark and gloomy. Nevertheless, on the second day of the month, Phillip with the able Henry Dodd, head surveyor Augustus Alt and William Dawes accompanied the small detachment of officers, marines and one hundred convicts to the place selected for the inland settlement at The Crescent. The convicts immediately began preparing the ground for cultivation, which would be relatively easy as the trees, though enormous, were few and far between. The land was relatively free from rocks and covered with luxuriant grass. Collins describes the area as: well clothed with trees and unobstructed by underwood.5 Located at a curve in the river just above the tidal mark around 25 kilometres from Sydney Cove, a small stockade or dirt redoubt would be constructed and a government house would be built on the nearby hill overlooking the farms. Phillip originally called the place The Crescent, but it would become known as Rose Hill. The settlement was well established within weeks; convict gangs felled huge trees and ground was dug out for planting. This was done without consultation, conference or consent of the Burramattagal, who had nurtured the land for millennia. It still is the place where fresh water mixes with the salt water of the harbour. It was the place where eels slithered up and down the shallows to spawn and feed their young (hence the nickname for the local rugby league team); the meeting place for clans for centuries; the frontier between the harbour tribes and the greater Darug nation. For the Burramattagal, the country was their paradise. Apart from the abundant fish and shellfish available in the upper waters of the harbour, the area between the Duck River and Parramatta River and beyond was dominated by a series of well-established campsites used in rotation. They had always been there and they abided until the Berewalgal arrived. Spring brought on rising temperatures and old tensions returned down at Sydney Cove. Fishing was resumed with diligence on the harbour, now openly resisted and harassed by the Australians. On 5 November, a fishing crew from Fishburn was driven away from a beach in the harbour by an angry group of Australians. This was becoming the norm. Soon, following the Australians’ lead, the British would start fishing mostly at night. 109

Two days later, a man was found beaten to death at the camp. But the murderer wasn’t an Australian. The incident would result in the first murder trial in the colony. It involved two Sydneysiders encountered before – Private James Baker of the marines and the convict, Mary Phillips. On Thursday evening, 6 November, Mary had met Baker while out and about. Evidence was given that she consented to Baker sleeping with her in her hut that night. He arrived at around nine o’clock that evening and they duly retired to bed. A short time later, another marine, Thomas Bulmore, more than slightly intoxicated, called Mary out and demanded to sleep with her. She called out to him that she was already taken for the night, but Bulmore would not take ‘no’ for an answer. He began to beat on her door, yelling. Baker got out of his cot, opened Mary’s door and told him to go away. He refused. Baker then put on his pants and followed him to a nearby clearing in the bush. In the fight that ensued between the two privates, Bulmore would leave the worse for wear. He staggered off into the early morning air, vowing vengeance. Before dawn, Bulmore reappeared outside Mary’s hut demanding a rematch with the private. Baker was not happy to be aroused at four o’clock in the morning, but neither was alone. In the ensuing melee that lasted only minutes, Bulmore was severely beaten by a group of privates: Baker, Luke Haynes, Richard Dukes and Richard Asky. These were tough men; they had been convict guards on the voyage out. At the end of the fight, they testified, all shook hands and parted. Later that day, Thomas Bulmore encountered Mary as he stumbled down the street and he slapped her several times. He then reported to the hospital where he died four days later. Privates Baker, Asky, Haynes and Dukes were eventually all acquitted of murder but they were charged with manslaughter. They were each sentenced to 200 lashes – a relatively lenient sentence. These soldiers were soon to face the courts again. On 10 November, the Golden Grove returned from Norfolk Island with more samples of the Norfolk Pine timber to be sent to the naval dockyards in London for examination, and on 19 November, she finally departed the cove. Now, after ten months, the snug little cove of Warrane was empty, save for little Supply. Sirius was somewhere in the Southern Ocean. The inhabitants of the camp must have felt even more isolated and lonely; the little settlement was a little more desolate.

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Reverend Richard Johnson and his wife Mary had spent the last ten months as deprived as most in the camp, due to poor rations and the weather. He had more than that to complain about. On 15 November, he wrote to a friend lamenting that he was ‘obliged to be a field preacher’ as no church had yet been built, adding that ‘most would rather see a tavern, a May house – a brothel’.6 He would eventually have a church built at his own expense. Unfortunately, it was burnt down. Even with the warmer spring weather, the return of the sick still showed over 160 men either under medical treatment or so old and feeble as to be unfit for work. Of those, nearly 20 per cent were marines. An atmosphere of misery began to set in at the camp as, daily, the expanses of sea brought no sail into sight. The animosities between Ross and Phillip, Ross and Collins, and Ross and his captains continued to simmer. The rising temperatures of the late Sydney spring frayed nerves and the thefts of food would not stop. A nameless female convict wrote on 14 November that ‘the distresses of the women – are past description as they are deprived of tea and other things they were indulged in – by the seamen’ on the passage out. She later wrote: In short, everyone is so taken up with their own misfortunes that they have no pity to bestow upon others.7 Also in November, the dour Major Ross contributed to the miserable mood of the camp by reliably informing Nepean back home that ‘in the whole world there is not a worse country than what we have yet seen of this’.8 Meanwhile, our old ‘gold finder’, James Daly, was back in the courts – you can’t keep a bad man down. He was caught red-handed stealing clothes from a number of fellow convicts. In his evidence, he blamed two convict women who he said had led him astray. Daly was executed and buried the next day. Theft of clothing due to its scarcity in the camp would dominate the courts in the year to come. By December, Phillip was now ensconced into his new, brick Government House and although a number of adjacent buildings were still to be completed, with various additions, it would serve as the residence of every Governor of New South Wales for the next six decades.

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On 14 December, a convict named Charles Wilson was found dead. A post-mortem was conducted. He had been assigned to the gang employed manufacturing shingles from the bark of the casuarina. He had been found dead early one morning, having expired some time before. When his body was opened, William Balmain reported that his stomach and bowels were completely empty. There were no marks of external injuries. It appeared that Wilson had been hoarding the food provided to him, then selling it, hoping to save enough to get a passage home to England. He believed that his term of transportation was over and he deserved to be free. Instead, he had starved himself to death. The taunting animosity that had existed for months between the Australians and the convicts at Brickfield Hill arrived at a point where, on a hot summer’s day – 18 December – the Australians made a stand. Blackwattle Creek had been badly damaged by their brickmaking activities and it had to cease. A large expanse of the ground around them had been clear-felled of trees and anything else combustible; areas of land had been gouged out to extract the clay; bird life had diminished and the water had been muddied by their encroachments. The brickmaking enterprise had been a focus of unrest and conflict between the invaders and the invaded since the beginning, and despite a small marine garrison lately stationed there, the brickmakers were only minimally supervised. On this day. There was not a soldier in sight. The Brickfield boys, as on most days, were hard at work forming moulds, chopping wood for fuel, digging clay and tending their kilns. In the afternoon, some fifty Australians (others say one hundred men) surrounded the unarmed convicts. Spears were thrown which fell short – these were warnings. The convicts then picked up the first available tool and formed a line, pointing their shovels and spades at the Australians as if they were guns. The Australians weren’t fooled but they disappeared back into the kangaroo grounds, nevertheless. This confrontation seems to have been the first large, co-ordinated attack on the part of the Australians. All other attacks were opportunistic or had been perpetrated by small guerrilla bands. Relations between black and white had obviously deteriorated. Phillip decided on a new tactic to win them over. The ambushes and random attacks had to stop; he was sick of looking at bushes with eyes. Phillip clearly went out of his way to solicit a friendship with the Australians according to His Majesty’s instructions in establishing his colony of felons.

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Although he needed to garner their affections, he had failed. The British assumed that the natives of New South Wales could not hold much of a resistance before they were allowed to plunder and rob them of their natural resources and appropriate their land. Phillip still hoped that brute force would not be necessary. For months, he had resisted taking to the gun. He had shown kindness and handed out colourful gifts; the Australians had stayed away, looking on at a distance as their seafood stocks were being depleted, their trees chopped down and their landscape ravaged. As the year was drawing to a close, Collins completed his month summary of all things Sydney Cove. He notes that fortifications were well underway at Dawes Point, and that a boathouse and landing place were being constructed on the east side of the cove. He does not mention that most of the marines and all of the convicts were still living in tents, cabbage tree huts or wattle and daub hovels. He concludes with a table listing all the casualties since leaving England: died on passage, 36; died since 26 January, 56; killed by Australians, 4; executed, 5; missing, 14. More marines and convicts had met their death by hanging than had been killed by Australians, let alone those who had perished since arrival. Just before the end of the year, on Christmas Eve, two Lady Pen transportees, Milly Levy and Elizabeth Fowles, were caught with a couple of marine corporals. They had agreed to sleep with them in return for a shirt each. It is obvious even at this stage that decent clothing was a rare commodity in the camp. And still not a ship in sight.

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C H A P T E R 17

Abduction

Phillip was still concerned by his lack of engagement with the people whose lands he continued to occupy. He wrote on 28 September: I am sorry to have been so long without knowing more of these people, but I am unwilling to use any force, and I hope this summer to persuade a family to live with us, unless they attempt to burn our crops, of which I am apprehensive, for they certainly are not pleased with our remaining amongst them, as they see we deprive them of fish, which is almost their only support. After almost a year, the British had gathered little knowledge of the Australians. He did not know how many lived in the region and had little knowledge of their language or customs. He made a fateful decision. He would kidnap some Australians, treat them with compassion and teach them English so they could learn the goodness of his intentions. He might also be able to find out more about the land that was still relatively unfamiliar to him. Food shortages always preoccupied his mind. Maybe he thought he could glean more information about food resources and how to feed his charges. Today, the abduction of an Australian may seem extreme but it was not uncommon in the history of imperialism. So, on 30 December, Phillip ordered Lieutenant Henry Ball of the Supply and Lieutenant George Johnston of the marines to travel down the harbour and ‘to seize and carry off some of the natives’. Two armed boats duly rowed to Manly Cove. Ball and Johnston struck up some cordial exchanges with the people there, using ‘courteous behaviour’ Tench called it. They then enticed them to come closer to the boat, offering gifts. It worked. Two men were grabbed and pulled

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towards the boats. One Australian fought off his attackers, dragging them into deep water and in the wild surf made his escape. The other was secured with a rope around his neck, dragged to the boat and thrown in as the Australians on the beach screamed in anger, fear and outrage. They threw spears, stones, clubs and ‘whatever else presented itself at the boats, nor did they retreat – until many muskets were fired over them’. The captors tied the poor, terrified man to the boat and, as they rowed back to the camp, the prisoner ‘set up the most piercing and lamentable cries of distress’. ‘His grief, however, soon diminished; he accepted and ate of some broiled fish which was given to him, and sullenly submitted to his destiny.’ Phillip later reported that the Australian was seized for the purpose of Learning their language and reconciling them to us – none of the natives having for months come near the settlement.1 Tench wrote, ‘I went with every other person to see him’. He described the Australian as a muscular man of some thirty years, proud and intelligent despite being in abject fright to which ‘the clamorous crowds who flocked around him did not contribute to lessen it’. He was an Australian warrior. As a captive, he would have felt terror as well as humiliation. Tench also described him as curious; his voice was soft and, as often commented on by the British about the Australians, he was an excellent mimic. Not willing to give any of his names, the British called this poor man Manly. Signs that he was an initiated man were evident: he was missing his front right tooth and had raised scars on his chest. He dined at a side table next to Phillip at Government House. He ate ‘heartily of fish and ducks’. He would drink nothing but water. Tench was astounded at how much the man could eat. This was not unique but typical of one who leads a nomadic lifestyle. You eat when you can. You cannot store food. He then had his first lesson in European table manners. When he wiped his greasy hands on his chair, he was given a towel which he used ‘with great cleanliness and decency’. That afternoon, on his first terrifying day in the camp, he was stripped, had his hair cut and beard shaved, was dunked in hot soapy water and scrubbed to within an inch of his life. Manly took great delight in picking off and eating the vermin on his shaven skull until ‘our expressing disgust and abhorrence he left it off’. He was dressed in a shirt, a woollen jacket and trousers, as Phillip believed

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the warm clothes would make the Australian sensitive to the cold and he would then adopt the habit of wearing clothes. He was also manacled to a convict. In the evening, he was taken to a brick outhouse built next to Phillip’s new residence. How he felt lying next to a strange-smelling stranger, we can only conjecture. The next morning, New Year’s Eve, Manly had a countenance of ‘sullenness and dejection’. You could hardly blame him. It was decided to take him on a tour of the camp so that he could witness first-hand the barbaric transformation that had taken place. As he was paraded around the settlement for everyone’s amusement, was he pointed out the hanging tree standing between the two groups of convict tents? Did he see the strange beasts and the fouling of the stream? Did he notice the desecration of the land? He was brought to Dawes’ beautiful spot on the western headland where the stone observatory had just been completed. The Australian looked sadly across the harbour and, seeing smoke from Australian fires on the north side, ‘sighed deeply two or three times, uttered the word gwee-un (fire)’.2 Happy New Year, Mr Manly.

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PART T WO

1789

C H A P T E R 18

Arabanoo

He laid awake sweating, next to the strange-smelling sleeping man. This was his second night in the convict-built brick shed close to Phillip’s house. Still shackled and in darkness, he listened to the snoring and the pre-dawn sounds of Warrane. As the sun rose, he heard the birds come alive in the cool morning air and listened to the growing activity around his kidnappers’ camp: drums, voices, footsteps. He was living a waking nightmare. All he has left with was his dignity and a sense of self, borne by millennia of law and culture. Arthur Phillip, of course, didn’t think of himself as a kidnapper any more than he would regard himself as an invader – it would not have entered his mind. However, he seemed eager to justify his action in ordering the abduction of the Australian man. He explained to Lord Sydney: It was absolutely necessary that we should attain their language, or teach them ours, that the means of redress may be pointed out to them, if they are injured, and to reconcile them by showing the many advantages they would enjoy by mixing with us.1 According to Phillip and the British Government, the Australians simply had to come to terms with the new order. They had to yield to British justice, customs and laws, and to the English language. Phillip believed that part of his charter was to facilitate a discourse with the original inhabitants of the land, presumably one Australian at a time, kidnapped and held against their will. He hoped that his captive would become an ambassador to his people, to promote the civilised living he would experience at the camp and begin to learn the mother tongue. His young captive would not be so amenable.

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They just called him ‘Manly’ as they had yet to elicit a name from him. On this, his second morning of captivity, he was led out of his prison by his convict ‘buddy’. There was much activity about – it was New Years’ Day. Phillip had invited the officers of the camp to a festive dinner (lunch). ‘Manly’ took in the smells and activity of the bustling scene: the bread being baked and the servants preparing, cleaning, washing and cooking. A precious pig had been slaughtered and was roasting above a fire. The guests would feast on roast pork and fish. At the feast, ‘Manly’ was seated on a chest near a window close to Phillip’s dining table. Tench gives a record of the Australian’s demeanour. After completing his meal, he attempted to throw his plate with the bones left behind out of the window, but was prevented from doing so by one of the dinner guests. Afterwards, he curled up on the chest and appeared to fall asleep. This was the normal practice among the Australians after their midday meal, though their mealtime would have been earlier in the day than Phillip’s celebratory feast on the hill above the camp. Later that afternoon, Phillip took his prisoner in a boat trip down the harbour. He wanted to show the Australians that his captive was unharmed and well. Maybe, he also thought that he could entice more of his kind to come to the camp. As they travelled down the harbour to the northern arm, ‘Manly’ named the headlands, bays and creeks of his home. There is no doubt that Dawes was on this journey, as well as Tench and probably Daniel Southwell, as all three recorded the names of landmarks supplied by this usually reticent Australian. It is from this woe-begotten man and others similarly that much of what we know of the language of the Sydney clans derives. As the British entered the northern arm of the harbour – as the boat approached the beach at Manly Cove, site of the kidnapping – the Australians immediately retreated into the bush. On hearing and seeing ‘Manly’ in the boat, they re-emerged. The Australians conversed with him from the shore. The poor man openly wept. Tench could easily understand ‘that his friends asked him why he did not jump overboard and re-join them’. ‘Manly’ merely pointed to the fetter on his ankle chained to the boat. He was often heard saying ‘Warrane’, telling his countrymen where he was being held captive, or so Tench thought. The Australians knew full well where he was being held. ‘Manly’ was saying much more than that.

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Phillip’s mission completed, ‘Manly’ was rowed back to his prison either sullen or quietly crying as the low rays of the sun struck the water. For a young warrior, the humiliation of being paraded by his victors before his own people must have been heartbreaking. Later that evening, according to Tench, his ‘vivacity and good humour continued’ and he ate heartily on kangaroo rat and fish, which he was allowed to cook for himself. A few days later, ‘Manly’ was taken down the harbour again but this time the Australians ‘kept aloof ’ and would neither approach the boat nor attempt to converse with him or anyone else. The British took the opportunity to shoot several birds from the sky, while men fishing from the rocks appeared to ignore them. However, nowies scattered and the beaches were emptied as soon as Phillip’s boat neared the beach. The British were baffled by this behaviour: one day, the Australians were cordial; the next, they were elusive and aloof. They were also surprised that as soldiers and gentlemen the Australians showed no added aggression towards them because of the capture of one of their countrymen, nor did they make any attempt to recapture him. Tench put the unwillingness of the Australians to resist their invasion down to ‘their dread of our firearms’ and the fear of the numbers of people in the camp with these weapons. It was not the entire reason. The Australians, by this time, had got the measure on the intruders’ muskets. They knew they had to be reloaded, which made the shooter vulnerable. They also knew by observation that the aim of their guns was not as accurate or deadly as their own spears when used with the skill that most Australian men possessed. However, the Australians knew that although an all-out assault on the camp from three sides might severely weaken the intruders’ hold on Warrane, it could well result in many deaths – something that they had never contemplated before. Local tribal warfare ended in few deaths, if any. It is doubtful that any Australian clan would countenance such an assault, which would leave the cove of Warrane uninhabitable to them. Instead, attacking members of the camp on uninvited excursions into their country and harassing the camp on its perimeters would become the Australians’ preferred way of dealing with the quiet invasion. It is also possible that the Australians whom Tench and the captive encountered on this second trip down the harbour to the place of his humiliation may not have known ‘Manly’, or alternatively, they realised that there was nothing they could

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do for him. Maybe they didn’t want to humiliate the warrior even further, or maybe they didn’t want to be the next ones to be shackled and taken away. ‘Manly’ found a ‘basket made of bark’ and placed some birds that the boat crew had shot ‘as a present to his old friends’. This ‘basket’ was the work of an Australian woman. The fact that it is described as such by Tench would make it a substantial receptacle, probably a work of art. That ‘Manly’ would leave some food, to share his bounty with an unknown Australian family, is touching. But, maybe he did know who owned this basket. Was she a family member? Clan member? Wife? After weeks of unsuccessful attempts at learning his name, the British eventually learned from the Australian that he was called Arabanoo. He provided just one of his names, as Australians had many identifiers. Arabanoo was a proud Gadigal warrior. Often reluctant to engage with his captors, he was not the playful, all-hands-together and dancing kind of native that Bradley might have encountered at Pittwater. He was also not ‘child-like’ or ‘innocent’, or ‘stupid’ or ‘savage’, as most of the invaders had assumed. Arabanoo was described by Tench as being neither ‘devious’ nor ‘frightening’. He was a quiet man, you might say pensive. He would have been understandably sullen. Although eager to teach his language, he was often silent; when he spoke, his voice was soft and deliberate. Despite the humiliation of his abduction, Arabanoo retained the inner strength of his culture. He was also known as an expert spear fisherman and oyster diver. Shortly after his capture, he was cursed by a bout of diarrhoea probably exacerbated by his sudden change of diet. Refusing all the invaders’ quack remedies, he dug up the root of a tree fern and began to chew on it. He was speedily well. Tench and Will Dawes would spend time with Arabanoo and he taught them some of his language and customs. It was their first real insight into Australian culture. The studious Dawes began filling his notebook with Sydney words and phrases. Tench wrote about the man. He was impressed by his gentleness and caring nature. His character was distinguished ‘by a portion of gravity and steadiness’. He was obviously fond of children and he would even often offer a portion of his meal to them. This is not surprising, as the main role of the warrior was to protect the women and children of his clan. It never occurred to

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the English though that Arabanoo could be a father. The act of giving/sharing was natural to Australian men. Nevertheless, although mostly even tempered, he was not to be crossed or roughly handled. Tench wrote of him as being ‘impatient of indignity and [he] allowed of no superiority on our part’. Insults ‘he would return with interest’. He was not to be pushed around. After seven weeks of captivity, it was decided that Arabanoo would accompany Phillip on a trip down the harbour to see the Supply off on its voyage to Norfolk Island. The plan was to sail down the harbour in the brig and to return in a boat. At the thought of boarding the ship, much larger that he had encountered, Arabanoo was reluctant to go and had to be forced on board. He was obviously terrified. When under sail, he was unshackled and sat on the deck and quietly waited for the opportunity to make his escape. As Supply neared the northern shore, Arabanoo suddenly jumped overboard and began swimming towards the shore where some Australians had gathered. Known for his ability in diving for oysters, he dove under the surface. Unfortunately, his newly acquired clothes hindered his progress in the water and a sullen and sodden Arabanoo was quickly picked up in a boat dispatched from the Supply. Back on board: He appeared neither afraid nor ashamed – but sat apart, melancholy and dispirited.2 It is easy to empathise with Arabanoo. With Supply heading for Norfolk Island, Warrane for the first time since the invasion was empty of any ships. The invaders would feel almost as isolated and vulnerable as the Australian, who once again was locked up with his convict ‘buddy’ in his brick cell.

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C H A P T E R 19

Troubled Village

The camp that was Arabanoo’s gaol was like nothing he had seen before. It had grown into a makeshift village around the slowly flowing stream. By now, the little tent city was transforming into sturdy buildings and a landscape of scattered wattle and daub huts mostly made from the cabbage tree. From a soldier’s point of view, Tench would reflect on the previous year before he got out from under canvas. He recommended: An encampment amidst the rocks and wilds of a new country, aggravated by the miseries of bad diet, and incessant toil, will find few admirers.1 The year 1788 had been a difficult one, but in eleven months Warrane had been radically altered from the river flowing through a thick wood as once described. As the first anniversary of the colony’s foundation approached, in late January, Phillip, accompanied by Arabanoo and his shackled ‘companion’, surveyed its ‘improvements’. It is inconceivable that the Gadigal man had not known and enjoyed the snug cove with its pretty stream before its desecration. Upon exiting Phillip’s new brick and stone house, they turned left and walked down the track that would become Bridge Street. He would gaze across the gardens that stretched off towards the harbour’s edge and beyond to Kirribilli on the opposite shore. There were now residences all along the southern side of the track, as the two unlikely companions strolled past David Collins’ nearly complete brick house and the convict camps and huts beyond. They then crossed the log bridge which forded the stream. Arabanoo noticed that recent good rains had fortified the fragile little rivulet. To their left, they would inspect the lumber yard and forge; to their right, the storehouses and jetty. Climbing to the top of

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the ridge, the barracks and soldiers’ camp were before them. They had reached the intersection between the two tracks. To their left, a track stretched for several kilometres to the south towards Brickfields. On either side of this High Road, there were little hovels and some better built huts occupied by convict supervisors, their gangs and families of marines and convicts. Before heading south to visit the brick kilns, they turned right to visit the medical precinct. The hospital, the first establishment erected in the colony, had greatly expanded from its first imported kit home, with extra tents, its own bakery, kitchens and gardens. The Brickfield boys were now working on a new dispensary. This gang had grown to over twenty men under the supervision of Samuel Wheeler and James Bloodsworth. These men performed all the tasks necessary to deliver bricks as quickly as possible. Close to the hospital gardens to the north and moving up the western ridge, dozens of wattle and daub huts squatted on the available ground on the rocky ridge. By January 1789, the area had already taken on different characteristics to the rest of the village. Phillip and Arabanoo enjoyed the sea breeze and they paid a call on William Dawes in his semi-isolated observatory and little battery. By now, Dawes and Arabanoo were well acquainted. Returning from the Brickfields, Phillip would have been pleased that the vigorous activity and understandable disorder of the first months of the camp’s inception had now settled into a languid and predictable pattern. On his excursion around the camp, Arabanoo would witness gangs of convicts clearing ground, digging the earth, removing tree stumps and valuable shrubs, building more pits and collecting huge piles of timber. He would see the convicts hunting small marsupials around the camp and teams of men and women baking bricks, burning shells from ancient middens, washing clothes, sawing wood and trawling the harbour for fish. He would see the convict game-killer John McIntyre set off into the bush, only to return with kangaroo, wallaby or emu. One can easily speculate on Arabanoo’s feelings about Warrane’s transformation. The Watling Collection under the authorship of the Port Jackson Painter contains a number of ink and watercolour depictions of the small marsupials that populated Warrane. Some were destined to extinction in short order, while others survived for decades. All have virtually now disappeared from the Sydney region. The original scientific descriptions of some of these animals were based on these drawings. Marsupials like the potoroo, the tiger cat (Dasyurus maculatus)

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that killed the invaders’ chickens, the white-footed tree rat (Conilurus albipes) that the Australians called gnarruck, and the long-nosed bandicoot would be hard to find today. The brown marsupial mouse (Antechinus stuartii) is gone, as well as the Eastern native cat (Dasyurus viverrinus) called mereagan. The baggaree was the swamp wallaby (Wallabia bicolor) and a sugar glider was called a dabbie. Most numerous of all the larger mammals around Sydney was the Eastern Grey (Macropus giganteus) – the patyegarang. What Arabanoo would not have known was that the village was less crowded than it had been. A hundred convicts were now stationed at Rose Hill and dozens have been sent off to Norfolk Island. Some 115 souls had died since the First Fleet had left England, mostly from natural causes. What Arabanoo would have seen was the growing number of families living together in homes. The little village was now the residence of dozens of children, their fathers both soldiers and felons. Arabanoo would see children walking about the camp and nursing mothers cradling their infants. Now, in this crazy microcosm of some London suburb, the clashes between marine and marine, convict and convict, and convict and marine began to increase. With little to do apart from sentry duty, some of the under-worked and often idle marine privates were troublesome or worse, as were a number of convicts. Many of the soldiers had come from similar backgrounds to many of the convicts, having sprung from the same milieu. Often there was a natural distrust of young men in red coats, who just a year or so before were walking the streets of their home neighbourhoods. Overwhelmingly, the conflicts between the different groups in the camp were the consequence of both the wide gap between the gender numbers that made the single females the targets of attention, and the increasing illegal barter between the soldiers and the convicts, notably involving clothing, food and grog. The courts became clogged with allegations of petty theft, fighting between convict women, and assaults on convict women by marine and convict alike, throughout the early months of 1789. Though some lived and worked with their assigned gangs, many convicts now lived in their own humble abodes with their partners. Many had attached vegetable gardens, which they tended in their leisure time. They had made a little home, something that in the old country only few could have achieved. Marines, convicts and even officers openly lived with their convict lovers amidst other

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marines and their wives who had sailed from England. A large number of couples married, but an even larger number of unions were not sanctified by the Reverend Johnson. Some men would soon be new fathers from a relationship with a convict – like Gidley King at Norfolk Island and his partner Ann Inett – although they already had a wife back in England. The large number of childbirths in 1789 could be regarded as remarkable. Like many of the soldiers, many women in the colony were not as hard working as they might have been back home. The marine wives kept to themselves. The women who were not attached to partners or employed by the administration would share digs. They would be employed mostly in laundering, cooking and sewing. A small number collected shells to grind and burn to use as lime for mortar for the bricklayers. Apart from work and the avoidance of it, one constant in convict lives was the threat of violence. For the administration, for Phillip and Collins, the question was: to flog or not to flog? The use of the whip on the bare back and legs of a miscreant was always the preferred punishment at Sydney Cove, regardless of gender or rank. These ranged from twenty-five lashes to 700 lashes. In the first three months of the year, there were over seventy convictions recorded against convicts, soldiers and sailors that resulted in public floggings. Sometimes, the punishments were administered outside the provision stores and at other times against a cart. For misdemeanours that exceeded fifty lashes, the punished would have half his or her sentence delivered on one day and would suffer incremental whippings in the days and weeks ahead, often staying in the interim in a hospital bed. For entertainment and as a deterrent, floggings were at times a moveable display. David Collins was a busy man in 1789 and not just due to the convicts. It is important to note from the outset that more soldiers than convicts were hanged by the neck in this year. He and his courts had to deal with convicts and marines from Sydney Cove as well as from the recently established Rose Hill. The year, in fact, began with the flogging of Ben Ingram, for not working hard enough on the land captured by the Burramattagal. He got fifty lashes – that would help him pull his weight and remind those at The Crescent that the reach of the government extended now 20 kilometres inland. The extension of British jurisprudence further inland is an indication of the quiet invasion. The day after Ingram was flogged, Collins and Augustus Alt sat as a magistrate court. Two Lady Pen women appeared before them. Ann Davis (alias Judith Jones) was accused of stealing a shirt from Mary Marshall. They were old rivals. There were 127

a number of witnesses, including Rebecca Holmes, formerly Davidson (also from Lady Pen), who had been married by Reverend Johnson almost a year ago. Mary Marshall was living with Robert Sidaway (the last person to speak to Thomas Barrett before the camp’s inaugural hanging the year before). As we shall discover, Mary and Robert had a large chest of clothes – some theatrical costumes. Sidaway was something of a thespian. Ann Davis testified and all the other witnesses, including one John Bazley, backed her up except for one person. Mary was then accused of obtaining the shirt through favours from a marine. The tables turned and, in the end, Davis was acquitted and both Mary Marshall and Rebecca Holmes were sentenced to receive fifty lashes each. They would be flogged twenty times on the east side of the cove, probably near the storehouse; twenty times on the west side, near the convict camp; and ten times at the government’s farm spreading down the slope towards the harbour. Marshall would not forget this indignity or Davis’ role in it. The statistics speak for themselves. Of the seventy convictions that resulted in corporal punishment between February and April, more than half were for neglect of duty or for absconding from a workplace, be it sawpit or sentry house. The miscreants were marines and male convicts, roughly in equal measure. Less than a quarter of the floggings were for the theft of food. The big rise in property theft was due to the scarcity of clothing and especially shoes in the camp. The footwear sent out was almost depleted and of such bad quality that within months at the cove they were in shreds. This was true for the marine detachment but more so for the convict population. Phillip, writing on 9 February to Gidley King at Norfolk Island, advised him that there were no more shoes spare to send to him. He also pointed out that his settlement only had a year’s worth of food left. He was expecting a supply ship any week. Sirius, sent to the Cape the previous year, was months away from arriving and as he cautiously reminded King, ‘you know how very uncertain supplies from England must be’. The first hanging of the year took place on 10 January as the thermometer reached 40 degrees for the first time since the camp’s existence. Thomas Sanderson was convicted of systematic burglaries over some weeks. Again, John Bazley gave evidence. After committing his first robbery, Sanderson had panicked and gone bush. He then proceeded to raid the camp at night. His conviction noted: ‘Let him be hanged by the neck’. This was done immediately but had little effect.2

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So the flogging continued. More than a quarter of the corporal punishments doled out in these first three months of 1789, more than those for thefts of food, were the result of convictions either for ‘insolence’ to a marine/convict overseer or for drunkenness – so much for having a sober camp. Punishments for drunkenness for both men and women in the camp doubled in 1789. All this alcohol came only from one source: the soldiers; the drinkers were mostly convict women. Half of the sentences laid down by the courts were given to convict women in the months till April. It is remarkable, the over-representation of women in the records of criminal proceedings at Sydney Cove in the second year of this quiet invasion. On any given day, there would have been about 140 able-bodied women in the settlement; there were 450 able-bodied men. Collins reports that there were 250 convicts employed in agriculture, half of them at Rose Hill. The rest were in work gangs. The presentations in court of women from Lady Pen, as either accused or witness or victim, are conspicuous throughout the year. On 16 January, Jamasin Allen got fifty lashes for receiving a shirt as a gift from a fellow convict. Three days later, another convict received 100 lashes for assaulting Lady Pen transportee Catherine Smith. The next day, Milly Levy, who with Ann Fowles was caught weeks before in bed with two corporals on Christmas Eve, was dragged before Collins’ bench again, accused of theft of a white linen shirt. Amelia Levy was a seventeenyear-old illiterate Jewish cockney woman who shared a tent with other single young women. She swore the evidence she gave in court proceedings on a copy of the Old Testament; acknowledging depositions, Milly signed with her mark. She had been apprehended this time by the ubiquitous John Bazley. He would be a familiar face in court throughout this year and the next. Mary Marshall and Ann Ward gave evidence and Milly was sentenced to fifty lashes over three successive Saturdays. Milly’s friend Ann Fowles was living with John Ruglass in January. Towards the end of the month, Ruglass was arrested for brutally beating her and trying to kill her with a knife. The background to this domestic violence is not known but it might have had something to do with incident the previous Christmas with Miss Levy. He got 700 lashes – a severe penalty, to reflect Ruglass’ brutality towards his partner. The indefatigable Ann, just weeks later, had a confrontation with a marine sentry. She was sentenced to twenty-five lashes for telling the soldier where to go. Weeks later, her child was taken away from her. .

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In the beginning of February, William Bryant, the designated fisherman of the harbour to supplement convict rations, and his newly married bride Mary were turfed out of their hut at Farm Cove and sacked. He was convicted of selling fish on the side, engaging in the burgeoning black market around the camp. Bryant’s job was to supply fish for the colony without recompense. He was trading fish for the collection of tools and articles that he was gathering. In Sydney Cove in 1789, you could be flogged for other reasons. At the same time as William and Mary were being tossed out of their cabbage tree hut, Mary Phillips, who had come out on Prince of Wales, was arrested on the most bizarre charge. Collins’ bench sentenced her to twenty-five lashes for ‘baking flour over a fire with an iron spade.’ Mary, it may be remembered, was the woman who, the previous November, was the centre of an altercation between two men that caused one of them to be beaten to death.3 On 17 February, Supply sailed for Norfolk Island with supplies and twentyeight convicts – twenty-one males and six females. She also transported three children, including Elizabeth (Ann) Fowles’ daughter. Collins described her as ‘a woman of abandoned character’. Elizabeth was the convict whose head was shaven the previous June and who was made to wear a ‘thief ’ insignia. It had been decided that her child was to be taken from her ‘to save it from the ruin which would otherwise have been its inevitable lot’. She would remain in the camp feeling lonely and abandoned. Worse, her past would come back to haunt her. On 24 February, just when they thought it had been forgotten, the events of Christmas Eve last were finally dealt with in court when Milly Levy and poor Elizabeth Fowles fronted David Collins. They both escaped without punishment. Not so fortunate were the Lady Pen women Mary Turner (who had a child by marine John Turner) and Jamasin Allen (again), for stealing cabbages. They each got fifty lashes over two successive Saturdays. Two weeks later, Mary Marshall and Catherine Smith were charged with being in possession of a soldier’s property. Mary got another fifty lashes and Catherine received twenty-five. At the end of March, Ann Martin, who had been charged the previous August with drunkenness and forced to make pegs for a month, was sentenced by Collins to receive thirty lashes for ‘causing a disturbance’ – that is, being drunk.4 The punishments of these last three women were directly related to the behaviour of the soldiers who supplied the property over which they were convicted.

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CHAPTER 20

Ambush

Brickfield Hill, along with the western side of the cove, was always the most lawless part of the settlement. It was the frontier of the little town. While the criminal benches in Sydney Cove dealt with the mostly petty crime that was occurring there, away from the day-to-day workings of the camp, a little outpost had developed. The Brickfield boys had erected brick kilns, a number of huts, clay pits, work tents, and a marquee for cooking. They had made also a track leading to Blackwattle Creek. This precious wetland, comparable to the little creek at Warrane, began as a natural spring that seeped out of sandstone outcrops on land now occupied by the University of Sydney. It took the form of a freshwater swamp, shallow lake or large pond fringed with reeds. It was filled with wildlife of all kinds, mostly birds. Even kangaroos visited the western side of the water. Flowing down the slope, the creek then became a tidal estuary that ran into the harbour in the area now known as Wentworth Park in today’s Ultimo. From almost the beginning of this quiet invasion, within weeks of their arrival, the brickmakers were in constant competition with the Australians for access to the water from this important natural resource. More significantly for the Australians, the brickmakers had gouged huge holes in the landscape. They were sourcing the same soft, malleable, light-coloured clay that was important for their culture. Even by 1789, the area known today as Haymarket had already been irredeemably damaged by the scarring of the landscape caused by the brickmaking enterprise which was producing thousands of bricks every month. Although a small number of soldiers were stationed at Brickfields to guard the convicts, there was little or no military discipline there. The changes in military personnel that would occur throughout the year only isolated the brickmakers 131

further from the daily goings-on in the town (see the next chapter). There is no evidence that the brickmaking gangs actually resided overnight at the outpost a few kilometres out of town, but there is no evidence that they did not. The supposition is that the convicts were marched out of the camp every morning, returning in the evening. What is certain is that while they were at Brickfields, they were a law unto themselves. It was inevitable that the brickmakers and the Australians would clash. Their industry had covered the area with clay and muddied the waters of the creek. The Australians would have threatened the brickmakers with spears. The British would have done the same with their tools. It all came to a climax on 6 March. The circumstances that precipitated the events of the day are unknown. Tench believed the convicts wanted to ‘plunder them of their fishing-tackle and spears’. The convicts later told Phillip that they were attacked unprovoked by Australians while picking ‘sweet-tea’. These were poor alibis. In reality, it was an act of vigilantism. Sixteen of the convict brickmakers decided to organise an attack on the Australians to the south towards Botany Bay. They armed themselves with their work tools. Early on the morning of 6 March, the marauders skirted around Blackwattle Swamp, marched across the ridge and followed the path that would become the Princes Highway, towards Botany Bay. Men itching for a fight, brandishing shovels, spades and pikes, hoping to catch the heathens unawares. They were going to teach these people a lesson. The brickmakers’ resolve held until they were halfway to their destination. They realised that they were not alone. They glimpsed fleeting shadows darting amongst the trees. Suddenly, around a dozen Australians who had probably tracked them since they left Brickfield Hill surrounded the convicts on all sides. It was an ambush. The warriors stood with spears poised. Although they outnumbering them, the convicts panicked and fled in all directions. Spears were let loose. One convict was killed and seven of the sixteen were wounded, none seriously. These spears were not deadly barbed and the convicts were wounded in parts of the body that didn’t prove fatal. The Australians could have eliminated these vigilantes, but they did not. The survivors ran back to the camp and raised the alarm. A detachment of marines was immediately sent by Phillip to the battleground, but it was too late

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– the Australians had, of course, disappeared into the bush. The body of the slain man was carried back to Sydney Cove. For the Australians, it was a decisive victory using classic guerrilla tactics. It was they who taught the British a lesson. They had by this time come to understand that, without the invaders’ fire-sticks, the British were no match for the skills they employed in the use of their spears. They well knew the power of the British muskets by March 1789. From Kirribilli, they would observe the battery being constructed on Tarra. They would have seen and heard the ship’s mighty guns fired on celebrations such as the ‘Glorious June 4th’ the year before. The Australians had executed a lightning raid on an invading party of superior numbers. Nevertheless, they understood the dreadful casualties that would occur if they launched an all-out assault on the camp at Sydney Cove. It would devastate the warriors of the clans and desecrate the place they wanted to reclaim. But, for now, in March 1789, they had thwarted this potential attack and defended their land. The invaders had been humiliated. Phillip was extremely angry at the incursion by this gang of convicts. It was a clear breach of his written orders forbidding convicts from straying from the camp. Surgeon White looked at it differently. He noted that written orders had little effect as many of the convicts were illiterate. He believed that verbal orders given by the administration were regarded by some of the convict class as only temporary or merely for the moment. What can you expect from the convict class? Nevertheless, for Phillip, the action of the convicts in not only leaving the camp without permission but mounting an organised attack on the native population, undermined his efforts to develop a working relationship with the Australians. And, for heaven’s sake, he even had an Australian staying as a house guest! Punishment for the offenders was swift, as always. The next day, seven of the convicts who had participated in the raid were sentenced to be flogged with 150 lashes, and each was ordered to wear a leg iron for a year. This last punishment was probably never carried out in full. Collins reported that the convicts were: tied up in front of the provision store and punished (for example’s sake) in the presence of all the convicts. He also decided that Arabanoo should witness the floggings in order to see how abhorrent the actions of the marauders had been to the administration at the

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camp. Still shackled, the Australian was led to the area outside the storehouse on the eastern side of the cove. Before the lash was brought out, Tench wrote that Arabanoo ‘was made to comprehend the cause and the necessity of it’. How much he understood, we can only guess. What is certain was his reaction. As the punishment commenced, with most of the convict population in attendance, Arabanoo was horrified by what he saw: seven men receiving, in turn, multiple floggings would have been a gruesome sight. The Australian had never seen anything so brutal and sustained. Tench records that Arabanoo was visibly upset and displayed only ‘symptoms of disgust and terror’. The Australian could not look at the ghastly spectacle. A simple ritual spearing was preferable to this taste of British justice. Besides, had not these poor people suffered defeat already?1 Hadn’t the Australians won the skirmish? While the floggings were happening, two armed parties left the camp and marched south in order that, as Collins noted: The natives might see that their late act of violence would neither intimidate nor prevent us from moving beyond the settlement whenever occasion required.2 The intention and attitude of the invaders could not have been more explicit. In effect, David Collins was confirming that the Australians had no right of any ownership to their land, with blatant evidence of their long-term prior occupation apparently having been dismissed. Collins’ comments could not have been expressed more clearly: we are the invaders and we will go where we please and do what we want – quietly or not. There was no acknowledgement that the Australians on 6 March were merely defending their land against an armed attack from people who had no right to be there. Of course, the armed soldiers tramped to Botany Bay and back without encountering a single Australian. Following the dreadful spectacle of seven convicts being multiply flogged against the storehouse wall, which would have taken some time, Arabanoo was taken back to Government House where he would remain. Towards the end of March, Phillip allowed him some limited freedom. While inside, the restraints used on Arabanoo were removed and he could walk around unshackled. However, his misery would continue and would get considerably worse.

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C H A P T E R 21

Military Machinations

The dysfunction between Major Ross, his officers and the rest of the camp’s administrators would continue to be another pain in the side of Arthur Phillip throughout 1789. The year began with the death of Ross’ most senior marine captain and ended with Phillip pleading back home for his replacement. On 2 February 1789, Captain John Shea, who had come out on the Scarborough, died of consumption. He had been ill for some time. Living a little beyond the camp, he had established a small garden on the land now occupied by the Sydney Town Hall. Here, he could keep an eye of the Brickfield men down the track when he wasn’t out wandering in the bush himself. Extremely well liked, he had been one of the first to bring down a kangaroo back in February the year before. He would spend hours near the broad estuary of the creek to the southeast of the camp that would come to bear his name. Shea was buried with full military honours on his plot of land. Reverend Johnson and Arthur Phillip would consecrate the ground in which he was interred, three years later. It became Sydney’s first official burial ground and would function as such until the 1840s. As the head of the marines, Major Ross was responsible for finding a replacement. There were only three other marine captains living in the camp, so Shea had to be replaced. Ross had a number of subalterns from whom to choose. Instead, he deviously offered the position to David Collins, who was already a captain. But, as Ross was aware, Collins was also the camp’s judge-advocate and Phillip’s secretary. Collins, on accepting the offer, would have to relinquish these positions, so depriving Phillip of a civil administration and leading to a virtual military takeover of the colony. It would leave him effectively powerless. Additionally, it would no longer allow a convict like Henry Kable and his wife the chance of getting justice for wrongs inflicted by a non-convict. Ross had no

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suggestions about who might replace Collins as judge-advocate, and was offering the job to Collins behind Phillip’s back; the Governor first heard about it when informed by Collins. Indeed Phillip and Ross had not officially communicated in writing since August of the previous year. In any event, Collins refused the position and Phillip never confronted Ross about the matter. Ross ended up promoting James Meredith, Ralph Clark and George Johnston to various captaincies. All three were most pleased. It was during this time that Clark discontinued his journal. It would be silent for over a year. For Johnston, it was a significant promotion and the first of many. He and Esther Abrahams were about to start a family. Robert Ross also appointed his son, aged only nine, second lieutenant to replace Ralph Clark. To promote a mere boy to the rank of an officer could be seen as a contemptuous action. Phillip certainly saw it that way, as he explained to Evan Nepean: Some days afterwards he came to ask me if his giving his son a commission as a Second Lieutenant would meet with my approbation. As Major Ross had not even at that time mentioned his having offered the company to the JudgeAdvocate, or made any reference to me respecting the filling up of vacancies, I desired he would excuse me from giving any approbation to that appointment in particular. On 14 February, the magazine was completed on Dawes Point, the first step in building the fort to defend the settlement. At this stage it was merely a secure box filled with powder, built next to the cannons taken from Sirius – their barrels facing down the harbour. By now, a track from the flagstaff above the cove to the narrow point was blazed and in due course it became known as Fort Street – but that was much later. By the end of February 1789, convict gangs had completed the marine barracks comprising two long, brick buildings. It was a sterling effort on behalf of the convict brickmakers and bricklayers, with no assistance from the hundreds of mostly idle soldiers. Robert Ross’ marines had a lot of time on their hands, thanks to his decision to distance his detachment from the day-to-day running of the camp. In the early days before his promotion, Ralph Clark’s only duty was that of sentry, rostered just a few days of the week. It was the same for most officers,

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less so for the privates. It was clear that the marines at Sydney Cove were little or poorly supervised. So the exposure of an elaborate military scandal involving systemic thieving should not come as a surprise. Early on the morning of Wednesday 18 March, a key was found broken in the padlock of the main door to the public storehouse. The broken key was taken to the camp’s blacksmith, William Frazer, who immediately recognised it as belonging to Private Joseph Hunt of the marines. Hunt had brought the key to Frazer for alteration. The month before, Hunt had been sentenced to 700 lashes for leaving his post during sentry duty. It was a hefty punishment, but Hunt had form. He was quickly arrested and even more quickly he turned Crown’s evidence and grassed up everyone else involved in the conspiracy. Collins summarises the soldiers’ systematic thefts from the public stores: Having formed their party, seven in number, and sworn each other to secrecy and fidelity, they procured and altered keys to fit the different locks on the three doors of the provision store; and it was agreed, that whenever any one of the seven should be posted there as sentinel during the night, two or more of the gang, as they found it convenient, were to come – open a passage into the store, where they should remain shut up until they procured as much liquor or provisions as they could take off – If the patrols visited the store while they chanced to be within its walls, the door was found locked and secure.1 The discovery of the plot is similar to a scene from a film comedy. On the night before the broken key was found, Hunt had decided to plunder the public stores on his own, without his accomplices or their knowledge of his intentions. While he was standing at the door with the key in the lock, he heard a night patrolman approaching. He turned and panicked and, in his efforts to escape detection, he accidentally broke off the key in the lock. So, he turned King’s evidence and implicated everyone else involved in the conspiracy to save his neck. Six marines – ‘the flower of our battalion’, Tench would call them – were found guilty of systematically robbing from the public stores. It was estimated that the seven marines stole large quantities of salted pork, over 375 litres of spirits, 227 kilograms of flour, 3.5 kilograms of leaf tobacco, over 7 kilograms of butter and many other items. These depredations had been 137

going on for eight months, aided and abetted by a number of female convicts. The soldiers were portrayed by some as hopeless victims of these damned whores, but these were egregious breaches of trust on the part of the marines. During the course of the investigation, systematic thieving was also discovered at the recently established Rose Hill, but this had only been going on for three weeks. Luke Haines, Thomas Jones, James Baker, James Brown, Richard Asky and Richard Dukes were tried by a bench of their peers and all were executed on 27 March. These men had been involved in improper dealing with the convict women since their arrival. They were also involved in the brutal murder of Thomas Bulmore the year before. Joseph Hunt walked scot-free. The shocking case would not have pleased either Ross or Phillip, and the animosity between the two men continued to simmer. The executions of the six marines cut deeply with the corps and it needed a scapegoat. A month after these men were hanged, Captain Campbell – who was on the bench that sentenced them – demanded to know why Mary Turner (formerly Wickes), allegedly implicated in the crime, was not in custody. Campbell and Mary were old adversaries, having sailed together on Lady Pen. It is unknown what grievance Campbell had with her, but it must have been deep. He believed that Mary Turner had manipulated the marines to do her bidding. The seven men who had robbed the public stores were merely dupes. Collins replied to Campbell’s demands by saying there was insufficient evidence to charge her with anything. She had done nothing wrong. This response was not good enough for Campbell. One wonders if the hand of Robert Ross was behind it. Campbell responded haughtily: You have effectually precluded Captain Campbell from sitting as a member of any criminal court that it may be necessary to assemble here, and of which you are a part. Campbell would refuse to take part in any more criminal cases. As one of only a small number of officers in the camp, his decision would hamper the administration of justice. The argument over marine officers sitting on benches of criminal court cases would go on for months. It eventually came to a head when Ross tried to encourage all his officers to refuse the task. Finally, all but Campbell signed statements to assure Phillip and Collins that they looked upon it as their duty to serve the courts.

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With reluctance, he laid out the whole sorry saga to Lord Sydney in June, concluding: I can only inform your Lordship that those discontents, which have existed from the time this detachment landed, still continue.2 Robert Ross’ winter of discontent continued. On his little barren farm on the western side of Long Cove, he could see the flagstaff on the hill above the camp from a disgruntled distance. He was sensitive to even the hint of disrespect. On 22 August, Phillip travelled to Rose Hill to inspect the agricultural improvements there. Barely nine months old, the township was been laid out earlier with the help of Augustus Alt and William Dawes. The government farms at The Crescent were to be the saviour of the colony. Also, six months earlier, he had given James Ruse his parcel of land lower down the river. He needed to see his progress. These trips out of the camp to Rose Hill or the Hawkesbury and later Toongabbie were no joy-rides for Phillip, who had been suffering almost constantly from kidney pains for the past year. Yet, he kept his regular visits throughout the year. On this day in August, he left the cove early and would sleep the night on the dirt floor of Henry Dodd’s hut at Rose Hill. On the evening before heading out, Phillip had given his usual instructions to David Collins about the arrangements for the convict gangs while he was away, and told him to pass the information on to Major Ross. Collins delivered the instructions to Ross the next day, so Ross could assign the appropriate number of marines for the task. But Ross was incensed that, as second in command, he was not informed earlier of Phillip’s absence from the camp. According to him, in that instance, military protocol decreed that he himself be in charge and certainly not ordered about or given instructions from someone below his rank, like Captain Collins. Any friendship ties that Collins might have had with Ross in the last eighteen months were severed permanently. Collins would years later refer to Ross as one of the most disagreeable people he had ever met. On his return to the camp, Phillip received a long letter from Ross. Phillip patiently tried to explain the situation to Ross, but the latter was not to be placated. Arguments between Ross, Phillip, Captain Collins and Captain Campbell continued for months and were never really resolved.

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CHAPTER 22

Galgal-la

Despite the inadequate diets of most of its inhabitants, the camp had not suffered any major outbreaks of serious infection except those of the sexually transmitted variety. Venereal disease had been rife in the colony since the beginning and recently it had been running amok in the both the marine and convict populations. A concerned Phillip wrote of the blight in letters back home, unaware that a far greater scourge was about to be unleashed across the harbour. The first signs of the disaster were the sudden absence of nowies seen paddling down the harbour. Most attributed the scarcity of sightings to the change of season. It was around early April when those who ventured out of the camp or took to the harbour in boats first discovered the abandoned bodies of dead Australians. They were lying on beaches or huddled in the bush. Soon, reports of dozens of bodies of Australians seen on the shores, in caves and on beaches around the harbour arrived at the camp. David Collins wrote that it was a daily occurrence to find: Either in excavations of the rock, or lying upon the beaches and points of the different coves – the bodies of many of the wretched natives of this country.1 Tench put it succinctly, if not a little too nonchalantly: An extraordinary calamity was now observed among the natives.2 Newton Fowell of the Sirius was shocked by what he saw as he sailed down the harbour: 140

Laying dead on the beaches and in the caverns of rocks, [Australians] forsaken by the rest as soon as the disease is discovered on them. They were generally found with the remains of a small fire on each side of them and some water left within their reach.3 Sergeant James Scott noted in his diary: Found three natives under a rock – a man and two boys (of which one already was dead). The Governor being acquainted with it ordered the man and boy to the hospital.4 Watkin Tench described the episode. The suffering family was found in a cove near the camp and Phillip and Surgeon White, accompanied by Arabanoo, immediately went to render assistance. They found an old man – an elder – lying stricken and stretched out in front of a small fire. He was covered in pustules. A boy aged nine or ten was pouring water on his face from an oyster shell. Nearby, the body of a young girl lay dead. Still further off, the body of an older woman. She had been dead for some time. The British believed that he young boy had lost his mother and sister and was desperate to keep his grandfather alive. He was terrified. Whether the young boy had just lost his mother or his cousin or auntie is immaterial. Despite pustules festering on the young boy’s body, his focus was on restoring the life of his elder. Surgeon White quickly examined the old man and recognised the symptoms immediately. He gave the grave prognosis: smallpox. Arabanoo and other Australians would call it galgal-la. Having no immunity whatsoever to European diseases, the affliction – if it was smallpox – hit the Australians especially hard. Not only did the disease spread very quickly but the symptoms debilitated the Australians within days of contracting the malady. When smallpox pustules first appear, they occur at the extremities of the body: the face, hands and feet. As hunter-gatherer people who rely on physical labour (however brief ) to sustain themselves and their families, the Australians were left helpless by the suppurating sores on their feet and hands. The naturally thick skin on their hands and feet would develop extensive and extremely painful cracking and splitting. The result would be almost complete skin loss on those areas, within a matter of days. As shown with the elder found dying in the harbour,

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galgal-la made the sufferer incapable of walking, incapable of surviving. On this dismal day in April, Arabanoo, as the only capable Australian, knew what he had to do. He would not leave until he had buried the young girl lying abandoned on the beach. As the young boy watched, he used his hands to dig a grave in the sand. He lined it with grasses and put the corpse in it, covering it also with leaves. Visibly upset, he covered the body, raising a small mound over the grave. Arabanoo never saw the body of the older woman, a short distance away. The Australians did not mention it and Phillip ordered that Arabanoo not be told she was there. Phillip decided to bring the old man and boy back to the cove. As Tench noted, they ‘quietly submitted to be led away’. The elder was so weak that it was difficult to get him on to the boat. He and the young boy were brought into camp, taken to a hut adjacent to the hospital and attended by John White, William Balmain and Arabanoo. As the old man lay on a cot dying, he cried out for water but had trouble swallowing. He could not eat. A fire was kindled when he was seized by shivering fits. The young boy lay beside him: Although barely able to raise his head, he kept looking into his child’s cradle; he patted him gently on the bosom; and with dying eyes, seemed to recommend him to our humanity and protection. It is a touching and tragic moment: the elder comforting probably one of the last surviving males of his clan. His ‘dying eyes’ showing a depth of compassion and tenderness. The elder only lived for a few hours. The whole event definitely affected Tench. He recorded that the man ‘expired almost without a groan’. The young boy recovered from the galgal-la. His name was Nanbaree, a survivor of the Gadigal clan. He was adopted by John White, who had probably saved his life. The Australian elder was dutifully buried next to the garden below the Governor’s house, his funeral attended by Phillip, Henry Ball, Tench and Arabanoo. The grave was dug by a convict. Tench records that Arabanoo’s behaviour was ‘strongly marked by affection to his countryman’. His compassion so much impressed Phillip that he ordered the last fetter attached to his leg be removed permanently. Maybe, he thought, the Australians weren’t complete

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savages after all. Even without chains, the captive had little motivation to flee. There was now no point in returning to his people. They were all gone. You can imagine Arabanoo looking out across the harbour. Now, there were no fires, no more gwee-un.5 Later that evening, without Arabanoo’s knowledge, Watkin Tench and Henry Ball returned to the nearby cove where they had found the old man and boy. They transported the body of the woman in their boat across the harbour and they quietly buried her. Two more diseased Australians were taken and brought into the camp – a young boy and girl of similar age. They were brother and sister. Again, they were attended by Arabanoo and the camp doctors. Sadly, the young boy died after three days, but the girl recovered. Her name was first reported as Abaroo – this must have been one of her names given to the strangers. Most people, however, called her Boorong. She was still only a teenager, around fourteen years of age. Upon the death of her brother, she lay by his side until she felt the coldness of his body. Clearly grief-stricken, Boorong did not cry, was probably beyond tears. She would be adopted by Reverend Johnson and his wife, Mary. The calamity of galgal-la devastated the Australians around the east coast of Australia. It is one of the most significant events in our country’s history. While its impact was profound, no satisfactory explanation has yet been produced to account for its sudden outbreak among the Australians. Fingers have been pointed for the last two centuries. Some scientists have even expressed scepticism around the original diagnosis of smallpox. The English have traditionally blamed La Perouse’s men for introducing the pestilence to the Australians during their visit to Botany Bay. This is hardly credible, as the French had left the coast some thirteen months before the outbreak. The evidence of smallpox amongst the Australians would have manifested itself within weeks of infection. Other writers have accused the English of accidentally or purposefully infecting the Australians from ‘variolous matter in bottles’ that Surgeon John White, according to Tench, had in his possession at the hospital. This is highly improbable and, moreover, inconsistent with the character of White. There is speculation that Robert Ross’ Marine Corps might have been responsible and even that Ross himself, fearful about the camp’s lack of ammunition and faulty

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musketry, might have been forced to take such defensive action. There are indeed precedents in the actions of the British earlier last century in North America, where blankets were infected, allegedly on purpose, with the smallpox virus. This had occurred at Fort Pitt (which became Pittsburg). Both Ross and Collins were at Bunker Hill and Boston under General Thomas Cage. However, there is no evidence that this kind of contamination occurred at Sydney Cove or Botany Bay. Ross did write to Phillip Stephens, his boss at the Admiralty, affirming that he was: By no means of the opinion that they are that harmless, inoffensive race they have in general been represented to be.6 The theory that the smallpox had arrived from Indonesian fishermen from the Gulf of Carpentaria, finally arriving at Sydney Harbour in April 1789, is a ludicrous notion with little validity. Other theorists, including Dr John Carmody of the University of Sydney, have surmised that the outbreak was not smallpox at all but a virulent form of chickenpox that would only mildly infect the Europeans. That is a notion which should not be dismissed lightly. What cannot be dismissed at all are the facts. The smallpox incubation period is about two weeks, so the Australians were infected in late March and we know that the pestilence travelled north. There is no evidence that it came from the west, south or north. It came from the camp – that much is certain. By fleeing the scenes of the outbreaks, the Australians naturally caused the disease to spread. Only those aged between five and fourteen years, those least susceptible, had good chances of survival. Mature adult populations around the harbour and beyond were badly affected. It is believed that the numbers of fathers and mothers, warriors and elders, were reduced by between 50 per cent and 70 per cent in a matter of months. Galgal-la ravaged the Australian population not only around the harbour but further north, south and west as well. It is estimated that half the population in the Sydney region could have perished, with devastating results for the society. Indeed whole clans living on the harbour could have been extinguished. It will never be known. In 1788, there were hundreds of people around the harbour fishing, angling and diving. In May 1789, there were very few. Thankfully, many people fled the area to escape the ravages of the disease as soon as it appeared. In

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the months to come, some Australians returned to the harbour. However, the impact of galgal-la cannot be overstated. More women died of the disease than did men, and much knowledge was lost or misplaced. Families and clans had to amalgamate or alter. Children would be adopted by other groups, and male survivors would live a haunted existence for some time. Boundaries had to be realigned, and more work had to be done ‘since the Dreaming still required every inch of country to be cared for’.7 No British died from the Sydney smallpox outbreak. One sailor, an indigenous American named Joseph Jefferies, succumbed to the disease. The comments of the diarists on the spot were not dispassionate but somewhat detached. They had no hope of stopping the scourge, so focused on those who had been found alive and ‘their man’ in the camp. David Collins writes of Arabanoo’s anguish: On our taking him down to the harbour to look for his former companions, those who witnessed his expression and his agony can never forget either. He looked anxiously around him in the different coves we visited; not a vestige on the sand was to be found of a human foot; the excavations in the rocks were filled with the putrid bones of those who had fallen victim to the disorder; not a living person was anywhere to be met with – he lifted up his hands and eyes in silent agony for some time; at last he exclaimed ‘All dead!! All dead!!’8 The Sirius returned from its six-month voyage to the Cape Colony on 8 May, just weeks after the outbreak of the disease. She carried four months of food and vital medical supplies. Also had on board were enough provisions to feed the Sirius crew for the next year. As they sailed up the harbour to anchor in the cove, Will Bradley was truly shocked at what he saw. We did not see a canoe or a native the whole way coming up the harbour, and were told that scarce any had been seen lately, except lying dead.9 John Hunter realised immediately that something had befallen the Australians. He, too, noticed ‘not having seen a single native on the shore or a canoe as we came up’ the harbour. 145

Later he wrote: It was truly shocking to go round the caves of this harbour, which were formerly so much frequented by the natives; where, in the caves of the rocks, which used to shelter whole families in bad weather, were now to be seen men, women and children lying dying. After Sirius was moored, Hunter went ashore to see the Governor. He had another shock. He met Arabanoo: He was sitting by the fire, drinking tea with a few friends, among whom I observed a native man of this country, who was decently clothed, and seemed to be as much at his ease at the tea table as any person there. Hunter also saw Arabanoo handling a cup and saucer like someone comfortably accustomed. The following day, Phillip and Arabanoo dined on board Sirius with Hunter, who described the Australian as ‘a very good-natured tractable fellow’.10 What no one around the fire would know was that the good-natured fellow had already contracted the galgal-la and, in nine days, would be dead. His affliction began with supposedly inconsequential marks on his face. John White thought that he would escape the disorder, but it soon ‘burst forth with irresistible fury’.11 Unlike Arabanoo’s previous bout of the runs, this new disease was one for which he readily accepted the nostrums administered by the hospital workers. Fowell wrote that ‘while he lay ill, he suffered himself to be bled, and took all the medicines that were offered him’. Arabanoo died on 18 May, just a week after the symptoms had manifested themselves. William Bradley described his death as ‘a great loss being quite familiarised and very happy, quite one of the Governor’s family’. Phillip had him buried ‘in his own garden’ near the old man.12 So, somewhere between today’s Circular Quay and Phillip Street, beneath a modern high-rise, lies the lonely grave of a mostly forgotten man. By June, the worst of galgal-la was over for the harbour clans as the disease moved northward. At the beginning of the month, twenty canoes passed the cove

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heading down the harbour. The Australians had returned. Later in the month, seventy Australians were seen at Spring Cove. They were regrouping, realigning, working out a way forward following this calamity; they were picking up the pieces. While the scourge was over, at least in the harbour, the dismal consequences of it prevailed. An Australian man with his young child was met with at Botany Bay. He made signs that the mother had died of smallpox. During Phillip’s journey to the west, the exploring party ‘met with but few natives’ though it discovered a number of corpses in the bush leading to Broken Bay and many who were ‘labouring under the smallpox’.13 For months afterwards, reminders of the devastation were still visible. John Hunter, on a survey trip to Botany Bay in September, found signs of the tragedy, discovering ‘in some of the caves, skeletons of some and loose bones of others’.14 The result of the smallpox on Australian tribal relations is not known. It certainly resulted in fewer women in the clans and increased the competition for them between the surviving men. The elders of the clans, who had often initiated the early encounters on the harbour, were mostly gone. Only three Gadigal were thought to have survived. One of them was a warrior by the name of Colbee.

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C H A P T ER 23

Deerubin

For months, Arthur Phillip had been desperate to further explore the freshwater river he was convinced lay within one of the northern arms of Broken Bay. On his trip during the previous autumn, he had stayed the few nights on Mullet (Dangar) Island in the pouring rain. Phillip, as a naval man, could read the currents and knew a major watercourse lay just to the northwest. He hoped it was a major river that would lead him inland. He had been keen to return sooner, but with Sirius having been away collecting supplies from the Cape Colony, he had been deprived of the valuable services of its crew. Now, with the outbreak of the disease amongst the Australians having subsided and within weeks of Sirius’ return to the cove, an exploratory party was organised to Broken Bay. It featured most of the colony’s elite. With Sirius about to undergo a major overhaul, crew members were recruited for the trip: David Collins, John White, John Hunter, Will Bradley, James Keltie, Henry Waterhouse, George Worgan and George Johnston. It was a major expedition, despite the colony’s distressed circumstances. It would be predominately a naval exercise. One supposes that Major Robert Ross of the marines would have the run of the colony while Phillip was away for the next few weeks, which would have pleased him. The explorers departed at six o’clock on the morning of 6 June, having dispatched boats to the large bay the night before under the care of Sirius’ Keltie. Phillip and his party marched north from Manly along the previously discovered paths well worn by Australians. They arrived at Pittwater by three o’clock in the afternoon and met up with Keltie. The sailors immediately hauled the seine in the sparkling waters of the bay, catching more than enough fish to feed everyone present. Phillip and his party pitched their tents for the night somewhere on the

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southern side of the bay, where luxury marinas now stand. Towards sundown, the British heard the sound of movement in the bush near their campsite. Going to investigate, thinking an Australian ambush, they instead discovered a frightened young Australian woman huddling in the tall grass. She was terrified – weak, hungry and dehydrated from the effects of galgal-la. One of her legs was badly infected, making her lame. At the sight of the strangers, the young girl tried desperately to hide, crying pitifully. The men tried to ease her distress by using ‘a few expressions which had been collected from poor Arabanoo whilst he was alive’. They gave her some of the fish they had caught and some water. Unfortunately, ‘we understood none of her expressions but felt much concern at the distress she seemed to suffer’. The British lit a fire for her, dried some grass and covered her with it to warm her. They shot some birds, skinned them and left them near the fire to cook. Before they retired for the night, Collins and others collected firewood, fortified the fire of the ‘poor young creature’ and left enough wood to keep her warm throughout the early winter night. Phillip, methodical as usual, spent the next day exploring as much of Pittwater as he could, no doubt confirming his earlier assessment of this beautiful waterway. Despite the rocky heights of the western shore, it was one of the safest and largest anchorages that Phillip had encountered. If necessary, a whole fleet could secure itself in perfect safety and undetected from any passing ship. That night, they camped at the same spot as before and found the young Australian woman under a shelter on the beach. She was now accompanied by an infant girl, who hid her face with her hands when the British approached. They were probably mother and daughter. The young woman sat up. David Collins described her as ‘the most miserable spectacle in the human shape I ever beheld’.1 Collins’ attitude was similar to that of many of his acquaintances: it was very sad that this calamity had fallen on such an inferior race with such devastation, but there by the grace of God go I. For all his compassion, he still viewed the Australians as something not quite human. The next morning before they took off, the surgeons and officers paid another visit to the two Australians. The woman and child seemed more relaxed, less frightened. Hunter noticed that the baby girl had already lost her finger joint (mal-gun), similar to the women down south at the harbour. The custom was either more widespread than he had thought or else this mother and child had

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fled north from the ravages of the disease. If the latter were the case, they were alone in a different country, which might partially explain their abandonment and isolation on the shores of Pittwater. The British left the two Australians all their remaining fish, firewood and some water before they set off for a day’s exploration. Embarking on their boats, they rowed to the northern side of what Cook had named Broken Bay without even examining it. Now Phillip would explore every arm of the bay until each was too shallow to move further. Eventually, most of the arms of the bay terminated in mangroves. The explorers would spend the next few days delving into the various corners of Broken Bay that would later be called the Brisbane Waters, Woy Woy, Ettalong and Terrigal. On 10 June, Phillip landed back on Mullet Island and set up camp on the same spot where he had stayed the previous winter. The explorers again hauled abundant amounts of fish before retiring for the night, the island living up to its name. On Thursday 11 June, Hunter writes, ‘we rowed into a branch which had been entered last time – but not examined’; they found a shoal. In the afternoon, he and Phillip entered another branch but the water was too shallow to navigate so they returned to the island and spent the night. They knew there was a river somewhere, emptying into his baffling bay. Finally, on the next day, after skirting an island, the party found what they were looking for. We were led into a branch which has not before now been discovered. We proceeded up this for a considerable distance, found good depth of water. Early the next day, after a foggy morning, they continued down what they now saw as an extensive freshwater river of some depth and length. Phillip was delighted but, having exhausted their supplies, the party returned to Sydney. As they marched back to the northern shore of the harbour, they noticed that the whole area was scattered with the corpses and bones of Australians. Galgal-la had obviously spread north from Sydney, not the other way around. They noticed that the number of corpses increased as the exploring party got nearer to the harbour.

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In our journey, we fell in with several dead bodies who had probably fallen by the smallpox, but were merely skeletons so that it was impossible to say of what disease they died.2 They arrived back on 15 June and Phillip immediately organised a second trip north, which left the cove on 28 June with provisions sufficient for two weeks. Meanwhile, Watkin Tench had assumed the command at Rose Hill on 9 May, thus he was not a member of Phillip’s exploratory party but sorely wished that he had been. After hearing news from the returning party and being driven ‘by a desire of acquiring a further knowledge of the country’, he set out from Rose Hill with five companions two days before Phillip’s second exploring party would leave the cove. They had food enough for three days.3 It is worth noting that Tench, a captain in the marines, the highest ranking soldier at Rose Hill at that time, had the permission or the audacity to abandon his post and go off exploring in the bush. There is no evidence that either Phillip, or Tench’s immediate superior, Robert Ross, endorsed this little excursion. The diminished role of inquisitive and intelligent officers like Tench and Dawes resulted in them being able to indulge their whims. It is also worth noting that Tench’s command at Rose Hill would be one of the last postings for a captain there for some time. In a few months, Phillip would decide that the Rose Hill township, established in such orderly fashion by Henry Dodd, did not need a high-ranking soldier stationed there. So Tench and his small party, including two of the settlement’s assistant surgeons, Thomas Arndell and the Swedenborgian, John Lowes, left Rose Hill and walked almost due west, observing the distant chain of blue-tinged mountains beginning to dominate the horizon. Throughout the next three days, they met with not one Australian. They spent the first night probably in the vicinity of Eastern Creek or possibly South Creek. Early the next morning, they set off again and soon arrived at the banks of a large river that appeared deep and ran in a northerly direction. Vast flocks of aquatic birds dominated the stream. Signs of Australian occupation were everywhere. ‘Traces of the natives appeared at every step’, reported Tench. The explorers also found traps and decoys to catch possums, quolls, birds and other animals. They stayed that night at what today is Penrith, on the Nepean River. It was a major discovery: a large river just a two-day trek away from the settlement’s new outpost. 151

Meanwhile, the day after Tench returned to Rose Hill, Phillip and his companions were already proceeding down the same river system, over a hundred kilometres to the north. By 3 July, they had reached the point that they had abandoned weeks before. Moving upstream as fast as they could, they found the banks of the river becoming rocky cliffs many metres high. The river branched off to the north and south. The north arm ended in shoals of water, but the next day they found what they had been looking for: a wide, broad freshwater river. They spent the bulk of the day exploring the picturesque waterway, noticing how close they were to the hills they called the Blue Mountains. Looking above them, they saw glimpses of the looming mountain range between branches of huge, centuries-old trees inexplicably wedged in barren sandstone. After travelling a considerable distance, these men in boats saw that the high, perpendicular sandstone cliffs on either side subsided and grassy banks with widely scattered trees appeared in their place. They also noticed debris hanging from trees to the height of twenty metres – an ominous sign of past inundations. They put their boats into one of the banks of the river to inspect the soil. There were large expanses of flat ground, broken up and trodden. The Australians, the British surmised: Appear to live chiefly on the roots (yams) which they dig from the ground, for those low banks appear to have been ploughed up. Indeed, the Australians did dig up yams, but these weren’t wild yams. The British were treading on fields planted and harvested by Darug women.4 These women, like the men, were nowhere in sight – or so we are told. On 5 July, Phillip and his crew camped out near the foot of a high hill. The water from the river tasted excellent and they used it for drinking and cooking their evening meal. Lying on their bedding that night, they could hear what sounded like a waterfall not far away. The following morning, the men ascended the hill and from the summit saw for the first time the extent of the long range of mountains stretching north and south for as far as their eyes could see. Phillip named the elevation Richmond Hill. The next day, further downstream, they found the cascades they had heard the night before, which blocked further progress. They noticed the many ingenious

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traps the Australians had devised to catch fish and young marsupials. Tench had noticed the same technology further to the south, one month before, on the river to the west of Rose Hill. The evidence of long-term Australian occupation of the lands and mighty river on to which Tench and Phillip stumbled was comprehensive. Like all Australians, the Darug had adapted their landscape to make it productive and sustainable, with a complete holistic understanding of their place in their world. So many recent campfires and freshly planted sweet potato fields were observed by the newcomers, as well as tall tree stumps notched by stone stools tens of metres into the air. Woven baskets, cups and stone kitchenware had been left as they lay, but no one to be seen. Phillip – on this, his second trip – met with no Australians. That is not to say they were absent. For their return journey, Phillip planned to hike back to the harbour in a more southwesterly route. He expected to arrive close to Kirribilli, where Sirius was anchored. It would not have been an easy trip and they ended up in the mangrove wetlands of the Lane Cove River. Suddenly, from out of the bush, the party came face-to-face with the same young woman and child whom they had attempted to comfort on the shores of Pittwater some six weeks before. The Australians’ ability to escape detection in the bush has been well and truly established, so the young woman would have approached them and instigated the meeting. Phillip and his surgeons were pleased to see that she had recovered. Her foot was somewhat twisted but did not disable her. Her young daughter was happy and healthy. An Australian man then appeared, watchful and aloof, as many men would be. One can only assume that the young woman approached Phillip and his party to communicate that she had recovered from their plague and to express gratitude for their previous thoughtfulness. However, Phillip’s mind didn’t turn to thoughts of appreciation or benevolence; it seems that abduction was clearly still on his agenda. Phillip quickly discussed with his colleagues the possibility of kidnapping this family to gain their ‘affections’ and ‘confidence’ – to teach them to become at least somewhat British. At that moment, it was clear to Will Bradley and probably Henry Waterhouse that the Australians were to be the abductees. Thankfully, the kidnapping didn’t happen. It sounds like Bradley talked his boss out of it – this time. He hinted at the excuse that he might have made to Phillip:

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This family would have been taken by force but the wind not being fair [they] did not think it a proper opportunity.5 After watching the Australians depart and managing to reach the harbour, Phillip and his companions then had to devise how to make contact with the Sirius crew in order to be picked up. From a distance, they could see the fires burning at the cove. Sirius was only a short distance away but separated from them by a deep bay and a high coastline. The juxtaposition between the Englishmen’s previous murmurings about abduction and what occurred next could hardly be more germane. They began by firing guns to alert the ship of their presence, but to no avail. While a discussion was taking place amongst the officers, one of the sailors discovered an Australian nowie left on the sand. The British naturally thought that it was just abandoned, but it wasn’t. All Australians left their belongings when it made sense to do so, in the complete knowledge that they would remain exactly where they had dropped them. In all probability, it was a boat belonging to a Cammeragaleon. Phillip immediately determined that two of his sailors would take command of it and paddle down the harbour to alert the flagship. Duly, one of them managed to sit in the boat and paddled off, only to capsize it, forcing the sailor to struggle ashore. After further discussion, these naval men decided that the vessel was not up to par, so they began to design an outrigger like that only read about in tales of the South Seas. Using found timber, they constructed a counterpoint to the canoe. They reasoned it was enough to carry two men. It failed spectacularly, being incapable of holding even the weight of one man. There was nothing else to do. Two hapless sailors were given a few swigs of rum before they were ordered to swim across the kilometre of shark-infested waters to Kirribilli. Phillip eventually returned to Sydney Cove on a Sirius boat on 16 July. He would name the mighty river Hawkesbury, in honour of the President of the Council of Trade and Plantations, who later became the Earl of Liverpool. To the people who had lived by its banks forever, the Darug people, the river was called Deerubin.

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CHAPTER 24

Outposts of Empire

When the well-travelled Supply arrived back at Sydney Cove from Norfolk Island on 24 March 1789, it brought a report from Philip Gidley King of an attempted mutiny of his administration earlier that month. It had been thwarted by Lady Pen’s Elizabeth Colley, one of Ann Innet’s best friends, who alerted King of the plot. It was helpful to King that Ann was his mistress. At the time, Norfolk Island, with fewer than a hundred souls, was the loneliest outpost in the Pacific and the entire British Empire. The windswept colony would more than double in population in the next twelve months as conditions on the mainland deteriorated. The history of this little penal colony is one for another time. While galgal-la descended on the harbour around Sydney Cove in April, somewhere in the South Pacific, near Tahiti, William Bligh’s ship Bounty was about to be commandeered by her crew in the most famous mutiny in British naval history. Bligh and eighteen others would be set adrift with little and endure an epic voyage to Timor – a remarkable feat. Bligh was too far north to sail for Botany Bay. Besides, he would have had little knowledge of the enterprise there and know nothing about its success or failure. To be honest, it was the last thing on his mind as he skirted around the huge reef off the northern coast of New South Wales that had almost scuttled the Endeavour decades earlier. Bligh had no idea that in a little over fifteen years, he would be deposed yet again in a house that convicts had just built above the cove named Sydney, or that his arresting officer was at that moment ingratiating himself with Phillip and his officers. It now being May, Phillip looked down the harbour expecting a store ship from England to appear at any moment. He began to think about the colony’s future as a maritime destination and how best to manage the next influx of the

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banished from his mother country. He designated a bay on the north shore to accommodate any foreign ships that might arrive, well away from the convict camp; it became known as Neutral Bay. The following month, again to isolate its crew from the convicts and the camp in general, Sirius was ordered to be hauled ashore for repairs close to Neutral Bay, at the nearby Careening Cove. By April and May 1789, the camp at Sydney Cove had begun to take on a more established aspect. With fine weather, it was a time of major construction. Despite both the marine and convict populations having been dispersed to Norfolk Island and Rose Hill, there was still much activity at the cove. Though much of the agricultural activity had ceased, the work gangs continued. These convicts, some with little or no experience, were constructing the obvious signs of British occupation and building vital infrastructure. Besides houses for Phillip and Collins, two storehouses, a bridge across the stream and barracks for officers and two jetties were completed by May. One jetty was near today’s Customs House and the other adjacent to the present-day Museum of Contemporary Art, on the western shore of the cove below the hospital. Apart from the bricklayers and carpenters, masons and cutters were hard at work also. The physical properties of the Sydney sandstone allowed them to provide all-important foundations for their buildings. The stonework for Will Dawes’ observatory was being cut in situ to replace the previous wattle and daub structure. At the same time, convicts began to work the sandstone that gave The Rocks its name. Sandstone outcrops on the ridge exposed following the heavy winter rains were cut to form the basis or foundations for more sturdy structures. The spring and autumn of 1789 saw a frenzy of convict home building in the area immediately to the north of the hospital garden and further up the ridge behind it. ‘Behind the hospital’ was for decades used as a location guidance or address for contact and deliveries. By the winter of 1789, a major convict camp dominated the western side of the cove, beginning around today’s Gloucester Street, separated by the track that led to the Brickfields. Unlike the eastern side of the cove and the barracks further south, the community made by the convicts was taking shape not through governmental decree and control but according to expedience and their own cultural rules. For decades, The Rocks would have no street names, often no streets at all and certainly no street numbers. The original geography of the area

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can still be envisaged today. In the months to come, a road would be forged as well, between the hospital and Dawes’ place at Tarra. While the dysfunction at the very top of government continued – tensions between Phillip and Ross, Ross and Collins, and Ross and his officers – the criminal courts at Sydney Cove were almost constantly at the bench dealing largely with petty thefts and squabbles. Many of these cases were related to the strained circumstances of the convicts as well as the involvement of the distracted military. On the day after Bligh was set adrift by Fletcher Christian, thousands of kilometres to the northeast, John Caesar, the towering Madagascan, and a West Indian called Black Jemmy were both tried for theft at Sydney Cove. The former was sentenced to a second transportation to Norfolk Island. It was certainly not Caesar’s first offence; he had been charged with theft twelve months before. Despite his strength and stamina, he was never the ideal worker. His accomplice, Jemmy, got 500 lashes. Caesar would have none of this nonsense about going to Norfolk Island. He waited for his opportunity and two weeks later stole arms and ammunition from a marine. He then took off, becoming Australia’s first bushranger. Within weeks, he would be raiding the settlement’s outskirts at the Brickfields. Caesar had intended to live ‘in the society of the natives’, but the Australians refused to have anything to do with him. By June 1789, the camp had taken on the aspect of a town. Phillip envisaged it as a port town to service the new agricultural settlement inland, with the jetties having been built for this purpose. He had contracted the carpenter from Sirius to construct a vessel capable of transporting goods and people up and down the harbour to a place on The Crescent. By now, he felt comfortable enough to allow the inhabitants of his little British outposts at The Crescent and Sydney Cove to celebrate their imperial conquest. This year’s commemoration of the King’s birthday – the ‘Glorious June 4th’ – was more than the celebration of the Monarch: it was an acknowledgement of the British achievement of their quiet invasion of Australian lands. The event was a bigger celebration than the year before, and demonstrated the type of society that had formed at the cove over the previous sixteen months. The celebration on 4 June was two days before Phillip’s first excursion to Deerubin (see previous chapter) and Supply’s next departure for Norfolk Island

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carrying extra marines for the potentially mutinous outpost. The day began with the first gun salutes on shore at William Dawes’ battery on the point: For the first time, the ordnance belonging to the colony were discharged; the detachment of marines fired three volleys, which were followed by twenty-one guns from each of the ships of war in the cove (there were only two).1 This thunderous display of British power from Dawes Point and from Supply and Sirius would have echoed around the harbour for some time. As each cannon was reloaded, the Australians would experience a shuddering silence before the next volley exploded at the cove, reminding them with every blast of the constant, permanent danger posed by the Berewalgal. The ‘Glorious June 4th’ was a holiday for the convicts. Extra rum was issued to the marine privates and subsequently to the mouths of some lucky convicts. Phillip welcomed the officers and other guests in his newly completed Government House, where they dined the afternoon away with music and many toasts. Later, a select audience at Sydney Cove would witness the first performance of a European play on this vast continent. Tench reported it: Some of the convicts were permitted to perform Farquhar’s comedy of The Recruiting Officer in a hut fitted up for the occasion. The play was an entirely appropriate choice for its audience, which would have consisted of the administration, most of the officers and some of the privileged few. The production also indicates a growing sense of community among the convicts. It shows the convict taste for theatre. Theatre – the capacity to entertain each other – had always been one of the strongest cultural bonds possessed by the underprivileged of the London streets. It was evident even before the First Fleet arrived. On 2 January, as Scarborough was riding the Roaring Forties, John Easty made a quick note in his diary – ‘this night the convicts made a play and sang many songs’. The Recruiting Officer was performed in a convict hut, probably in The Rocks precinct but maybe somewhere else. The patrons were appreciative:

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They professed no higher aim than ‘humbly to excite a smile’, and their efforts to please were not unattended with applause.2 Farquhar’s play is a post-Restoration comedy with characters and a plot that would take some skill to perform. The convicts also wrote and presented a clever prologue and epilogue, containing allusions to their particular situation at New South Wales. What the actors said disappeared into the air as they spoke in the evening of the ‘Glorious June 4th’, but it was the first known verses to be composed and delivered in Australia. Imagine the mine of information that these two texts would reveal about the formation of this odd outpost of empire! What is also lost to history are the names of the actors and participants in this little show. There are many clues and not enough evidence, although it can be said confidently that Robert Sidaway was one of the driving forces behind the production. He probably had a hand in the writing of the play’s prologue and epilogue as well. Contenders for actors on 4 June include convicts William Hogg, Henry Lavell, Fanny Davis and, of course, Sidaway’s partner, Mary Marshall.3 Sidaway and the others mounted the best production they could under the circumstances. It is doubtful that there was more than one copy of The Recruiting Officer in the camp. Most surmise the playscript was owned by an officer or other marine, assuming that no convicts were literate enough to appreciate a sophisticated comedy. But it was probably Sidaway’s. The whole project would have been hatched weeks before. With only one copy available, the play would have been transcribed, at least in part, multiple times to accommodate all the characters. These convicts had to be literate, though there is no doubt that some actors would extemporise on the premise of the scene. Prior to the performance, a group of convicts would have rehearsed most evenings. Robert Sidaway used the private stash of costumes that he and Mary Marshall had managed to bring out. The walls of the wattle and daub theatre were lined with coloured paper, with dozens of candles stuck into the mud walls: I am not ashamed to confess, that the proper distribution of three or four yards of stained paper, and a dozen farthing candles stuck around the mud walls of a convict-hut, failed not to diffuse general complacency –

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The convicts had made a considerable effort. The materials they used to dress their space – the ‘paper’, the dyes or paint with which to design a set, and the twelve candles – could only have come from the colony’s administration. Candles would certainly not have been in every convict hut, and the burning of a dozen of them throughout the two-hour show would have illuminated the nights for as many convicts. The officer who facilitated this convict performance is unknown, but it probably wasn’t Ralph Clark. Watkin Tench would have told his readers. It could have been Phillip himself, perhaps encouraged by David Collins. The performance was exactly what the lonely camp needed. Some of the officers thought that the staging of a piece of theatre was a frivolous undertaking in a supposed place of punishment, and a waste of time and resources. Such would have been Robert Ross’ opinion and probably that of James Campbell, who both would have been in attendance. Tench thought ‘every opportunity of escape from the dreariness and dejection of our situation should be eagerly embraced’. He tried not to be condescending: Some of the actors acquitted themselves with great spirit and received the praises of the audience.4 After the show, the camp was treated to a grand bonfire. Unlike the previous year on 4 June, there was no great spike in the incidences of theft and assault committed during the night. In reality, as winter had arrived, life had become a bit more difficult – mostly due to the scant diets and inadequate clothing, notably among the convicts. As the months of 1789 passed, the courts dealt with fewer and fewer issues. Four cases tried over the following months, however, highlight the priorities of the court at Sydney Cove. On 25 June, Elizabeth Fowles – Milly Levy’s friend – was charged with stealing a number of items of clothing and footwear, on spurious evidence. Both items were precious commodities in the camp. Despite pleading her innocence, Elizabeth was sentenced to be flogged with 150 lashes, to be administered over three consecutive Thursdays. It was also ordered that her head be shaven and she be forced to wear a canvas cap with the word ‘thief ’ emblazoned on it. This last punishment, more than the episodic lashes, would have completely humiliated young Lizzie Fowles in front of the entire camp. Moreover, in a town where female attractiveness meant any extra blanket or an extra mouthful of food from

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a benevolent marine private, her life was made considerably harder. In stark contrast, a month and a half later, on 11 August, convict John Ryan was sentenced to only fifty lashes for the attempted rape of former Lady Pen transportee Margaret Dawson. With such an imbalance of genders, women had always been prey to male depredation at Sydney Cove. What is unusual is the relative absence of charges of a sexual nature made by women against men found in court records. With light sentences like John Ryan’s, it is little wonder that the women in the camp seldom bothered even to complain. Just ten days before, Margaret Dawson had given evidence in another case. Sarah Bellamy was attempting to bring charges against Captain James Meredith and Lieutenant Keltie from Sirius, who, she asserted, had stormed into her tent in the middle of the night. Sarah Bellamy had given birth to a child by marine Joseph Downey back in February the previous year. The boy had died. Now, she was living with James Bloodsworth, by whom she would give birth to another boy in fifteen months. At the time of Sarah’s accusations, Meredith had just returned from duty at Rose Hill. He had also just fathered a daughter with Lady Pen’s Mary Allen. Mary and Margaret were friends. Both Keltie and Meredith gave evidence. Of course, no charges were ever laid. By August 1789, the commissary issued the last of their provision of footwear to the convicts, with little prospect of the stores being replenished any time soon – unless a store ship appeared off the coast. At the same time, the provision of butter (ghee) from the stores was also exhausted. Luckily, in the following month, with the return of spring and with fewer people at the camp and fewer Australians on the harbour, fish stocks recuperated and huge hauls were again seen in the nets. With little agriculture now bring practised at the cove, the warm September weather and some good rains in August led to an increased focus of the lonely outpost of empire at Rose Hill. Less than three months after the first convicts had arrived to dig up the ground around the little river back in November, on 15 February, Captain James Meredith and twenty of his company were sent to further establish the invasion of Burramattagal country. The small military detachment would summarily build a small redoubt on the slope below Phillip’s house. Apart from preventing convicts from wandering off into the bush, it marked another stage of quiet invasion.

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Rose Hill now had an established presence on the soon-to-be named Cumberland Plain. William Broughton, former assistant to Surgeon John White, was appointed as commissary at the newly built storehouse. Shortly after, the trusted convict James Smith was appointed as his assistant commissary. It was decided soon that he was becoming too old for the task and he was dismissed. Thefts from the new stores at Rose Hill began almost immediately and, on 15 March, convicts George Bannister, Thomas Ibdin and Peter Hopley were punished in the usual fashion. Following the arrest of seven marines and their subsequent hangings at the end of March (see Chapter 21), and the evidence of systematic pilfering, Phillip decided to send Henry Brewer to replace James Smith – not only assistant storekeeper but effectively as the camp commandant. The two Henrys – Brewer and Dodd – took over the running of the settlement. With the scant and mostly disinterested marine detachment, Brewer was given the power to inflict corporal punishment on his convict charges. He would prove again to be a formidable character. Despite the man’s rough appearance, Collins wrote that ‘his figure was calculated to make the idle and the worthless shrink if he came near them’. From now on, clearing and planting would be the order of every day. Unfortunately, despite the executions on 27 March at Sydney Cove, thieving continued there and later at Rose Hill. On 13 April, Samuel Midgley, a convict, was charged with stealing a large amount of dried peas – he received 100 lashes. On 23 April, Richard Nicholas, an African convict, stole a quarter of a pound of tobacco – a trafficable quantity. He got 500 lashes. On 9 May, Tench was sent up to Rose Hill to relieve Meredith, so he could return to Sydney Cove to witness the birth of his daughter. Tench was pleased with the posting. With little for him to do there, Rose Hill would prove a welcome distraction. He was itching to explore the country west beyond the river, despite the fact that just a fortnight before two marines with a greyhound had departed from Rose Hill to hunt kangaroo or emu (many emus were seen near the camp in previous weeks) and were never seen again. Only their greyhound returned. Quite possibly the Darug people had a way to deal with such intruders on their land, or maybe the soldiers had just perished in the bush. Nevertheless, Tench would have his wanderlust satisfied. Shortly after his posting, Will Bradley recorded his visit to Rose Hill:

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[The] situation is pleasant, the soil good, the country open and promises much to the success of the colony. John Hunter wrote: Rose Hill is certainly a pretty situation. Bradley described the settlement as being four miles from the flats – that is, Homebush Bay which he had surveyed all those months ago.5 Visitors also noticed its orderly nature which contrasted with the settlement at Sydney Cove where, despite Phillip’s best intentions, the camp grew haphazardly due to the terrain and lack of supervision. At Rose Hill, Phillip and his surveyors had the opportunity to adopt a town plan much aligned to his utopian ideals of an agricultural village. He planned a single road to service the community – an orderly main street with regularly spaced, uniform convict huts.6 Yet, despite the great effort and planning, the yield in grain from Rose Hill in its first full year only furnished enough seed for the next plantings. At best, in 1789, the agricultural settlement looked vaguely promising. What seemed more promising was the activities taking place just down the river. By November 1789, James Ruse had been established on a farm close to the plantings at The Crescent for a year. Indeed, Arthur Phillip on his visits to Rose Hill throughout the year could easily observe Ruse’s progress from the elevated ground near his Government House. He had granted Ruse two acres of land, on ground already cleared of timber – the stumps remained in the ground. He was given seeds, tools and a modest hut. He would be able to draw rations from the stores for two years. He avowed that he would have weened himself off the government’s teat sooner than that. He was aware that the Cornish-born had a background in agriculture. He also knew that he was one of the signatories of the petition in August calling for emancipation on the expiation of their sentences (see next chapter). Phillip knew that Ruse was an industrious man and, as Collins related: he was desirous of trying, by this means, in what time [he] would be enabled to support himself in this country.

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Many believed it was not possible. Ruse took his time in preparing his soil for planting. Throughout the previous summer, he deeply tilled his ground, lifting soil that had never seen the light of day. The newly exposed dirt would absorb the summer rain. Whereas on the government-run farms, trees were grubbed out of the ground, Ruse burned his stumps. Without manure, he laboriously and thoroughly – ‘as well as I could’ – hoed the ashes into his ground. He then dug in green compost that he had collected. He left it as long as he could before planting. In 1789, he planted in May and June and would later sow in early May. This all sounds familiar. To those ignorant of matters agricultural in the colony, it was a revelation. Of course, Henry Dodd’s convict gangs would prepare his fields for planting by digging up the ground, but in many cases it was only scratched over. Dodd’s focus was getting grain in the ground as soon as possible. But James Ruse was not so rushed. His use of ash and green compost, then allowing time for the soil to absorb nutrients, was a time-consuming plan but worthwhile. By the end of November, Ruse had harvested his first rows of wheat. Later, he would sow maize – a crop with which he had no experience. He would plant his corn during late August and early September. Ruse would remain on his farm for a further four years. By then he had powerful neighbours.

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CHAPTER 25

Crime and Punishment

Sometimes, it’s safer just to keep your mouth shut. On 28 July, convict John Calleghan, who had been sentenced for burglary years before, resulting in his transportation on Charlotte, presented a petition to Phillip. It was signed by him and five other convicts, one of them James Ruse, declaring that their sentences had expired and they should no longer be forced to labour. While Phillip was amenable to the notion of emancipation, unfortunately, his hands were tied. As David Collins explained: By some unaccountable oversight, the papers necessary to ascertain these particulars had been left by the masters of the transports with their owners in England, instead of being brought out and deposited in the colony; and, as, thus situated, it was equally possible to admit or to deny the truth of their assertions, they were told to wait until accounts could be received from England; and in the meantime, by continuing to labour for the public, they would be entitled to the public provisions in the store.1 In other words: ‘bad luck, fellas’. Phillip and John White then interviewed Calleghan at length. During the course of the exchange, he stated to have been told by an officer that there were two years’ provisions in the stores for convicts whose time had expired and they need not work for it. Calleghan was reluctant to divulge the name of this marine, as well he would be, since the officer in question turned out to be Major Robert Ross. Collins and White were convinced that the convict was telling the truth. Ross was subsequently interviewed by Phillip, denying everything. This sort of scuttlebutt was Ross’ modus operandi. In the Australian idiom, it’s called ‘stirring the possums’.

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Nevertheless, British justice swung into action. A court of magistrates was convened the next day and the hapless Calleghan was charged with ‘devising and uttering an untruth respecting His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor’. On oath, he said that when requested by the Governor and John White to name the officer who had given him the information about the rations, he refused to do so. Later, he claimed, John White said: ‘I’m damned if it wasn’t the Lieutenant-Governor!’ He was sent for trial. It seems that Calleghan had got caught up between the two raging factions of power in the camp. Phillip, Ross and White all testified. Needless to say, Calleghan was found guilty. He was sentenced to 600 lashes and to work in irons for six months. That put an end to any talk of emancipation, for now. Collins admitted later: It must be acknowledged, that these people were most peculiarly and unpleasantly situated. Conscious in their own minds that the sentence of the law had been fulfilled upon them, it must have been truly distressing to their feelings to find out that could not be considered in any other light – than that which alone they had been hitherto known in the settlement. Yet, as he also noted: In the infancy of the colony, however, but little was to be gained by their being restored to the rights and privileges of free people.2 Indeed, the success of the colony relied entirely on the servitude of its largest population. On the same day as Calleghan was sentenced to his series of near-fatal beatings, another convict – John Harris – presented another petition to Phillip. It was a proposal to implement a convict night watch for the camp that would deter petty thieving, night marauding or absconding. Major Ross had always insisted that his men were soldiers and not gaolers or policemen, so with thefts, break-ins and assaults happening almost on a regular basis, Harris’ proposal just might have been effective. The notion that you need a thief to catch a thief, was certainly a novel, if not original, idea. David Collins thought a police force consisting of

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convicts would be less than ideal, to say the least – after all, they were convicts ‘in whose eyes, it could not be denied, the property of individuals had never before been sacred’. But there wasn’t any choice.3 Collins thought it a gamble, but Phillip approved the plan immediately and the convict watch was announced on 1 August. Regulations were published for the establishment of the watch a week later. It gave the night watchmen the authority to detain ‘any felony, trespass or misdemeanour’. Any marine or seaman they found after curfew could be detained and ‘immediately given to the nearest guardhouse’.4 The camp was divided into four sections for the night watch to patrol. The first division took in the east side convict tents and Farm Cove. The second division covered the road out of town and the Brickfields. The third division patrolled the area between the women’s and men’s tents, and the fourth covered the area between the hospital and Dawes’ place on the point. Three convicts were assigned to each division, with the power to apprehend any illegal activities and to detain any miscreant overnight. The first night watch began in the second week of August. The watchmen included John Harris, transported for stealing silver spoons; John Archer, convicted of stealing coach-glasses; Herbert Keeling, a sword thief and mutineer; John Coen Walsh, done for breaking and entering; and Charles Peat, for assault and highway robbery. William Hubbard had stolen a bed sheet, while John Neal had pilfered a gold watch and chain. Thomas Oldfield, with his sister, had taken off with a shilling’s worth of fabric, while William Bradbury was a good oldfashioned pickpocket. Lastly, Stephen Le Grove was quite a do-it-yourself man. He became a night watchman after stealing a large quantity of timber back in the Old Country and despite getting a flogging, back in March, for not turning up to work. It was an immediate success. Night-time burglaries were reduced by half and any culprits were quickly apprehended. One of those not arrested by the night watch was John Baughan, who fronted the bench on 29 August. Before David Collins and Augustus Alt, he was accused of being drunk and disturbing the peace three nights previously. Baughan was found guilty and sentenced to fifty lashes – the same punishment as inflicted on John Ryan, weeks before. Were the magistrates aware that he and his wife’s baby, Charlotte, had just died and was buried just two days before the night in question? Both Collins and Alt would

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become the fathers of daughters from female convicts in a little over twelve months’ time. It was almost inevitable that the convict night watchmen would fall foul of Robert Ross and his sense of his soldiers’ entitlements. In October, head of the watch Herbert Keeling had to apologise to a marine private for using ‘abusive language’ and accusing his wife of selling grog to the convicts. He was just doing his job. A few weeks later, a marine was apprehended near the women’s camp, loitering around a pig-sty. The soldier was duly taken to the watch house to be detained overnight. Ross was incensed that a convict would have the temerity to arrest a member of the King’s Army. Letters were exchanged and the regulations regarding the night watch were altered by Phillip. Collins wrote on 9 November: The night watch is not in future to stop any soldier unless he is found in a riot, or committing any unlawful act, in which case such soldier is immediately to be taken to the nearest guard.5 Robert Ross had got his way yet again. While John Baughan’s grief was being compounded by fifty lashes on his back, the most shocking crime ever reported came to the attention of the camp. How many other crimes of its nature were perpetrated before and since at the muddy camp, we can only speculate with a shudder. On 31 August, Assistant Surgeons Thomas Arndell and William Balmain were asked to call on Corporal Thomas Chapman and his wife Jane. They were concerned about the injuries and behaviour of their elder daughter, Elizabeth. Called Betsy, she was only eight years of age and had survived the voyage out with her parents and sister on the Prince of Wales. The men from the hospital examined her and did not like what they saw and heard. William Balmain contacted JudgeAdvocate David Collins. The little girl had been violently raped. Last Sunday evening, following her dinner, Betsy was walking about the camp accompanying the wives of two marines, Privates Kennedy and Thomas. They were visiting a friend of one of the women hoping to borrow some tea cups and saucers. As they strolled out, the group happened by Betsy’s even younger sister Jane, who told her that Henry Wright had some flowers for her. Wright was a private and someone they must have known. The women allowed Betsy to run off to go his hut. When she arrived there, it was dark and empty save for Henry Wright.

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Ten days later, Private Henry Wright of the marines faced a magistrate’s court. It consisted of David Collins, John Hunter, James Campbell, Ralph Clark, Henry Ball, Thomas Timmins and William Faddy. Only Captain Hunter and Lieutenant Ball were Navy men. Apart from the judge-advocate, there were four marine officers. All would know the accused well. Lieutenant Timmins had sailed with him on Prince of Wales. Ralph Clark and William Faddy had come out together with him on Friendship. As for Captain James Campbell of the marines, this was the first time since April that he had sat on any bench of law, having refused earlier to do court duty. Now, he suddenly appeared for the trial of Henry Wright. Campbell, of course, would have known Wright in such a small camp, as Betsy Chapman seems to have. Wright was married and had children himself, so it is more than probable that Jane and Thomas Chapman were friends with him and his wife. They had all sailed out on Prince of Wales. Henry Wright stood before a bench of his officers on Thursday 10 September. He was: indicted for that he not having the fear of God before his eyes, did violently and feloniously make an assault, and her, the said Elizabeth Chapman, then and there feloniously and did ravish, and carnally know. It was the most appalling crime. The euphemistic term ‘carnally know’ makes the heart break. The trial was the first of its kind in the New South Wales Colony and should be the stuff of any first-year Law undergraduate’s study in Australia today – serving as an historical test case of what not to do when confronted by such a crime. The frightened eight-year-old girl and her distraught mother came before the bench. To prove that Betsy was God-fearing, she was examined by the members of the court. She was asked: ‘Do you know that it is wrong to speak an untruth?’ She answered ‘Yes’. ‘What will happen to you if you do?’ She replied, ‘Go to the devil’. The bench then made her recite the Lord’s Prayer. I suppose they considered the recitation equivalent to an oath on the King James Bible. Her mother, Jane, gave evidence along with six others. She said that Henry Wright ‘had the character of doing such things with children’. He obviously had form. After he grossly violated this girl that evening, Wright went out and picked

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some flowers for her. He also gave her a doll – one of his children’s. Assistant Surgeons William Balmain and Thomas Arndell provided undeniable evidence of the appalling crime. Arndell had just proudly witnessed the christening of his son with the young Lady Pen woman, Elizabeth Burleigh. Private Wright was rightly found guilty and sentenced to death. That seemed the end to it: if a man could be sentenced to 500 lashes for stealing a pouch of tobacco, surely this heinous crime deserved the loss of life in the eyes of British justice? However, after Wright was taken away, a discussion took place among the members of the court. The bench court papers reveal the results of this meeting: He was humbly recommended to the Governor for mercy. How could this be? David Collins gave us the reason for the bench’s clemency: This was an offence that did not seem to require an immediate example; the chastity of the female part of the settlement had never been so rigid, as to drive man to so desperate an act.6 Collins could not comprehend why a seemingly conventional young soldier with a family would violate an eight-year-old when the camp had plenty of women who could service his extra-marital needs. Collins did not even know the word ‘paedophile’. To him, Wright’s behaviour was outlandish but just a one-off. Wright was an aberration to him, to be dismissed. Therefore, it was felt that punishment for the offender would not serve as an example to others, because the crime committed couldn’t possibly happen again. It was an appalling decision, with no regard for the welfare of Elizabeth Chapman or any other vulnerable young girl in the colony. Private Henry Wright would be banished to Norfolk Island: out of sight, out of mind. Jane Chapman gave birth to another daughter, Maria, in April 1790. The only shred of consolation in this sorry story is that the Chapman family – Thomas, Jane, Betsy, young Jane and Maria – all finally left the colony in 1791, sailing for England on the Gorgon. Less than two years later, Wright was at it again. On 18 July 1791, he was charged with the attempted rape of a ten-year-old and was made to run the

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gauntlet between two rows of armed Norfolk settlers. This happened twice but did not stop his behaviour. His wife had long abandoned him and remarried, taking her children with her, so Henry Wright found himself alone in Sydney when he was again charged with child rape and severely punished. He died peacefully in his sleep in Sydney, at the age of eighty. The fates of his victims are not known. Weeks after Wright’s acquittal, on 14 November, our cockney girl Milly Levy was charged with verbally abusing Sergeant Clayfield. She complained that the convict gang to which he was attached pelted her with stones as she walked by. She gave them a mouthful. Poor Milly got fifty lashes for her trouble. On the same day, Ann Davis (alias Judy Jones) was found drunk and in possession of suspected stolen articles. She had also come out on the Lady Pen and won little affection among her fellow convicts. This was her second arrest since arriving at the camp and she would become the first woman hanged at Sydney Cove. A week later, Ann (or Judy) stood before a criminal court while a cavalcade of convicts gave evidence against her, including members of the convict night watch. Among others, Ann Fowles, Robert Sidaway and Mary Marshall – each no stranger to the courts – testified. The court heard that Davis (or Jones) had broken into Robert Sidaway’s hut and stolen a considerable amount of clothes from a chest belonging to Sidaway and his partner, Mary Marshall – who, of course, had received seventy-five lashes earlier in the year, in part thanks to Ann Davis’ evidence. Mary had also received twenty-five lashes earlier in the year for ‘causing a disturbance’. Mary and Ann had known each other at least since boarding Lady Pen, almost two years ago. It seems they were the best of enemies. The items Ann allegedly stole from Sidaway’s chest included four linen shirts, a linen waistcoat, a silk waistcoat, two linen caps and a dozen other items. It was a blatant robbery of both Sidaway and Marshall’s property. On 21 November, the night of the break-in, the accused would be conspicuous carrying all this clothing. More interestingly, apart from a nightgown and other items obviously belonging to Marshall, many of the other stolen items seem to have been not street clothes but stage costumes from Sidaway’s collection – recently seen on stage in The Recruiting Officer on ‘Glorious June 4th’.

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Ann Davis (or Jones) was speedily found guilty and sentenced to death. Following the verdict, she immediately declared that she was pregnant. She no doubt hoped that being ‘with child’ would result in the commutation of her death sentence. ‘A Jury of twelve matrons were then impanelled’ and delivered the verdict that she was in fact not ‘quick with child’. She was immediately hanged – another job for James Freeman, the reluctant hangman. It has been a busy year.7

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C H A P T E R 26

Heat and Dust

It is easy to envisage Phillip crossing the bridge below his house to inspect the camp in the late spring of 1789. He would see the colony’s first vessel being built near one of the new jetties on the eastern side built by Augustus Alt. The boat was designed by the carpenter from Sirius, Robinson Reid, and built by convict labour. Constructed over the previous four months, it was little more than a barge. Launched on 5 October, it was called the Rose Hill Packet and had been designed to negotiate to the shoals of Homebush Bay so as to reach the inland settlement. It was nicknamed ‘The Lump’. It would be the first of many, despite Reid’s disparagement of Australian timber. Phillip would inspect the building of the road connecting the hospital with Dawes’ partially completed stone observatory – the first building in Sydney constructed completely of local sandstone. You can follow the old Australian track today, heading away from the cove south-westward, which was slowly being widened and extended. Indeed most of Sydney’s major early roads would be constructed following ancient Australian foot tracks. It is doubtful whether Phillip ventured into The Rocks before walking back up present-day George Street, past the military barracks and the huts of those privileged enough to live the there. In the spring, Robert Ross had presented Phillip with the list of those marines who wished to quit the colony after their tour of duty ended – that is, within the next two years at most. Few marines indicated any desire to stay on longer. The exceptions were Watkin Tench, William Dawes and George Johnston. With most in the town on half-rations, scurvy began to rear its gum-bleeding mouth again. The native sarsaparilla, so avidly sought by the colonists as an ascorbic over the previous two years, had become increasingly scarce near the

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camp. Convicts, marines and sailors therefore needed to search farther afield to source it, increasing the risk of attack by the Australians. Since the ambush on the road to Botany Bay in August, tension and suspicion between invader and invaded had become even worse. Game-killers like Henry Hacking and John McIntyre were not helping. By October, due to the dangers of Australian attacks, foragers were forbidden to go out into the bush except on Saturdays, and only then accompanied by an armed guard. This order was ignored, of course. Today, the sarsaparilla plant is still an extremely rare sight in the Sydney region. The Port Jackson Painter’s An Attack by Natives depicts a blue-coated man fleeing with shrubs from three Australians armed with longs spears. While not recording a specific episode, the watercolour portrays a common incident for a marauding member crew of either the Sirius or Supply. With the spring came dry, warm and windy weather. The heat and dust of October winds withered the crops at Farm Cove, rendering little hope of a good harvest. With the food provisions running low – indeed with only four months’ worth remaining in the stores – Phillip reduced the rations again, beginning on 1 November, cutting the men’s allocation by a third. It was now equal to the women’s provisions. Now, every man, woman and child essentially received the same level of rations. Newton Fowell believed that the reduced rations were due to rats having ravaged the stores; it could have been a contributing factor. With regard to the new rations, David Collins noted ‘this measure was calculated to guard against accidents’.1 It was a prudent decision. These rations were now doled out every Saturday, until it was discovered that some convicts had eaten their whole weekly food allocation by the following Tuesday. Rations were then distributed every Wednesday and Saturday. In the first week of November, as the temperatures rose at Sydney Cove, Phillip wrote to Gidley King at Norfolk Island explaining the reasons behind his reduction in rations at Sydney Cove and his inability to provide much in the way of supplies. He told King that he was sure the store ships were on their way and would probably arrive at the end of January. He was wrong, but by this time, Phillip had begun to harden his resolve. It had been a difficult year. Galgal-la and the death of Arabanoo had left relations with the Australians remote at best. Their resistance to engage – apart from random attacks in the bush – showed no sign of diminishing. Phillip had

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quietly invaded the land to the west at Rose Hill with no hostile resistance. Captain Meredith and his band of young men had built an earthen fort and barracks there without interference. Now, reports of other areas of arable land were coming in daily. To expand his presence, Phillip needed the submission of the Australians, but they had become bolder. Whereas earlier the Australians avoided anybody with a gun, now they showed a mastery of ambush. Abduction had always been on Phillip’s agenda, being a part of an expedient plan to win over the confidence of the Australians, to witness their subservience and to provide himself with a degree of legitimacy to continue his territorial expansion. The events of the next few weeks would determine Phillip’s next move. On 7 November, following months away from Sydney Cove, Sirius arrived back from Careening Cove on the north shore, having had a good scraping and her hull strengthened. While she was being repaired, her crew had spent their time exploring the surrounding coves and bushland, constantly being watched by the Cammeragal. Inevitably a hundred hardened men on this relatively remote shore would have made their presence felt. Henry Hacking was constantly out shooting in the bush to provide fresh meat for the crew. Less than two weeks before Sirius’ return to Sydney, Hacking met up with some Australians in the bush around today’s Sirius Cove. He later told Will Bradley that he hadn’t noticed them until a rock narrowly missed his head. He turned and saw what he said were fifty men armed with spears. His immediate response was to discharge his firearm at them. Fortunately, his gun was loaded only with small shot for firing at birds. After scattering, the Australians continued to follow him, so Hacking reloaded his gun with more substantial shot and fired into the crowd behind him. He definitely wounded and possibly killed several Australians. Hacking told Bradley that he saw two dead or injured Australians being carried off into the bush. Collins mentioned the incident as well. Relatively few reports of serious clashes between the invaders and Australians exist during these first years. Whether this is due to the suppression of these events by people like Collins and Tench, the non-reporting of incidents from the hundreds of marines, sailors and convicts who ventured into country, or the peaceable nature of the Australians, can be debated. But this episode would not have been an isolated case for people like Hacking and others. For more than the previous year and a half, the Australians

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had targeted the crew of Sirius, particularly her fishermen and game-killers – the constant predators on their country. HMS Sirius was the flagship of the First Fleet: the physical manifestation of Britain’s burgeoning empire, an embodiment of conquest and invasion. When Francis Hill, midshipman from Sirius, lost himself in the bush a little over a week after Hacking’s attack, most people assumed that he had fallen in a hail of spears. Hill was a young man much more well-connected than fellow crew members like the game-killer. He was also lovesick for his convict girlfriend back at Sydney. He was dropped off on a point of the north shore, closer to Sydney Cove, and trekked off into the bush. So Sirius arrived back at the cove without him. Her crew members spent the next week firing guns, rowing about the harbour and searching in the bush – in vain – for any trace of their man. They were also fighting off the Australians every time their crew hauled up the nets. Francis Hill was never seen alive again. Will Bradley, after his sojourn on the north shore, returned to the heat and dust of the starving little town. Phillip’s mood had also changed. Bradley knew that he had already been pencilled in for a special assignment. The news of more clashes with the Australians and the mysterious disappearance of the well-bred Francis Hill would fill him with apprehension. With the flagship back in service at Sydney Cove, four days later Supply sailed for Norfolk Island with fourteen convicts – as many fewer mouths to feed in Sydney. Soon the tiny island would have over 200 convicts battling its blustery winds. Summer arrived and temperatures began to climb. The harvest at Farm Cove was almost non-existent. The yields at Rose Hill were disappointing. Unlike the previous year, there had been little spring rain. And still not a sail in sight. As Phillip gazed out across the water, his back faced the unknown. The last twelve months had seen multiple trips inland, north and west. Looming above the horizon, as far as the eye could see, the tantalising blue barrier of mountains dominated his senses and curiosity. In late December, with Phillip’s blessing, William Dawes, George Johnston and John Lowes, who had travelled with Tench before, set out from Rose Hill. No doubt, Esther Abrahams would have been reluctant for Johnston to go; she was in her last weeks of pregnancy. They struck out for what would be called the Blue

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Mountains. In typical Dawes fashion, they headed due west. They crossed the Nepean near present-day Penrith and penetrated into the mountains for fifteen miles over rugged terrain, scrambling up and down ridges and vales. It was a valiant first attempt. Dawes’ party finally turned back at a prominence he called Mount Twiss, probably named after ‘Captain’ Twiss – a soldier who, the year before, had fronted up at a christening of another convict’s child, representing the father. Mount Twiss is just north of the present-day town of Linden. Supply returned from Norfolk on 21 December, while David Collins itemised the work of the convict gangs at Sydney at the close of 1789. The bricklayers were constructing kitchens and installing ovens for the marine detachment and building a house for himself; others were forming roads to and from the camp and transferring the provisions from the old thatched storehouse to one of the newly built brick marine barracks with a tiled roof. A few days before Christmas, Henry Dodd sent down from Rose Hill a cabbage weighing over 11 kilograms. Things were seemingly looking up for the colony, but it was hardly the case. Back home in England, on Christmas Eve, Home Secretary Grenville wrote to Phillip, informing him that the New South Wales Marine Corps under Major Robert Ross had been recalled and that a special detachment – named the New South Wales Corps, consisting of about a hundred officers and men – were to travel with the next fleet. Phillip would not receive this dispatch for many months. In the meantime, he had plans for Major Ross and other malcontents. At the end of the year, Phillip bestowed on Gidley King – in lieu of a promotion – the title of Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island. But he also had another job for King. Less than a month later, he dismissed him from Sirius and ordered him to sail for England to impress upon the British Government the prospects of the colony and its present dire straits. In his absence from Norfolk Island, Phillip had the perfect replacement for him.

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CHAPTER 27

Most Unpleasant Service

Neither the devastation of the smallpox outbreak among the Australians nor the tragic death of Arabanoo dampened Phillip’s resolve to assimilate these people into his English world. Though fewer Australians were seen – mostly sightings of them in their canoes close to the camp – he had given orders to the effect that if an opportunity arose whereby other Australians could be kidnapped, it should be done. History records at least three occasions during the year where abduction was contemplated, but the right opportunity did not arise. Upon the outbreak of galgal-la, those Australians who could, fled – probably north and west. But after a few months, large assemblies of armed Australians were seen in the bush, often painted for ceremony – something not seen since the British had arrived. However, there are no recorded clashes with the invaders during this time. The Australians were engaged in business that they could not possibly understand. Whatever the disease that had befallen them, despite the social and existential crisis among the people where whole clans had been eliminated, the Australians abide. Many surviving men, women and children had lost their families. However, kinship, senses of shared knowledge and the growing animosity towards the invaders, allowed many of the Australians to forge new relationships. Clans would amalgamate according the traditional law. They had literally regrouped, their culture intact. At the end of July, Richard Johnson and his newly adopted daughter Boorong (the girl saved from smallpox; a Burramattagaleon) ventured out of the cove and ‘went down the harbour to endeavour to have an interview with the natives’. This was for one reason only, so ‘interview’ can be regarded as a metaphor. Johnson, his boat crew and supposedly Boorong used ‘every persuasion to get one or more

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of them to return with her, but to no purpose’. Johnson was attempting to lure another Australian on to his boat using a young girl as bait. Two days later, John White and his adoptee Nanbaree tried to do the same thing, except this time ‘the boy was much inclined to join the naked tribe’. The plan had backfired. The British were baffled by his behaviour. Weeks later, another party went down the harbour ‘to take a native – but had not an opportunity’.1 It is manifestly apparent that abduction was an important part of Phillip’s strategy to achieve one of his long-term goals – seemingly the submission or even subjugation of the Australians under a similar yoke to that of those convicts under his command. The surviving Australians still kept their distance from the invaders, but it was clear their tolerance of game-killers, fishermen and plant-gatherers was wearing thinner as the intruders became bolder and more adventurous, especially the men with guns – like Sirius’ Henry Hacking and Phillip’s man, John McIntyre. Men like these would encounter the Australians on their land. One can only imagine what crimes they committed on the Australians. On 25 November 1789, Phillip made a momentous decision. Will Bradley, one of the reluctant perpetrators of the crime, told the story and it is worth quoting most of it: Governor Phillip judging it necessary that a native should be taken by force – I was ordered on this service, having a master, two petty officers and boat crew with me in one of the Governor’s boats. As we went down the harbour, we got some fish from the boats that lay off the northern arm fishing and proceeded up the arm in which we saw a great number of natives on both sides and several landed on the beach at the northern cove hauling their canoes up after them. As we got near the upper part of the northern cove, we held two large fish up to them and had the good luck to draw two of them away from a very large party by the bait. These people came around the rocks where they left their spears and met us on the beach near the boat and a distance from their companions – they eagerly took the fish – they were dancing together when the signal was given by me and the two poor devils were seized and hauled into the boat in an instant – on seeing us seizing these two, [the natives] immediately advanced with their spears and clubs but we

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were too quick for them – they were entering the beach just as everybody was in the boat – we pulled immediately out without having occasion to fire a musket – The noise of the men, crying and screaming of the women and children together with the situation the two miserable wretches in our possession was really a most distressing scene, they were much terrified, one of them particularly so, the other frequently called out to those on shore – they followed the boats on both sides as far as the points of the cove and then returned to the beach. We saw them take up the two fish …2 On landing back at the camp, the two terrified captives were immediately taken to Nanbaree and Boorong. Both of the children knew them, of course, greeting them by one of their names: Colbee and Bennelong. Nanbaree was Colbee’s nephew. Bennelong knew her father’s people. The two young Australians were glad to see them but, as Tench wryly commented, the prisoners ‘seemed little disposed to receive the congratulations’.3 They tried to assure the frightened men that they would be treated well in the camp. Were they convinced? Colbee certainly was not. Will Bradley was most relieved when he understood from Boorong that: Neither of them had wife or family who would feel their loss, or be distressed by their being taken away. Boorong was lying. Although neither of them had children, each had a wife. Bennelong had a passionate relationship with a woman named Barangaroo, and Colbee was in love with a young girl named Daringa. It is clear that the whole ordeal had traumatised Bradley, almost as much as those he had abducted. It would have a lasting effect on all of them: It was by far the most unpleasant service I ever was ordered to execute.4 Colbee was the shorter of the two Australians but he was strong and robust. Thomas Watling did a pencil sketch of him a few years later, portraying a proudlooking man with a serious disposition. He was estimated to be around thirty years of age. He was a Gadigal man, a survivor of the galgal-la; his face was

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heavily pock-marked with its scars, as was that of his co-captive. Bennelong (also Woolawaree), more sullen and defiant at this stage, was around twenty-six years old, with a ‘bold intrepid countenance which bespoke defiance and revenge’. He was a Wangal man and another survivor of the smallpox. Some questions need to be asked. Foremost, what were a Gadigal man and a Wangal man doing in the country of other clans? And, knowing the fate of Arabanoo taken earlier in a similar place, with the same modus operandi, why did these two warriors approach the boat? The answer to the first question is easy. Historians have had the tendency to believe that the clans around the harbour were rivals and constantly at war. This is wrong. These clans were tied by blood, language and culture. Although classed as a warrior culture, the Australians had long abandoned any large-scale warfare. Clan vendettas existed and payback was made, but most people around the Sydney basin were settled in their country. There is one reason why both would be visiting the country of another clan: galgal-la. Colbee was one of the last warriors of his clan; in order to survive, he had to reach out to others. As to the Wangal man’s reason for being in this northern cove, anyone can speculate. Nor will we ever know why these two men waded into the water and allowed themselves to be lured into the boats. Some say it was a ‘dare’ between the Australians, but it may have been their natural curiosity, openness, cordiality and innocence that betrayed them. There is also the possibility that they wanted to get caught. Without further ado, Colbee and Bennelong were forcibly bathed, scrubbed, clothed and shackled to their convict ‘companions’ – Colbee’s convict ‘buddy’ was William Moore. Tench noticed ‘they were very sullen and sulky’. This was entirely understandable, ‘yet it did not by any means affect their appetite’. Both Australians ate quickly and voraciously. They ate as if any meal might be their last, and of course they need to be well fortified if there were any chance of successful escape from their abductors. They were locked in the same or similar brick huts with their ‘companions’. Over the next several days, the Australians made a number of attempts to escape during the night by gnawing at the ropes attached to their convicts. On one occasion, having bitten through, they were found by their keepers groping about the room looking for an opening but unable to find the window or door. Less than three weeks later, on 12 December, Colbee managed to escape by

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gnawing through the ropes that tied him. He ran off, still with an iron ring around his ankle; Bennelong was almost free from his bonds when he was discovered. Colbee’s escape from the Berewalgal is a significant moment in the relations between the invaders and Australians in these early years. In the years to come, his presence would be as significant as that of his co-captive. Days later, poor old William Moore was sentenced to 100 lashes for allowing Colbee to escape, while the convict in charge of Bennelong was now chained to the shackle on his leg. On Christmas Day, Bennelong ate at the Governor’s table with the officials of the camp. He feasted on a whole turtle procured on the Supply’s latest trip to Lord Howe’s Island. He had never eaten the animal before. Tench described him as ‘far above mediocrity – willingly communicated information; sang, danced and capered’. Unlike other Australians, he showed a fondness of alcohol whereas Arabanoo would not touch the stuff. For a time, he preferred to be called by one of his other names. The exchange of names was an important custom in Australian society, part of a welcome-tocountry ritual where men (and possibly women) were given appellations – some we would call nicknames. Bennelong conferred the name Be-ana on Phillip, meaning ‘father’. It was a sign of respect. Tench writes ‘hardly anyone judged he would attempt to quit us – Nevertheless it was thought proper to continue a watch over him.’5

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William Bradley, Sydney Cove, Port Jackson 1788 Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Safe 1/14

William Bradley, View at Broken Bay, New South Wales, March 1788 Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

William Dawes/John Hunter, Sketch of Sydney Cove, July 1788 National Library of Australia

William Bradley, Taking of Colbee and Benalon Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Francis Fowkes, Sketch and Description of the Settlement National Library of Australia

William Bradley, Port Jackson from the South Head Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

PART THREE

1790

C H A P T E R 28

Gloom and Dejection

What Phillip didn’t know in January 1790 was that two ships had already departed England bound for his struggling colony. Lady Juliana had sailed on 29 July 1789 with over 220 female convicts, and the store ship HMS Guardian had left port in September. Both ships were expected to appear in the harbour within weeks – or so they assumed back in London. What no one knew was that Lady Juliana would spend a leisurely ten months at sea and port and would not arrive for another five months. The store ship whose cargo was most needed in Sydney would never arrive. HMS Guardian was built for the American War of Independence but was completed too late for her to see any service. She had been idle until May 1789, when she was refitted as a store ship to relieve the distant settlement at the other end of the world. Phillip, is his dispatches, had pleaded for convicts skilled in trade and agriculture. He also asked for more convict superintendents as well as more tools and farming equipment, and desperately needed clothing. His wishes were granted. Guardian was loaded with enough salted meat and flour to last the colony two years, as well as clothing, blankets, medicines, building materials, tools, farming equipment, wagons and carts. The ship was under the stewardship of Lieutenant Edward Riou, who had sailed with Cook as a midshipman on his second voyage in Discovery. After corresponding with Joseph Banks, he arranged for fruit trees, vines, plants and seeds to be boarded. Banks even came on board to chalk out where the plants should be best maintained on the voyage. HMS Guardian sailed in September 1789 with twenty-five skilled convicts and twelve convict supervisors, including Nicholas Devine and Andrew Hume – the latter’s son would become famous as an explorer and get a highway named after him – as well as German-born Phillip Schaefer and his young daughter. When the ship arrived at Santa Cruz shortly after, she took on 2,000 gallons of wine before

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sailing to the Cape. There, they boarded two bulls, sixteen cows and heifers, seven horses – a stallion and mares – pigs, sheep, poultry and rabbits. These livestock would be vital to the development of the settlement and go towards replenishing those lost in the early weeks of the camp. We cannot blame Riou, though, for introducing rabbits to our continent, because his ship never got here. Joseph Banks had arranged for the ship to collect plants and seeds from the Cape, including 150 fruit trees. Guardian left the Cape on 11 December, heading southwest. Just ten days later, three large icebergs were sighted nearby. Riou decided to get fresh supplies of water for his ship and its cargo. Why he would need to do this after less than two weeks out from the Cape is anyone’s guess. He was supposedly inspired by a similar feat accomplished by Cook. He ordered boats out to approach an iceberg and collect ice. As the boats returned, a dense fog descended on the ship and visibility became almost zero. The ship struck the iceberg on 23 December and was stuck fast. By the time she was freed from the mountain of ice, Guardian had lost her rudder and had gaping holes in her keel bow and sternpost. Riou ordered the four pumps to operate non-stop. Orders were also given to jettison cargo: first the guns, then some provisions and finally all the livestock flung into the freezing Southern Ocean. He then fothered the ship – wrapping an oaken-encrusted sail around the keel. These measures only stabilised what was a dire situation. By Christmas Day, things had become desperate. The liquor stores were broken into, personal possessions were ransacked and most of the crew got drunk. Riou declared that he would go down with his ship; crew members were not so ready to accept that fate. Five boats were lowered from the lurching deck of the ship and mayhem ensued as men scrambled on board in near-freezing temperatures. One boat was overturned with all hands drowned, while the others disappeared into the mist. Riou was left with sixty men, including twenty convicts, on a helpless ship – without a rudder, it couldn’t be steered. He ordered ceaseless work at the pumps, even taking his turn. After nine weeks, he had become raving mad. Almost miraculously, in February Guardian sighted Table Mountain and with assistance Riou managed to beach his ruined ship close to the Cape. A week later, as the salvage operation to rescue whatever had not been pushed overboard continued on Guardian, Lady Juliana slipped into the harbour after

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spending three months in port at Rio. When Lady Juliana left the Cape in March 1790, she carried salvaged flour, clothing, twenty-two sheep and five convict supervisors. On Lieutenant Riou’s recommendation, of the twenty convicts who survived the shipwreck, fourteen were eventually given pardons upon their arrival at Sydney Cove. The wreck of HMS Guardian was the sensational news story of its day. It was commemorated in poetry, song and in novel form. But in January 1790, Phillip and his hard-bitten colony didn’t know this. He would only find out in June. The loss of Guardian left the people of Sydney and Rose Hill destitute, threadbare and anxious. Eighteen months previously, the Governor had contemplated bestowing his little camp with the name Albion: New Britain in the antipodes. Now Sydney Cove, although still the centre of government, was becoming merely a port and a depot to service his grand inland enterprise around Rose Hill. Unlike the haphazard design of the original camp, Rose Hill was to be his model for an orderly settlement of agricultural workers. However, the summer of 1790, unlike the previous two seasons, was very hot and mostly dry. The little creek that ran into the cove had been reduced to isolated pools. By then, much of Sydney’s water needs were sourced from nearby springs and creeks including the freshwater swamps to the south. Reduced rations had curtailed most of the labour in the cove. At Rose Hill, things were little better. In the first few months of this hotter-than-expected year, Phillip found encouragement in his new ‘visitor’ Bennelong, from whom the knowledge of their straightened circumstances was hidden, in case he become more ‘troublesome’. Phillip’s relationship with the Australian was paternalistic, personal, political and manipulative – all of which the Australian well understood. Now almost two years since the eleven ships had first landed at Sydney Cove, the British were still clinging to a tiny piece of the huge Australian continent, still trying to impose their European sense of order on to a landscape that would not yield. No ship had arrived from England. Daniel Southwell continued to look forlornly from the South Head towards the southeast. The food rations were now half those allocated upon landing. The government work gangs ceased at 1 p.m. to tend their little gardens. The lack of adequate rain had seriously debilitated the crops in the ground at Rose Hill. Without a night watch there,

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thefts of crops and provisions by convicts continued. On 4 January, Phillip replied to Gidley King’s dispatch from Norfolk Island, delivered by Supply two weeks earlier. In reference to food, he wrote: The Provisions in this settlement being sufficient only to serve until the end of May, none can be sent to you – slops (convict tunics) are sent – it maybe some time before you will receive any more – all the livestock belonging to Government has been disposed of, but I send you two sows from my own stock.1 Gidley King had been a protégé of Phillip’s for over a decade. Phillip’s confidence in him, and his promotion to the command of Norfolk Island two years before, had been justified – the settlement on the tiny Pacific island had been firmly established. But he needed an ally to bolster against the constant animosity between himself and his cranky marine commander. He added as a postscript to his letter on 4 January: I have discharged you from the Sirius –. This meant that King would now be under direct orders from him, rather than from the Admiralty. King could now be employed as his envoy back in England. Good old Supply sailed for the island with Phillip’s correspondence and twenty-four more convicts. His tactic was to spread the population to deal with the severe food shortages, and his policy to send as many of the more obstreperous convicts as possible to a second transportation. Many of the Lady Pen women would spend their last days on windswept Norfolk Island, though some would return to Sydney. With the slow, steady trickle of convict mouths to feed now shipped to Norfolk Island and over one hundred convicts now settled at Rose Hill, Sydney Cove would barely have 300 able-bodied convicts to work. Yet even in the sweltering summer weather, work went on. Despite scant rations and the weather, the Brickfield boys had not only finished Collins’ house but had begun the foundations of the hospital’s new dispensary. John Hunter presented a plan to Phillip and it was immediately adopted. On 20 January, Worgan, Surgeon White, Hunter and half a dozen sailors from

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Sirius rowed down the harbour to Camp Cove, mounted South Head above Birrabirra and erected a flagstaff. They built a hut and began shifts to watch out for ‘the appearance of a ship in the offing’.2 Hunter and his crew would stay for around eight days before being relieved by Will Bradley. Daniel Southwell will be a reluctant third watchman on South Head in the coming weeks and months. On 1 February, Phillip began lengthy correspondence with his superiors in England. Over a week, he laid out all the problems he had faced since his fleet first occupied Sydney Cove. Most of his letters dealt with his relationship with Ross, both as a person and as a marine commander. He began by fully justifying his establishment of the convict watch. He referred to the hanging of the marines the years before for theft and corruption, noting: Major Ross did not deny but that the robberies which had been so very frequent before the watch was established had been very effectually put a stop to.3 Phillip then went on to detail the friction between Ross and his officers – court-martials that could only be resolved in England; disputes over his officers sitting on the criminal court; refusals of his marines to supervise convict work gangs despite being given convict servants and their own land to till. He revealed the discord between Collins, his judge-advocate, Ross and Captain Campbell. He wrote of the death of Arabanoo and the ‘disorder’ that tore through the Australian population at Sydney Cove. Even as Phillip was writing, Ross was placing yet another court-martial on another of his officers, James Meredith, once a firm ally of Ross. The situation with this military commander had become untenable and downright ridiculous. The fact that Meredith now had established a family with a convict woman might have incurred the major’s ire. Phillip concluded in one dispatch to Lord Sydney: Your Lordship will excuse my having entered on this detail; it will point out the necessity of some change being made, or an additional sent out. The recall of Major Ross and his detachment from Sydney Cove had already been arranged, but Phillip didn’t know this – just as he was unaware that the long-sought store ship was rising and falling helplessly in the Southern Ocean. Of 189

course, he informed the bureaucrats at home of the food shortages while forever expressing confidence in their patronage. Anxiety, however, was creeping in: We have been entirely cut off – Famine besides was approaching with gigantic strides, and gloom and dejection overspread every countenance.4 Tench was writing retrospectively here, but it was the reality: In every company the conversation turned now upon the long expected arrival from England. Soon, the catch-cry around Sydney, when invited to the Governor’s house for dinner, was ‘bring your own bread’. But all was not lost. As in every summer, fish abounded in the harbour. Phillip ordered three boats to go out night fishing six times a week, and their hauls became part of the rations. Men from the colony’s Chief Surgeon John White to the lowly marine would become part of the fishing roster. Night fishing was nothing new. The British had long observed Australian men expertly spearing fish from the rocks with the aid of a lighted torch. Our Port Jackson Painter (Watling 43) captured the practice. By the second week in February, the weather finally turned. As rain pelted down on the camp and strong, gale-force winds lashed the town, Phillip sat down and began a detailed account of his situation. He wrote thousands of words over the coming week. He ruminated about the very beginning of the camp, relating the hardships of the first few months, the buildings erected, land explored, Australians kidnapped and their retaliation to his invasion. His ongoing disagreements with Robert Ross and his soldiers were clearly obsessing him. He bridled against the undue influence and power of the military at Sydney Cove, even in early 1790: As to those necessities which were sent out for the use of the settlement – a considerable part of those articles which were intended for the convicts only, like shirts, frock and shoes – now remaining the greatest part in possession of the detachment.

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As the indefatigable Supply returned once more from Norfolk Island (alas with no more turtles from Lord Howe’s Island), he related his plans for the future of the colony. He described the situation at Rose Hill and the prospect of future expansion: As the land for several miles to the southward and twenty miles to the westward of Rose Hill, that is to the banks of the Nepean, is a fine land for tillage as most in England – I propose that tract of land for those settlers which may be sent out ; and though they will be placed at some distance from each other – they will have nothing to apprehend from the natives, who avoid those parts we most frequent, and always retire at the sight of two or three people who are armed.5 This is clearly an aggressive expansionist policy: wholesale usurpation of traditional Darug land. Phillip understood that his little fleet had been merely the advance party of an invasion that would take over all the land of what he now called the Cumberland Plain. He and his superiors knew they had no sovereignty or right to any of the lands they were about to usurp. He hoped to gain legitimacy from his ‘new best friend’ staying with him in his home. The torrential rains of February resulted in all work ceasing. David Collins wrote that the deluge was overwhelming: [It] came down in torrents, filling up every trench and cavity which had been dug about the settlement, and causing much damage to the miserable mud tenements which were occupied by the convicts – A brick building – designed for a guardhouse, of which the foundation had been laid a few days before the heavy rains commenced suffered much by its continuance. It can bucket down in a Sydney summer thunderstorm. The rainfall was so heavy that a young boy, the son of a convict woman, fell into a flooded pit and drowned. But even the rains did not stop the constant thieving from farms and gardens, such was the desperate situation in which the settlement had found itself. As the rain poured down, Phillip decided that he had enough of Ross and his disruption. On 1 March, he wrote to Gidley King on Norfolk Island informing

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him that Ross would be relieving him as commandant of the island and that he should proceed to England as soon as possible to present their dire situations to all the relative authorities in person. Major Ross was to be dispatched to Norfolk Island with most of his detachment, allowing Phillip to rid himself of the wouldbe martinet to a posting in which he could wield almost unlimited power and at the same time relieve the depleted food stores in Sydney. He added ominously to Gidley King: By the time you receive this, we shall not have more than ten weeks provisions, and that at two-thirds allowance. If not to reinforce the austere mood the camp, on the same day, he announced what, for the marines, was unthinkable. Collins recorded it: A reduction in the allowance of spirits took place; the half pint per diem – was to be discontinued, and only half of that allowance served. The desperate hunger for fresh meat in the town led to the loss of valuable livestock as its few pigs and sheep were killed for food. The announcement of the impending departure of the large marine contingent to Norfolk Island saw the rapid depletion of stock as soldiers sold off their chickens and pigs to hungry colonists. Phillip issued another decree: No officer, soldier or any other person (those who are to embark exempted) are to kill, sell or otherwise dispose of any livestock until further orders.6 The unexpected result of this order was the wholesale slaughter of most of the best livestock in the camp. Those not going off to Norfolk believed that the government was going to seize all the colony’s animals after the departure of Sirius and Supply and began using the parenthetical loophole in the decree. By the time Sirius and Supply left, besides a few younger animals that escaped the butcher’s knife, the last fresh meat in the colony lay on slabs or was hanging by a hook. Phillip despaired but he was powerless to stop it. What he could do at this time was find more allies. George Johnston was a man with whom he could

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deal. He offered him a captaincy in the yet-to-arrive New South Wales Corps. Johnston had recently become the father of a boy, named George junior, to Esther Abrahams, and he had long expressed a desire to remain in the colony. It would take him years to establish his company, eventually recruiting a motley bunch of soldiers, marines and ex-convicts. The usual celebration of the King’s birthday on 4 June also culminated with the final completion of the Governor’s house in Bridge Street. With later additions, it would remain the home of New South Wales Governors for the next fifty years, but with no more Australian ‘guests’.

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CHAPTER 29

Bennelong

By the beginning of February, Bennelong had been a mostly willing captive for two months, taking his meals with Phillip and becoming friendly with his staff, including Jane Dundas from the Lady Pen. He enjoyed the company of the Berewalgal as much as he could. He and Phillip attempted to communicate regularly. According to Phillip, half of his people – the Wangal – had died from the galgal-la. The death toll could have been much more. Of his neighbours, the Gadigal, it was thought only three members of the clan had survived: Colbee, who had escaped from the camp five months ago; Nanbaree, adopted by John White and a waiter on his table; and Boorong, the young girl taken under with wings of Mary and Richard Johnson after the epidemic had swept through the clans. Watkin Tench and William Dawes also spent hours in Bennelong’s company. Dawes took notes on his language, whilst Tench observed the man, finding that ‘though haughty, [he] knew how to temporise’. Bennelong was a natural story-teller and mime, enacting his conquests with appropriate exaggeration and theatricality. His strategy was to ingratiate himself with his captors, exuding confidence and good humour but always remaining wary and alert. He proudly displayed his battle scars; posed with a spear and enacted battles; mimed a story about taking a woman from another tribe. Clearly, he was a man who liked women. He had learnt little English at this stage, so Tench’s reported conversations are fantasy; yet there is no doubt that Bennelong was a bit of a performer: His powers of mind were certainly far above mediocrity – he willingly communicated information; sang, danced and capered; told us all the customs of his country, and all the detail of his family economy.1

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Tench was kidding himself if he thought he was being told all the customs of the Wangal. He diminished the man by stating that he was only interested in love and war, denying him any of the sensibilities of a ‘civilised’ person. But Bennelong was a proud man, aware of his position in his culture and was happy to extol it. He was also politically savvy. He had lived through the horrendous impact of galgal-la, his society devastated and its social structures shattered. To align himself with these powerful strangers was also a possible path towards higher status among his depleted people. Bennelong railed against the Cammeragal of the north shore. Now that he was with a manifestly more powerful tribe of people who had transformed Warrane, he would use his advantage to convince the British to disenfranchise the most powerful Australian clan on the harbour. He was a warrior for his people, after all. Although constantly shackled by the ankle and despite food restrictions, he was fed well, slept under a roof and had access to most of the worthies of the camp. On his many excursions, Phillip would have Bennelong accompany him. He started calling the older Phillip, Be-ana, meaning ‘father’. Whether he coined the appellation in jest or more as a heartfelt and genuine expression cannot be known. Most people enjoyed his antics and jovial nature and tolerated his sudden changes of mood. Bennelong was a passionate man, far more animated and less reticent than Arabanoo. He also gave the British their first real understanding of Australian culture and language. Content as he might have been, there was at least one thing that the invaders could not provide. Under a hot, clear February sky, William Bradley hosted them at the lookout near South Head. As they gazed out over the magnificent views, maybe Phillip was trying to wish a sail would appear on the horizon. Bradley was impressed as he watched Bennelong – released from his shackle on the open ground near the lookout – throw a spear against the breeze that travelled over ninety metres, hitting its target with speed and accuracy. On the return journey to Sydney Cove, their boat rowed towards a number of Australian women fishing in shallows of Rose Bay. Bennelong called out to one of them by name – a tall woman, possibly in her thirties: Barangaroo. As Phillip threw the women jackets and other items, Bennelong began a long conversation with her, initially at a distance. He indicated his shackled leg, so Barangaroo waded out into the water to continue talking. He

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was told that Colbee was nearby fishing, still with the shackle about his ankle. They parted as the boat rowed off to his harbourside prison. Four days later, Will Bradley took Nanbaree down to the lookout. There he witnessed the young boy perform a ritual burial. Honouring those no longer walking amongst them had been an activity too much prevalent in his young life. As a way to remember those who had gone, he dug a grave then placed dry sticks in it. Then he mimed placing a body in it, after which he laid more sticks and branches. He then play-acted the cremation of the corpse, rubbing two sticks together to form a spark. He showed how the ashes and remains are pushed into the grave-like pile that the British had seen before, during their bush walks. Despite the heavy rains in February, the twin towns were drought-stricken. But if the rations were not enough for Bennelong, the loss of freedom was worse. Tench thought he was disgruntled because of the meagre meals he was getting. Deep down, he knew that it was more than that. ‘We knew not how to keep him, and yet unwilling to part with him.’ He thought that he was ‘furious and often melancholy’ because of his lack of food. It was the lack of his freedom. In April, Phillip ordered that the ankle bracelet be detached and Bennelong began to make himself appear at home. He was still to be accompanied by his convict ‘pal’ everywhere, but he had resolved to escape. Tench took up the story again in May. He wrote: ‘There is reason to believe that he had long meditated his escape’. Daniel Southwell wrote: Before it was light, he pretended suddenly to be disordered, upon which the other [the convict] opened the door, not doubting that he would soon return; at last, tired of waiting, he thought proper to go and see how and where W.B. was.2 Bennelong had no sooner found himself in the backyard before he nimbly leaped over a slight paling, and ‘bade us adieu’.3 By his escape, he became the expert on the Berewalgal and an important person among the clans. By any measure, he was not previously a leading figure among his own clan or any other people living on the harbour. He would tell the British that his ancestral land was Mel-Mel (meaning ‘eye’), later Goat Island. As much as any individual could claim a piece of land in Sydney, Bennelong’s sovereignty of the island cannot be disputed.

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CHAPTER 30

Two Weeks with Ralph Clark

Ralph Clark, the unhappy lieutenant who railed against the female convicts whom he considered no more than ‘damned whores’, had been silent since March 1788. Knowing he was about to be sent to Norfolk Island, he picked up his pen again on 15 February 1790. He was now a remarkably different man from the homesick marine who had marvelled at the scenery but hated the camp. The marine who reappeared was a person somewhat reconciled with his lot. With little guard duty, he began to enjoy his life at Sydney Cove. Throughout the turmoil surrounding Ross and his fellow officers, Clark tried not to align himself to either faction and attempted to bridge the rift with compromises. One of the few officers who did not incur the wrath of Robert Ross, Clark along with Captain James Campbell (for the moment, at least) was Ross’ only colleague. He had been given an island in the harbour to farm that would come to bear his name. There he planted potatoes, onions and maize and he would regularly visit his little garden. Having access to the island gave Clark the opportunity to explore more of the harbour and people who occupied it. The resumption of his journal begins with his encounters with Australians. Although he had been in the colony for over two years, he writes as if it might be his first close contact with them. By 1790, he had the confidence of a long-time resident of the harbour and the ignorance of an arrogant invader. On 14 February, Ralph and his three convict servants – Ellis, Davis and James Squires (the future brewer) – rowed up the middle branch of the northern shore that Hunter had named Lane Cove. Here he met two Australians, with whom he exchanged a hatchet for two of their spears. Ralph had become a collector or even a trader in rare goods. Indeed, the spears could make considerable money for him back home. Phillip had repeatedly forbidden any trade or theft of Australian

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weapons or tools since the beginning, but Clark was like most of his kind and simply ignored the orders. As a consequence, the theft, unfair trading and destruction of Australian tools, weapons and nowies, added salt to the wounds of a dispossessed people. Crossing the harbour on this day in 1790, Clark was penetrating into a valuable, ecologically important arm of the great harbour. Much of Middle Harbour contained habitats for fish nurseries and a variety of molluscs. Even today, surrounded by suburbs and the constant gargle of distant traffic, the tranquillity and quiet beauty of the Lane Cove River as it glides along shorelines crowned with centuries-old red gums, remains. The next day, he visited Lane Cove again, heading straight towards the smoke from some Australian fires. When he arrived, the people scattered. He called the men by their names that they had given him – Doorawan and Tirrawan. He came ashore and noted: They could see me, although I could see nothing of them.1 They appeared out of the bush and resumed their place by the fire. They had been roasting mussels before being rudely interrupted. Ralph ate one; it made him sick. Australians appeared to look on Clark as a benign figure, one who would do them no harm. Even after two years, he still regarded the Australians as having the mentality of children, thinking it remarkable that they had remembered his name from the day before. He heard the sound of children and indicated his desire to meet them. It transpired that Doorawan was a widower with a young girl. Tirrawan’s son was still suffering from the galgal-la. His wife was nearby, breast-feeding another child. It has been Phillip’s policy that any officer who could safely entice or capture an Australian should do so. Clark’s servant Ellis suggested that the men should be kidnapped, but Clark could not countenance the fact that the woman and children would be left abandoned, probably to starve. There might have been some compassion in the man, for he had a wife and son back home, but Clark was also there for business contrary to the Governor’s orders. Clark and his convict servants rowed up Lane Cove again the next day. It is unknown what attracted him to the place besides its aforementioned serenity, but the Australians were not attracted to him. As soon as Clark approached the shore, they took off. Clark and his party followed them into the bush, armed. 198

Having lost the Australians, Clark was returning to his boat when he came upon a skeleton lying under a tree. He thought it was the remains of Thomas Hill, the midshipman from Sirius who had disappeared recently. He took the skull back to Sydney and presented it to the hospital staff. They believed it to be the skull of another Hill – a convict who had scarpered from Rose Hill over a year ago. Clark demanded that the skull be returned to him, determined to collect the rest of the body and bury it with some dignity. This is not the Ralph Clark whom we met two years ago. On the afternoon of 17 February, Ralph was visited by Robert Ross, who sprang a question on him: how would you like to go to Norfolk Island? Ralph replied: ‘Not at all’. Ross responded by rephrasing the question into an order. Sometime in the last few days, Ross had got the word. Phillip had decided to send Ross and two companies with around a hundred convicts to the island outpost. The plan had two aims: removal of the vexatious Ross from the colony and relief to the public stores from over a hundred hungry mouths. Ross had few officers to accompany him. People like Tench were out of the question – he was under his court-martial. His only other ally, James Campbell, would remain in Sydney. The move to Norfolk Island would change Ralph Clark’s life forever. With thoughts of his imminent departure, Ralph went down the harbour to check on his garden, only to find out that someone had stolen all his onions. He would dine with Ross almost every night until he sailed. On Friday 19 February, Clark rowed back up to Lane Cove and recovered the rest of the convict’s remains. He then went further up the waterway and buried the bones on a point of land he named Skeleton Point. Sirius and Supply were expected to sail at the beginning of March. Ralph Clark had barely two weeks to get his affairs in order. He visited most of his contemporaries, settled debts, purchased a sow, dined with colleagues like Watkin Tench, visited Rose Hill, managed to smooth over a disagreement between Kellow and Ross, and lost all his potatoes and corn on his garden farm. Throughout his last days in Sydney, Clark seemed positive, almost happy. Gone were the earlier forlorn lamentations about his isolation from his family back home. He had no illusions as to why he was being sent to Norfolk Island. He hoped that the sudden arrival of a store ship would preclude him from sailing, but he well understood:

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There is not more from the first of next month than thirteen weeks provisions in store. God Help us. If some ships don’t arrive, I don’t know what will.2 In his letter to Gidley King on 1 March, days before the ships’ departure, Phillip informed him that after stopping off at Norfolk, Sirius would continue on to China to collect supplies. She would also be transporting 96 males, 65 females and 25 convict children. That night, he held a special dinner for those officers about to depart – all except Robert Ross, who refused to come. After waiting some days for favourable weather, Sirius and Supply slipped out the harbour. At the lookout at South Head, Daniel Southwell watched the ships until they were out of sight.

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C H A P T E R 31

William and Patye

While Bennelong subtly railed against his captivity and performed dumb shows for Tench, Phillip and others, there was another relationship that had quietly developed between an Australian and the most unlikely member of the colony. It may also be the greatest love story in these first four years at Sydney Cove. When they met, no one really knows. It could have been as early as January 1790. What cannot be in doubt is that the relationship between the deeply religious, somewhat introverted and highly intelligent William Dawes and the young Australian woman known to us as Patyegarang was both tender and loving. His intimate companionship with this young girl would have a profound effect on Dawes and resonate in him for the rest of his life. Patye (as Dawes would call her) probably felt the same way. How they met, we do not know. However, Dawes’ stone observatory and house on the western point of the cove were intermittently visited by the Australians for at least the past year. From his relatively isolated vantage point, Dawes would have had a full view of the harbour east and west and the expanse of the southern night skies. The Australians would come to see him as a harmless, non-threatening and almost benevolent figure to them – a part of the invasion force and yet also apart from it. Will Dawes had always been somewhat of an aberration to most of the officers in the camp. Promoted by the Astronomer-General, whose name Dawes officially bestowed on his observatory (Point Maskelyne), he had previously been slightly wounded fighting the French off the coast of Maryland but had seen no active service since 1781. In the intervening years, Dawes had acquired a broad classical education well beyond the level attained by the other officers in the camp. He had studied mathematics, engineering, science and grammar as well as astronomy,

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and he was only about twenty-seven years old. Just as important as his talents and skills were Dawes’ character and disposition. A decade later, when Co-Governor of Sierra Leone, his colleague would write: Dawes is one of the excellent of the earth. With great sweetness of disposition and self-command he possesses the most unbending principles.1 Daniel Southwell also thought very highly of William Dawes: To give you character in a few words, he is a most amiable man, and though young, truly religious, without any appearance of formal sanctity. He is kind to everyone – he has a great share of general knowledge, studious, yet ever cheerful, and the goodness of his disposition renders him esteemed and respected by all who know him.2 Dawes’ role in the early years of the colony was significant. He was there at Phillip’s first discovery of one of the greatest harbours in the world; as a surveyor, engineer and draughtsman, he assisted Augustus Alt in laying out both Sydney and Rose Hill. The first town plan was drawn up by him and he had the confidence of Phillip and the administration as an extremely competent man of science, despite seeming not a little odd, perched there as he was on the point called Tarra. It was at Tarra where William and Patyegarang would meet, probably for the most part in secret. Close friends like Watkin Tench, Henry Ball and others seemed to have known about the relationship, as must have Richard Johnson in whose house Boorong was living. It is doubtful, though, if any knew of the intimacy between them. Most historians believe Patye was around fifteen years of age. Suffice to say, she was young. Historians also believe she was Gadigaleon. Her name has been related to that of the grey kangaroo. Equally, she could quite well have been a Wangaleon or someone from Cammeray. These words, the use of these terms, the use of suffixes to denote gender, the geographical names and other Australian words employed in this book, all come from Dawes’ notebooks. Whether or not their relationship was consummated, in what Dawes might term ‘the biblical sense’, is somewhat immaterial. His notebooks reveal a close

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relationship, emotionally and physically. He recorded intimate scenes and conversations between them, translating common English expressions or words into the Sydney language. They reveal a warm, playful relationship of mutual respect: D: Why don’t you sleep? P: Because of the candle. Dawes translated hundreds of words and expressions, such as ‘to undress’, ‘to sleep’, ‘to hug’, ‘to make love’, ‘to run away’. He gives us the Sydney words for ‘We shall sleep separately’ and ‘I will throw water on you’. It is from Dawes we learn that putwa means ‘to warm your hands by the fire and then gently squeeze the fingers of another person’. Of the three antique books rediscovered in London in 1972, two (designated A & B) are definitely the work of Dawes. These were written in 1790. The third book was written in a different hand and appears to be transcriptions of previous lists made by Dawes and others. Here we have pages of Australians’ words for the fish, plants and animals that make up their life, spirit and country. This third manuscript (C) also records five different terms signifying ‘to give’ or the act of giving – an insight into the co-operative nature of Australian society. The two Dawes notebooks, however, are just that: field notes and unfinished at that. There are empty pages of word lists never completed. It was definitely a work in progress. Being the polymath that he was, Dawes’ study of the Sydney language reveals some knowledge of linguistics. Tench had hoped to use these notes in his own publications but it was not to be. However, there is no doubt that by the time Dawes, sadly, left the colony at the end of 1791, he was the foremost linguist of what we now call the language of the Sydney tribes or the Eora – much more so than any other European. It is from Dawes, Patye and other Australians that we have words like waratah, dingo, warrigal, corroboree, coo-ee, woomera, nowie, kurrajong, gunya (shelter), gibber (rocky outcrop), Be-ana and many more. From his notebooks, we get the names of the Australians who interacted with the British in these very early years: Bennelong, Barangaroo, Colbee, Boorong and Nanbaree. We learn that murry means ‘many’ and also ‘very’ and that murry means ‘very many’. We learn that carradhy means ‘doctor’ and dyin means ‘woman’ (the British would corrupt the

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word to ‘gin’). It is from Dawes’ notebooks that we find the terms galgal-la for ‘smallpox’ and mundowies for ‘feet/toes’. When a young naked girl stepped into a petticoat belonging to Patye, Dawes recorded the event: Dawes: It’s too long. Girl: I will hold it up. The colonial British obsession with petticoats could be seen as an enduring theme of the disingenuous masculine response to Australian women’s nakedness. But Dawes was not your average man.3 He was different and he knew it. A born outsider, intelligent and spiritual, he was truly the first to understand Australian culture, law and customs. He comprehended the impact of this quiet invasion on Patye’s people. His writings give us a glimmer of insight into the Australians’ cosmology. He understood that the Australians had a complex understanding of their environment. He was astonished that the Australians had names for all the constellations in the sky and that knowledge helped them to navigate their way around the country as well as on the water at night. Dawes noted that the starry clouds of the Milky Way, so prominent in their night sky, are all designated as feminine, using the suffix -galeon. Having some knowledge of linguistics, Dawes found no difficulty in identifying and understanding the Australians’ use of suffixes and repetitions. Questions in conversation were easy to identify too, since the Australians used the same upward inflexion used in English. Being a spiritual man, William would have probed the Australians about their religion. He had the opportunity to talk to a number of the people, including Patye and Boorong. But, as he confessed to Watkin Tench, he was no more informed than most. When the topic was broached, the Australians changed the subject and made jokes. Tench recalled that, in all his friend’s efforts to understand the cosmology of the Australians, their: love of play in a great measure defeated his efforts.4 It is obvious that the Australians did not want to discuss the Dreamtime – their culture – too deeply with these people. It is doubtful that the invaders would

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have understood the concept anyway. As for the young people living in the camp, Boorong and Nanbaree, they would attend church service every Sunday, as would Dawes: When they attended church with us (which was common practice) they always preserved profound silence and decency, as if conscious that some religious ceremony on our side was performing.5 ‘As if ’, Tench wrote. The thought that these ‘primitive’ people had any sense other than that of a child was beyond conception to him – and he, a supposedly enlightened man. It is a pity that more Australian words are not in our mainstream vocabulary. Apart from those words cited above, and with a strong personal preference for the use of mundowies for the little toes and feet of children, how about gitteegittee for ‘tickling in the armpit’ or didyi for ‘ow’, or for ‘Ow!? That hurt!’? How about burook, meaning ‘I’m stuffed, I’ve had enough to eat’? Or bora for ‘testicle’? Wouldn’t it be nice if a white cockatoo would be called a garraway and Bradley’s Head became Nooragee? From Daniel Southwell’s diary, we discover the words Eora and Cooee! We learn the fish hooks are burra, the arse is bong and yen-ou means ‘Well, I’m off’ – which sounds almost like the old sign-off ‘hoo-roo’. Southwell understood that bogie means ‘to dive’ – hence, the term ‘bogie hole’ – and that the land around the lookout on South Head that he would soon command was called Woollahra. As for Patyegarang who momentarily came to life in Dawes’ sketch books, she paddled off down the river of history and disappeared, but her influence on our understanding and acknowledgement of Australian culture and language is enormous.

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C H A P T ER 32

Solitary Silence

Following the departures of Sirius and Supply to Norfolk Island, Sydney Cove took on a forlorn appearance. Bereft of any ship with any possible link to the outside world, the recently drenched camp felt empty and languid. By March 1790, less than a third of those who had arrived two years previously now remained at the cove. For the first time, days would go by without anybody putting pen to paper over the next two months. At other times, the unadorned notations of births and deaths on some days are all that are extant. The rest is silence. What could not probably be silenced was the child born of Mary and Richard. On 23 March, Mary Johnson christened her new baby girl, with Boorong by her side. She named the girl Milbah Maria, the influence of the Australian girl, her culture and language present in the name. At the end of that week, the inevitable order came from Bridge Street: The expected supply of provisions not having arrived makes it necessary to reduce the present ration – from the first of April – to every person in the settlement without distinction – four pounds of flour, two and a half pounds of salt pork, and one pound and a half of rice, per week. The working hours of the convict workforce were further reduced while thefts of vegetables from gardens continued: soldier from soldier, convict from convict. Private Knight got 200 lashes for stealing two cabbages. The brutal punishments would do little to reduce the pilfering. At the end of March, Collins’ monthly summation of the camp’s progress was bleak.

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The military quarters had a deserted aspect; and the whole settlement appeared as if famine had already thinned it of half its numbers. The little society that was in the place was broken up, and every man seemed to brood in solitary silence over the dreary prospect before him.1 Following the debacle over the needless slaughter of the livestock before the ships’ departure, Phillip directed that no pigs under three months were to be killed and no animal slaughtered without permission, although he allowed the hospital to purchase whatever livestock they could from willing providers. Convicts and soldiers could waiver their salt pork allowance for fresh fish, thus preserving what precious stores were left. More torrential rain arrived in March and many more structures were damaged. Most work was again at a standstill. Pointedly, in early April, divine service was held in an empty storehouse – the congregation easily filling the dusty barn. Finally, on 5 April Daniel Southwell was awoken at daybreak by the man on watch at the lookout on South Head: a sail was in sight. On running up the slope, he saw the ship – it was Supply. Daniel immediately knew there was something wrong. The flag was hoisted to alert the camp. Back at Sydney, Tench went straight to the observatory and used Dawes’ large astronomical telescope to train his eyes on the flagstaff at the Head. He saw no evidence of excitement among the sentries there, realising that whatever was coming in was not a longedfor store ship. On board Supply was an agitated Gidley King. He was arriving with Ann Inett, one of the girls from Lady Pen, with their son Sydney (another, Norfolk, was on the way). He would leave all three of them in Sydney. Ann would shortly later marry and live a comfortable life in the colony. Gidley King’s boys would be educated in England and follow their father into the Royal Navy. He left the ship as soon as she arrived in the harbour and took to a boat with Henry Ball. Phillip and Tench met them halfway. Lidgbird Ball was on the bow of the boat, gesticulating wildly. Sirius had been dashed on the rocks on the coast of Norfolk Island and wrecked. Mercifully, no one lost their life. Hunter and many marooned mariners would be stranded on the island for eleven months. Tench wrote:

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Dismay was painted on every countenance, when the tidings were proclaimed in Sydney. It was a total disaster; Sirius was the fleet’s flagship. More importantly, she was their only real means of procuring enough emergency supplies to sustain the colony. Daniel Southwell, a naval man, gives the best succinct account of the demise of the ship, from his information from Hunter and Bradley: On the 19th of March about noon the Sirius had in course of loading the boats drifted rather in with the land – the wind being dead on the shore, and the ship being out of trim and working unusually bad – she would not go about just as she was coming to the wind – tailed the ground with part of her keel, and with two sends of the vast surf that runs there was immediately thrown on the reef of dangerous rocks called Pt Ross. They luckily in the last extremity let go both anchors and stoppered the cables securely, and this – caused [her] to go right stern-foremost on the rocks, by which means she lay with her bow opposed to the sea – her bottom bulged immediately, and the masts were as soon cut away, and the gallant ship upon which hung the hopes of the colony was now a complete wreck. Two lines were made fast on either side of the heart – one to haul it on shore, the other to haul it on board. On this the shipwrecked seated themselves at two or more at a time, and thus were dragged on shore thro’ a sad dashing surf which broke frequently over heads, keeping them a considerable time under water, some of them coming on shore half-drowned and a good deal bruised. Captain Hunter was a good deal hurt.2 Besides transporting Gidley King and Henry Ball, Supply had brought back to Sydney Cove thirty-two men from Sirius including Henry Waterhouse, George Worgan and Newton Fowell. Phillip would later be grateful for the presence of these men. As their accommodations in Sydney had been reassigned, they were all put up at the Governor’s house on the hill. With many gathered at his house, for the first time, Phillip convened a Governor-in-Council meeting. Its course of action was to reduce the rations yet again; to curb the robberies from gardens and to make extra efforts in the procurement of fish; to order that the gamekeepers

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like John McIntyre and Henry Hacking should cease their activities and bend their efforts towards the catching of fish. As an inducement, extra rations of one pound of fish were given to those who returned with a catch after a night trawling on the water. Like most of the Sirius crew, Hunter and Bradley would be stranded on Norfolk Island for eleven months. But their situation there was not as dire as that of Sydney Cove. Ralph Clark reported that the Norfolk settlers had killed 170,000 mutton-birds between April and July 1790. Within a year, the nesting colony would be almost gone. Indeed, for Clark, life on Norfolk Island was comparatively easy. Shortly after arrival, he formed an attachment with Mary Branham, one of the Lady Pen women, who gave him a child in July 1791. Will Bradley used his time stranded on Norfolk to comprehensively chart the island for the first time.3 Meanwhile, in Sydney, Phillip ordered the camp rations be immediately reduced again. It was now a starvation diet: same as before – 1.1 kilos of flour, 900 grams of pork and 900 grams of rice – but instead of per person per week, it became the daily allotment for seven persons. These rations were now issued on a daily basis by new Commissary, John Palmer – the previous Commissary Andrew Miller having resigned due to ill-health. Without regular hauls of seafood, evenly distributed among the invaders, the camp would actually starve. Collins also noted that the three hundred bushels of wheat produced at Rose Hill would be reserved for seed. Phillip called Henry Brewer back from Rose Hill to organise more efficient fishing teams. John McIntyre and others were instructed to organise shooting parties but they were soon abandoned. Phillip commanded the hard-working Henry Ball and the redoubtable Supply to set sail again as soon as possible, this time to Batavia to pick up supplies. On the way, he would call at Norfolk Island. Henry Ball’s instructions were to lease a ship, have her filled with provisions and sent off, as soon as possible, to save the starving colony. At Norfolk Island, as the waves pounded the broken hull of Sirius, Robert Ross, true to form, had declared martial law on the island. It was no surprise to Phillip or Henry Ball. Phillip knew that Sydney Town had only enough desiccated salt pork and flour to last another six months on starvation rations. He also knew that no workforce could be sustained on this diet. Now every man and women would

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gather shortly before lunchtime to pick up their meagre dole and tend, or more likely watch over, their vegetable gardens. By the time Henry Brewer had begun organising night fishing parties to Botany Bay among willing convicts, the catch was becoming progressively lighter. With the camp in wretched circumstances, the harsh penalties for those found guilty of theft became even more barbaric. On 12 April, a court bench was assembled including David Collins, Tench and William Dawes. The convicts James Williams and William Lane were found guilty of stealing 13 pounds of vermin-infested biscuits from the stores. Williams got 500 lashes; Lane was sentenced to 2,000 lashes. Thomas Halford was charged with stealing a handful of potatoes; he also got 2,000 lashes. William Parr was caught stealing a pumpkin; he received 500 lashes. These sentences all occurred even before Supply left the cove on its mercy mission to Batavia and they were probably never carried out in full. No person could survive 2,000 whippings, even if applied on an instalment plan. However, these barren months reveal more than just thievery and the lash; there were times of quiet reflection also. Many put pen to paper. Before Supply sailed, the Reverend Richard Johnson, among many others in Sydney, wrote to a friend back home: Tis now about two years and three months since we arrived at this distant country – all this while, we have been as it were buried alive, never having the opportunity of hearing from our friends – Our stock of provisions brought from England is nearly exhausted – We have been anxiously looking out for a fleet for a long time – as to my family, we are in a thriving way – Mrs J. has had a second child (the first was still-born), a sweet babe about five weeks old – have given it the name Milbah Maria – Have a native girl under my care. Have had her now about 11 months – Bennelong – is still at the Governor’s, and has become very communicative and affable – Have taken some pains with Abaroo (Boorong) (about 15 years old) to instruct her in reading – she can likewise speak a little English, and is useful in several things about our little hut – on Monday I am appointed to go fishing.

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James Campbell, now one of only two marine captains at the cove (the other being Tench), finished his letter bluntly: However much myself and others are now suffering from a seemingly, apparent neglect on your side of the water, or from misrepresentations of this vile country which has not yet been found to produce any one natural production that can be of the least use to anything human, I shall conclude my letter without any further comments, saying only that I hope you are, as I am, well. An anonymous writer (probably a marine private) would also take the advantage of Supply’s imminent departure to tell it like it was: To give you a just description of the hardships that the meanest of us endure and the anxieties suffered by the rest, is more than I could pretend to. In all the Crusoelike adventures I have ever read or heard of – All our improvements, except our gardens, have lately been quite at a stand, neither do I think they will go on again till we have more assistance from England. God knows what our Governor thinks of it – We fear the troops, and they are not contented with seeing those who live better than themselves, nor with us who live worse; and I think if the savages knew that we were as short of powder as we are of provisions they would soon be more daring than they are – If you was to see with what ardent expectations some of the poor wretches watch an opportunity of looking out to sea, or the tears that are often shed upon the infants at the breast, you must have feelings that otherwise you never could have any experience of.4 Another unknown writer, this time an unidentified officer, had his letter published in England over twelve months after he penned it. In part, he wrote: By the time this reaches you, the fate of this settlement, and all it contains will be decided – On the day I write we have but eight weeks provisions in the public stores – unless ships from England should yet – come in upon us. The hope of this is, however, very feeble – we use every means to get fish 211

– were you to see us digging, hoeing and planting it would make you smile. As to parade duties and show, we have long laid them aside – our soldiers have not a shoe, and mount the guard barefoot.5 The convicts by now disported themselves in ragged patch-worked dresses, shirts and pants. The marines were not sartorially different. The weather was also turning colder and they were malnourished. Collins was well aware of their plight: It was naturally expected, that the miserable allowance which was issued would affect the health of the labouring convicts – an elderly man dropped down at the store – fainting from hunger – he was carried to the hospital – on being opened, his stomach was found quite empty. Our poor marine officer, James Maxwell, certified insane the year before, escaped from the hospital in April, stole a boat and was eventually found rowing up and down the lower part of the harbour. He was kept under a closer watch in the future.6 By the end of April, the fishing tackle brought from England had deteriorated, frayed beyond repair. A convict was employed to utilise what he had gained from his observation of the Australian women using particular trees in an attempt to spin fishing lines – it was unsuccessful. Phillip had just about enough of the pain in his kidneys, his vexatious relationship with Ross over the past two years and constant exertions, all of which led him quietly to request his recall. He wrote privately to Lord Sydney: I shall be glad to return to England – which I do not ask in any public letters, nor should I mention a desire of leaving this country at this moment but that more than a year must pass before it can possibly take place. You cannot blame him for wanting to leave Sydney as this dreadful dry autumn crawled along and friend began preying on friend. William Chaaf and Thomas Tennyhill (or just Hill) were mates, or comrades at least. Chaff had come out on Scarborough and Hill had arrived on Friendship.

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They had to know each other since their arrival. Both had received floggings in the past. In April, they both volunteered to take part in Henry Brewer’s new fishing expeditions to Botany Bay. The convicts would walk to a camp established to the south and spend three days fishing on the bay. They then returned to Sydney Cove for three days off while the next shift replaced them. One night while Hill was away, Chaaf broke into his house and was caught red-handed by the convict watch. Later evidence revealed that William has recently helped thatch Thomas’ roof and discovered a way to enter the hut seemingly unnoticed. This was William Chaaf ’s second crime in the camp. He had got 150 lashes on his bare back for stealing a pumpkin from John Archer towards the end of the first year. Thomas Hill, convicted of stealing bread from a fellow convict way back in February 1788, had been the first to be banished to Pinchgut. Clearly, they weren’t saints. Interestingly, Archer was one of the arresting officers. This time, William Chaaf didn’t get a flogging. He got life. He was executed the next day. June started with cold rain and colder winds. The little work going on in the camp was abandoned, yet again. On 3 June, as the frugal celebrations for another ‘Glorious June 4th’ were being prepared, Watkin Tench was relaxing: I was sitting in my hut, musing on our fate, when a confused clamour in the street drew my attention – by the assistance of a pocket glass, my hopes were realized. My next door neighbour, a brother-officer, was with me; but we could speak; we wrung each other by the hand, with eyes and tears overflowing. Tench jumped in a boat with Phillip and they were rowed through the wind, rain and choppy seas. He waxed lyrical: At last we read the word ‘London’ on her stern. ‘Pull away, my lads! She is from old England!’7

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CH A P T ER 33

Second Fleet

Although many historians regard the Second Fleet as comprising six ships, they did not all sail together. Justinian and the ill-fated Guardian travelled by different routes. Lady Juliana would do the same. It is the voyages of the three transport ships in 1790 – the Neptune, Scarborough and Surprize – that comprise the true Second Fleet and one of the worst events in the history of convict transportation. As the store ship HMS Guardian was being waved off to the shores of New South Wales, in December 1788, Lady Juliana was being prepared for a trading trip to Canton. Around the same tonnage as the transports from the previous fleet, she was docked in the Thames when the first ship back from Botany Bay limped home. Prince of Wales had finally arrived in March 1789. The most important items on board were the letters from Arthur Phillip and his pleas for better tools, more clothing, blankets, medical supplies and, if the colony were to survive, competent supervisors for the convicts. He barely mentioned the need for more women to close the gender gap in the colony. Throughout 1788, however, the overcrowding in the women’s section of Newgate Prison had generated appalling sickness, fever and death. A number of the women were also imprisoned with their children. Unlike the male prisoners, the women were sometimes supported by people of standing in London society. Some won their appeals, though many didn’t. There was increasing pressure on William Pitt’s Government to clear out the cells. Lady Juliana was speedily refitted as a transport to take 150 women to the new colony at New South Wales. The total number of women sent to Sydney on the ship, like all the early transport fleets, is not exactly known but Lady Juliana banished around 240 women with five children, but probably more.

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Captain Aitkin was the ship’s commander. The master and government agent was Lieutenant Thomas Edgar. Aitkin was a benign, benevolent man. Edgar had sailed on Cook’s last voyage as master of Discovery – a dream job for a young man until things had turned sour. Edgar had a decisive role in the events leading to his hero James Cook being bludgeoned to death by Hawaiians in 1779. Prior to Cook’s murder, tools had been stolen from Discovery and Lieutenant Edgar and his seamen went off in pursuit. The islanders easily outran them. At the end of the day, a Hawaiian brought the tools back. It was probably just a joke. Edgar didn’t see it that way and began to attack a Hawaiian canoe. A scuffle broke out and both the English and the Hawaiians were injured. Then the Hawaiians took off in Discovery’s cutter. This was not a joke. The next day, Cook went onshore to demand the return of the boat. A fight ensued and Cook was murdered. Now ten years later, Edgar was still a lieutenant but he was a competent sailor who had sailed the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. He was described as a jolly man who liked a drink, as did most sailors. In later years, he would become a drunkard. In 1789, he was an honourable man. The crew of Lady Juliana assembled on board in June 1789, including the ship’s cooper and steward, John Nicol. His role on the ship was to maintain the integrity and the preservation of the casks of provisions on board and to act as the ship’s general dogsbody. In the next month, the women were delivered to the ship. They arrived cold, dirty and wet, most of them from Newgate Prison. John Nicol’s job also entailed breaking off the convict shackles of the women upon their being brought on board. In a romantic look back on his life, Nicol would recall his first meeting with Sarah Whitelam. She was seventeen, while he was in his thirties. It was love at first sight. Within days, Sarah was not living in the orlop deck with the other women. She was ensconced in the private quarters of John. Even before Lady Juliana left the Thames, Sarah would be pregnant. Leaving Plymouth in July 1789, the ship would take a leisurely eleven months to reach the harbour at Sydney. Lady Juliana has become known as the floating brothel but it was no more so than Lady Penrhyn. Around forty women on board were spared the convict holds to live with officers and crew of the ship. In the almost year-long voyage, this arrangement relieved those women and children still left in the orlop. On most evidence, Lady Juliana was a healthy ship and

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arrived at the Heads with most of the convicts in good condition. Due to the strong westerly winds on this day in early June, she was eventually towed up to the settlement. Lady Juliana only carried enough provisions to satisfy the 240-odd women on board for two years. It was little relief for the colony as a whole, but at least the women weren’t more mouths to feed. Many on shore were disappointed that the ship had food on board but not for them. Various thefts were detected from Lady Juliana over the next few days – one at Spring Cove, the usual first port of call in the harbour, before the ship had even arrived at Sydney Cove. Collins bitterly commented: It was not a little mortifying to find on board the first ship that arrived, a cargo so unnecessary and unprofitable as 222 females instead of a cargo of provisions. His opinion of the women as a whole was also less than flattering when they finally disembarked on 11 June: Many of them appeared to be loaded with the infirmities incident to old age – Instead of being capable of labour, they seemed to require attendance themselves, and were never likely to be any other than a burden to the settlement – at divine service on the first Sunday after their landing, Mr Johnson – touched upon their situation, and described it so forcibly as to draw tears from many who were the least hardened among them.1 What the long-wished-for arrival did carry was tools, blankets, clothing and – most significantly – news from home. For the first time, the Sydney Cove campers heard about the siege of the Bastille and the beginnings of the French Revolution. They read about the recovering health of their monarch George III and they found out about the wreck of HMS Guardian. The news of her demise gave reason to believe that England had not forgotten about them after all. Phillip had to remind Grenville, the newly appointed Home Secretary: Excuse me, if I repeat what I have mentioned in my letter of 17th instant – that it is professional men who are wanted as

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superintendents – master carpenter, a sawyer, and a brick and tile maker, in whom some little confidence could be placed.2 Collins believed that if not for the unfortunate accident with the iceberg, the ship would have arrived in January along with Lady Juliana, who had taken her sweet time. Phillip was also informed that HMS Gorgon would shortly arrive with the rest of the New South Wales Corps accompanying its leader, Major Francis Grose. He was an acquaintance of Joseph Banks through his father, a famous antiquarian and writer. One could easily enjoy the pastime of applying the ‘four degrees of separation’ between either Banks or Cook and any person presently living in the colony. Many soldiers, like Jonathan Easty, as well as marine wives and convicts, received letters from home for the first time – good news and bad. The camp also learnt that around a thousand convicts would soon be descending on the camp. More ships would be arriving at any time. Most of the women from Lady Juliana would be destined for a second transportation to Norfolk. Seaman Edward Powell formed a relationship with young Sarah Dorset, and their son was christened in Sydney before Powell would leave again, only to return two years later as one of the colony’s first free settlers. Sarah and her son would return from their stay at Norfolk Island too and the family were immediately granted land on what would be called Liberty Plains. Powell’s Creek near today’s Homebush commemorates the seaman’s name. He would later become a constable and be implicated in the frontier wars on the Hawkesbury and the covering-up of atrocities against the Australians in the decade to come. On 20 June, after battling heavy gales, the store ship Justinian finally arrived in the harbour. Of the many items on board was another portable hospital for the colony – just as well. Tench noted: We were joyfully surprised – to see another sail enter the harbour – our rapture was doubled on finding that she was laden entirely with provisions for our use. He added that ‘full allowance and general congratulations immediately took place’.3 But it didn’t last.

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Collins recorded ‘everything seemed getting into its former train’. Rations were doled out weekly again, not daily, and the drum for the work gangs to begin their afternoon labours was heard once more at one o’clock. From correspondence from England, written in August 1789, Phillip was given the British Government’s permission to begin the further expansion of the colony. Ex-marines of good character were to be allowed tracts of land (for a small fee) and given every encouragement to take them up. He was told to expect free settlers, to whom he would extend similar generosities of land grants. The British Government also advised Phillip that he should reserve 10 acres out of 50 for the Crown. He was further advised to expect three transports – Neptune, Scarborough and Surprize. William Grenville (a cousin of Prime Minister William Pitt) had succeeded Lord Sydney in June 1789. Whereas the First Fleet had been organised as a form of a public–private partnership between the government and private enterprise – specifically, the East India Company – the next fleet of transports was totally outsourced. Grenville reverted to the model of transportation used prior to the American War by hiring private contractors. Enter the firm Camden, Calvert and King (CC&K), slave traders who worked the notorious ‘middle passage’ between London and the Guinea coast. Grenville would hire three ships as transports from this company. The deal CC&K had with the British Government was simple: a flat fee of £17 7s 6d per head, whether the convict was landed dead or alive. They also agreed to care for, clothe and feed the assigned convicts throughout the voyage. The only representative of the government on the voyage was naval agent Lieutenant John Shapcote. It was a disaster waiting to happen and Grenville was all too aware of the dangers. He advised Phillip: There is every reason to expect that many of them [convicts] will be reduced to so debilitated state that immediate relief will be found expedient for the preservation of lives.4 Later, as British Prime Minister, Grenville would oversee the passage of the Abolition of Slavery Bill in 1807. But that’s in the future. The three privately contracted ships sailed on 19 January 1790. Scarborough was the same ship that had sailed with the First Fleet. Then, as now, the ship was mastered by John Marshall. She departed with around 253 convicts on board and

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a crew of thirty-eight men. On 18 February, a plot by some convicts to overtake the ship meant that the human cargo was confined below decks for the duration of the voyage. Two of the would-be mutineers were sent to another ship and the others were severely flogged and chained to the deck – the same punishment that the Lady Pen women had endured. Scarborough also sailed with the New South Wales Corps’ Edward Abbott and Surgeon John Harris and roughly a third of the new garrison’s privates. Macarthur and his family would later join them. Of similar tonnage, Surprize carried around 254 convicts. Even in mild weather, water would flood the lower decks and many of the convicts who were chained up would be waist-deep in it for days at a time. The Reverend Samuel Marsden was also travelling to New South Wales. The third transport was the behemoth Neptune at 735 tonnes. She departed with around 421 convicts. Other passengers included D’Arcy Wentworth, his soon-to-be lover Catherine Crowley and, initially at least, John and Elizabeth Macarthur and their son. Wentworth was a tall, handsome man from a prominent Anglo-Irish family. While studying medicine in London, he had exuberantly lived beyond his means, so he turned to highway robbery. Charged but acquitted at the Old Bailey, he decided it would be expedient to get out of town. He signed up on a passage to Botany Bay as Assistant Surgeon. It is not the scope of this book to detail the appalling conditions and lack of humanity that attended to the convicts of these ships. Dysentery, typhoid fever, scurvy and cholera were commonplace. Those who survived the voyage would arrive seriously malnourished and riddled with lice, after months held in compartments, chained in the same way as the Africans usually transported by CC&K. Food was deliberately withheld from the convicts by the officers and crew, with predictable results. The death toll was heavy. This is the vision that has inspired ‘historical’ television series of the harsh brutality of Australia’s convicts. The Third Fleet was not much better, with CC&K again contracted to the enterprise even before the Second Fleet had arrived at Sydney Cove. Future charges against Shapcote, John Marshall and others for their gross negligence, mismanagement and cruelty during the voyage of the Second Fleet were dismissed by the jury, even before a judgment was made by the magistrate. At Donald Traill’s court appearance, no lesser person than Horatio Nelson was a character witness for the reviled captain. 219

As with all the early transportation lists, exact totals of those convicts who had boarded the three transports and those who arrived are unknown: 1,000? 930? Around 12 per cent of the convicts were women. Those who had come out on Lady Juliana would realise how lucky they were. Early on 23 June, a sail was discerned from Daniel Southwell’s lookout on the South Head. It was the Surprize. First, she hooved into Spring Cove and dumped some of her unwanted cargo. The Australians watched in horror as dozens of bodies floating off the beaches would bloat and eventually sink to the bottom. Neptune arrived next, followed by Scarborough, and all three ships were anchored off Garden Island on 28 June, to further dispose of dead convicts. Within days, naked bodies were seen floating in the harbour or caught on rocks. It took the Reverend Richard Johnson’s entreaty to Phillip before an order was issued that all the dead be interred and not heaved overboard like sacks of potatoes – or, as Johnson put it: ‘in the same manner as they would sling a cask’. The next day, disease-infested Neptune and Scarborough were warped into Sydney followed by the even nastier Surprize. Richard Johnson arrived at the cove and immediately boarded Surprize, demanding to inspect the condition of the convicts: I beheld a sight truly shocking to the feelings of humanity, a great number of them laying, some half and others nearly quite naked, without either bed or bedding, unable to turn or help themselves. Spoke to them as I passed along, but the smell was so offensive that I could hardly bear it.5 Johnson then went aboard Scarborough but was discouraged by the captain from going below. He didn’t even attempt to examine Neptune. Collins wrote about the landing of the convicts on the afternoon of 29 June on the shore of Sydney Cove: The west side afforded a scene truly distressing and miserable – the appearance of those who did not require medical assistance was lean and emaciated. Several of these people died in the boats as they were rowing on shore; or on the wharf as they were lifting out of the boats; both the living and the dead exhibiting more horrid spectacles

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than had ever been witnessed in this country – All possible expedition was used to get the sick on shore; for even while they remained on board many died. The bodies were taken over to the north shore and interred.6 Richard Johnson despaired at what he witnessed: Great numbers were not able to walk, nor to move hand or foot; upon their being brought up to the open air some fainted, some died on deck, and others in the boat before they reached the shore – Some creeped upon their hands and knees, and some were carried on the backs of others – The misery I saw amongst them is inexpressible – covered over almost with their own nastiness – filth and lice.7 The camp swung into action – the focus being the hospital. Thirty tents were immediately erected near the waterfront and the new portable hospital from the Justinian was hastily erected. Every man in possession of a gun and every person with fishing tackle were all instructed to find fresh meat and fish to feed the ailing newcomers. Troops of convicts scoured the countryside for any medicinal herbs that they thought would be of benefit to the sick. Blankets from the Justinian were quickly disembarked to cover the traumatised patients. Convicts collected grass to pad the beds of the afflicted. A letter from an unknown source (it might have been William Balmain), later published in England, recalls those desperate weeks on the west side of Sydney Cove: It is shocking to behold the deplorable condition to which the poor wretches were reduced by dysentery and scurvy. The liberal supply of hospital stores enabled us to assist them with some comforts as well as medicines. But the miserable state to which the poor wretches were reduced – put it beyond the power of art to restore many of them.8 These appalling conditions were brought about solely by greed. Within days of the transports’ arrivals, the master of Lady Juliana opened a store on the east side of the creek, selling merchandise from the transports at exorbitant prices. He had few takers. 221

A well-informed woman from Lady Juliana, whose letters were later published in the Morning Chronicle, compared her arrival to that of the vermin-covered wretches she beheld: The Governor was very angry, and scolded the captains a great deal, and, I heard, intended to write to London about it, for I heard him say it was murdering them. It, to be sure, was a melancholy sight. What a difference between us and them.9 Over the next month, the deaths would continue unabated. Each morning would begin with those who had died overnight being transported up the main street, past David Collins’ new house, to the new burial ground that already held Captain Shea, near today’s Sydney Town Hall. The statistics, recorded by Surgeon John White, provide the stark reality. Of those were shipped off on Scarborough: 28 per cent of the convicts died and 37 per cent were hospitalised on landing. The numbers are similar for the other two transports. On Surprize, 14 per cent of the convicts died and, half were incapable of walking. Neptune recorded deaths tallied at 31 per cent. Of those who landed, 53 per cent were unfit for anything but occupying a space in the dirt in the corner of a hospital tent. The only moment of clinging humanity during these calamitous weeks involved a Newfoundland dog named Hector. This was Scarborough’s second visit to Sydney. The ship had left after disgorging her cargo way back in May 1788. Before departing, the master of Scarborough, Captain John Marshall, had left Hector with Zachariah Clark. Amid all the tragedy, on 29 June, seeing the ship in the cove, Hector leapt into the water and swam to his master and remained at his side throughout the rest of his stay in Australia. The ultimate fate of Hector is not known. The quiet invasion was going to get a little louder. Phillip was informed: The discontents which have prevailed in the marine detachment – have led to the making arrangements for relieving them – his Majesty has ordered Corps to be raised – to be readiness for embarkation on the 1st of October next.10 This was to be the soon infamous New South Wales Corps.

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CHAPTER 34

New South Wales Corps

The New South Wales Corps, authorised by King George III and established to replace Ross’ Marine Corps, has been described as a ‘peculiar institution’. The London Gazette of 16 October 1789 declared the Corps of Foot for New South Wales and listed the appointment. Major Francis Grose, after years on half-pay, was the commander. All of his subordinates were promoted to their new positions: Captain William Hill, Captain William Paterson, Captain Nicholas Nepean, Lieutenant Joseph Foveaux and Lieutenant John Macarthur. Three of the ensigns and most of the privates had never seen any military service. In the decades to come, it would become known as the Rum Corps. The men who sailed in January 1790 consisted of three companies, not of full strength. As noted before, the man assigned to form this new battalion would not arrive in Sydney for eighteen months. By then, the Corps was at its full strength. Within years, it would be at its full power. The New South Wales Corps was raised specifically for long-term service in this faraway land. Little was known, when the corps was formed, about the fate of the First Fleeters who had sailed to the other end of the earth. It attracted adventurous, often ambitious young men who were seeking fortune more than service. The recruiting officers began by seeking out marines on half-pay. Next they trawled the Savoy Prison (which housed those imprisoned due to courtmartials) for likely lads and took on a number of paroled marines who had nothing else to lose. As news got out about the successful occupation of Sydney Cove, and in order to attract more interest, a bonus system was instigated whereby any man who signed up and could get his mate to enlist, would get a pay bonus, and so it went on. As a further inducement to attract the ‘right’ kind of solider, the War

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Office also allowed the corps to take ten wives per company to travel with them to New South Wales, up from the usual six. The young officers of the corps were mostly educated men from the lower middle classes. Some were troublemakers, some were intelligent men full of adventure and ambition. By any measure, a colourful bunch. John Macarthur was enlisted into the corps in June 1789 by Captain Nicholas Nepean, who happened to be the brother of the Undersecretary at the Home Office. Macarthur came from a relatively lowly background – it is thought that his father was in the hosiery business – but John had a strong sense of self and entitlement. He was an ensign on half-pay at the time of his enlistment into the New South Wales Corps and he joined, like all officers, with the guarantee of promotion to lieutenant. John was twenty-three years old and had recently married Elizabeth, whom he regarded as coming from the good breeding to which he aspired. Elizabeth was also ambitious and felt entitled. The Macarthur family had already been blessed with a young son, named Edward. A circumspect quote from one of John Macarthur’s biographers describes him as a young man with a ‘strong personality – with more than the natural arrogance of youth’.1 The contractors for the voyage had allowed the great cabin in the stern of Neptune to be used for two officers of the New South Wales Corps – Nepean and the Macarthurs. This freshly minted lieutenant with the strong personality boarded Neptune with his wife and son, accompanied by his recruiter, Captain Nepean, in January 1790. There was trouble from the start. Their room, one of the most commodious in the ship, was unfortunately too close to the convicts for John’s sensibilities. He immediately complained to Captain Tom Gilbert, saying his wife and child were affected by the noxious smells and noise of the seventyeight female convicts kept unchained in the upper deck. Gilbert dismissed this upstart – indeed, to complain about convicts! Where did he think he was going? Nicholas Nepean contacted his relative Evan Nepean, an Undersecretary of State, on the insistence of Macarthur, complaining about Tom Gilbert’s conduct. But it was not enough. Macarthur had been insulted and his honour had to be addressed. He marched up to the quarterdeck and confronted Gilbert in front of his men, accusing him of ‘ungentlemanly-like’ behaviour. Oblivious to the fact that his present conduct was the epitome of the notion, Macarthur insisted on a

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duel by pistols. Gilbert agreed and the date and place was set at a tavern near the Plymouth docks. They had not even left the British Isles. The two duellists met at the Fountain Tavern in Plymouth, at the appointed time. John Harris, the recently appointed surgeon, was Macarthur’s second. Gilbert and Macarthur raised their pistols. They fired twice but the bullets whistled through the air with no damage. The seconds rushed in and honour on both sides was assuaged – for the moment. Hours after the duel, back on board Neptune, the whole ship was in an uproar; the animosity between Gilbert and Macarthur and, by association, Nepean, had not cooled. Guns had been drawn and John Harris was sent with an urgent dispatch to the Admiralty. The outcome was the removal of Gilbert as captain of Neptune and the instalment of Donald Traill. Compared to Traill, Gilbert was an angel. By Christmas 1789, Neptune had around 500 convicts on board – half of the total number banished to the colony. They were almost ready to set sail. By this time, Nicholas Nepean had had enough of John Macarthur. He had made the decision that, for the moment, he might give the young man with the dark, piercing eyes a wide berth. Honestly, he decided that he could find a more convivial companion for his journey to the antipodes. He left the great cabin to his brooding subordinate and family. But in the overcrowded ship where space was a premium, Traill used all the vacant space available in the ship. The corridor outside the Macarthurs’ cabin was taken up by female convicts, making it unpleasant for them to visit the head (toilet). Needless to say, Macarthur turned white with rage and demanded their removal. Traill refused. Nepean became embroiled in the dispute and then Macarthur turned on his superior officer. Everyone had had enough of him. When Macarthur demanded that he and his family be transferred to the transport Scarborough, both Traill and Nepean readily agreed. On 19 February 1790, mid-Atlantic, with the huddled convict masses heaving below decks, the three Macarthurs were winched on to Scarborough in unnecessarily hazardous circumstances. Shortly after, during the stopover at the Cape, Macarthur became dangerously ill and spent the rest of the voyage bed-ridden. Tom Gilbert died mid-voyage. Macarthur would spend most of 1790 recovering from his voyage. The man

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whom Gidley King would later call the ‘perturbator’ would soon paper over his disapproval with Nepean. Within three years, he would be the most powerful man in the colony. Meanwhile, his wife later gave her opinion of Sydney Cove in June 1790: Save for the natural setting around the finest harbour in the known world – everything is wretched – the filthy ships in the cove, the rude lines of sodden barracks, the tents that held the sick sagging in the downpour along the waterfront; the night fires in the region of the Rocks, a sink of evil already and more like a gypsy encampment than a part of town – the stumps and fallen trees, and the boggy tracks winding their way round rock and precipice; the oozy Tank Stream spreading itself over the sand by the head of the Cove.2

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CHAPTER 35

No Going Back

For the Australians no doubt looking on, the arrival of this second fleet of ships – and the appalling scenes it generated – confirmed once and for all that these invaders had no understanding of the laws that had sustained them forever. If any Australian had thought the Berewalgal would pack up and leave, they were now convinced otherwise. They were not going anywhere, but neither were the Australians. There was no going back for either of them. Since Bennelong’s escape, the Australians had been little seen on the harbour. Some had moved west, some to the north. Chance encounters were circumvented by the Australians disappearing into the bush, leaving their firesides silently burning and their nowies lying casually on the beach. The new kids in town, the members of the New South Wales Corps, were disappointed, to say the least, at the struggling camp before them. Appalled at the lack of progress in the colony and the lack of supplies, the newcomers had been expecting better conditions after almost three years. The most senior officer of the newly arrived corps was Captain William Hill. Though he acknowledged that the Rose Hill farms were looking very promising, Hill was astounded that some of his soldiers would be living under canvas while most of the officers’ accommodations were flimsy huts. David Collins noted dryly: Our new guests expressed great concern at not finding everything here in a very prosperous state. They had been led to believe that matters were in a very fair train, and that plenty of conveniences were ready for their reception at landing; but they found quite the contrary to be the case.1 In his letter, after having regaled his reader about the wonderful winter weather and the horrendous voyage out, Captain Hill did not hold back his

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criticism, centred on Arthur Phillip. He thought the government of the colony was inefficient, badly run and ‘will never answer’ to the requirements of the mother country. He found it inexcusable that more land had not been explored further and occupied. He could not understand why Phillip had settled in the little of valley of Warrane in the first place, rather than the open kangaroo grounds of Bulamaning further to the south and west. With its sparser vegetation and luxuriant grasses, it was an area that Hill thought should have been turned over to farming. He described the land around Sydney Cove as ‘little better than a sandy desert’. He was also appalled to find that everyone was on the same ration: Here I am, living in a miserable thatched hut, without kitchen, without a garden – obliged to live on a scanty pittance of salt provisions, without a vegetable – A soldier should endure all hardships cheerfully when the service requires it, but when they are occasioned by ignorance, incompetency, injustice, or oppression, he has a right to complain.2 But William Hill was a man of some decency. Later he would be stationed at Rose Hill and see the brick barracks completed. He would also befriend a young Australian boy. Meanwhile, Lieutenant John Macarthur was still recovering from his voyage while his pregnant wife Elizabeth got to know Tench, Charles Worgan and Henry Ball, to avoid her irascible sickly husband. While the ships were in Sydney Cove, Phillip took advantage of their imminent departures and became engaged in a frenzy of letter writing. He wrote again to his hopefully new best friend, Grenville, giving a positive spin on the state of the place. But he was not well, complaining of insomnia and the ever-present ache in his side. Having re-transported most of the new arrivals to Norfolk Island, there were only a hundred convicts well enough to march west to reinforce the occupation of Rose Hill. By August 1790, Sydney Cove had virtually no livestock, only some small piglets and a sheep or two. They had chickens of course, but these were hidden and closely guarded from thieves. Phillip pleaded again in his letters to Sydney, Grenville and Banks for better supervisors, men of agricultural background and more livestock, especially cattle. He failed to mention to Grenville about the cattle from his fleet that had disappeared into the bush over three years ago.

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Phillip was effusive about his optimistic plans for the expansion of the colony, to his superiors back home. These plans were centred on Rose Hill. The farms there, after a poor second season, were now flourishing as never before. His vision for this inland settlement was of an agrarian utopia. From his house on the hill, a wide road was being formed adjacent to the river. It would be a mile long, to begin with. Huts were being constructed fifty metres apart, each able to house ten convicts – every dwelling having its own patch of ground. Apart from the inevitable petty thieving, he believed that by allowing the convicts to till their own gardens, it would spur on their efforts at the government farms. He also planned a church as well as more substantial storehouses. But, as he noted, this was only the beginning: The convicts who will occupy the huts now building will be removed in a few years to cultivate lands at a distance –3 In other words, as each new batch of arrivals was consigned to the camp at Rose Hill, those who had lived there and acclimatised to his version of convict life, would be moved some miles off to begin another ‘village’ and so it would go on. This was Phillip’s strategy: a slow encroachment over time – a quiet invasion. Of course, the expectation of free settlers could allow a more rapid expansion. With this in mind, he soon ordered another excursion to the west and north of Rose Hill to scout for good farming land, consigning Watkin Tench, William Dawes, Charles Worgan and the highly respected Private William Knight. They camped below Prospect Hill on 1 August and on the banks of the Nepean days later, before travelling to just north of Pyramid Hill (in the Razorback Mountains). They moved further northwest, discovering the source of the Nepean which they named Worgan’s Creek, now Grose River. Remarkably they did not see any Australians though traces of them were everywhere. Tench described the lands he explored as unprofitable. Later, on a further expedition, Tench would confirm that the Nepean and the Hawkesbury constituted one river system. Phillip had earlier recognised the dangers in establishing farming settlements next to a river whose banks showed clear evidence of regular extreme inundation. He was hoping to find good land closer to his settlement at Rose Hill. Placing an isolated farming community on the banks of the Hawkesbury was not an option that he was willing to take.

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CHAPTER 36

Lookout

By August 1790, twenty-six-year-old Daniel Southwell had been stationed at South Head lookout for two months and had begun to know the area well. Situated on the track that became Old South Head Road, near a prominence known today as Dunbar Head, the lookout had magnificent views of the Heads, the ocean and the beautiful southern shores of the lower harbour. The Australians called the place Woollahra – meaning ‘good lookout’. Most of the landscape was sparsely scattered with large trees on its more gentle slopes, specifically designed using fire management to create an environment ideal for large gatherings. Young Southwell would walk the short distance to see the mighty gap in the coastline that would become a notorious suicide spot. He would stroll along the beautiful, sandy beaches as far as Rose Bay or climb the little headland. But mostly, he looked out across the ocean: I early and late look with anxious eyes towards the sea, and at times, when the day was fast setting and the shadows of the evening stretched out, have been deceived with some fantastic cloud, which, as it has condensed or expanded by such a light, for a little time has deceived impatient imagination into a momentary idea that ’twas a vessel altering her sail or position while steering in for the haven – surely our countrymen cannot have altogether forgotten us. The lookout was first suggested by John Hunter and it was he who established the post and manned it for the first months of its operation. Will Bradley took over and now it was Daniel Southwell’s turn. He was most reluctant to take up the duty. Sirius was about to sail on its ill-fate voyage to Norfolk Island and Southwell had expected to sail with her. He

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complained to Hunter, who convinced him that, as the only naval officer left in the colony, his services were needed in the harbour. He considered complaining to Phillip in person, but changed his mind and ‘determined to be satisfied’. It seems the older naval captain had a somewhat paternal attitude towards the young officer, considering his posting as a means of keeping him away from the dissipation of the town. It is clear that, in the beginning at least, Southwell held Phillip in the highest esteem. It was Southwell who had first spied the transports and the store ship in the offing, raising the colours on the old flagstaff to alert the anxious campers at Sydney Cove, and it was Southwell who first spied Supply bearing the news of the wreck of Sirius. Now, in late July and August 1790, Daniel was still at Woollahra awaiting the arrival of the Gorgon. The year before, he had contemplated settling in the country, along with his friends Dawes and Tench. All three had developed an appreciation for the land and an interest in the Australians and their language. All three could see the advantages in remaining in this vast and ‘unknown’ land. Southwell once wrote about reaching out to the Australians to assuage ‘our first misunderstanding with them’. An enigmatic phrase, but by mid-1790, the Australians had no misunderstanding about the intentions of the British. Gazing across the water from Woollahra, Daniel could see the Australians, notably women, fishing in the harbour below. Any contact he had with them would only be from a distance. After Bennelong’s escape, they spent weeks calling out his name every time they ventured into the bush, hoping that he would reappear, only to hear the laughter of fleeing men and women. Southwell rarely encountered any Australians on his post near Woollahra, but almost daily would come across recently abandoned campsites. He would ‘Cooee!’ But, as he wryly noted, since the galgal-la the Australians were rarely seen as they were ‘ill pleased with their new neighbours’. By November 1790, looking out from the blustery headland above Birrabirra, Daniel was no longer thinking of staying in the colony. The promised arrival of HMS Gorgon would transport himself as well as the rest of the crew of Sirius back home. Along with the marine attachment, it would be a crowded trip. He had felt neglected at his lonely post, especially since the loss of his boat (which he called ‘cruel’). A flagstaff, a few whitewashed huts, a small garden with two little springs on either side of a pretty beach – it was not exactly a hellish spot. Kutti, as the

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Gadigal called it, was where Phillip had spent his first night in the harbour. It had been used as a meeting place for centuries. With four-hour shifts, the lookout was manned continually. It was not an easy exercise to walk from Woollahra to Warrane. A stonecutter’s gang had recently arrived to erect a proper signal cairn, but Daniel Southwell had become disappointed with Phillip, claiming that the Governor was by then ‘universally censured’. He had become forlorn and disgruntled, now seeing the colony as a ‘mere burden’ to the mother country. The beautiful views had become a craggy, unsuitable landscape. What was worse, Southwell suffered from a persistent head cold. A recent gift of some grog from his friend William Dawes (who probably didn’t drink) was greatly appreciated. Meanwhile, the vast seas without a sail presented itself as a desolate sight. The events of 23 July did not improve his mood and the loss of his boat would contribute to his misery. Two marines had been fishing in the harbour in a small flat-bottomed boat, a punt, near Woollahra for most of the night. Southwell took the opportunity to send two of his men (one a close friend, Midshipman Ferguson) back with them and their catch to the camp for provisions. They left early that morning for the haul to Sydney Cove. About halfway there, close to Bradleys Head in mid-stream, a huge whale suddenly breached close to the punt. It was the first sighting of a whale in the harbour by the British. For the next ten minutes, the sailors fought to keep afloat as the ‘monstrous creature’ played in the harbour. To distract the whale, they threw their fishing catch into the sea. At one stage, the whale appeared so close to the boat that the men put their hands on the side of the mammal to push their boat free from the turbulence. Eventually, the boat disappeared to the bottom. Only one out of the four men could swim. Three would drown. The fourth eventually struggled on to the rocks near Rose Bay and stumbled back to Woollahra to alert Southwell. He said, ‘the poor fellow was sadly affected, and indeed disordered’. Southwell was heartbroken. A week or so later, he made a rare visit to the camp. He had missed sending his letters home by Justinian, due to his isolation at Woollahra. He wanted to make sure that his correspondence would sail on Scarborough. He stayed at the house of John Palmer, the new commissary and the former purser on their lamented Sirius. Southwell was offended when Phillip inferred that he had only come into camp to associate with ‘whores and rogues’,

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as he told his mother. He made an excuse when Phillip invited him to dinner and stayed at Palmer’s enjoying his ‘well-stored larder’ and ‘a glass of warm grog’.1 Phillip had lost the esteem of Daniel Southwell. How many other naval men disapproved of their leader by August 1790 is unknown. But Phillip was about to be taught a harsh lesson about respect.

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C H A P T E R 37

Payback

It happened on 7 September 1790. It was a Tuesday. Of the various accounts of the incident, only three of the writers were actually there. Tench’s description, while colourful prose as usual, cannot totally be relied on because he wasn’t present. Young Henry Waterhouse was, and it is his version that should be the basis for any understanding of what really happened. Unlike Collins or others, he had little reason to manipulate the truth. Early that Tuesday morning, Phillip and Collins – the colony’s leader and his deputy – in a boat commanded by Lieutenant Waterhouse, rowed down the harbour to the South Head. They were about to visit the lonely outpost of Daniel Southwell and his men stationed there. They brought fresh provisions courtesy of Justinian. This was just weeks after Southwell’s visit to Palmer’s house and his snubbing of his dinner invitation by Phillip. The other purpose of the Governor’s visit to South Head was to survey an appropriate site ‘to build a column as a mark for ships coming from sea’.1 They passed Woollahra and landed at the familiar Camp Cove by mid-morning. Meanwhile that same morning, another boat left Sydney Cove. A party led by John White rowed down the harbour towards Manly Cove. He intended to travel north by land to Pittwater. The boat members included the newly arrived Nicholas Nepean, Lieutenant Edward Abbott and Surgeon John Harris of the New South Wales Corps, as well as John White’s ‘ward’, Nanbaree. He was now a boy of about twelve years of age. After living four months with the British, he had learnt a few English words and had been taught to wait upon their dinner tables. Whilst Phillip would have known of White’s little expedition, this was purely a private journey to satisfy White’s growing hobby as an amateur naturalist, birdwatcher and shooter. The trip had nothing to do with White’s official duties as

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the leading medical officer in the colony.2 It was for this reason that the boat also carried John McIntyre, rifle at the ready. By this time, the Australians’ loathing of the convict ‘game shooter’ was universal. Nanbaree’s young frame would cringe at the sight of this gruff Scotsman sitting himself in the boat. So, while Phillip and Collins were choosing a site for their cairn on South Head, White’s boat approached a beach in Manly Cove. There, they were confronted by over 100 Australians – some say 200 – feasting on the flesh of a beached whale. It might have been the same whale that had capsized the punt in July, or it could have been her calf. The sightings of whales at this time, as early as July and as late as October, had always been common – and they still are. The luck of getting a beached baby whale was a moment for great feasting. The rare event was a moment to celebrate. The Australians were gathered around a large fire where pieces of whale flesh were being broiled on stones. The smell of the decomposing mammal would have pervaded the air as the fire raged, thanks to all the whale oil dripping into the flames. The large crowd included warriors from multiple clans, not only there to enjoy the bounty but to use the occasion, after more than two and a half years of occupation, to reinforce their clan loyalties and their determination to survive in the face of invasions by the Berewalgal. The Australians understood that the British had become, due to their superior technology, a dominant force on the harbour. There was little surprise when White’s boat suddenly appeared from the southeast but many still ran off into the bush. White’s boat landed. He alighted and walked amongst the crowd, recognising, with Nanbaree’s help, Colbee and Bennelong, the latter for the first time since he had absconded from the camp some four months before; Colbee had legged it ten months previously. It should have been no surprise that they were both there. Since escaping from their captors, Colbee and especially Bennelong would have endured intense interrogation by fellow Australians. Their new status would have been challenged and they probably would have had to fight to maintain their positions in their distracted and disrupted society. Bennelong greeted White warmly and asked after Phillip’s health and inquired of others he had met during his stay at the camp. White presented him with a shirt, and after he got into difficulties putting it on, John McIntyre was ordered to assist him. Bennelong’s change of mood as soon as McIntyre approached was immediate:

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This man, who was well known to him, he positively forbade to approach, eyeing him ferociously, and with every mark of horror and resentment.3 McIntyre was well known to Bennelong, even before his forced sojourn at the strangers’ camp. McIntyre had supported the colony for the last two and a half years by shooting emus, kangaroos, ducks, swans and other marsupials. The abhorrence displayed by Bennelong towards him indicates that the Australians looked upon him as some people would the devil. Bennelong gave White a piece of putrescent whale flesh as a present to Beana. It was not an insult; it was a genuine gift. White gave the present to Henry Waterhouse for safe transportation to the Governor, at the same time abandoning his trip in order to forge a reconciliation between Bennelong and Phillip. Waterhouse immediately departed for Sydney Cove, while White and some of his party remained at Manly with the feasting Australians. As they rowed out of the northern arm of the harbour and confronted the ocean winds that bore through the Heads, they noticed Phillip’s boat returning from his tour of the South Head. The boats met somewhere near Bradley’s Head, where Phillip was informed of Surgeon White’s encounter with Bennelong and Colbee. Henry Waterhouse presented him with his gift from Bennelong. It would have reeked but it was the gesture that counted. Phillip quickly ordered his boat crew to return to South Head, where he quickly gathered up some food and other items (depriving Southwell of his recently gifted provisions). He ordered the muskets to be loaded before he crossed the harbour to rendezvous with his one-time captives. Next to the rotting carcase of the whale, the Australians sat about their large fire. As the boat approached, the Australians – including Bennelong and Colbee – disappeared into the bush. Phillip stood up in the boat, calling Bennelong’s name. While the others, including Collins, remained near the boat, Phillip disembarked and walked down the beach alone, unarmed, his arms out in front of him. He began to follow the Australians into the bush, calling, but Bennelong was nowhere to be seen. He returned to the boat, fetching some bread, salt beef, wine and also some jackets, then waded back to the beach with a crew member carrying the food and clothing. He offered the Australians the wine and food. Collins joined 236

them, before Bennelong and others arrived depositing their spears on the beach. Bennelong warmly greeted them both and Phillip presented the jackets as gifts, even though he was probably wearing the jacket that Collins had given him just hours before. Bennelong showed them his recent scar from a battle or possibly a ritual spearing. He then asked after Henry Waterhouse, whom he knew and had probably spied sitting in the boat a short distance away. The crew member was ordered to fetch him. Phillip expressed an admiration for Bennelong’s spear. It was long at 3.5 metres and had a single wooden barb. Bennelong asked for hatchets. Phillip was thinking he was making a trade, but Bennelong was not interested. Instead, he laid the spear on the sand next to another man and offered Phillip a smaller weapon. Waterhouse noticed that the Australians on the beach had begun to arm, except for Bennelong and the other man. This was unusual, as the ritual from the beginning had always been to lay weapons down when coming amongst each other. Waterhouse then saw the Australians slowly closing in on the Governor, forming a crescent shape near the water’s edge. Phillip resolved to return to the boat, promising Bennelong that he would return in two days with the clothes he used to wear when a ‘guest’ of the camp. Well pleased, Bennelong ‘pointed out and named several of the natives who were strangers’. As Phillip approached to greet one of the Australians, the latter quickly snatched up Bennelong’s spear, fixed it to a woomera and threw it ‘with astonishing violence’. It flew through the air before entering Phillip’s right shoulder just above the collarbone, the point exiting some eight centimetres lower in the back. It was not a mortal wound nor was it intended to be. Chaos ensued. Some Australians, including Bennelong, fled into the bush. Others threw spears. Collins rushed for the boat. Phillip stumbled down the beach, clutching the spear with both hands. As Henry Waterhouse attempted to break it in half, another spear scraped his hand, which ‘he thinks added power to exertions’ as he was able to break off the spear embedded in Phillip’s shoulder.4 These spears would not have been thrown with intent to harm but more as a show of force. If the Australians had wanted to injure the intruders or do further damage to Waterhouse, they could easily have done so. The British themselves had oft-times seen the strength and accuracy with which the Australians wielded their weapons.

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Our mysterious Port Jackson Painter gives up two snapshots of the action. One features Phillip dashing for the boat, while the other shows Henry Waterhouse trying to extract the spear. The two watercolours show the same beach but there is evidence that they were executed by different artists.5 It was at this moment that Phillip lost his small ‘dirk’ or dagger, which slipped from his waist on to the sand. After depositing the wounded Phillip in the boat, it took two hours for the crew to row to the camp, where William Balmain immediately inspected the Governor’s wound. It was surprisingly clean. Without much fuss he extracted the rest of the spear, dressed the wound and announced that it wasn’t fatal. Phillip was bed-ridden for a week but soon recovered. The ordeal must have taken a toll on his already poor health, but interestingly, Phillip made no mention of the incident in his dispatches to London. This extraordinary occurrence needs some explanation borne by all of the facts. It is obvious that the whole proceedings were managed by Bennelong. After his escape on 3 May, Bennelong had suffered a loss of his warrior status with his people. He had lost Barangaroo as a wife while he was at the camp, although she would later return to him. This encounter with Phillip on the beach was a way to establish himself as the primary middleman between his people and the invaders. Bennelong’s cat and mouse game with Phillip – not revealing himself initially – was done for maximum effect, and the subsequent exuberant greetings were meant to impress his countrymen. This was all part of the plan. Bennelong’s invitation to Phillip was arranged to enact a ritual spearing, in front of many tribal warriors, as penance for the invaders’ offences against their people and their land. The single spear thrown at Phillip was unusual as it was not bone- or shellbarbed but topped with a single wooden barb. Meant to drive cleanly into the flesh, the spear tip could be easily broken off and the weapon removed without serious damage to the body. This is exactly what William Balmain did. The spear was not meant to kill. The Australians could easily have employed a savage weapon topped with up to three barbs designed to break off in the body during battle, resulting in a slow painful death. The ritual spearing of the Governor was payback. The procedure is still practised in Indigenous communities today. Bennelong had helped to provide the

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situation where wrongs could be acknowledged, retribution sought and feelings assuaged. This is Australian law, and now, as blood had been shed on both sides of this cultural divide, it was the beginning of a new relationship between these two disparate societies. For Bennelong and the Australians, the payback settled the score and allowed them to confront the Berewalgal on more equal terms.

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CHAP TER 38

Kirribilli Agreement

The camp beside Sydney Cove was momentarily quiet while Arthur Phillip quickly recovered from his injuries. The spear had left a clean entry and exit on his body. Both wounds readily healed, as the Australians knew they would with John White’s care. He would be on his feet in days and back at work before anyone could have guessed. In reality, Arthur Phillip would have a constant reminder of the events of 7 September. His right shoulder would ache periodically for the rest of his life. It would be painful to raise his right arm above his head; his arm would ache when writing. It was a further contribution to his health worries. More significantly, the measured approach, calm demeanour and tolerant attitude towards the Australians that he had employed in the past, were gone. Of course, it was William Dawes who proverbially carried the broken spear to the Australians. Reconciliation, it seems, was in his heart. He understood the Australians more than did any of the other Berewalgal. From his place on Tarra, he could see Australians gathering across the harbour at Kirribilli. It had been a popular gathering place since forever, though quiet for some time. Some of the best fishing spots in the harbour are just off the western point of the land, hence its name meaning ‘good fishing spot’. Dawes knew this; he had learnt it from Patye, a Cammeragaleon after all. The waters below Kirribilli Point are one of the deepest parts of the harbour. Today, of course, Kirribilli is the residential suburb of our Commonwealth’s Prime Minister and of Queen Elizabeth’s representative. The sloping lawns that can be seen across the harbour from the Opera House have changed little since 1790. Take away the mansions and the introduced trees, then it would be much the same: open land with scattered trees. Other places like today’s Cremorne Point were also clear of much vegetation and had been favoured meeting places of the Cammeragal for centuries.

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Of all the places on the harbour to be seen from Sydney, Kirribilli is the prime one. The Australians wanted to be seen. After the payback, they were demonstrating a sense of concord, of amity towards the British. They were presenting themselves now in the belief that grievances had been assuaged: there you are on the south side and here we are on the north side, directly across the harbour. The Australians were saying: ‘Well, here I am!’ – presenting themselves as equals: ‘Let’s talk?’ Exactly a week after the spearing, Dawes, Richard Johnson and Boorong rowed across the harbour and met up with two Australians at Kirribilli, who said they were Burramattagal expressing anger about the expanding settlement at Rose Hill. They also informed Dawes that the man who had wounded Phillip was named Wileemarin, an Australian from Botany Bay. If that were true, he would have had grievances going back to the days of La Perouse. No doubt Boorong translated this information to Richard Johnson and William Dawes. She would by then have been about fourteen years old. It transpired that Wileemarin had speared Phillip on behalf of Maugaron, Boorong’s father. The young Australian woman was walking a cultural tightrope. The spearing was a direct result of the Berewalgal expansion to the west at Rose Hill. The wounding of Phillip had sent cultural shockwaves through the tiny colony, and Richard Johnson, with Boorong as his ‘ward’, was particularly concerned. His wife Mary had become more than fond of the girl during the year or more that she had lived with them. Boorong had become an asset to his family and indeed the camp as a whole as a translator, along with Nanbaree. Nevertheless, Johnson also realised that she missed her people and needed to be with them. As a good Christian, he further realised that to allow the young girl to live in the camp would present carnal dangers despite his and her best intentions. Tench would write that Boorong was present on the day because Johnson wanted to find her a suitor. But in reality, she was there to translate and to coerce another Australian across the harbour to the camp – not so much a husband for herself and perhaps even a woman, a female companion. After Phillip was told of their visit, he authorised Watkin Tench and John White to row across to the Australians’ campsite at Kirribilli to inform them, on his behalf, that no retaliation for the payback would take place. They were also to invite Bennelong and his family to come into the town.

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Tench took himself across the harbour the next morning, along with William Dawes, Richard Johnson, John White, Nanbaree and Boorong. His narrative naturally centres the action about himself. The interest of the British reading public in the tales of enlightened adventurers travelling to Botany Bay had not diminished. His ongoing journal and its subsequent publication were never far from Watkin’s mind. The meetings at Kirribilli over the next few days could have changed the course of British–Australian relationships for years to come. Tench related the meetings in some detail but failed to mention the other extraordinary activity on the harbour on that same day. Throughout the afternoon and into the night, large numbers of boats took advantage of the spring bounty on the harbour. The result was the largest hauls of snapper and other fish ever landed and brought to Sydney Cove. It was a remarkable bonanza: enough seafood to feed every single person in the colony including those stationed at Rose Hill. The Australian women, the mistresses of the harbour, would have watched the invaders dominating the very fishing spots that they had once occupied, catching enough fish to feed all the harbour clans for months. No Australian woman would have been more upset than the Cammeragaleon, Barangaroo. She was one of the reasons Bennelong had escaped. She was the striking woman to whom he had spoken after being taken down the harbour during his months of captivity. Now they were partners again. Some say Barangaroo was around forty years of age. She was probably younger. Tall and handsome, she had no sign of smallpox scars. She would have been one of the most powerful women among the harbour clans in this time of turmoil, remembering that the Cammeragal were traditionally the dominant group in the area. She was trying to keep her culture together and simultaneously dealing with the reality of the Berewalgal. This may be why she and Bennelong had formed such a strong allegiance: she, from a powerful clan; he, now associated with their most powerful enemy – the Berewalgal. Colbee, it seems, was not on the harbour at this time. He had met a young woman named Daringa, whose country was the Cooks River. Tench wrote that on this day in September, he saw a fire on the north shore and ‘went thither’; William Dawes would have told him where to go. He immediately met Bennelong and a number of young men, including Imeerawanyee, whom he described as slender and fine looking, barely sixteen years old. A worthy young

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man to take Boorong off Johnson’s hands? He was encouraged to speak to her. Imeerawanyee approached her as any young man would; Tench described him as offering many blandishments. However, she was not swayed by the young man’s advances and repeatedly called out something. Tench believed that she was asking for a better suitor but she was simply not interested.1 The young girl was under enough pressure from the invaders without a pathetic effort to snare her a husband. There would be many reasons why the young man was rejected. The status of women in Australian society on the harbour was equivalent to that of the warrior men. Women held, understood and spread the ancient laws of this country as much as did the men. Tench and Bennelong agreed to meet later that afternoon at the same spot. The boat pushed off and they rowed back to Warrane. At the appointed time, Tench, Richard Johnson, Boorong and John Palmer stepped ashore at Kirribilli. The usual presents were doled out; Bennelong was given a hatchet and a fish. Considering what the invaders were hauling from the harbour, one fish could be interpreted as an insult. Then, Bennelong got down to business. He complained about a number of spears, fish-gigs, swords, woomeras and other articles recently stolen from them. Tench agreed to investigate. Then, seeing some children sitting behind the rocks, he tried to coax them to come closer, which eventually they did. Someone produced a bottle of wine and Bennelong showed his mates how he could drink, confirming to his peers that he understood the ways of the Berewalgal. The next ritual to show his mates was the beard-trimming. Bennelong showed how he would submit to large metal clippers against his throat, without fear and indeed with laughter. Bennelong was raising his status amongst some of his countrymen; they would not consent to a barbering. Tench saw a tall woman watching the whole proceedings from a distance. It was Barangaroo. Boorong approached her; Tench said she was dispatched to bring her thither. They spoke together for some time on their own. Bennelong was then given a petticoat and told to speak to his wife about wearing it. It can be assumed that Johnson brought the items along and that Boorong, herself, was dressed in one. Bennelong and Barangaroo had a heated discussion before she put on the petticoat and the three joined Tench, his party and the gathering of Australians. As she approached, some of the Australian men began to laugh. Bennelong then joined

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in. In humiliation and rage, Barangaroo dropped the petticoat, kicked it away and stood defiantly naked in front of all. As she calmed down, Bennelong cajoled her into having her hair trimmed. Her submission to the strangers’ ritual is significant, in that she submitted to Bennelong’s request, not to the Berewalgal. Nevertheless, Tench was impressed. She enjoyed her salon treatment and he couldn’t help but notice her gentleness and femininity in contrast to her earlier belligerence. Boorong then instigated what this Kirribilli appointment was all about. She took Barangaroo aside to try to convince her and Bennelong to come back with her to Warrane. The two women had an extended argument: loud and demonstrative, then more subdued and pointed. If we could only know what these two women discussed on that beach with its stunning views of the harbour. The confrontation ended with Barangaroo remaining on the beach and Boorong running to Tench’s boat and sitting in it, like the sulking teenager she ultimately was. And what would she have been reflecting on, sitting in the invaders’ boat? The strong words of an elder? Whatever, Barangaroo said upset her deeply. Was she ruminating on her failure in trying to understand or reconcile with the overwhelming upheaval that had befallen her people? Like many Australians after her, she needed to find a way to deal with this major clash of cultures. Undoubtedly, what Barangaroo had said rocked her soul. Within days, Boorong declared her intention of spending more time with her people. It was not long before she was seen naked and paddling off in a nowie with her countrywomen, only to reappear with the obligatory petticoat at Richard and Mary’s door. Meanwhile, on the beach that day, the men began to engage in what Watkin Tench called ‘play and romp’. The usual jigging about, mime and body language morphed into challenges of strength. He noticed that one of his marines could lift an Australian above his head, but the Australian could not do the same. His conclusion was that the Australians were ‘very feeble and inadequate’. It was an unfair assessment. His men were bred for the sea. Upper body strength needed to manage a ship or take the oars of a boat, were essential for their profession. The Australian men did not rely just on the strength of their shoulders and arms. They relied on agility. The power of their lower body – hips, legs and feet – far outweighed whatever ‘deficiency’ they might have in their arms in comparison to the burly seamen.

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Before they left, Bennelong reminded Tench and White of his people’s stolen valuables. There can be little doubt that Barangaroo was behind the man’s insistence. He reassured him that he would return the items. Bennelong in turn promised to return Phillip’s dirk, which he dropped on the beach on 7 September. They resolved to meet the next day. When Tench returned in the morning to the Australians’ camp, Bennelong and Barangaroo were nowhere to be seen. They were down the harbour, trying to get some of the fish that they had relied on before the invaders completely depleted the stocks. He brought ashore the confiscated goods that he had promised to return. It was certainly a haul; the theft of Australian tools and weapons had been commonplace since the English arrived but was diminishing until recent times. The fact that Tench could round up these stolen items so quickly is remarkable and indicates that the recent thefts had been perpetrated by a small number of people and probably not convicts. The finger could be easily pointed at members of the New South Wales Corps. Imeerawanyee immediately recognised his weapon and joyfully claimed it. He gave a performance in front of Boorong. She wasn’t interested. He gave her no further attention but the Berewalgal did receive his attention. He submitted to their combing and cutting ritual, which he seemed to enjoy. This put him on the same supposed status as Bennelong and Barangaroo. Tench was always astounded by the honesty he saw in the Australians. He was intrigued that each one came forward and riffled through the stolen property extracting only their own personal items. He probably imagined the Australians would behave like children in a playground. Yet why would any take something that belonged to another? An elder, he wrote, came forward and claimed one fishgig ‘singling it from the bundle’. He noticed an Australian observing the proceedings but standing aloof. He was a man in his thirties, one of the last warriors of his clan. He wore a necklace made of reeds – though Tench called it a ‘string of bits of dried reed’. Was it something he had fashioned himself, or, perhaps more likely, a present from someone else? He greeted the man and tried to exchange the necklace for a black stocking. The Australian ignored the offer. Imeerawanyee, having observed Tench’s approach, stepped forward and took the ornament from the Australian’s neck and fixed it around his own. Tench was terrified that the necklace owner

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would become enraged. He didn’t, and then someone pulled a sock over his foot and lower leg. After an hour of this, Tench struck out to find Bennelong. Some at Sydney Cove – like Tench, Dawes and others – understood the deep importance to the Australians of their few possessions. The items were critical to their livelihood and culture. What the British generally could never understand was that the land in which the Australians had lived for thousands of years informed their cosmology, confirmed their sense of morality and provided the tangible connection between past, present and future. On the directions of those at Kirribilli, Tench’s boat rowed up the harbour and soon caught sight of Bennelong and Barangaroo. On seeing the boat, they took off but on the calling of names, they returned. Barangaroo had just made a miserable catch. They were both shivering by a small fire commensurate with their meal. Tench presented the stolen possessions not yet claimed; there were still many items left. Barangaroo immediately disentangled a ‘net full of fishing lines’ then slung it over her shoulders. Tench and his party sat down with the couple by their fire. Bennelong enquired again about Phillip’s recovery. He was satisfied but unsurprised that the wound had healed nicely. The meeting ended with wine and Tench’s entreaty that he and Barangaroo should come willingly to the camp, for a visit. Bennelong would not accept the invitation until Phillip had visited him at Kirribilli. Whether they knew it or not, a step towards reconciliation had been made. After payback, reparations have to be made. The return of large amounts of stolen personal possessions was significant. The Australians now believed that the invaders would respect their way of life and not take away any more of their land. In return, Bennelong seemed willing to accept the Berewalgal, but on his terms. This was what might be called the ‘Kirribilli Agreement’. On 17 September, Philip with armed marines rowed across the harbour to Bennelong’s camp. The Port Jackson Painter has left us the scene of this reconciliation. Four Australians in nowies are paddling near the shore. It is easy to identify Bennelong in the lead canoe and Barangaroo in the nowie behind him. Bennelong has his arm raised, as if to halt the progress of the nowies. In the distance, Phillip, in a ship’s boat, is heading across the harbour towards them. Along with Colbee, Bennelong confirmed that Wileemarin had been punished for his assault and Phillip accepted the Australians’ explanations for his

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spearing. It was just a misunderstanding; the Australian was scared and threw his spear out of fear. This was the story that the British took away. For Bennelong and his companions, it was the moment when the Australians would swipe the slate clean in terms of the British invaders’ depredations on their life and land. They expected them to do the same: to respect their land and to make some sort of reparations. This was Bennelong’s strategy at least. But by now, Phillip’s focus had shifted away from the harbour in line with his expansionist agenda. Although keeping the natives happy was a priority, he knew that this fragile settlement’s future lay to the west at Rose Hill.

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CH A P T ER 39

Rose Hill

The day after his meeting with the Australians, Phillip suffered another trip to Rose Hill to confer with his inestimable colleague, Henry Dodd. They both had big plans for the place. In the last months, a large storehouse, barracks, wharf and landing place had been built under the supervision of Samuel Wheeler and James Bloodsworth. The Brickfield boys, long a law unto themselves at Sydney Cove, had come west. Back in June, Wheeler had been flogged fifty times for insolence. He had intervened in the sentence given to one of the Brickfield boys, William Edwards. Phillip had ordered him flogged. By the end of the year, there were landing places on both sides of the river to accommodate ‘The Lump’ at any time, irrespective of the tide. Shops were set up near the stream and the farming land expanded across the landscape. That was all well and good, but there had been no decent rain in months. One rainy day in September spurred a flurry of sowing with mixed results, but Phillip was undeterred. He was planning more farms further west, particularly at the base of Prospect Hill and the creek nearby that the Australians called Toongabbie. One of the first Australian names bestowed on a place by the newcomers, this name was undoubtedly supplied by Boorong or her older brother, Balooderry. Phillip visited Rose Hill every two or three weeks for the rest of the year. By now, the government farms near Sydney Cove had been virtually abandoned. Tench recorded that the number of convicts at the cove: diminishes every day; our principal efforts being wisely made in Rose Hill – nothing of consequence is now carried on here. Henry Dodd gave Tench a tour of the inland settlement in mid-November. Considering that the place had no plough, relying on broadcast planting with

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little manure and little rain, the farms were going adequately well, he believed. He saw hectares of wheat and maize on both sides of the river, noting that Dodd’s men had adopted Ruse’s practice of digging the ashes of burnt stumps into the soil. Standing at the top of the hill above the crescent, next to Phillip’s modest house, he described the little valley below – tilled fields all around him, ‘grand and spacious’.1 He was more impressed by the main street that Phillip designed adjacent to the river. Planned to be a mile long and impressively wide, it already had twentyseven houses completed. Each hut was 24 feet by 12 and held ten convicts in two large rooms. Each hut was given a plot of land and most convicts tended their gardens on their time off. These had become flourishing cottage gardens. Potatoes were becoming a favoured vegetable for planting, as well as greens. Before returning to Sydney, Tench visited Ruse’s farm to the southeast. It confirmed his opinion that Rose Hill would become the centre of the next quiet push of British invasion on to confiscated land. With the expansion of the population at Rose Hill came the attendant crimes and mishaps. Despite warnings, several newly arrived New South Wales Corps soldiers wandered into the bush and got themselves lost for days. Thefts by convicts were dealt with savagely, as they were in Sydney. Meanwhile, the first criminal court to involve a member of the New South Wales Corps was convened. The young accused, James McManus, was not coping with life at the far side of the world. He had stolen from his comrades and was clearly in poor mental health. The treatment of the unfortunate Maxwell from the First Fleet, whose peers had left him abandoned in a hospital bed only to find him rowing randomly about the harbour, was recent history. In the case of McManus, the Corps spirit rose up, refusing to acknowledge that the private was unfit to serve. The soldiers bonded around him and he was acquitted with no penalty. This loyalty among members of the Corps would only grow in the years to come. Life in the two colonial outposts continued, and convict midwives continued to deliver babies. James Bloodsworth and Sarah Bellamy were blessed with a daughter, as were Lady Pen’s Ann George and the surveyor Augustus Alt – a father almost sixty years old, though Ann was much younger. Around the same time as he became a father, Bloodsworth, who had done so much to establish the colony, was declared free and at liberty. He was one of the first convicts to be

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emancipated. He had more than paid his dues and managed to make a life for himself in the colony. Now, he had a young family. Despite having permission to return to England at any time, he remained in the colony for the rest of his life. James, Sarah and their children would live a happy life together. As was to be expected, by September, some of the Second Fleet arrivals began pushing the boundaries of the colony and its administration. Some had disappeared into the bush never to be seen again, while others had more elaborate plans. The first convict escape by sea happened on the rainy night of 25 September. David Collins called it ‘a desertion of an extraordinary nature’. John Tarwood and four of his mates managed to steal ‘The Lump’ from its mooring on the river at Rose Hill. They loaded her up with a week’s worth of provisions, pots and pans, clothes and bedding. The Rose Hill Packet was totally unseaworthy, so under cover of night, they moved down the harbour and swapped her for a bigger vessel with a mast and sail. Continuing down the harbour, they sailed between the Heads, unnoticed. The next morning, Daniel Southwell found his boats had been stolen. Convict rumours were that the five men were bound for Tahiti. Henry Waterhouse made a vain attempt to find the escapees, but they had cleared off.2 Everyone assumed that they had perished, until the crew of HMS Providence, blown north to Port Stephens some five years later, discovered four ‘smoke-dried’ white men living with the Australians, in perfect harmony. By this time, many of the convicts had families. A more famous escape was also being planned. Mary and William Bryant were already hoarding supplies. On 19 October, deprived of his boat, Southwell raised the flag at South Head and Henry Ball steered HMS Supply into the cove after a six-month absence. In April when Ball had left, the camp was in a very bad state. He returned to a place not much different. Ball and his command of Supply are one of the more unsung stories of these earlier days of Sydney Cove. His ship more than any other traversed the Indian Ocean and Southern Ocean in rescue missions for the colony. Ball himself had discovered Lord Howe’s Island as well as Ball’s Pyramid. He was well regarded by people like Tench and Dawes, as well as Phillip. His contribution to the success of the early colony at New South Wales should never be underestimated. Henry Ball’s mission to Batavia had been to commission a ship – any ship – to sail to the distant harbour with much-needed supplies. Ball found it difficult; the

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war in Europe had inflated prices for most necessary goods. He could not provide the flour that Phillip had requested. Instead, he purchased 200,000 pounds of rice and such goods as he thought the colony needed and as his budget allowed, including domestic goods and personal items. Waaksamheyd, a Dutch snow whose name means ‘good lookout’, was finally engaged by Ball to sail for Sydney. The ship would arrive in December. On 19 October, Ball would be reunited with his convict girlfriend, Sarah Partridge, with whom he had already fathered a daughter. He also discovered new acquaintances – those who had arrived in the Second Fleet. Elizabeth Macarthur recorded a visit by Henry Ball not long after his return. She was presented with trinkets from Batavia and, obviously charmed, the discerning Elizabeth found him quite agreeable. What they both agreed upon was the sudden presence of Australians coming into the camp. Neither of them was in favour of it.

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CHAPTER 40

Coming In

On 18 September, Phillip visited Rose Hill. This was the day that Bennelong and his party decided to move camp. Beginning over the next two months was what historians call the ‘coming in’ and Tench would call the ‘hand in glove’ relationship between the British and the Australians, though neither term accurately labelled the circumstances. The year would end as fractiously as ever. Bennelong built a fire at Kirribilli and Tench, Johnson and Boorong crossed the harbour to his camp, joining Bennelong, Barangaroo, another woman and a young warrior whom they had seen days before, standing aloof. The British agenda of the visit was not just a casual meet. They had brought flour, salted meat and hatchets in another effort to entice the Australians to the town. Upon seeing the Berewalgal’s merchandise, the Australians immediately produced spears and other articles and they successfully bartered for the second time. Later, Tench produced a damaged spear he had appropriated earlier. One Australian took it and sat by the fire, expertly repairing it for him without comment. The ritual barbering was offered to the man. He succumbed to it, during which Tench tried to trade his fine-looking barbed spear. The Australian proposed swapping it for a hatchet, but alas Tench had just given away his last one. Still desirous of the spear, he vowed to row back across the water to fetch another hatchet at Sydney. The man agreed, followed him to his boat and watched Tench shove off. Richard Johnson and Boorong remained at Kirribilli. This fascination with the spear is puzzling. It had been forbidden by Phillip to steal or appropriate Australian weapons or tools, so Tench’s determination to purchase indicates that this spear was important. Its similarity to the weapon that had injured Phillip should not be ignored. Rowing back from Sydney Cove with the procured item, he was surprised

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to find a brace of nowies heading towards him. After Tench had left Kirribilli, Bennelong had noticed the Rose Hill Packet returning to the cove from Burramattagal land. He and his band suddenly decided to visit Warrane and greet the Governor. They were all heading to Sydney Cove, with the exception of Barangaroo who had refused to go. Richard Johnson witnessed the argument between Bennelong and Barangaroo on the beach near Kirribilli. It began with loud voices and ended in her slamming one of his fish-gigs against the rocks after he had begun to paddle away. Boorong placated her by promising that she would remain until Bennelong returned. As Tench approached the nowies, his would-be trader raised his spear in the air and, mid-harbour, the exchange was made. Not only that, the Australian also gave him one of his woomeras. After the Australians landed at Warrane on the west side near the hospital, a crowd soon gathered. Undeterred and with confidence, Bennelong led his entourage up the main track then left across the log bridge to the Governor’s house. Bennelong and Be-ana greeted each other cordially. Out came the bread and beef, but no fish. The Australians would have found it difficult to conceive that, with all the hauls extracted from the harbour over the previous few days, there was nothing for them. Phillip gave out hatchets (again), a few petticoats and some old fishing tackle for Barangaroo – a gift for the wife. Bennelong showed his friends around the house, warmly greeting all of Phillip’s staff with one exception. John McIntyre remained apart. The look in Bennelong’s eyes would have been enough to halt him in his tracks. Tench returned to Kirribilli accompanying Bennelong and friends in their nowies, finding that Boorong and another girl were out fishing. Barangaroo was quietly sculpting a fish hook, while Richard Johnson was sitting on the rocks nearby. Bennelong and Barangaroo eventually patched up their disagreement, despite the broken fishing spear: it would be safe to say that they had a volatile relationship. A little over a week later, he visited Sydney again. Whether at his suggestion or not, Phillip agreed to build a hut for him on the point on the east side of the cove. For Bennelong, this was a claiming back of some of Warrane, which would earn him some prestige amongst his peers. For Phillip, it was the fulfilment of a long-held plan. The building of a house and accustoming the Australian to a fixed

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abode was the second step towards his becoming ‘civilised’, after first eschewing nakedness. On the site of the steps of today’s Sydney Opera House, a brick hut was constructed in a matter of weeks. It was barely three metres square, raised without much mortar and topped by a clay shingle roof. Bennelong’s hut became a favourite spot to drop in, have a meal and a chat. At times, the place was crowded with people but this had its advantages. When a fishing boat overturned at Middle Head, leading to the drowning of several of the hospital’s convict staff, several Australians retrieved their fishing nets and gear and returned the boat to the camp. Around the same time, Bennelong presented himself at the hospital. He had injured his shoulder and White dressed the wound for him, before the Australian dined with Phillip, probably to celebrate his new brick hut. Then, Bennelong finally enticed Barangaroo to come to Warrane. Within a week, Phillip would be disturbed in the middle of the night by Bennelong yelling outside his window and wanting to sleep in the Governor’s house, as there was not enough room in his hut for he and Barangaroo to lie down. Phillip invited them in, gave them something to eat and the couple bedded down out the back of the house after ensuring that the door was locked. This is John Hunter’s version of events. Tench told a more detailed story with embellishments, such as verbalising Bennelong in a way that stretches credibility, playing with the capricious, vengeful but ‘noble savage’ paradigm whose only pursuits are love and war. He recorded that the gathering at Bennelong’s point on the night in November was a scene of ‘bustle and agitation’, with intimate scenes of fornication involving Bennelong and a young woman named Deein. ‘Deein’ is a Sydney word for woman, afterwards corrupted to ‘gin’ by the British. According to Tench, Bennelong woke Phillip unattended at 2 o’clock in the morning, telling that he was going to kill a woman whom he had brought from the Cooks River. Phillip with soldiers followed the vengeful Australian down to the point, whereby Bennelong immediately attacked a young woman with blows to her head and had to be restrained. Things got out of control and all the Australians began arming themselves. The British primed their muskets. Phillip called for assistance from the Supply crew and the Australians were surrounded. The injured woman was ordered to the hospital for treatment. Balooderry, Boorong’s older brother and an acquaintance of William Dawes, accompanied

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her. In a hut on the west side of the cove, the two Australians were held overnight with a soldier to protect them. On the following morning, Imeerawanyee joined them at the hut near the hospital garden. Shortly after, a number of Australians – Bennelong, not among them – tried to take the three Australians away but were driven off by the hospital staff. By this time, Imeerawanyee was a regular in the town and, like Nanbaree, was being taught to wait on the Governor’s table. Two days later, Bennelong and Barangaroo reappeared in town. Tench said he acted contrite and apologised for his behaviour. They visited the young woman at the hospital but it ended with Barangaroo losing her temper and she and Bennelong arguing all the way to their nowies. It was about this time that Tench encountered Gooreedeeana who, according to him, was the eighteen-year-old ‘sister’ of Bennelong and a Cammeragaleon. She was married, he later discovered, but she had no children. He tells us that he had admired her from afar. Their first meeting began when Gooreedeeana suddenly arrived at his door asking for food. Maybe it was this young woman whom he was contemplating when he described the state in the relationship with the Australians as being ‘hand in glove’. As an officer, he had a handy stash of food and provisions. He described her as a woman of five feet two in height and very beautiful. After his first mention of her in his book, he soon admits to the reader: I cannot break from Gooreedeeana so abruptly. Tench won the young girl’s confidence. They spent some time together – long enough for him to take the opportunity to measure her body dimensions and admire her femininity. He wrote: The firmness, the symmetry, and the luxuriancy of her bosom, might have tempted painting to copy its charms: her mouth was small; and her teeth – were white, sound and unbroken – Her countenance – was distinguished by a softness and sensibility. Watkin Tench was obviously smitten. The romantic in him took full flight. The young woman was an ‘elegant timid’ girl. With limited language skills on both sides, he examined her various scars, some on the leg, others on the head.

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He was convinced that she had fallen victim to the brutal violence of the men. Aggression towards men and women was a feature of the warrior culture of the Australians. The turmoil of the galgal-la and the fragmentation of the clans would only have exasperated the situation between men and women. He noticed a little scar above her left knee before he inspected Gooreedeeana’s skull – ‘mangled with scars’ – believing that she had been repeatedly beaten by her husband or perhaps raped – ‘forced from her home, to gratify his lust’ as he put it, reinforcing the ‘savage’ nature of these primitive people for his readers. What he assumed could indeed have been true, although some contusions could also have been due to a fall or other mishap. He noticed that Gooreedeeana had not gone through the ceremony of mal-gun nor, of course, did she wear the apron or barin to indicate virginity. Tench commented on her liberal use of white clay. He understood that this was worn as an adornment by women during dance and ceremony, which he must have witnessed. He naturally assumed that white indicated the earth but he found that it signifies ‘that with which they distinguish the palms of their hands’. It is a profound comment, although he did not realise it. The white clay did not just indicate land but their direct connection with it. The iconography of the human hand has always been a symbol of identity for the Australians. Before the young girl departed, Tench gave her ‘all the bread and salt pork which my little stock afforded.’ He lamented: After this, I never saw her but once. Not long after, while heading for the Heads in a boat with Henry Ball, he discovered her fishing with other women at Birrabirra. They were decorated all over in white clay: she no longer looked like the same Gooreedeeana. He wrote that ‘she was painted for a ball’. They rowed up close to the women, intrusively. The young girl graciously accepted gifts but, ‘finding our eagerness and solicitude to inspect her’ too confronting, she paddled deftly away to avoid them and ‘acted the coquette to admiration’. He concluded that ‘female beauty’ is the same all over the world. All men admire the same features of physical womanhood,

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he believed, and he conferred with Bennelong and others Australian men on this point and found general agreement.1 But Bennelong’s partner, Barangaroo – as most women – had a different perspective on the male-dominated colony and were far less tolerant of the strangers and their place in this new paradigm. By November 1790, the sight of Australians – men, women and children – was common on the streets or in one or other of a small number of homes where their presence was accepted, as long as they knew their ‘place’. The attitude of Elizabeth Macarthur towards the Australians was typical. Since arriving in June, Elizabeth had been living in town and had had quite enough of her husband’s ill-health. The man was irascible at the best of times, so she tried to make friends. Elizabeth has been often touted as the first ‘lady’ to arrive in the colony. Aside from the patrician nature of the comment, it is patently wrong. She was no more highly born or educated than Mary Johnson, a mother like herself and fourteen years her senior, for whom Elizabeth’s gentility described: The clergyman’s wife being a person in whose society I could reap neither profit nor pleasure.2 There were also a number of wives who had come out in the last ship with her, as well as women who had lived at Sydney Cove since the camp was a rotting canvas sheet – though the latter she viewed simply as abandoned wretches. So, she spent her time with Watkin Tench with whom she would take short strolls into the bush or she would gaze at the southern skies with William Dawes. Dawes also tried to engage her interest in the local plants, but he was either too intense or aloof for her. She preferred the company of the gallant Henry Ball. It was at a dinner at the Governor’s house in November, accompanied by Tench, that Elizabeth was served at table by fifteen-year-old Imeerawanyee. After having closely instructed the new servant regarding his duties, the younger Nanbaree sat with the other dinner guests. Knowing that when each diner placed their knife and fork together, their plate was to be removed, Imeerawanyee performed the task for Elizabeth but steadfastly refused to remove Nanbaree’s plate when he did the same, much to the amusement of those around. Strange Berewalgal custom or not, Imeerawanyee was not going to wait on a mere boy – after all, he was soon to be initiated. He was sending a clear message. For Elizabeth, servants were one thing, but:

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We do not in general encourage them to come to our house, as you may conceive there are some offensive circumstances which makes their company by no means desirable. She was at a loss to comprehend why Bennelong would choose to escape from the benefits of British society. He had left captivity ‘without any known reason’ after ‘taking it a great compliment to be a white man’.3 There was intolerance on the other side of the cultural divide as well. After almost three years of invasion, many tribal leaders were not so ready to succumb to the supposed might of the invaders. Some had unfinished business. One Australian would strike at the heart of the colony and the impact would ripple out from the blow.

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C H A P T E R 41

Pemulwuy

It happened on 9 December 1790, near the Cooks River. It was a hot summer’s day but the area down near the bay always has a refreshing sea breeze, whatever the temperature. The previous two days had given the coast a good drenching of rain, the best since September. A marine and three convicts were out on a shooting party. Since August, there were only three licenced ‘game-killers’, as David Collins dubbed them: John Randall and Patrick Burn, both recently married, and John McIntyre – Phillip’s personal game-killer. From the first few weeks of the muddy camp’s existence in February 1788, when he brought down his first kangaroo and dragged his first two-metre-tall emu into the camp, McIntyre had been furnishing the Governor’s table regularly with fresh meat. He was one of the first convicts to be assigned a job and the powerfully built Scot was a good worker. He would be a constant presence in most shooting parties organised by White and others. His knowledge of the bush around Sydney, especially the land to the south, had become a valuable asset. However, McIntyre’s relationship with the Australians he met is exemplified by Bennelong’s reaction to his presence on more than one occasion. The Australian could not bear the Scotsman to touch him. His enmity was palpable. On this Thursday in December, McIntyre and his party were heading to a little shelter constructed some time ago just south of the Cooks River. There they could lie in wait until the evening or early morning when game was afoot. They crossed the river and the party lit a fire and settled in for the night. In the middle of the night, they were awoken by a ‘rustling noise in the bushes’. They discovered five armed Australians crouching there. McIntyre reckoned he knew the men, approached them unarmed and spoke to them. He followed them into the bush as they slowly retreated. Then, when McIntyre was metres away, one

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Australian threw his spear. It struck deeply into his left side between two of his ribs. Tench records that McIntyre immediately said: ‘I am a dead man’. He was right. His assailant was described as being young, with a blemish in his left eye. He had no beard. It took the party almost a day to reach Sydney, whereupon John McIntyre’s wound was pronounced as mortal. Phillip was away at Rose Hill and not expected back until Saturday. The spear had penetrated McIntyre’s body to the depth of 20 centimetres. It had a wooden barb, upon which were attached red stones designed to break off in the body, causing a long painful death. Tench didn’t seem that surprised about the attack, having heard rumours of the Scot having injured and killed Australians in the past. His suspicions were reinforced by the cries of repentance bellowing from the injured man for ‘crimes of the deepest dye’ – ‘too terrible to repeat’. Later that day, Colbee and a few other Australians visited the camp. News travelled fast. He was taken to the bed where McIntyre lay. He looked at a dying man. Most Australians abhorred the game-killer but he had nothing to do with the attack. The surgeons wanted to extract the spear from the injured man’s body but Colbee advised against it. Two days later, after Phillip’s return, they performed the surgery anyway. Three times, Colbee told the invaders the perpetrator’s name: Bidjigal man, Pemulwuy, Pemulwuy, Pemulwuy. Pemul means ‘earth’ in the Darug language. Most historians believe he was born around 1750 near the Georges River, which would mean that he was already an initiated man when Cook stepped ashore at Botany Bay in 1770. There is every likelihood that he was one of the Australians on the beach on that fateful day of 18 January. Colbee described him as a carradhy – a ‘clever man’. The red stones on the barb of the deadly spear launched at McIntyre indicates a man whose country lay further inland than the bay. In later years, Pemulwuy would be described as a member of the ‘woods tribe’. In 1790, he was not entirely unknown in the camp. There is evidence that he had spent some time at Bennelong’s new hut on the point. Tench believed that he had ‘lately been among us’ as he was clean-shaven, indicating that he had been through the barbering ritual sometime in the previous month. From this moment on, Pemulwuy would be a marked man. Phillip, no longer the cool-headed leader of two years before, was incensed by

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what he saw as cold-blooded murder. Although he forbade any other soldiers to fire on any Australians, on Monday morning he himself immediately organised an armed party of retribution. While his former game-killer, whom he regarded as a member of his household, lay groaning in agony, Phillip called for Captain Tench. Watkin received the news of his summons just before he read the proclamation: A party, consisting of two captains – with three days provisions – to be ready to march tomorrow morning at daylight, in order to bring in six of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or, if that should be found impracticable, to put that number to death. He would have shuddered, knowing already the subject of the meeting. He allowed Phillip to vent his spleen. The Governor regarded the spearing of his ‘gamekeeper’ as unprovoked; he was willing to believe that all previous altercations – the bashings, injuries and deaths, even his own spearing – were the results of misapprehensions or misunderstandings. The murder of McIntyre was different. In essence, Phillip was acting as if he were a lord of the manor who discovered that his trusty gamekeeper had been murdered by incorrigible poachers. He ordered Tench to take the marine sergeant and two convicts who had been with McIntyre as guides, and to travel south at dawn the next day. They were to kidnap two Australians to find out where they were staying, raid their campsite, kill ten of them and destroy all their weapons and tools. Women and children were to be left unharmed. Phillip told him this was to be done either by open warfare or by ambush. He was allowed to select his lieutenants from his own marine ranks. Tench chose his friend, William Dawes. The bulk of the revenge party would be supplied by members of the New South Wales Corps on their first confrontation with these ‘savages’. Phillip’s patience was gone. According to his reckoning, seventeen of his people had been killed or wounded by the Australians since his arrival. His tally included those who had scarpered into the bush and or had just lost their way and died of hunger, thirst and exposure. The number of men and women hanged at Sydney Cove on his orders exceeded the total of Berewalgal slain by the Australians. It had also become personal for him. He and McIntyre had obviously formed a close relationship. The tough, no-nonsense Scot was similar to the Henrys – 261

Dodd and Brewer – in their attitudes to life and their role in it. He also had a good knowledge of the land to the south and west, and would have relayed information about the country and its inhabitants. Notwithstanding, Phillip’s reaction to McIntyre’s attack was extraordinary and caused a major schism in British–Australian relationships. The members of the expedition were forbidden to relay any information to the Australians, including those who waited on his table – Imeerawanyee and Nanbaree. Nor were they to approach any Australian during their march to the bay. Phillip was adamant that he wanted the heads of the ten slain men transported back in the bags that he would provide. This was to be a decisive lesson for the Australians with two major objectives, achieved by force and brutality. Firstly, they needed to know once and for all who had the power: they had their spears, but the newcomers had the guns and the numbers. Secondly, the Australians needed to know that, from now on, there would be no more clemency. He ranted to Tench, railing against the Bidjigal whom he regarded as the most treacherous of them all. Tench’s lively account of his meeting does not disguise Phillip’s rage. He told him that he had ‘talked’ to Bennelong and Colbee in an effort to convince them to bring in this warrior, Pemulwuy. It angered him that the Australians either did not understand him or deliberately ignored him. Both the men later feigned having a bad leg. Phillip thought they were impersonating the aggressor. However, they were probably only reminding him that they were once shackled by their ankles by his command. After Phillip had settled down, Tench suggested a compromise. He was thinking of himself and those who would be under his command as much as the natives’ lives they would extinguish. He struck a deal that Phillip readily accepted. Instead of ten heads in bags, he suggested that six be captured and only half of them be executed. Phillip acceded but he wanted six Australians to be shot if they couldn’t capture any. If Tench did manage to get six men back to camp, he planned to hang two and send the rest to Norfolk Island. Tench’s choice of his friend William Dawes to accompany him on this execution march is puzzling. Dawes, like himself, had formed close ties with the Australians and he was well aware of William’s relationship with Patyegarang. Was he so mortified by Phillip’s instructions that he needed Dawes to help assuage any

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future guilt? Or, did he just need his friend by his side? Did he need his orientation skills as well as his company on this brutal assignment? By all accounts, the choice of Dawes was inappropriate and completely against the man’s humanity, moral code and temperament. Tench’s narrative is brief when he recalls his conversation with his friend. Predictably, William Dawes was aghast. At first, he absolutely refused to comply with the order, but it wasn’t as easy as that and he knew it. Friendships aside, Dawes was a lieutenant and Tench was a captain. Moreover, as his name had already been submitted, any refusal would be deemed an act of subordination resulting in his court-martial. Dawes was in a crisis of conscience. When Tench left him that evening, he was still refusing to comply with Phillip’s order. When the Governor’s directive was posted the next morning, 13 December, Dawes wrote to his superior, Captain Campbell, again refusing to comply. The young lieutenant had reached an existential crisis. Dawes returned to his place on the point and possibly to the company of Patye. Did he discuss his situation with her? We don’t know, but in his notebook, written around this time, he recorded one of their conversations, where he asked why a white man (perhaps McIntyre?) was attacked: ‘Gulara.’ (Because they are angry.) ‘Gulara eora?’ (Why are they angry? [Dawes asked]) ‘Inyan ngalwi – tyerun kamarigals.’ (Because white men settled here and we are afraid.) ‘Minyin tyerun kamarigals?’ (Why are they afraid?) ‘Gunin’ (Guns.)1 After repeated requests from Campbell and warnings from Phillip, late that night Dawes sought the advice of his friend, Richard Johnson. The substance of their conversation is unknown but the gist of their talk would have been in the realm of religion and philosophy and his relationship with the Australians. Johnson would have known about Dawes’ friendships and fascination with Australian culture and language. It is interesting to ponder whether Boorong was present or possibly overheard the men speaking. Late in the evening, Johnson informed Campbell of Dawes’ decision but the damage had been done. His initial refusal to obey Phillip’s order of 13 December warranted a court-martial and would lead to the lieutenant’s early departure from Sydney, with no hope of

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reconciliation between them. Though he would still call upon his services in the future, Phillip would remain cold and distant towards him from this moment on. This whole episode is much more than just a soldier’s disobedience of a Governor’s orders. And it is more significant than the defiant stand of a remarkable young man. Through his character, his writing, his deep compassion founded on strong Christian principles and his empathy with the Australians, Dawes had become an enemy of the government. His stance against Phillip’s murderous intentions towards the Australians, his insistence on the legitimacy of the Australians’ humanity, culture, even land custodianship, not only questioned official policy and plans for colonial expansion but undermined the fiction of terra nullius, upon which the British invasion of Australia based its legitimacy. After a sleepless night, William Dawes awoke before dawn. At 4 o’clock, the party set off. Behind Tench walked George Worgan, Captain Hill, Lieutenant Poulden and Lieutenant Dawes. Along with Private Easty who had recently enlisted were around fifty fresh marines of the New South Wales Corps ready to see some of the country, heavily armed and carrying bags to transport the severed heads of Australians. The ‘terrific procession’ after four hours finally arrived at the Cooks River. After dumping most of their gear, the soldiers spent the rest of the day travelling in all directions in search of their human prey. They halted for the night around 4 o’clock ‘without seeing a native’. Not one; Tench and Dawes would hardly have been surprised. The noise of the troops lumbering through the bush could be heard a kilometre away. Up at the crack of dawn the next day, Tench and his bagmen took off in a southeasterly direction – or so he thought. They stumbled through the bush and found themselves on an upper shore of the bay. It can only be surmised that Dawes was not on his compass on this trip but sullenly following behind. Dawes would not have gotten lost. They saw a number of Australians breakfasting on a nearby beach. They tried to surround the group but were easily detected and the Australians disappeared quickly. Then, after discovering a group of huts, Tench and his soldiers attempted to launch a surprise raid on the camp, only to see the former occupants paddle off in three canoes to safety. Disheartened, on their way back to their campsite, he and his band spotted an Australian fishing in the bay a hundred metres off the shore. Realising that it was pointless to endeavour capture, they walked on. Suddenly, from far off,

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they heard a voice calling ‘several of us by name’. Tench was referring to his name and that of William Dawes. Before long, Colbee bounded up all smiles and handshakes. So much for not talking to the Australians or treating them at a distance. It transpired that he had found out about the punitive expedition shortly after Tench had left the camp the day before. Was it Boorong who told him? Or Nanbaree? As soon as he had heard, he immediately departed for Botany Bay. Did he go to warn Pemulwuy and the Bidjigal? There is no way of knowing, but it would seem likely. When Tench asked where the warrior was located, he said that Pemulwuy was long gone, having headed south. Colbee stayed long enough to have lunch with the British and take a nap before he went on his way and Tench stumbled towards home. In the next few days, Colbee and his expectant wife Daringa would move to Sydney Town. Tench spent the night next to a creek, probably Wolli, pestered by mosquitoes and sandflies throughout the duration, ‘without measure or intermission’. The disappointed soldiers finally trudged back into camp the following afternoon, 16 December. Phillip was not happy with the outcome and demanded another endeavour to revenge the death of his shooter. This behaviour was completely out of character. He began to believe that the Australians had deliberately targeted the man who had been the source of fresh food for the camp and notably for himself. He was not to be deterred. On 17 December, as the Dutch snow Waaksamheyd – hired by Henry Ball at Batavia months before – arrived at Sydney Cove full of provisions, Phillip demanded another punitive excursion south and Tench noted ‘the painful preeminence again devolved on me’. William Dawes did not accompany him on ‘the fate of a second’ expedition. This time, his party consisted of about thirty soldiers of the New South Wales Corps, including old hand John Easty who had recently joined the corps, under Lieutenant Edward Abbott and Ensign John Prentice. Abbott, born in present-day Canada, had witnessed Phillip’s spearing two months earlier. He would later make his presence felt in the colony and become a leading figure in the overthrow of the government in 1808. For covert reasons, this time the party left around midnight. It was also a hot dry summer – better for the men to trudge through the scrub in their new woollen redcoats under the coolness of a full moon. With bags for severed heads packed, the second act of the farce began. Tench retraced his steps of the week before,

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arriving at the same point on the Cooks River on Wednesday 22 December. After waiting until 2.30 a.m. to cross the various arms of the upper bay, the soldiers managed to traverse two rivers before he ordered his party to follow the river by the most direct route towards the bay. They arrived at another creek. The tide was out. Determined to conduct an early morning surprise raid, Tench ordered the troops to cross. What followed would make any Australian bend over with laughter. You can feel Tench’s tongue firmly in his cheek when he related the story. Remember, it was a moonlit night. Even he saw the humour: I directly bade them to push through, and everyone began to follow as well as he could. They who were foremost had not, however, got above half over when the difficulty of progress was sensibly experienced. Half of the troops including himself, his sergeant, other officers and men had sunk up to their waists in mud. The more each soldier struggled to move, the more he became stuck fast. They were holding their arms above their heads. Luckily, their knapsacks had been left on the river bank, from where those who had yet to cross marched further south and before crossing without mishap. He lamented: What to do, I knew not: every moment brought increase of perplexity, and augmented danger, as those who could not proceed kept gradually subsiding. The men on dry land eventually spent a frantic hour extracting their fellows using cut branches. It took more than several men to extricate the sergeant from the quagmire, as he was buried up to his chest. Finally back on terra firma, the men would have been hot and dehydrated, their uniforms caked with drying mud. It is also doubtful that many of those not stuck in the mud were able to withhold a smirk behind their muskets. They left most of their baggage and lumbered on as the sun was rising, hoping to ambush the natives. When they finally arrived at their destination, there was no one in sight. There were no recent fires. The Australians had long gone. Then it was realised that if they didn’t start back, they would be stranded by rising tides. They had little water and the troops were ‘disappointed and fatigued’.

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They made it across the various arms of the Georges River and Cooks River before half of them collapsed in a heap. They rested for the rest of the day. At 4 p.m., they were off as the sun began to recede in the sky. Their march ended at sunset, as Tench recalls, ‘without our seeing a single native’. He sardonically referenced Cook’s description of the land he had just travelled as having ‘some of the finest meadows in the world’. He described it as a ‘rotten spongy bog, into which we plunged knee-deep at every step’. The bedraggled party stumbled back into the camp on the morning of Christmas Eve, when Tench would report on ‘our fruitless peregrination’. Both expeditions had been a total failure. Pemulwuy would live to fight another day. Two days after Christmas Day at Sydney Cove in 1790, Tench described the sort of stifling hot windy weather that regularly descends on the basin. This was the first really hot summer the invaders had experienced. The drought had persisted since the previous June. The wind ‘felt like the blast from a heated even’. It was around 26 degrees by 9 a.m. and crept up to 37 degrees. This weather would continue for most of the summer and it would get hotter. Quick, violent thunderstorms near the coast saw people running outside with bowls and buckets while no significant rain fell where it was really needed, at Rose Hill. On 28 December under a hot hazy sky, two Australians who had frequented the camp of late were caught digging up potatoes on a patch of land near today’s Millers Point. When a convict confronted the pilferers, one of them threw his fish-gig in his direction and both Australians took off. The convict unloaded his weapon, injuring one man. The Australians would have seen the potatoes being dug up just as their women would dig up yams and free fern roots. The notion that these tubers were owned by one person was anathema to them. Phillip demanded to know who it was who had attacked the convict gardener. Tench stated that his name was Bangai. It was a minor offence. It was only a few potatoes and the thrown fish-gig had little chance of causing injury, but Phillip now had adopted a zero tolerance policy towards the Australians. Gone was the belief in Rousseau’s ‘child of nature’; the Australians were now perceived to be untrustworthy, capricious, savage and more than capable of deception. He immediately ordered a party of soldiers to pursue and capture the potato thieves. It was night before they came upon a campfire, two men and two women

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beside it. When discovered, someone threw a club then soldiers opened fire. Tench tried to excuse the behaviour: The ardour of the soldiers transported them so far, that instead of capturing the offenders, they fired in among them.2 The women were taken back to the camp. The next day, they returned to the campsite and followed a trail of blood to the water’s edge. At the end of December 1790, Collins gives his final monthly summary of the year. He records the 143 convict deaths, mostly from the death ships of the Second Fleet. More than twice the number of people drowned in 1790 than were strung up by rope. And of course, a convict had wandered off into the bush and was never seen again. Collins did not mention in his report that he had just fathered a child with former Lady Pen transportee Ann Yeats, despite his wife Maria waiting for him at home. His situation was hardly unique.

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PART FOUR

1791

CH A P T ER 42

Three Years On

By 1791, the fringes of Sydney Town had been decimated as building materials, food and living spaces were appropriated. The Brickfields area had been transformed, as well as the land around the fragile stream. Large forests of timber had been extracted from the kangaroo grounds. The hot dusty town was silent on New Year’s Day 1791. Below the Governor’s house, along the soon to be named Bridge Street, the building sites of Surveyor Alt and Richard Johnson’s houses lay temporarily abandoned amid piles of bricks while people grouped around campfires for a dinner. Blue smoke spiralling upwards towards a harsh burning sun. The holiday was a welcome time to tend to other duties and most convicts took advantage of it. It was a day to spend in tending their slowly depleting gardens; a moment for someone to sit and contemplate their plight. Other convicts did their laundry. At Rose Hill, a young man washing his threadbare clothes on the river bank fell and drowned. Like most English, he was unable to swim. He was a member of old Henry Dodd’s farming gang who had just got in a bitter-sweet harvest of wheat. The hot winds had burnt the corn and shrivelled the wheat. Hidden inside the maize fields, thieves had denuded the stands of cobs. On this New Year’s Day, the Waaksamheyd laid idle in Sydney Cove, its cargo not fully landed. Nearby, the limeburners’ fire was out as the women tended to their families and friends while, despite Phillip’s curfew, the crew of the Dutch snow familiarised themselves with the town. Outside Bennelong’s new brick shed on the point, the Australians, like most of the convicts, were socialising around a fire. They had been a semi-regular presence there for weeks. Nearby, the stonecutters’ work on the sandstone rock face lay abandoned for the day. 271

Sydney – population barely 700 persons – had developed into a number of precincts with the major boundary being the barely running stream down the centre of the town. To the east, the civil authority; to the west, the military barracks, officers’ quarters and parade ground next to the town’s only main street. Immediately to the north were the hospital grounds and gardens, having doubled in area in the last six months, with one hundred patients lying on sweat-stained cots. Now, three years on, life in Sydney Town as well as Rose Hill had become routine. Another season of unpredictable weather and poor harvests had just passed. The yields from the wheat and maize fields to the east of Warrane were paltry. They would be the last in today’s Farm Cove and Botanic Gardens. Regular work hours had long been abandoned. Convict gangs forced to labour by the butt of a rifle or fear of the lash did not exist. The labour force at Sydney and Rose Hill preferred task work and they were relatively efficient at it. Though a muster was done at least once a day, convicts worked at their own pace and time, with plenty of daylight hours spent on their own domestic affairs with many having vital gardens to tend. On reflection, the productivity of the workforce over the previous twelve months – considering their malnourishment and lack of any beasts of burden – is remarkable. The old-timers knew that the flexible hours they worked were a necessity in order for all of them to survive. For those convicts who had arrived on the recent transports and been able to queue in hellish weather to pick up their scant weekly rations, Sydney was better than they had expected. The brickmakers, bricklayers, blacksmiths, timber-cutters, sawyers, stonecutters, bakers, carpenters, fishermen, cooks, clerks, domestic staff, limeburners, game shooters, farmers and doctors of the town were all convicts and all were fulfilling essential roles in this unique society. These convicts and ex-convicts were the tradesmen and workers who were building this town and, by 1791, a sense of civic pride was developing among these workers, their partners and small children. Many of the most skilful men, like Bloodsworth and John Baughan, had even begun to attract a small level of esteem. This would soon be crushed by the New South Wales Corps. Meanwhile, the overseers who had arrived seven months previously – men like Nicholas Devine, Thomas Daveney and Thomas Clarke – did not disrupt the established work regimes set up by Phillip and Henry Dodd. Andrew Hume was shunted off to Norfolk Island almost immediately upon arrival to oversee

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the production of canvas from the native flax. However, in time, the convict managers of labour, most of them having fulfilled these positions for the better part of three years, were relieved of their duties. By the end of the year, life for the workers in the colony would become more harsh and unforgiving. By January 1791, the town was well established but with the landscape of its hinterland to the south, north and west scarred as a result. Enormous tree stumps stood like tombstones from the creek at the cove to the Brickfields and across the slopes of Rose Hill. Timber-getters were now felling giants in Bulamaning. The colony’s ‘footprint’ was extensive with large areas of country depleted of timber and scrub to feed the camp fires of the British invaders. The weekly rations fluctuated as circumstances dictated but were never sufficient, leading to regular night-time garden raids by malnourished workers. The amount of grain in the stores was negligible. If not for the forced diaspora of the populations to Rose Hill and Norfolk Island, the whole enterprise at New South Wales would have fallen already. Instead, all three outposts remained. Yet irrespective of signs of establishment and order, they were all in circumstances of some uncertainty. The impact of the arrival of the Second Fleet and its human cargo was still being felt. Scores of convicts still lay in clammy hospital cots while outside, the new red tunics of the New South Wales Corps stood in stark contrast to the faded, tattered jackets of veterans of the First Fleet. Now three years on, in contemplation, Tench waxed lyrical about the convicts’ plight comparing it to that of African slaves – ‘I have been to the West Indies’ he insisted. Then he painted a portrait for his British readers of a forlorn, half-starved population at the far side of the world: I every day see wretches pale with disease and wasted with famine, struggle against the horrors of their situation. How striking is the effect of subordination; how dreadful is the fear of punishment! – the blacksmith sweats at the sultry forge, the sawyer labours pent up in his pit; and the husbandman turns up the sterile glebe. This is the paradigm of the convict society in early Sydney that many hold today: men toiling under the yoke of harsh discipline. But this is not wholly correct. The town of Sydney, less crowded than before, was now a place of homes,

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families and children. The colony’s workforce lived in huts to the north, south and west, reflecting their position in the colony. These homes of the convicts dominated the township, giving it a village-like appearance. A majority of them lived in private domestic circumstances with partner and children. Some still lived in communal situations. All of them were in a town that they had created. Many women were home-providers and caregivers. Several worked for Phillip’s household and some were washerwomen. Other women worked in burning the shells from ancient middens to provide lime for building mortar. The men worked in gangs or were supervisors, like Charles Peat and Charles Williams. Convicts had become farmers, builders, carpenters, blacksmiths, brickmakers and builders. The thespian Robert Sidaway, for instance, was a baker who sold his wares to the Commissary for distribution for the public good. Master bricklayer and now emancipated James Bloodsworth, with Sarah Bellamy, lived in South Street (today’s O’Connell Street). He had taught a team of workers the techniques of bricklaying and building construction. On this New Years’ Day, abandoned worksites and half-finished chimneys lay scattered about the town to be resumed the next day. Even some convict homes now boasted brick fireplaces – hearths for homes – provided and transported by Samuel Wheeler’s Brickfield boys and Bloodsworth’s team of workers that was slowly transforming the town. Bricks were sent to the inland settlement of Rose Hill by ‘The Lump’ but the bricklayers and builders would travel by foot to build the military barracks and houses for the government. Following the Australian track along the ridges, Phillip had ordered a three-metre-wide road to be made to Rose Hill. The Parramatta Road effortlessly winds west avoiding the wetlands to its north and south. Not far from the Bloodsworth’s town residence was that of Matthew Everingham, a former law clerk banished on the First Fleet’s Scarborough. He was the assistant to the Commissary, Zachariah Clark – a position of importance in the desperate town. Edward Pugh, another convict, was a carpenter whose time was about to expire. John Baughan (from Friendship) was also a tradesman, working to build more effective mills to grind the grain that people like William Bond would bake into bread for the hospital patients and staff and Phillip’s own table. The dour William Frazer (Charlotte) was a blacksmith who worked at the forge on the crest of the hill near the High Street. George Lisk (Lish or List, Scarborough)

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was a watchmaker. The Ropes lived nearby with their growing family, while Patrick Burn still maintained himself as a game-killer. A number of men had distinguished themselves as overseers, team leaders or honest hard workers. Many of them had stated their former profession as seamen when they were sentenced and transported. Many had turned to crime after being discharged following the end of the war with the Americans. These were people like John Herbert, William Parish, John Nichols, James Chapman and William Butler. Some of these men, like Phillip’s old friend Henry Dodd, would be usurped of their positions by the new government salaried overseers stationed in the town and at Rose Hill. The high mortality rate of the Second Fleet convicts sadly allowed the easy integration of the survivors into Sydney society – especially with some of them sent for resettlement to Norfolk Island and Rose Hill. Notwithstanding the petty thefts of person and property, the town was generally a safe place for both convicts and Australians. The events of the previous month would change that. On this New Year’s holiday, however, the female servants at Government House were not freed from labour and the burden of having to trudge up the hill to Phillip’s residence. He was hosting a dinner for his fellow administrators and officers of both military detachments. It was a crowded affair dominated by the members of the New South Wales Corps. If William Dawes was present at the dinner, he would have received a frosty greeting from Phillip but possibly the dinner was an opportunity to try to smooth over their grievances. He didn’t need an enemy, especially an officer of Dawes’ skills, but the lieutenant’s refusal to account for his actions, deemed by Phillip as acts of disobedience, would seal his early exit from the colony. There were sharp differences between marines like Tench and lieutenants like John Macarthur. The New South Wales Corps officers were mostly a little younger and few had ever left England before – unlike the many veterans of the American War who had arrived at Sydney Cove in 1788. The shiny buttons on their fresh tunics were in stark contrast to those of officers like Tench and Dawes. Captain Nepean would have been present, as well as Macarthur and his wife, Edward Abbott, the surgeon John Harris and the Dutch captain of the ship in Sydney Cove. After seven months in the colony, the first instalment of the New South Wales Corps was deployed to Norfolk Island (where convict overseer Andrew Hume joined them), Rose Hill and in Sydney. But mostly, the new officers and

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privates were idle; little supervision was needed and sentry duty was not only ineffective but long superseded by the convict watchmen. Many of the officers, like Macarthur, had only recently recovered from their voyage to this strange colony. With its commander, Robert Ross, hundreds of miles away, the marine detachment officers knew that their days in the colony were numbered. The New South Wales Corps were still few in number relative to the full deployment in the following year. At just two companies, they had nonetheless already made their presence felt. With a remnant of the marines, still in occupation, the barracks were crowded. The officers had to occupy temporary accommodations around the town. The Macarthurs lived on Pitts Row (Pitt Street) and it wasn’t long before they were complaining about their neighbours, whom they considered not of their status. While the dinner table conversation at Phillip’s house on the hill is not known, recent events probably held a pall over the festivities. Tench noted that the New Year was ‘marked by no circumstances particularly favourable’.1 Phillip’s ‘gamekeeper’ was lying seriously ill on what would be his death bed; an Australian, Bangai, a Wangal man, had been shot and killed over a handful of potatoes and Phillip’s hardened attitude towards the ‘natives’ was evident. To compound woes, Henry Ball, captain of Supply, was seriously ill. The Dutch captain’s ship was needed more than ever, but presently he was found to be cynical and mercenary. For those New South Wales Corps officers at the table who had, since their arrival, seen the spearing of the Governor, the death of his trusty servant and the increased presence of Australians in the town, Phillip’s new-found determination and plans for the colony were refreshing. The Governor now had the power to grant land to worthy convicts and members of the military who had built families or expectations and chosen to remain in the colony. While half a world away, George Washington was personally selecting ten acres of swamp land next to the Potomac River as the site of his nation’s capital, Phillip was doing much the same on a grander scale. Schemes for further inland settlements dominated his thoughts at this time. They were idealistic and the reality would be far from his dream. The disappointing soils around Sydney and the slightly better arable dirt around The Crescent convinced him that further expansion into Australian lands should be in the form of quiet, peaceful villages

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scattered picturesquely across the country where convicts and ex-convicts would farm the land and raise their families in a simple rustic idyll. To many with whom he would talk of his plans, notably the new members of the New South Wales Corps, Phillip was regarded as too old or incompetent, too cautious or too arrogant. For all that, his dream of a pastoral utopia was also shared by Thomas Jefferson in his vision of America. Rose Hill, at that point a dusty track alongside slab huts, small gardens and an empty stockyard, with a brick storehouse and barracks under construction, was to become the model for all agrarian communities as the invaders quietly expanded their territories into Darug land. Phillip had already picked out several sites for his villages: one, just to the northwest of Rose Hill, along a beautiful tranquil stream surrounded by blackbutts and serpentine trees; the other, at the foot of the hill that Watkin Tench had climbed two years before. Phillip believed that Sydney would remain merely as a port town and all that entailed, while peaceful agrarian communities would flourish in the vast hinterland of the country. What was absent from Phillip’s scheme was any acknowledgement of the original inhabitants of the land they were about to seize. The Australians had no role in his plan, having no demonstrable purpose aside from that of possible indentured servants or labourers. They were the flaw in his plan, the bubble in his glass: the Australians, the original inhabitants of the lands already occupied or about to be occupied. His plans for settlement expansion were clearly based on falsehoods that he must have acknowledged. By this time, no one in the colony believed that the Australians did not have prior occupation of their land, but since the original inhabitants did not cultivate it in the sense that the newcomers understood, the country was deemed to be ‘unclaimed’ until the Cook had a Union Jack stuck in the sand. It was a papal loophole that had allowed the Spanish to plunder South America two centuries earlier and English merchant soldiers brutally to subdue Muslim rulers in India. While Phillip had not yet unsheathed his own sword, the effects on the Indigenous population of his decisions would essentially be the same as those effected by these former invaders: displacement, disenfranchisement, alienation and dehumanisation. In recent weeks, the Governor had become more bellicose and aggressive and it is easy to see why, if not to justify it. The ache in his shoulder would not have aided his equanimity. His hyperbolic reaction to the brazen attack on McIntyre

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was the first overt sign of his change of attitude towards the Australians. However, this had been evolving for some time – something that the officers of the New South Wales Corps had not experienced. By 1791, the stereotype of the idle, untrustworthy, brutal and ungrateful savage had been born. Phillip’s endeavours to form a relationship with the Australians had failed; it would be hard to expect any people to be in perfectly amity with those whose country had been usurped. However, he was disappointed with Bennelong whom he felt had betrayed him by taking advantage of the comforts he provided. The inherent British distrust of the Australians had hardly diminished in three years and there was little change since they had begun to visit the town. The recently arrived New South Wales Corps officers were much more intolerant of the Australians, which possibly may have rubbed off on Phillip. To most of the newly arrived, the ‘coming in’ – where some Australians spent days or weeks in the town – was seen an indication that they had no home, no fixed address and no connection to the land at all. While the fundamental gulf between these two cultures was as wide as ever, individual contacts between two disparate peoples became more frequent and challenged attitudes on both sides of the proverbial chasm. Phillip’s plan for territorial expansion was predicated on more than just the imperative to feed his starving colony and cognisant of the fact that another influx of convicts would arrive sooner rather than later. Now, he had been granted the power to apportion land to worthy emancipated convicts and veteran soldiers of the First Fleet; this would eventually transform a struggling penal colony into something very different. As the guests sat to dine on New Year’s Day – a year that would see the rise to power of Robespierre in France and the arrest of that country’s King; the debut of The Magic Flute and the death of its composer; bitter fighting on the Ohio territory and the ratification of the United States Constitution – their meals were served by Nanbaree and Imeerawanyee, dressed in linen shirts and breeches. The table of fare is not known.

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CHAPTER 43

Daringa

The presence of the young Australians waiting at Phillip’s table on New Year’s Day should not be taken as indicative of their submission to British power and beliefs. The mind’s image of this boy and young man in linen shirts removing dirty plates from the Governor’s table is truly remarkable and it should be placed in context. The mortal wounding of another Australian had dropped a pall over what should have been a festive day. The Australians seemed disinclined to speak of the incident. They would ‘become immediately shy’ on the subject, Collins noticed, refusing to utter Bangai’s name. A respected man had been needlessly slain; respect for the dying should be upheld. Following the news of the incident, Phillip went into damage control, knowing that it could risk further enmity, particularly from Bennelong. He enlisted the help of John White, who had considerable sway over young Nanbaree. The next day, Imeerawanyee found out where Bangai was located and on 3 January, with an Australian woman as guide, he, Nanbaree and John White went to the spot where Bangai was lying in preparation for cremation. He was covered with green branches, his head shrouded in a screen made of grasses and ferns. Only his left leg was exposed. Nearby, a fire tended by female elders held vigil over the body. What happened next was as outrageous as the murder. As the two young Australians looked on in horror, White proceeded to desecrate the corpse, examining the musket ball injury that had caused the poor man’s death. The body was still warm. Tench was well aware of the reverence Australians have towards those who have died. Even to speak the name of a deceased person, let alone interfering with the body, is abhorrent.

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He noted: None of the natives who had come in the boat would touch the body, or even go near it – certain it is – that they believe the spirit of the dead not to be extinct from the body. While, the younger Nanbaree had resided on the hospital grounds under the protection of John White for the previous eighteen months, the sixteenyear-old Imeerawanyee would shed his clothes after his table service and return to his people. Now twelve years old, Nanbaree was indebted to the surgeon for saving his life and they had developed a close relationship based on some kind of paternalism. White even bestowed his name on the young Australian, dubbing him Andrew Snape Hamond Douglas White. While seemingly a ridiculous exercise of adoption to ‘legitimise’ the boy to British eyes, this was possibly a measure to allow the surgeon to bequeath some property to him upon his own demise. Though the boy was an orphan, he still had close kin. Indeed, both these young men still had family and were part of a network of Australians making attempts to come to terms with the strangers who were determined to stay. All of the Australians coming into Sydney town were welcomed by the two children, Boorong and Nanbaree. There is no more clear evidence of the resilience and power of Australian culture in this post-galgal-la world – where half their population had been destroyed, the land and their place in it severely challenged – than those men and women who came amongst the British in the first half of 1791. None more so than Daringa, Colbee’s new wife. She was the younger sister of Moorooboora, the elder from whose name the suburb’s title would derive. Colbee, of course, had been captured along with Bennelong two years before. Now, he was about to become a father. Amidst the contretemps of the previous month, he had arrived into Sydney Town with Daringa, who was heavily pregnant. Eighteen months earlier, he had fled the place with a shackle about his ankle. The couple had walked from their home on the Cooks River and Sheas Creek – it would have taken most of the day. They, or more probably she, had decided that their child should be born in the strangers’ town. It would have been her decision: childbirth, after all, was women’s business. By giving birth in Sydney, Daringa believed that her child

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would be legitimised in the eyes of the Berewalgal, giving the newborn girl a sense of place in these uncertain times. It was a pragmatic decision and highlights the different ways in which the Australians reacted to the invasion. She was also giving the child a birthright, a place at the centre of the invaders’ territory. The message was clear: ‘we are not going anywhere’. The Australians knew that after more than three years of occupation, they had little standing in the minds of many of the invaders. The British held a steadfast belief in the superiority of their own ‘race’, white northern Europeans – a belief which long pre-dated 1788 and indeed continues in this country to this day. While the Australians were yet to feel the full weight of Christian doctrine, nevertheless their traditional cultural life would continue and endure. Daringa gave birth to a baby girl whom she named Paniebollong. Hunter recorded that Phillip took the young family into his home for the night when the child was only days old. It would be surprising if Boorong, now a girl of around fifteen years of age, were not present at Paniebollong’s birth. Although living with Richard, Mary and baby Maria Milba, Boorong maintained contact with her family and friends. The heated communication with Barangaroo conducted after the petticoat episode the month before had a strong impact on the young woman. Boorong would never lose her culture or sense of place. Boorong’s brother Balooderry was daily working the waters of the upper harbour. In these early days of change and invasion, this young man had realised an opportunity for trade and was providing fresh seafood to the settlement at Rose Hill, much to the appreciation of the convict workers. But his enterprise is no indication of Australians’ acquiescence to their situation. The incursions at Rose Hill and elsewhere on Darug land had generated deep concern among the original inhabitants. The Berewalgal occupation of Warrane was mainly confined to the waters about the harbour – something they could not command. The land around the upper harbour where fresh water meets the tidal stream was valuable and significant. It was the expansion of the invasion to the west that alarmed the Australians and had galvanised some to action. This, of course, was only the beginning. Balooderry was a close friend of Imeerawanyee, who was an ally of Bennelong. The two young men were both the same age, about to turn sixteen. Imeerawanyee had already expressed an interest in younger Boorong, but she had apparently

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dismissed his advances. She appeared to favour someone else. His name was Carradah, a Cammeragal man and a relative of Colbee, who had befriended Henry Ball. Whether just visiting or staying longer in the town, all these Australians still maintained their culture. Some came to barter fish or to sell a spear, others developed somewhat deeper relationships but they soon understood that their role in this new society was immaterial. What was sacred to them – country, place, law and community – was being swept away in the relentless tide of invasion. The Australians who came to town were riding the crest of a wave that had yet to break. Bennelong’s reaction to the death of Bangai was immediate anger, and justifiably so. The deceased had simply dug up tubers from the ground which he presumed they all shared; if Phillip hadn’t ordered soldiers to march off in pursuit, the man would still be alive. If this was retribution for the attack on McIntyre and the farcical attempt to behead Pemulwuy, it was misguided as Bennelong was not complicit in the attack. To him, it was an unwarranted murder and it broke what he believed to be an agreement made at Kirribilli; it also undermined his adopted role as the warrior who had broached a reconciliation with the Berewalgal. In his rage, he robbed a British boat of its catch, threatening them with his spear. When Phillip confronted him, he ‘burst into fury’ demanding to know who had committed the murder. His anger would be short-lived. Over the next few weeks, he and the heavily pregnant Barangaroo would come to town on a number of occasions, though neither would make any firm allegiances with the Berewalgal and both would continue to fight with each other – one giving as good as the other. Bennelong’s relationship with Phillip was complex. No longer was the older man called Be-ana. The Australian would recall his first day in chains each time he beached his boat in today’s Campbell Cove. He fully understood the technical superiority of the British and the physical comforts that their culture provided, but he remained a Wangal man till the end, still attempting to assume the role of dispassionate spokesman or ambassador for his people. His familiarity with the Berewalgal was an asset to the Australians until it became evident that he was powerless to stop the killing of his people and the usurpation of their land. He was an asset to Phillip because he brought hope of his coming to some agreement with

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the Indigenous peoples, of somehow legitimising the British claims to their land. Yet this had not happened. While some Australians made themselves familiar with the British and their customs, there was little reciprocation on the part of the invaders. While the Australians tried to come to terms with this new paradigm confronting them, the British continued to be dismissive of them as child-like and increasingly impatient with what they regarded as their ridiculous adherence to their culture. In his discourse or ‘miscellaneous remarks’ on the country’s ‘natives’, Watkin Tench summed up for his readers his opinion of the Australians’ culture, lifestyle and ‘notions of religion’. Quite simply stated: A less enlightened state we shall claim can hardly exist. He related that his friend William Dawes tried to engage Boorong in a conversation about her belief in a deity or spirit, but she ‘defeated his efforts’. He concluded that this only confirmed his opinion of their completely ‘unenlightened’ state. He related that they were well acquainted with night skies which could predict consequences ‘good or evil’. He remembered a frightened Boorong pointing to the skies, exclaiming impending mischief. That night, he wrote, it became cloudy and ‘the air disturbed by meteors’. Nevertheless, he found it noteworthy to record the behaviour of the Australians who attended their Sunday church services, no doubt compelled to go by Richard and Mary Johnson. After a discourse about the superstitions of the Australians, including a story about Boorong (Abaroo) who, seeking remedy for an illness, allowed another woman to cut her forehead in what he saw as ‘ridiculous superstition’, Tench remarked: When they attended at church with us [which was a common practice], they always preserved profound silence and decency, as if conscious that some religious ceremony on our side was performing. The Australians were, in fact, more deeply spiritual than most of the English churchgoers, their beliefs and rituals more ingrained in their culture than those of the Protestant church.

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Following the birth of his baby girl, Colbee began spending more time at the hospital, having befriended John White, who had allowed the child to be delivered in his hospital. Nanbaree, of course, was his companion. The Australians witnessed amputations and marvelled at the skills of White and other surgeons. But amputations were hardly new to the Australians. When Colbee’s daughter was one month old, it was time for the ritual of malgun performed on female Gadigal babies where the first joint of the little finger of the left hand is removed. It was a common practice but not totally inclusive to all women in the Sydney area. Men like Tench, Hunter, Phillip and White all conjectured on the meaning of the practice. The explanation that the missing joint in the finger aided in their line fishing, of which they were more than adept, did not satisfy them. These men would have witnessed what took place in early 1791. It is clear that both Colbee and Daringa had some faith in the tall white man, John White, no doubt encouraged by Nanbaree. Tench described the procedure, performed by Daringa: The finger is taken off by means of a ligature [generally a sinew of a kangaroo] tied so tight as to stop the circulation of the blood, which induces mortification, and the part drops off – The little wretch seemed in pain and her hand was greatly swelled. But this was deemed too trifling a consideration to deserve regard.2 About a month later, John White snipped off the last remaining piece of skin from the stump of Paniebollong’s little finger. A short time later, Daringa paid a visit to Elizabeth Macarthur. ‘Mrs Coleby’, she wrote to her friend not without a dollop of sarcasm, came to visit her. She helped her the best she could, she told her friend. As for the little baby: It was wrapped in the soft bark of a tree.3 ‘It’ was Paniebollong, swaddled in the inner bark of a melaleuca – paperbark tree – as soft as an eiderdown. Daringa was not what Elizabeth had expected her to be. The Australians, she believed, were savages indifferent to ‘civilised’ sensibilities. So she was astonished to find a proud, caring mother with her newborn. Elizabeth Macarthur admitted that she had a ‘softness and humanity’

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that she presumed was unusual in the Australians. Her difficulty in recognising Daringa’s inherent maternal instincts as equal to her own is baffling to us in the twenty-first century. Thomas Watling, who would arrive in the following year, sketched a number of portraits of Daringa and Colbee, along with other Australians who frequented the town. His pencil drawing of ‘Dirragoa’ reveals a young woman with malgun clearly evident. She wears a barin of possum fur to indicate her virginity. Accompanying this portrait is one of the young man ‘Gurrooee’, showing the missing incisor – the mark of an initiated man from Sydney. Watling’s sketch of Colbee presents a proud man sitting in a chair, his left hand clasped across the other. Daringa is seen as an attractive young woman with her daughter (now a toddler) in her arms. She wears a headband. Her features are soft; her intelligent eyes gaze at the viewer. Her similarity to ‘Dirrogoa’ is striking, as is ‘Gurrooee’ to Colbee. In Watling’s pencil sketch, Daringa’s missing left little finger is partially obscured by her hand clasping the other to support her child. Paniebollong looks the spitting image of her father. The events of the previous three months – Phillip’s spearing, the ‘coming in’, the attack on McIntyre and the death of another Australian at the hands of a convict – had unsettled the entire colony. Daringa’s arrival in the town with Colbee brought an ambience of shared humanity to Sydney. Even Elizabeth Macarthur, under the veil of benevolent snobbery, began to appreciate Daringa for her seemingly unusual love and care for her child. Neither the Macarthurs, nor Phillip, Tench or Collins could conceive of a people who had lived on this apparently inhospitable country for 60,000 years. It was Daringa, more than Bennelong, Nanbaree or Barangaroo, who provided both a sense of continuity and also an acknowledgement of the changes wrought on her people. However, it would be wrong to endow a rosy glow to an image of peaceful co-habitation between the two cultures over the last three months; to be duped by the benign curiosity of writers like Tench. In reality, many of the British were implacably against discourse with the Australians, and for many Australians the feelings were mutual. For three years now, apart from displacement from their land, they had suffered the invaders stealing their weapons and tools and smashing their nowies. These articles were their livelihood and these incidents were the cause of simmering bitterness.

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The death of Bangai over a handful of potatoes was just another episode in this long-running dispute over property. To compare the theft of a few tubers to the destruction of laboriously crafted items of Australians’ material culture is ludicrous. Australians knew hypocrisy when they were faced with it; the English less so. David Collins summed up the death of Bangai almost apologetically: It is much to be regretted that any necessity existed for adopting these sanguinary punishments and that he [Phillip] had not yet been able to reconcile the natives to the deprivation of those parts of the harbour which we occupied. Then, he stated the obvious, debunking the presumption that the Australians had no ‘residences’ or prior occupation of their land: While they entertained the idea of having dispossessed them of their residences, they must always consider us as enemies.4 The British endeavour to cultivate a discourse with the Australians, in order that the original inhabitants acquiesce to the newcomers’ invasion plans, had clearly come unstuck. Having admitted that their plan had failed, Collins then declared that the Australians were untrustworthy anyway. He disparaged even those people who made connection with the British, intimating that they spread bad rumours about their interactions with them in order to keep the largesse bestowed on them to themselves. In February 1791, Imeerawanyee underwent the coming-of-age ritual in which he had his front tooth extracted. Tench could only conjecture about these ‘superstitious ceremonies’. It pained him greatly, he remembered: But he boasted the firmness and hardihood with which he had endured it.5 Then, for the first time up close, members of the town witnessed what they would later call a corroboree. It is left to wonder whether the British treated these Australians’ ceremonies with the same reverence that the latter displayed towards their rituals of church services.

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The summer of 1790–91 was one that most long-time Sydneysiders would recognise: days of scorching temperatures, into the low forties out west, with strong westerlies. It was a summer where young flying-foxes fell from the trees and the smell of burning eucalypts hung in the air. In late February as the dry weather continued, Augustus Alt and a team of convicts began work on Warrane’s ailing stream. First, they cleared away much of the foliage that secured it. Then, they attacked the creek, excavating and dredging it and digging trenches beside it. It was the beginning of the Tank Stream. In the months to come, Alt would organise a fence around the blighted stream using the Brickfield boys.

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CHAPTER 44

Departures

As summer ended, daytime temperatures remained high, the almost year-long drought had yet to break, but Phillip mustered new resolve. While he waited for the rains to come, he began making extensive plans for the colony’s expansion and its future. But firstly, he had to deal with immediate concerns, both as a leader of a still lonely outpost of Empire and as a naval man. In the first three months of 1791, Phillip experienced a number of departures, many tinged with regret and fond memories. Waaksamheyd was the first foreign (non-British) ship to moor at Sydney Cove. She had arrived thanks to Supply skipper Henry Ball’s initiative months before. The food she carried saved the colony again. Now, Ball had fallen badly ill from something he had picked up in Batavia. With the loss of Sirius, the little brig was the colony’s only link to the mother country. As the Dutch ship was finally being cleared of its cargo with the temperature nudging 40 degrees, David Blackburn was appointed Supply’s captain and ordered to take off for Norfolk Island to rescue John Hunter, Will Bradley and the crew from the wrecked Sirius and bring them back to Sydney. Much of the recently arrived supplies, notably the rice stores, was not only short but mostly deemed inedible. It would all be consumed, however. The resumption of decent food rations in the colony relieved the situation in the immediate term, but Phillip needed the Dutch ship for other reasons: he needed to fulfil his naval obligations. The wreck of Sirius was unfinished business. The loss of one of His Majesty’s ships required its captain and crew to return to England in the first possible ship, to front the Admiralty. Now, after nine months on Norfolk Island, John Hunter, James Keltie, William Bradley and other officers had means of transport. It was Phillip’s duty as an officer and a gentleman to facilitate this passage home.

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Supply moved down the harbour to Camp Cove prior to departure. Just before she left the Heads, her crew witnessed a number of young Australian men shimmy up the nearby flagpole on South Head and make off with its signal flags. They were last seen enjoying themselves, draping pieces of the pennants around their bodies. Supply finally sailed for Norfolk Island on the morning of 22 January. That afternoon, following eight days of agony and delirium, John McIntyre died. He would not be missed by anyone, save Phillip. Collins stated his opinion of the man quite clearly: This man has been suspected of having wantonly killed or wounded several of the natives in the course of his excursions for game.1 On his death bed, after desperate confessions about gross mistreatment of Australians on his hunting trips, he retracted his admissions of guilt. Tench noted that most people didn’t believe him. His autopsy revealed that the spear had struck the left lobe of the lungs around which were pieces of shell and bone. McIntyre had been more than Phillip’s ‘game-killer’. Having travelled more extensively than most, the burly Scot was a font of knowledge of the lands to the south and west. There is little doubt that McIntyre had told him about his encounters with Australians on his hunting expeditions. By 1790 or earlier, he had become a member of Phillip’s household. His looming presence at Government House during Bennelong’s visits reveals him in the role of a strong man or a personal bodyguard to the Governor. On 26 January 1791, Phillip celebrated the third anniversary of the founding of the colony. The Union Flag was saluted. A commemoration perfunctory, to say the least. After seven months of no rain, in the wind and heat of a hot Sydney summer, it was a short and desultory affair. Collins barely referred to the occasion. Meanwhile, both Watkin Tench and Elizabeth Macarthur recorded that two bunches of grapes grown from cuttings that Phillip had brought from the Cape Colony were presented at table. He remembered that they were ‘fruit of a moderate size, well filled out and the flavour high and delicious’. The dry autumn weather had produced a superior crop, not unnoticed by the German-born erstwhile convict overseer Philip Schaffer.

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Two days later, Henry Dodd, Phillip’s dogged leader of the farm workers who had fulfilled that role from the very start and upon whose dirt floor he had recently slept at Rose Hill, died suddenly. His full contribution to the establishment of the colony will never be known fully but both Phillip and Collins eulogised his demise, which was not unexpected. Collins believed that he had caught a chill while deterring night-time convict depredations of the ripening corn. In reality, he was an old man who had reached his end. Collins wrote: He had acquired an ascendancy over the convicts which he preserved without being hated by them.2 The convict supervisor to replace Dodd was Thomas Clarke along with Thomas Daveney. Neither of them would garner the respect of their workforce.3 Throughout these months, immense bushfires to the southwest fuelled blistering winds filled with smoke and ash which stifled the settlements, notably at Rose Hill. If not caused from lightning strikes, these fires would have been deliberately lit. No Australian would have instigated ordinary controlled burnings during this hot, blustery summer. So if any of them had been responsible, the fires could well have been a warning to the Berewalgal to go no further west than Rose Hill. But it was too late. Phillip had already identified the lands his convict gangs would presently occupy. By force, if necessary. The captain of the Dutch snow, Detmer Schmitt, had been authorised to offer his services to the colony – at a price. Assistants like David Collins were of little help to Phillip in his negotiations with the wily captain who had little English and a competitive nature. He required the ship to be refitted in order the carry his naval comrades. Negotiations with the Dutchman lasted for most of February. Schmitt drove a hard bargain. At one stage during the process, Waaksamheyd left Sydney Cove and sailed down the harbour on the pretence of departing. A deal was eventually made and Schmitt returned the ship to the cove. The carpenter of Supply was tasked to refit the below quarters to accommodate Hunter and his crew. Meanwhile, Supply returned from Norfolk Island after an absence of five weeks on 26 February carrying the crew of the lost Sirius. She also brought back timber from the doomed ship. The men had been marooned on the island for eleven months. It would have been a warm welcome for Hunter, Bradley and his men. To Phillip, Hunter had always been his natural successor as Governor. He

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had probably hoped that, by now, he himself would have returned to England, leaving the colony in Hunter’s capable naval hands. The demise of Hunter’s ship, however, had extinguished that hope. Both naval men, they each well understood that Hunter had to return to face the Admiralty at once. To facilitate this, Phillip provided the means of transport and the most positive recommendations to the authorities for his benefit. However, it would be a month before the carpenters, employed to adapt the Dutch snow for the voyage, had completed their job. In the meantime, Phillip gave Hunter a tour of the settlements and details of his plans for expansion west. Hunter, in turn, gave a report on the state of the outpost at Norfolk Island. It was the first detailed news since before the arrival of the Second Fleet. Through skill or luck, Sirius had ended up on the reef, from which the salvage of most of the stores was achieved. The shipwreck resulted in only a handful of deaths. On the first day after the disaster, 290 casks of provisions were landed. Phillip discovered the reality of the ‘distressed situation’ of the colony under Robert Ross. Upon taking command, Ross had ordered that 140 acres of land be cleared and sown with wheat and maize. Rains flushed the seeds away and the dry season had stunted growth. Then, the ‘myriads of grubs and caterpillars’ descended ‘which destroyed everything before them’. Prior to the arrival of the Second Fleet’s Surprize and Justinian with stores from Sydney Cove in August 1790, under Ross’ martial law, the island had only provisions for a few days, save for the birds. Collins noted: What their situation might have been but for the providential supply of birds they met with, it was impossible to say. On an elevation they called Mount Pitt, they had discovered what Collins would call ‘an abundance almost incredible’ of nesting ‘puffins’.4 They would commonly be called mutton-birds, for obvious reasons. On an island hitherto uninhabited by humans, these birds were the easiest of prey: all that was needed was a torch and a lump of wood. After their initial discovery and a few nights of wholesale slaughter, Ross imposed a quota of only three birds a day per person. But, as the rations reduced,

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he allowed everyone ‘to bring in as many as thought proper’.5 Before long, they were killing up to 3,000 birds a day. Then, there were the birds’ eggs. During his exile, Hunter and his crew made themselves useful. Under his supervision, access to this inhospitable island was improved with Sirius’ crew clearing rocks from the treacherous reef. Contemporaneously, Will Bradley with a small crew conducted a detailed survey of the then uncharted island. The dangerous conditions caused by savage surf and hidden reefs would have made the task both treacherous and difficult to achieve with accuracy. Despite these challenges, Bradley’s resultant map, begun on Norfolk Island and largely finished at Sydney Cove before being finessed on his voyage home, is an outstanding piece of cartography. Bradley hoped his efforts might garner a promotion from the Admiralty. It did. Norfolk Island, though, was a disappointment. By all accounts, it could not sustain more than a thousand people. With its dangerous shores, it was a hardly a welcoming port. The expectation of the island’s flax plants and pine trees servicing the needs of the Navy had come to nought. Andrew Hume, given the job of processing the flax, produced a coarse canvas-like material that would not even serve as a dishcloth. In the weeks before setting sail, the crew of Sirius said their goodbyes to Sydney – although two sailors had decided to stay. David Blackburn was also ordered back to Norfolk Island in Supply to transport convicts, goods and members of the New South Wales Corps – notably Captain William Hill, Lieutenant Edward Abbott and Ensign Prentice – leaving a paucity of officers in Sydney and Rose Hill. Accompanying Hill was an Australian boy named Bondel. The little fellow had become attached to the captain while he was stationed at Rose Hill. According to Tench, the boy was an orphan, his father having been killed in battle and his mother a victim of a shark attack. With these three New South Wales Corps officers to be stationed at Norfolk, there were only four officers left in Sydney and Rose Hill: Lieutenant John Macarthur (still seemingly unwell), Captain Nicholas Nepean (soon to take up garrison duties at Rose Hill, with his lieutenant), Lieutenant John Townson (with his pregnant convict mistress) and Surgeon John Harris. Prior to departure on 22 March, Supply’s carpenter, Robinson Reid, signed a report on the condition of the ship, concluding:

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It is my opinion his Majesty’s armed tender Supply, will want, in the course of another year, a total repair, and which cannot be done in this country conveniently. She was literally falling apart at the seams. It could be seen as a metaphor for the colony in March 1791. Of course, in the weeks leading up to Waaksamheyd’s departure there was a flurry of letter-writing. Phillip’s right hand as well as his shoulder would have ached. Two of his missives are here presented. Writing to Lord Sydney, he was clearly exhausted: At present I find my health so much impaired, that I am now obliged of that account, to request permission to return. For more than two years, I have never been a week free from a pain in my side, which undermines and wears me out, and although this colony is not exactly in the state in which I would wish to have left it, another year may do much, and it is at present so fully established, that I think there cannot any longer be a doubt but that it will, if settlers are sent out, answer in every respect the end proposed by the Government in making the settlement. He also wrote to Joseph Banks: I am sorry that I cannot send you a head. After the ravages made by the smallpox, numbers were seen in every part, but the natives burn the bodies, some may be found hereafter. I once more take my leave of you and am with great esteem – your much obliged humble servant. Richard Johnson wrote to a friend in Hampshire, despairing about Boorong: We are now upon a pretty friendly intercourse with the natives – numbers of them are coming into the camp daily, or rather are in, night and day. This intercourse was principally brought about by means of a little girl, which, if I mistake not, I mentioned to you in a former letter. For some time, this girl made good improvement in her book,

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and began to be very partial to her; but since they have come in in common she has not behaved so well or so complying – Once and again she has been off in the woods for some time, but believe she finds things better in camp and with us than amongst her countrymen. David Collins wrote to his father. He failed to mention his convict partner or their child. But he did vent his spleen on an old grievance. There is every reason to believe that, in March 1791, he also felt threatened by the new military detachment: Of my situation I will say this much – I still live with the Governor, and continue to be his secretary. Since Major Ross went from hence, Tranquillity may be said to have been our guest, but whenever he returns, Discord will again drive out Tranquillity. Oh! That the Sirius when she was lost, had proved his – but no more of that. A letter later published in the London newspaper The Bee, written by an unknown old marine, also complained: Three years have elapsed in January last since our arrival in this country, and, saving a chance meal, the chief of our diet has been salt meat, and that sometimes in very reduced quantities – It is probable Government does not intend to continue the allowance of spirits any longer, for, except a three months’ proportion, which has lately been served, there has not been any issued for eight months past. The soldiers feel the want of that article very much, as they live but poorly, and have been long accustomed to the use of it. Elizabeth wrote to her friend: The harbour of Port Jackson is universally allowed to be the finest in the known world – it is so beautifully formed that I can conceive nothing to equal it – in a harbour so formed and of such extent, a number of pleasant little water parties might be made – but hitherto from Mr Macarthur’s long confinement – I have been enabled to put but one in execution. 294

While Will Bradley was working on his Norfolk Island map and compiling a census of all the colony’s inhabitants, George Worgan, the organist’s son – who had not sailed with Sirius to witness its fate but remained in Sydney to entertain Elizabeth Macarthur and others – bade his farewells. Elizabeth wrote of her musical friend: I assure you in losing him a very considerable branch of our society will be lopped off. Worgan would donate Australia’s first piano to Elizabeth Macarthur before setting sail. Waaksamheyd sailed out of Sydney on 28 March. On that day, Collins recorded: [By] Captain Hunter’s departure, which was regretted by everyone who shared the pleasure of his society.6 The departure of Hunter and the crew of the enterprise’s flagship is a significant moment in this early colonial story. Phillip would lose not only his naval comrades but a crew of men who had done much to sustain and maintain the colony for more than three years. More significantly, the departure of the Sirius crew precipitated a shift in the balance of power from that naval authority to that of the army, specifically the New South Wales Corps. Along with the Sirius crew, the long-demented James Maxwell was shipped back home. Will Bradley’s reputation as a surveyor was assured and he was immediately promoted upon arrival back in England. Although it is hard to discern the hand of either Bradley or Hunter in their Sydney coastal charts, the excellence of Bradley’s maps of Norfolk Island was beyond doubt. However, in 1809, he began to suffer from mental illness. In 1814, he was accused of defrauding the postal authorities. It was a petty case but he was dismissed, arrested and sentenced to death, only for it to be commuted to exile. He died a sad, lonely man in exile in 1833, aged seventy-six years. George Worgan continued as a surgeon’s mate for another decade. He died in 1838, aged eighty-one years. Daniel Southwell was wounded off Portugal in 1797 and died aged thirty-three years. Henry Hacking left on Waaksamheyd but he was not gone for long. He would re-emerge eighteen months later from the deck of Royal Admiral. It would be

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from the gun of Hacking that Sir Joseph Banks would get his head. John Hunter, of course, would be exonerated for the loss of Sirius and return to New South Wales as the colony’s second Governor, at the age of fifty-nine, after two years of military rule by the New South Wales Corps. David Blackburn wrote before he left: I have but little to say on the subject of this country – It seems to be the general opinion that it will never answer the ends of government.7 He would die aged forty-two years. On the night following Waaksamheyd’s departure from the harbour, taking advantage of an empty cove with Supply away at Norfolk Island and after years of planning, William and Mary Bryant with their children and other convicts stole Phillip’s cutter (a small, two-mast affair) and took off. David Collins reported the incident, rightly surmising their hoped-for destination: It was conjectured that they would steer for Timor, or Batavia, as their assistance and information were derived from the Dutch snow.8 In fact, Detmer Schmitt had supplied the escapees with a compass, quadrant and charts before they left under the cover of darkness in Phillip’s cutter, past the lookout as James Scott was snoozing, and disappeared. Bryant, the Cornish fisherman, had been suspected for some time of planning an escape. Phillip discovered that the venture was common knowledge among the convicts at The Rocks. An immediate restriction on the use of vessels was proclaimed. Phillip was outraged, focusing his anger on Mary and her children, whom he thought had been coerced into participating. He even began proposing that their marriage on 10 February 1788, blessed by Richard Johnson, was bogus. John Easty could not help but express both astonishment and sympathy: It’s a very desperate attempt to go in an open boat for a run of about 16 or 17 hundred leagues and in particular for a woman and 2 small children, the oldest not above 3 years of age, but the thoughts of Liberty from such a place as this is enough to induce any convicts to try all schemes to obtain

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it as they are the same as slaves all the time they are in this country.9 In a remarkable voyage of sixty-nine days, William and Mary, their two children along with seven other convicts arrived in Timor. Having convinced the Dutch authorities that they had been shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef, the escapees spent the next few months recovering, with Bryant signing bills on the contention that His Majesty’s Government would pick up the tab. This idyll ended suddenly with the arrival of actual shipwrecked sailors from HMS Pandora, under the command of a captain who literally spelt double trouble – Edward Edwards. But that’s another story.

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CHAPTER 45

Land Grab

Phillip, in his founding commission from His Majesty’s Government, had been given the power to grant land to worthy convicts whose terms had irrefutably expired. However, the paucity of the necessary proof from the mother country concerning the terms and dates of each convict’s servitude, as well as the dire situation of the first two years, had precluded any plans for land grants. The disaster that was the Second Fleet consumed virtually all the colony’s resources and the loss of Sirius further distracted Phillip from any notion of private land grants. The drought over the previous eight months also delayed any decision. It is clear from Phillip’s Instructions in April 1787 that the British Government envisaged future settlers in New South Wales would be ex-convicts. It gave him the ‘full power and authority’ to bestow land grants to worthy emancipated men: To every male shall be granted 30 acres of land, and in case he shall be married, 20 acres more; and for every child who may be with them at the settlement at the time of making the said grant, a further quantity of 10 acres.1 Two years later, Phillip received some additional instructions with regard to land allocation. The guidelines proposed were an attempt to establish a hierarchical system of land ownership that replicated the British model, based on grant size. Accordingly, Phillip established a hierarchical pattern of land grants, with the civil officers (like Thomas Arndell, for instance) and retired non-commissioned officers at the top of the order entitled to a minimum of 130 acres. Ex-marines would be granted a minimum of 80 acres. A convict with a wife and child was allowed a maximum of 60 acres. Further instructions foresaw the granting of land to free settlers and those not mentioned in other regulations.

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As things stood in 1790, every type of colonist could receive a land grant except the officers and soldiers of the New South Wales Corps, much to their chagrin. The regulations notwithstanding, as early as July 1788, both Phillip and Robert Ross had land under cultivation. Francis Grose would inherit Ross’ farm in 1792. Enthused with the apparent success of his planned settlement at Rose Hill, Phillip began looking for similar locations nearby. It would be the start of a network of agrarian settlements that would quietly be created in the Australian ‘wilderness’. Toongabbie Creek, the small but elegant waterway that wound its way to the main river just to the northwest of the settlement, was easy to spot, being sheltered on both sides by the canopies of centuries-old trees. The soil on either side of the creek was rich and moist, even in the hot weather. Unlike Rose Hill but similar to Warrane, Toongabbie Creek was dominated by huge red gums, turpentine trees, coachwood and lilly-pilly. Designed as a large government farm, it would take a large convict workforce to establish this third settlement. But, an area almost directly west of Rose Hill, at the base of a small elevation in the extensive plain he called Cumberland, and the banks on either side of the upper reaches of the harbour between The Flats (Homebush) and the Rose Hill settlement were to be the locations of Phillip’s first land grab. Meanwhile, he had a perfect role model in James Ruse, the stoic farmer on the land conditionally granted to him some fifteen months previously. In March, Collins proudly recorded that Ruse wished to be taken off provisions from the government stores, saying he could fend for himself. As a consequence, he was granted 30 acres of ground extended from the land he already occupied. However, it was only weeks later that Collins discovered that Ruse and his wife were barely coping. They were quietly put back on rations for a short time. Yet Phillip was sanguine. Writing to Joseph Banks, he declared: Our crops have turned out better than we had reason to expect from the long drought, and we have no reason to suppose such dry seasons common.2 How wrong he was. Many historians believe that Ruse was the first recipient of a land grant. Finalised on 30 March 1791 and formally granted on 22 February

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1792, the property would be dubbed Experiment Farm. But the Cornish farmer has some contenders. After a week of cloudy weather with the welcome promise of rain, on 16 March, Phillip made his first move to grant land – on the south side of the harbour leading to Rose Hill. The recipients were two ex-crewmen from the lamented Sirius, Robert Webb and William Reid. Each was granted 30 acres, compliant with government orders, with another 30 acres to be set aside for the Crown. This gave reasonable egress for the Australians but the new settlers soon complained and the policy was abandoned. The traditional owners were thereafter denied access to the land and the harbour adjacent to it. That same day, the long-awaited rains came and it poured for days. It would spur Phillip into action. A convict timber-cutting gang was deployed to Toongabbie Creek and the magnificent trees that maintained it were laboriously hacked off at their base. Thomas Watling’s 1793 pencil sketch of the creek clearly shows the stumps among the cornfields. It was this destruction of Toongabbie that led Phillip to steer his surveying party inexplicably northeast, to avoid the consternation of his Australian companions (see next chapter). Charles Williams (also known as Christopher Magee), a friend of Ruse, had worked as a convict gang supervisor. He married Eleanor McCabe in August 1788. Sadly, a baby had died in 1790. They were granted land next to Ruse, as was another First Fleeter, James Stuart, who had come out on Scarborough. Then, Philip Schaffer, the German-speaking erstwhile convict supervisor who had befriended the Governor, was also settled on a large piece of land on the south bank of the river, next to the main freshwater creek that fed into the river. Originally called Ponds Creek, it now has the name Subiaco. Phillip granted Schaffer land along the entire length of the creek. He would call his land ‘The Vineyard’. Much later, he would sell it to a member of the Macarthur family. From the very beginning, Phillip sought to separate convict and free settler. Adjacent to Schaffer’s grant and across the river from the convict holdings, Phillip gave land away to the two sailors of the former Sirius who had decided to stay – Robert Webb and William Reid. This was only the beginning. Phillip had identified three more locations for his blatant encroachment on Australian lands, with no regard to a sense of natural justice or cognisance of its impact on the original owners. In short order, he authorised dozens of land grants. 300

At the base of Prospect Hill, almost directly west of Rose Hill, he settled thirteen former First Fleet convicts and their families on the land. Samuel Griffiths, originally from Gloucester, came out on Alexander after stealing a sheep. He was now in his early forties. James Castles also came from the land. He had been found guilty of burglary – stealing a woman’s linen shirt and a pair of shoes. He was sentenced to banishment for life – that is, he would never return home. William Parish (or Potter) was a Londoner who took up highway robbery. Already in his forties, he married Phoebe Norton (who had fallen overboard Lady Pen while on the toilet and was rescued from the seas) in the first marriage ceremony at Sydney Cove. They were one of the first families to settle in Rose Hill. At the time of his land grant, the couple had a six-month-old son. Also marrying in February 1788 were John Silverthorn and Mary Wickham. She had arrived on Charlotte, he on Alexander. They had a son together during the previous year. Both mother and child, however, died, leaving John a widower. A friend of William Parish, William Kilby was a man in his fifties. Joseph Marlow (or Morley) had received 100 lashes back in July 1789 for trading with a marine. He was just recently married when his land was granted. More happily, Edward Pugh, a carpenter, married Hannah Smith in June 1788. She had just lost a two-yearold from another relationship. Hannah had the distinction of being transported in three different ships, ending up in Lady Penrhyn. By March 1791, they had themselves a two-year-old boy. William Butler was a seaman by trade and, apart from being done for theft back in April 1788, he had kept his nose clean since. Newly wed to Jane Forbes, he would partner up in his farming endeavours with George Lisk, a Jewish watchmaker, transported out on Scarborough. John Richards (or Williams) never got to enjoy his land grant. He would die the following year. John Herbert was also a seaman who had pursued robbery during his shore days. A man in his thirties, he had married Deborah Ellam in April 1788. She had the first of seven children by him in August 1789. John Nicols is described as a gardener but he was actually an assistant to a wigmaker who took off with his wigs, powder puffs and 67 razors. He had come out on Scarborough, married Mary Carroll of Lady Pen, but became a bachelor again when Mary was packed off to Norfolk Island. Lastly, Thomas Martin, listed as a weaver, was the recipient of a land grant despite copping 200 lashes for stealing a pair of trousers

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in September 1788. Today, these grants are the suburbs of Pemulwuy, Prospect and Girraween. Within ten years, more than half of these grantees would be bought out, mostly by the soldiers of the New South Wales Corps. Extending from the southern shores of the harbour and centring round a series of freshwater swamps, the area known as ‘The Ponds’ was bestowed on fourteen men. Their grants cover the present-day suburbs of Ermington, Rydalmere and Dundas. Named for the freshwater swamps in nearby Dundas Valley, the land was more favourable than that at Prospect Hill. Many of the grants were rewards for good service. William Hubbard, Joseph Marshall and John Anderson had all distinguished themselves as night watchmen. All had come out on Scarborough and had subsequently married. John Ramsay, a friend of John Nicols and William Hubbard, was married in December 1790. Anthony Rope and John Summers were also mates. Both were flogged, 25 lashes each, in May 1788 for neglecting their work. Matthew Everingham was an attorney’s clerk in his mid-twenties. He had recently married Elizabeth Rymes on the same day as his friend William Butler married. Everingham would later sell his land to Andrew Hume. The other grantees were all men in their late twenties and early thirties: Edward Varndell, William Elliot, Curtis Brand, Joseph Bishop, Thomas Kelly and William Field. On the lands called the Boundary Farms, Phillip settled six First Fleeters and their families. Simon Burn, a friend of John Ramsay, he was one of the first to marry, in February 1788; his wife was Frances Anderson. Burn became a convict gang leader with a reputation for toughness. John Baughan never settled on his land. A skilled carpenter, Baughan had also married within weeks of his arrival at Sydney Cove. By 1791, he and his wife Mary Cleaver already had three children. He would remain in Sydney to become the town’s leading millwright. His success would make him a target of the New South Wales Corps. Years later, when he complained about soldiers slacking off, a troop of soldiers marched to his newly built cottage at Dawes Point and demolished the building, smashing all the furniture while an axe was held to Baughan’s throat. Although a member of the night watch, William Bradbury was found guilty with two others of beating up two sailors from Supply. Despite this punishment, his copybook apparently remained blemish free. It is obvious that the assault was not entirely unprovoked. Liverpudlian William Parr married Mary MacCormack

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weeks after arrival. In April 1790, he had been caught stealing a pumpkin. John (Thomas) Brown was transported on Charlotte and shortly thereafter married Elizabeth Barber. A little over a year before the land grants, their son died. His wife would later leave him, departing on Neptune to act as the servant of the wife of her captain, Donald Traill. Of the last recipient of land, William Moulds, little is known. These men and women occupied land in the suburbs of North Parramatta and Northmead. It was close to Phillip’s declared government domain for the colony’s phantom cattle herds. The New South Wales Corps persuaded Phillip to write to Grenville in November 1791, requesting ‘land – for their own advantage’. Approval didn’t arrive in January 1793 but that didn’t stop Ensign William Cummings from occupying land right next to Ruse’s and Williams’ grants. Within months, Francis Grose was giving out land to his officers in 100-acre lots.3 During 1791–92, Phillip allocated sixty-three farms to sixty-four convicts on land around Parramatta, but few of them would keep their grants. Many would be bought out by soldiers of the New South Wales or other members of the colony’s elite.

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CHAPTER 46

Gonin-patta

David Collins noted in April 1791: The Governor made an excursion westward, but he reached no farther than the banks of the Hawkesbury and returned to Rose Hill on the 6th without making any discovery of the least importance.1 It is an odd statement; it is also false. There was no ‘excursion westward’ in early April. Maybe, Collins erroneously dated the excursion that was undertaken later in the month, recording 6 April rather than 16 April as the date when Phillip’s trip to the Hawkesbury did end at Rose Hill. Nevertheless, his dismissal of the excursion that actually left Rose Hill on 11 April is curious, as Tench remembered: Our party was strong and numerous. Moreover, Collins was one of almost two dozen members of this admittedly fruitless expedition. With provisions for ten days, apart from ten soldiers and three game-killers, Phillip was accompanied by him along with Tench, John White and William Dawes. This expedition was important enough to Phillip for him to set aside his displeasure with Dawes in order to have the young man’s talents on the trip. He was put in charge of surveying the land they would traverse. Dawes would steer by compass. As meticulous as ever, this ‘arduous task’, Tench remembered, was always given to him, who: from habit and superior skill, performed almost without a stop, or an interruption of conversation: to any other man, on such terms, it would have been impracticable.

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Most historians happily recount that section of Tench’s ‘travelling diaries’ that deals with the largest inland expedition that Phillip would undertake in 1791. This ‘excursion’ of supposed ‘least importance’ is notable for its two most unlikely members – Colbee and Balooderry. He wrote that Bennelong was asked to come but Barangaroo would not let him, which seems entirely plausible. Colbee agreed to accompany the white men only on condition that Daringa and Paniebollong be taken care of back in Sydney. Tench had to note that he made his demands ‘with great care and consideration’. The deal was probably brokered by John White, who had befriended him. It would be a mistake. During his time away, or shortly thereafter, his daughter fell sick. She died sometime late in April. Balooderry, Boorong’s older brother, had recently established a thriving trade with the Rose Hill settlement, bartering fresh bream and mullet. Tench referred to the two Australians as ‘volunteers’ on their journey and he is assuredly right, but their inclusion in the party is striking. They were clearly never meant to act as guides. By this time, Phillip understood that neither of these men was well acquainted with the Darug country to the northwest of the harbour. Tench’s apparent surprise at the Australians’ lack of knowledge of the country they traversed – ‘Where’s Rose Hill? Where?’ – is disingenuous. Nor were the Australians included in the expedition to act and translators or intermediaries on the trip, despite eventually fulfilling those roles. They had all travelled west before without a friendly ‘native’ with them. There had certainly been no conflict with the Australians on the Hawkesbury up until this point, and, although well armed, the expedition was not one of invading force. Not yet. The purpose of the expedition was to seek out any arable land between Rose Hill and the Hawkesbury. Phillip’s was a quiet invasion: small farming villages slowly spreading across the landscape. He regarded the Hawkesbury district as being too distant to govern for the moment. He had seen also the unmistakable signs of the river’s previous inundations. To retain centralised power, moreover, he favoured a patchwork of settlements a short distance apart. Again, the question must be asked: why were these two Australians going along with him? It cannot be overlooked that Colbee had come to be seen by Phillip, and certainly by John White, as a far less capricious character than Bennelong – someone whom he felt held more gravitas. He was the father of a young daughter and an endearing

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wife. In reality, Phillip needed to keep Colbee on his side – even, by his side. What also cannot be ignored is that, at the very time Balooderry’s country – the land between The Flats (Homebush) and Rose Hill – was about to be invaded (see previous chapter), he would be absent. They left early on the cool April morning, the soldiers heavily laden with food (for ten days), blankets, tents and so forth. Tench delights his readers again with images of the clumsy, over-burdened soldier in the Australian bush. The Australians carried some provisions too but hardly as much. Food would be supplied and they had no need of blankets or tents. He amuses his readers as he did in his last foray into the country with light-hearted anecdotes that mask the purpose of the journey. Again, he is being disingenuous when he tells his readers: We expected to have derived from them much information relating to the country; as no one doubted that they were acquainted with every part of it between the sea-coast and the river Hawkesbury. He, Phillip and especially Dawes, knew that this was not true. Maybe he was being truthful when he wrote: We hoped also to have witnessed their manner of living in the woods, and the resources they rely upon in their journeys. With their food and fire supplied, however, the Australians had little to do while Tench was wondering, if: the effect of fatigue is sufficiently powerful to overcome the bites and stings of the myriads of sand flies and mosquitoes which buzz around him. The central focus of the trip became Dawes and his compass. Tench noted that the Australians ‘comprehended its use’, calling it naa-moro – ‘to see the way’. They travelled northeast then northwest through a drought-affected landscape occupied by the modern-day suburbs of North Rocks, Dural, Kenthurst, Glenorie

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and the still semi-rural areas around Maroota and Cattai. When he inquired about the people they would encounter, Colbee called them Boorooberongal and ‘said they were bad’. Meanwhile, Tench described ‘our natives’: They walked stoutly, appeared but little fatigued, and maintained their spirits admirably, laughing to excess when any of us either tripped or stumbled; misfortunes which much seldomer fell to their lot than to ours. He even supplied the term Colbee and Balooderry used in their ridicule – gonin-patta – which he delicately told his readers means ‘an eater of human excrement’. To the Australians, the British were just a bunch of shit-eaters. They had no idea why this journey would be mounted in the first place. Why spend five days trekking in the bush for no reason? They already had plenty of food and water. They believed the British were fools and behaved accordingly: Their laziness appeared strongly when we halted; for they refused to draw water, or to cleave wood to make a fire; but as soon as was kindled (having well stuffed themselves), they lay down before it and fell asleep. On the first night, somewhere around Dural, the men were ‘chatting by the fire side’ when they heard voices in the darkness. ‘We begged our natives to call to them.’ Colbee did so and the stranger made himself known as Berewan: He came to us unarmed, having left his spears at a little distance. After a long conversation with his countrymen and having received some provisions, he departed highly satisfied. Tench noted that Berewan spoke a different dialect to that which is spoken at the coast, presenting a table, probably with Dawes’ help, that feature the differences in common words used by both parties. He also noted that he was not missing his front tooth, unlike his ‘sable companions’. He believed he possessed a number of wives and that he lived off small animals and wild yams growing at the river’s edge. He could not conceive that Australian women actually sowed and harvested the tubers on large flat expanses of the river’s edge.

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The next day, they reached the Hawkesbury – Deerubin to the Darug people; it is from this trip that we have the river’s original name. It was clear that neither Colbee nor Balooderry had ever seen the river before – ‘they stared at it with surprise and talked to each other’. They were somewhere in the vicinity of Cattai, miles away from Richmond Hill, their point of reference. The river here was over 90 metres wide. Despite the drought, it was teeming with birdlife, its banks sheltered by trees, its current strong with evidence of previous floods with branches of trees a dozen metres above the water line hanging like dangled ornaments. Someone shot a duck, which Colbee later retrieved. The river’s water, Tench noted, was ‘pure and excellent to the taste’. But it was not Colbee’s country or Balooderry’s. Tench appeared to be also surprised when he realised their ‘total ignorance of the country’. They were not alone. Thinking they were upstream of Richmond Hill, they proceeded the follow the mud flats along the river. Having stumbled on to Little Cattai Creek, they followed it through marshes. This was when the British were graced with the ‘opprobrious name’ of shit-eaters. They ‘scrambled with infinite toil and difficulty to the top of a neighbouring mountain’ where they saw the object of their pursuit – Richmond Hill – kilometres away in the opposite direction. He wryly noted to his readers that ‘this pile of desolation’ was given the name of ‘Tench’s Prospect Mount’ – it is thought to be a prominence close to today’s Old Northern Road near Forest Glen. Tench told his readers: Our fatigue today had been excessive: but our sable companions seemed rather enlivened than exhausted by it. The Australians played ‘ten thousand tricks and gambols’. They sang, danced, laughed, poised with their spears, ‘imitated the leaping of a kangaroo’ and reenacted all the stumbles and falls that befell the British all that day ‘with inimitable drollery’. The next day, they saw several nowies on the river. Colbee and Balooderry immediately made them lie down ‘among the reeds’ until they were gone. Later, an Australian ‘with frankness and confidence’ paddled up to them. He was middle-aged, Tench believed, his face ‘marked with the smallpox’ and sporting ‘a nose of uncommon magnitude and dignity’. His name was Gombeeree. He

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followed them along the water’s edge, pointing out a path, while another man and young boy paddled ahead in a nowie. When they stopped for the night, the Australians halted as well. Along with Gombeeree, the boy in the nowie was named Deeimba. His companion was Yellomundee. With their women and children on the opposite side of the river, they sat down by the fire, ate with them and shared hatchets ‘without betraying any symptom of fear, distrust or surprise’. Stretched out at ease before our fire, all sides continued to chat and entertain each other. After Gombeeree showed Colbee a spear wound on his side, the following ‘superstitious ceremony’ took place: While they were talking, Colbee turned suddenly around and asked for water. I gave him a cup full, which he presented with great seriousness to Yellomundee, as I supposed to drink. This last indeed took the sup, and filled his mouth with water; but instead of swallowing it, threw his head into Colbee’s bosom; spit the water upon him; and immediately after, began to suck strongly at his breast, just below the nipple – The silent attention observed by the other natives – convinced us that something more than merely the accommodation of Yellomundee was intended. The ceremony was staged again, this time Yellomundee ‘pretended to receive something in his mouth, which was drawn from the breast’. He took a stone from his mouth and threw it into the river. Colbee ‘assured us that he had received signal benefit from the operation’. The three visitors stayed the night ‘sleeping before the fire in the fullness of good faith and security’. Again, he commented on the commonplace which was deemed remarkable in his eyes. The little boy slept in Yellomundee’s arms. Tench was struck by the observation that, whenever the father turned in his sleep, he ‘first put over the child, with great care, and then turned round to him’. It is really what any father would do. The next day, they parted company, the British shaking hands and the Australians with a ‘slight nod of the head, the usual salutation of the country’.

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Yellomundee’s name is immortalised in today’s Yarramundi. Gombeeree and John White – possibly unbeknownst to White – had adopted each other’s names. ‘Major White’ would become a prominent figure among the earliest Hawkesbury settlements in the decade to come. Phillip continued along Deerubin until they struck today’s South Creek. Following this watercourse south until the late afternoon, they found the land largely unpromising in the drought of that autumn. Someone shot some ducks, Balooderry became surly and refused to swim for them when requested. Tench admitted that his refusal was ‘justly founded’ as all the Australians had received from ducks procured on the trip thus far was offal and half-chewed bones. Instead they were offered crow, whose meat is far inferior to that of duck. Both men lived on country dominated by aquatic birdlife; duck was part of their staple diet, while crow meat was seen to be fit for nothing except their dogs. It was an insult. The Australians knew it and the British knew it. By Saturday 16 April, everyone had had enough. Phillip had found no good arable land between Rose Hill and the Hawkesbury. The ‘natives’ were getting restless and they ‘resolved to abandon our pursuits’. They arrived back at Rose Hill at around three o’clock in the afternoon, just in time to see ‘The Lump’ depart down the harbour. Colbee and Balooderry would not wait and boarded her immediately for the trip to Sydney Cove, eager to see their families again.

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CHAPTER 47

Parramatta

As Balooderry and Colbee drifted down the harbour on ‘The Lump’ on the afternoon of 16 April, after their bushwalk with Phillip and Tench, they would have noticed signs of human activity on either side of the river. They would have seen fallen trees, huts and campfires as the land grantees settled on their newly acquired land. When Colbee arrived at Sydney that night, he discovered that his daughter was ill and Daringa had had her fishing gear stolen. Days later, a man named Dawkins received fifty lashes for the theft. Phillip insisted that Daringa, Colbee and other Australians should witness the punishment as a sign that the protection of personal property was equal under his law and as it was under their own. Like most flogging, it would have taken place outside the storehouses on the eastern shore. Tench wrote that Australians ‘of both sexes, accordingly attended’. Both he and Phillip remembered Arabanoo’s reaction to a similar sight. He wrote that on this day: There was not one of them that did not testify strong abhorrence of the punishment. The behaviour of two women ‘was exactly descriptive of their character’. Daringa began to sob; Barangaroo lost her temper, grabbed a stick and began to threaten the man with the whip.1 A few weeks later, Phillip hosted Bennelong and Barangaroo, Colbee and Daringa at his home, hopeful of reinforcing their accord. It is not known if Daringa’s daughter had already died by this stage. But it was around this time that Colbee appeared one day with a musket in his hands. Diving for shellfish, he had found the gun in the water and was returning it. Whether Balooderry was present at the flogging is not known, but he did resume his trade with Rose Hill, now the most populous settlement. Collins

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recorded the completion of the large barracks for the New South Wales Corps, new storehouses and neat wattle and daub huts along a wide main street. In expectation of future livestock and to avoid the recurrence of three years before, large areas of grassland were being fenced in. On the ‘Glorious June 4th’, Phillip renamed the town as Parramatta. It was the third name for the place. Yet the creek to the northwest of the settlement, dominated at that time by the timber-cutting gang, had always been known as Toongabbie. Collins had used the appellation as early as March. Whether a sense of irony may be deduced, the dubbing of Indigenous place names on to conquered territory was in the imperialist tradition. The American colonists had been employing the custom in their country for decades. What happened at Parramatta around the very same day that Phillip changed its name was definitely not ironic. Balooderry was just one of a number of Australians who were plying a trade, bartering fish for salt meat and other goods with the residents of Parramatta. As Collins wrote: To the officers who resided there this proved a great convenience, and they encouraged the natives to visit them as often as they could bring them fish. Then, Balooderry’s nowie was smashed to pieces by convicts – an incident that Collins described as ‘so unthinking or so depraved’ to destroy the canoe of a ‘fine young man’. He had dragged it to a spot by the waterside hidden from view, while he went to trade his fresh fish at some huts ‘a little distance from the settlement [Parramatta]’. Up until recently, Balooderry would have left his nowie on the beach without thought of its not being there on his return. He flew into a rage. Collins described his anger as ‘unconceivable’ and his behaviour is certainly understandable. His nowie was his main asset, wantonly destroyed. Balooderry shouted revenge to all Berewalgal and departed. His vociferous avowals of retribution were probably tinged by feelings of betrayal – after all, he had sat beside the same campfire as the Governor. He would not have realised that his association with Phillip and his administration might have been behind the incident.

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Although the culprits were quickly identified, Balooderry was not assuaged. Collins said he was ‘taught to believe’ that one of the convicts had been hanged. He knew it for a lie. A few days later, he speared a convict at Homebush, wounding him twice. For the Australian, this was legitimate payback and he assumed that the matter was settled, but Phillip, bizarrely, declared him an outlaw, forbidding him to approach Sydney or Parramatta. He should have known better than banishing Balooderry from his own land, making him an exile in his own country. From this time on, ‘the instant effect of all this was’: Parramatta was seldom visited by them and all commerce with them was destroyed. Balooderry became a shadow in the bush while Parramatta continued to grow and thrive without his fresh fish. Colbee and Daringa had also withdrawn from Sydney and were mourning the death of their daughter. But Colbee still had a presence. One day in June, a soldier from the New South Wales Corps became lost in the bush while picking native herbs. His comrades had decided to pursue a patyegarang (wallaby), leaving him stranded.2 After wandering in the bush, he came upon a group of Australians who, seeing his gun, fled back into the bush. All but one. Colbee and one of his companions induced the man to follow him. The soldier offered his clothes and other items to Colbee if he would guide him back to Parramatta, but they were not accepted. With Colbee on the verge of leaving, the soldier offered his gun. He took it and conveyed him back to Sydney. Parramatta was further away. On the outskirts of Sydney (probably the Brickfields), Colbee returned the gun and refused the gifts the soldier had proffered, bidding him that he should tell Phillip that it was he, Colbee, who had led him to safety. Months later, Phillip was informed by a number of Australians who were visiting the Governor’s house that Balooderry and several others were sighted at Kirribilli. He ordered him to be seized as soon as his visitors had left or whenever an opportunity presented itself. By June 1791, the autumn harvest was brought in and the storehouses became less empty. Meanwhile, the thieving at Parramatta went on but there was one man in town who was dogged in his pursuit of the burglars and miscreants.

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Thomas (or John) Ocraft had been convicted of stealing lederhosen in 1784. After absconding, he ended up on the Dunkirk hulk where he became a snitch before being transported on Charlotte. In March 1791, he became head of Parramatta’s night watch and was diligent to say the least. Within days, he was giving evidence against one of his own after having caught him stealing some corn stalks. Robert Hunt said he had done so because he was hungry. He got 100 lashes. The following month, Ocraft was again a witness before David Collins after William Cross was accused of stealing corn and greens from the young New South Wales Corps Private, Thomas Bray. Cross was sentenced to wear an iron collar for a year. The next day, Ocraft was instrumental in another convict wearing the collar for two years. On the ‘Glorious June 4th’, Phillip ordered all those wearing iron collars to be released. That night, Ocraft disturbed six men robbing gardens in Parramatta, who then proceeded to beat him up. Nevertheless, he managed to secure three of them for punishment. One received 500 lashes. Collins noted: The people who had assaulted the watchman were severely punished, as his authority could never have been supported without such an example. By this time, Ocraft had become one of the most hated men in the inland settlement. He was awarded a land grant at Prospect Hill in the following year for his services. In June, the drought finally broke with almost a week of heavy rain, leading to a frantic effort to put as much wheat seed in the ground as possible. Prior to this, Collins wrote: the ground was so dry, hard, and literally burnt up, that it was impossible to break it with a hoe.3 Captain Nepean had taken over duties at Parramatta (apparently, without his Lieutenant Macarthur), with his garrison occupying the newly completed barracks. Despite soldiers complaining about the paucity of grog in the colony, there was plenty about if you had money and the right connections. Private William Hallam managed to purchase three bottles of rum in as many days, and

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deaths due to hard drinking still occurred, some of these fatalities befalling longstanding, hard-working skilled convicts that the colony could not afford to lose. On 13 June, William Frazier, one of only a few blacksmiths in New South Wales, came to an untimely end. He had regularly been paid in spirits by soldiers for work done in his extra hours. A month later, Patrick Burn, one of the colony’s most prolific game-killers was also found dead. His hut was burnt down that night during the drunken Irish wake and it was with difficulty that the corpse was saved from the flames. His scorched body was buried the next day.

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CHAPTER 48

Tench and Dawes

If not the best of friends, Watkin Tench and William Dawes were – with the possible exception of Phillip and Collins – the closest of colleagues since the beginning of the invasion. Together, they had endured the last three desperate years with stoicism and mostly good humour. It was Tench who enlisted his colleague to accompany him in the first fruitless punitive expedition south, following the attack on McIntyre. It was Dawes whose fascination and interest in Australian language and culture matched his own. And it was Tench who was well aware that Dawes’ remaining presence in the colony was in jeopardy. Despite his enlistment by Phillip on the journey to the Hawkesbury in April, the rift between Dawes and the Governor had not been breached. His initial refusal to obey his orders in December the previous year would, in most circumstances, warrant a court-martial. But William Dawes was too valuable an officer to be put under house arrest. As it happened, his sanctuary on the western point of Warrane was denied to him. His observatory on Tarra in the months to come would become a guardhouse, incorporated into the battery that convicts were now carving out of the sandstone rock. Apprehending that his days in the colony were numbered, Dawes along with Tench in the months to come would strike out on treks into the Australian bush. A little over a month after Phillip’s return from the Hawkesbury in April, Tench and Dawes with two other soldiers, one of them Sergeant Isaac Knight of Captain Nepean’s company, returned to the river. Tench avowed that their intention was to settle the long-contested point as to whether the Nepean and Hawkesbury were one and the same river. However, it was already plain to all those who had journeyed to the area that this was the case. Maybe Dawes wanted to be certain, but it is also probable that the two men simply enjoyed each other’s company and shared a certain amount of wanderlust.

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Reaching the Hawkesbury at the end of May, Tench wrote, ‘we heard a native call’ across the water. They coo-eed back and the Australian launched his nowie to greet the strangers. He recorded his name as Deedora and ‘appeared to know our friend Gombeeree’ whom they had met the month before. The Australian followed them in his canoe as they proceeded upstream to Richmond Hill. Wishing to cross the river, in order to climb the prominence, the travellers accepted Deedora’s offer to assist them with his boat. Dawes and the private were the first to traverse the river, using the nowie to transport their possessions as they swam behind it. Meanwhile, Tench, Knight and Deedora waited before another Australian returned with the nowie. Due to the sergeant’s fear of water and his inability to swim, it was decided that he would cross in the nowie with the Australian whose name Tench recorded as Morunga. But such was the soldier’s phobia that, after climbing into the nowie, he jumped out again, refusing to proceed. Despite the ‘ridicule’ of the Australian, he decided to cross over by himself. This he eventually did. It was now Tench’s turn to cross. He climbed into the nowie with Deedora but, like Knight, became too scared and resolved to swim the river – which he did, leaving his clothes, knapsacks and three guns. Deedora loaded his nowie with the items and delivered them to the opposite shore. Tench declared that a ‘brighter example’ of the ‘disinterested urbanity’ the Australians showed towards his ‘set of destitute wanderers’ would be hard to find. They climbed Richmond Hill with Deedora. After having shot a hawk which fell on to the branch of a tree, they gladly accepted the Australian’s offer to fetch it. Tench lent him a hatchet, which ‘delighted him so much, that he begged for it’. However, the British needed the hatchet to chop wood for their evening fire. Somehow, he led Deedora to understand that he would be given the hatchet if he came to see them the next morning. ‘Punctual to our appointment’, Tench wrote, the man returned at daylight and claimed his hatchet.1 They then struck westward, climbing to the top of an escarpment that provided spectacular views eastwards across the Cumberland Plain. With provisions running low and with the fear of being unable to safely cross the river again, they decided to return. They called the elevation with its panoramic views Knight Hill. Today, it is known as Kurrajong Heights. Six weeks later, Tench and Dawes were off again, this time venturing south

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from Parramatta. It was, by this time, the depths of winter. They found the cold inland climate remarkable, recording below freezing temperatures. The leg of a kangaroo they had shot and intended to roast for dinner was frozen solid. Little of substance is known about the pair’s trek, apart from their examination of the saltwater Prospect Creek and the Georges River. Days after their return to Sydney, both Dawes and Tench sat on the magistrates’ bench with five others. The convict James Chapman was accused of ‘feloniously and burglariously’ carrying away the goods and chattels of some of his cohorts.2 Again, the diligent watchman John Ocraft bore witness. The evidence was overwhelming, Chapman pleaded guilty. The sentence was death and he was executed at noon the following day, 28 July. Chapman was the only person to be hanged in New South Wales in 1791. As winter turned to spring, Dawes bided his time. He knew that aboard one of the ships expected imminently in Sydney would be correspondence that would determine his future in the colony.

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CH A P T ER 49

Botany Bay Rangers

Their alternative name was the 102nd Regiment of the Line. In the decades to come, the New South Wales Corps would become known as the Rum Corps. But, in 1791, they had nicknamed themselves the Botany Bay Rangers. In the aforementioned letter later published in London’s The Bee, an anonymous soldier wrote: The new corps seem to have come out without being well acquainted with their situation at this place. It is said that they are to pay threepence per day for their ration, and to have no spirits allowed them.1 This was not true. Indeed, drunkenness and deaths due to alcoholism had increased since the arrival of the new corps. But in 1791, the New South Wales Corps had yet to exert its influence on the administration of the colony, with only a handful of officers having yet arrived. Back in July 1790, Captain Nepean completed a return of the New South Wales Corps detachment. Besides himself, there was only one other captain: William Hill, who would be stationed at Norfolk Island. Besides Lieutenant John Macarthur, there were only two other lieutenants and both would be stationed at Parramatta. The corps had only one ensign and forty-five soldiers. Most of these would be sent to Norfolk as well. The corps’ leader, Major Francis Grose, would not arrive for another year. Captain Nepean was stationed with his garrison at Parramatta, without his lieutenant. Macarthur remained, apparently unwell, in Sydney with his wife and family, living across the road from the marine barracks on today’s Pitt Street. While his captain was preparing his troops for their garrison at Parramatta, Macarthur signed an affidavit declaring that convict Mary Morgan had stolen a

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black tin dish belonging to him. He had demanded its return but she refused, declaring that it was not his property. It came to nothing, through lack of evidence. It would be the first of numerous complaints lodged with the courts by John Macarthur over the next forty years. The corps’ new medical man was John Harris. Born in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the thirty-seven-year-old had been appointed as surgeon’s mate after ten years in service but following the resignation of his superior, he was promoted to surgeon. In little more than a decade, he would be one of the largest landowners in the colony. He would also perform the roles of magistrate and trader, greatly supplementing his meagre surgeon’s salary. Even a fit and robust person like Harris was debilitated by his voyage out on Neptune.2 He was not fit for duty until months after his disembarkation. During that time, he spent time convalescing at the lookout near South Head. On 20 March 1791, he wrote to a friend about Sydney Town, dispelling his reader about the condition of life in the colony. He described it as: the most miserable looking place I ever beheld – Sydney Cove may, in my opinion, be justly termed one of the most barren rocky situations for a colony under Heaven – the run of fresh water which we have been told would turn a mill is so reduced as scarce to be able to supply the colony. Harris wrote that he was ordered to Norfolk Island with the detachment but somehow avoided it. He commented: I see no inducement for changing in of the frying pan into the fire.3 Harris is presented by the Port Jackson Painter in a scene also featuring John White and a surgeon’s mate with a large party of soldiers. It depicts an unknown incident when Colbee was apparently wounded. There is no record of this incident, but Harris was one of the party that had set out for Broken Bay in September prior to Phillip’s payback. In May 1791, Harris was sent to Parramatta with Captain Nepean’s garrison. He had befriended the captain on the voyage out. Within two years, he had bought out James Ruse and become the second biggest landowner in the Parramatta area,

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behind John Macarthur. But, in 1791, he had little influence. Around the end of June, John Harris wrote to Captain Hill on Norfolk Island. The letter reveals not only the morale of his comrades at the time but Harris’ cynical attitude towards his fellow soldiers. The italics are his: Your friend Major Nepean acts much the same manner as when you left us, but I think rather with more inconsistence. On our arrival at Rose Hill, he took a whim of not speaking to Townson [his lieutenant] but he has since made an apology and now does. His behaviour is so gear with Mrs Morgan that he is the common talk of this place and Sydney – Macarthur remained at Sydney doing duty till the return of the brig from Norfolk and Captain Nepean consoled himself in his absence with the company of Mr Timmins, neither speaking to Townson or me except on duty and then so haughtily that it is very disagreeable. However, on the return of the brig, he came up and Captain Nepean and he as inseparable companions as before, but that did not last long for they soon fell out and are now the bitterest of enemies – The Governor has given him a gamekeeper but though many kangaroos are killed sometimes two of a day, he never sends any of his officers a mouthful.4 On 9 July, the transport Mary Ann arrived at the harbour. Harris was informed that the ‘Botany Bay Rangers was dispersed among the [incoming] ships’.5

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CHAPTER 50

Third Fleet

Historians might quibble but to the people of Sydney Town, the eleven ships that would arrive between July and October 1791 were the Third Fleet, despite their staggered departures from the British Isles between February and April. The signal went up at South Head early on the morning of 9 July. Sergeant James Scott, head of the lookout, boarded the transport Mary Ann outside the Heads along with Watkin Tench. Hired by the slave traders Camden, Calvert and King, she carried around 143 women, with only three having died on the voyage. She had sailed alone in a quick passage of under five months. However, Tench lamented: – And what was our disappointment, on getting aboard, to find that they had not brought a letter.1 Phillip, however, did receive official dispatches from England that informed him that a large fleet of transports would be arriving soon. Official letters also clarified his power to convene a criminal court using the military officers. No longer could someone like Robert Ross defy the Governor’s authority. He was also given directives concerning those convicts whose term had expired, informing them that if they intended to settle in the country, they would be given every encouragement. For those who desired to quit the place (which were the majority of them), they would confront no obstacles so long as they could settle any debts and finance their own passage home. He was also delighted to learn that HMS Gorgon – the replacement ship for HMS Sirius – was heading for the harbour. Mary Ann anchored in Sydney Cove and the women were disembarked the next day and housed in huts in Sydney while Phillip travelled to Parramatta to make preparations for the large influx of convicts about to descend on the colony.

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Two huge tent huts were erected, each about 30 metres long and thatched with grass. Three weeks later, Matilda arrived carrying over 200 male convicts and twenty-two soldiers of the Botany Bay Rangers. Most of the convicts were ‘aged and infirm’, recorded Collins: It was not therefore to be wondered at, that they buried twenty-five on the passage. One soldier had died, twenty were brought in sick, and were immediately landed at the hospital.2 Phillip took one look at Matilda’s convict cargo and immediately decided to send most of them to Norfolk Island. As Matilda was leaking badly, Mary Ann was contracted for the job and was consequentially hauled alongside Matilda to ‘receive her cargo’. He selected fifty-five able-bodied and sent them off to Parramatta. The rest left with eleven New South Wales Corps soldiers on 8 August. By noon on 20 August, the Atlantic transport anchored in Sydney Cove with 202 male convicts and a detachment of the New South Wales Corps. During the passage, she had entered a wide bay that the ship’s master, Lieutenant Bowen, named Port Jervis. The following day, another transport, Salamander, was sighted by the lookout and on 22 August, around 160 male convicts were landed. Most of these men would undergo a second transportation to Norfolk Island. Both Atlantic and Salamander held provisions calculated to last nine months. Phillip immediately ordered John Palmer, the commissary, to issue full rations (extra rice in lieu of dried peas). A week later, William and Ann arrived with more soldiers and another 180 convicts. The ship’s skipper was the whaler Eben Bunker, who would later take land at The Rocks (Bunker Hill) and at Liverpool. By the end of August, David Collins recorded that Sydney was ‘beginning to fill with strangers’ whose ‘spirituous liquors finding their way among the convicts’. Phillip imposed restrictions on their landing but this was ineffective. The convicts appeared well on disembarkation but days later many were carried to the hospital. On 1 September, the sick roll numbered 285 convicts. On 4 September, Salamander left for Norfolk taking a small detachment of corps members and 200 male convicts.

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On 20 September, John Easty recorded: The flag at South Head was hoisted and a large ship seen but the wind being contrary she put out again.3 She was the long-awaited HMS Gorgon, all 900 tons of her, bristling with forty-four guns. Tench wrote of her arrival: The hour of departure to England, for the marine battalion, drew nigh. If I be allowed to speak from my own feelings on the occasion, I will not say that we contemplated its approach with mingled sensations – we hailed it with rapture and exultation.4 Watkin Tench, like Phillip, had had enough. He, with Dawes, had made known their desire to remain in the colony. Now, he had changed his mind. He had become disillusioned with the place. Moreover, his feelings towards the Australians had altered. Upon arrival, his attitude was informed by the notion of the ‘noble savage’ as expounded by Rousseau. Now, he saw them as mercurial, untrustworthy and without the basic dignities of humankind. Gorgon had transported thirty convicts as well as Philip Gidley King, the newly minted Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island, and Surveyor, Charles Grimes. She also brought the first seal of the colony – 46 ounces of silver – to affix to all correspondence and business done on behalf of the Crown: On the obverse side were the King’s arms; with the Royal titles in the margins; on the reverse, a representation of convicts landing in Botany Bay, received by Industry, who, surrounded by her attributes, a bale of merchandise, a beehive, a pickaxe, and a shovel, is releasing them from their fetters, and pointing to oxen ploughing and a town rising on the summit of a hill, with a fort for its protection. The masts of a ship are seen in the bay. More importantly, HMS Gorgon carried a small menagerie of animals that were immediately landed and secured in enclosures that had been empty for years. They comprised: one bull, seventeen cows, three rams, fifty-six ewes, five pigs and

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ten pigeons. Gorgon also brought 200 trees and plants and seeds, Captain William Paterson (soon to be stationed on Norfolk) and James Bain, the chaplain for the New South Wales Corps – though Richard Johnson suspected that he was not a Methodist. On 26 September, the transports Active and Queen anchored at the cove. Active held 154 male convicts and Queen, which had sailed from Cork, brought 152 Irish convicts – most of whom are now claimed by present-day Australians with Irish heritage. Both of these ships, Collins decreed, were ‘unhealthy’, especially Active. The convicts complained that they had been starved. Although he described them as being ‘in an emaciated and feeble condition’, Phillip’s sanguine secretary ascribed it to their enforced confinement below decks. The sick roll by the end of September listed over 300 convicts. Both of these ships contained more New South Wales Corps soldiers. As the landing of this load of convicts continued, Phillip held a breakfast celebration on Gorgon, no doubt at the invitation of its Captain, John Parker. It was a small affair with only two other guests. With just Collins and the commissary, seems to have been a ‘business’ morning repast. They had much to talk about as they sat there on board the huge ship in the crowded little cove. All of them were aware that three more transports were to come. Discussions would have concentrated, firstly, on the condition, possible use and subsequent destinations of the seven ships at anchor (Salamander had already left for Norfolk Island). A mast of Gorgon herself had been struck by lightning. Some ships were destined for the southern waters of the Pacific, to try their luck in whaling; others were heading for India. Phillip would commission several ships. The other topics of discussion must surely have centred on the means of feeding, housing and employing what they expected to be two thousand new souls; the condition of the convicts (complaints had already been made by soldiers and convicts against William and Ann’s Eben Bunker, involving abuse, systematic starvation and assaults); and sudden deluge of commercial goods into the colony for the first time – tea, sugar, grog, tobacco, paper, quills, ink, tableware and much more. Additionally, John Palmer was dealing with the commissioning of hundreds of new provisions that had arrived in the last three months. Of the table-talk that morning, Mary Parker, the captain’s wife, described it as very interesting. Later, the breakfast party toured Sydney Town.

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Ten days afterwards, Albemarle was sighted off the Heads. The story of HMS Albemarle serves as an exemplar of British imperialism in the late eighteenth century. She arrived at Sydney Cove as a 28-gun frigate of the Royal Navy. However, she had originally been the merchantman Menagere, captured from the French in September 1776 at Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola – today’s Dominican Republic, which itself had just been captured from the Spanish. Columbus had landed there in December 1492, Santa Maria was wrecked off its coast and he left behind on the island men who were to ‘civilise’ the natives. The captured ship roamed the Leeward Islands and Martinique, before creeping back to England in 1781. While being repaired and improved at the Woolwich Docks, she was taken under the control of twenty-two-year-old Captain Horatio Nelson and redubbed Albemarle. She sailed to Denmark before crossing the Atlantic to Quebec and hassling the French squadron off Boston. Nelson flogged her off at Portsmouth in 1784, then she disappeared from the records before suddenly reappearing in 1791 on the books of Calvert and Co. HMS Albemarle arrived at Sydney with 256 convicts after several days battling winds to enter the Heads. By the time she anchored, the Admiral Barrington and Britannia had been sighted, driving against the same westerly winds. Two letters from Lord Grenville were delivered to Phillip. The first dealt with pardons and recent appointments, including the confirmation of William Dawes as the colony’s chief engineer. Phillip was incensed. The second document, written in February, did not improve his mood. Grenville, invoking the wishes of Lord Sydney, answered his request to quit the colony. Phillip was ‘so extremely important to the public’, Grenville wrote, that it was his ‘earnest hope’ that the Governor would continue on ‘for a short time longer’. By 17 October, Sydney Cove was the most overcrowded it had ever been. Over 600 convicts had arrived in the previous three days alone and all had been immediately disembarked. An anonymous writer described the scene: We arrived safe here – about two o’clock in the afternoon – where great numbers of the inhabitants flocked down in groups to enquire after their relations and friends in England, and some few black natives out of idle curiosity.

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Someone from the Albemarle wrote: We sent on shore to the King’s hospital about one hundred of the convicts in an emaciated state, owing in some measure to the flux and scurvy which raged among them with much inveteracy; and likewise to other causes which ought to have been prevented.5 The shores of Sydney Town were cluttered with tons of bales, stores, roaming sailors, fresh-faced inexperienced soldiers, hospital staff and many hundreds of convicts. This was not the organised chaos of the first landing, nor was it like the arrival of the three death ships the year before. Most significantly, the town was awash with money for the first time. These were Spanish dollars. The ever-tactful David Collins described the situation: By the arrival of these ships several articles of comfort were introduced among us, there being scarcely a vessel that had not brought out something for sale. It could not, however, be said that they were procurable on easier terms that what had been sold here last year. For the first time, Phillip had to fix the currency of the colony, proclaiming five shillings sterling as worth one Spanish dollar, but prices were ridiculously inflated. The new deputy-surveyor (there to replace Dawes, in many ways) wrote: You have no conception how wretchedly they are off here for the little comforts of life. I am now awkwardly situated for kitchen utensils, and I cannot get a plate here.6 By the end of October, the greater majority of the new convicts were marched down Parramatta Road to newly settled lands. The coming of the eleven ship of the Third Fleet changed the colony of New South Wales irrefutably. It was the start of Sydney as a commercial hub, the beginning of the whaling and sealing industry in Australia and the realisation that the colony had a thirst for goods and services. From this time forward, Phillip began to lose whatever centralised control he had previously possessed. The effect of the impact of the Third Fleet on the Australians was far-reaching,

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but early signs are telling. Hunter recorded as soon as the end of August that Australians were beginning to show skin infections – something they had never suffered before – having the ‘same appearance as the itch’. It seemed to have afflicted almost all those who visited the town, notably children. Hunter records that boys were rubbed with brimstone as a ‘cure’. Even Bennelong succumbed to the infection.

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C H A P T E R 51

Barangaroo

The indelible fact is that the Australians abide. They were cautious when the Berewalgal first came amongst them and remain so. They did not oppose their occupation of Warrane. In the early months of 1788, they tolerated men fishing in their harbour. They greeted those like Bradley, Hunter and Phillip with equanimity. The Gadigals’ first armed resistance in defence of their country was against the workers at Brickfields, who had scarified the land. It is clear that the Australians wanted not only to contain the strangers but to let them know that they themselves were as quietly indomitable as them. The Australians are not a people to be set aside or ignored. No one exemplifies this more than Barangaroo. A powerful woman with law behind her, she was uncompromising and proud. Tench called her ‘a scold and a vixen and nobody pitied her’.1 By August 1791, she was heavy with child. An insistence which Hunter related: gave our colonists an opportunity of seeing the preparations the women of New South Wales make on these occasions. She arrived at Sydney Town ‘very near her time’, along with Bennelong. The father was convinced that the child was a boy. She had two baskets hanging from her neck. Hunter called them ‘nets’ and, one of which being new, Governor Phillip was desirous of obtaining, and it was given to him. This was a basket newly made by Barangaroo or another woman close to her. Someone like Daringa, or perhaps Boorong. Before relinquishing it, Barangaroo carefully took out a sheet of soft bark, ‘nicely folded up’ that she ‘intended to lay

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her infant on’, and transferred it to the other basket before walking away. Of the paperbark, Hunter believed: Nothing this country affords can be better calculated for the purpose for which it was intended – it is so very soft. It was probably Phillip’s appreciation of the bark that motivated Bennelong to demand a woollen blanket for Barangaroo. The blanket was given and the couple departed. The next day, he accepted a ‘net made in the English fashion’ on her behalf, telling Phillip he intended to bring her ‘to bed in his house’, after which the Governor: at length persuaded him that she would be better accommodated at the hospital. Daringa had presumably given birth at the hospital. At the very least, she received postnatal care there. But Barangaroo had other ideas. Birth was women’s business, after all. Hunter was nonchalant: ‘the women do not appear to suffer any great inconvenience’, he avowed.2 According Hunter, the expectant couple argued on the morning of the birth, with Bennelong beating her badly. She would defy him, giving birth alone in the bush to a daughter. The girl would be called Dilboong. Collins was notified by one of the women and he went to the secluded place, finding Barangaroo already up and tending a fire with her baby lying on the soft bark. About the same time, Bondel arrived back at Sydney on the Mary Ann after staying with William Hill on Norfolk Island for the previous six months. He would relate to his fascinated people his account of his time there. Bondel (later named Bundle) soon become one of a number of Australians who took to life at sea with the Berewalgal. Tragically, Barangaroo did not live long after the birth of her daughter. The date and circumstances of her death are unknown; the records are silent. After she died, Bennelong came to town to inform Phillip, saying that he was entrusting his child to him; that he would be her Be-ana (father). Barangaroo’s funeral took place on the slope below Phillip’s house, next to the grave of Arabanoo. But unlike him, she was cremated, her basket filled with fishing gear beside her. The ceremony was attended by Phillip, Collins and John White. 330

Dilboong, who was lying at her breast when her mother died, did not survive. Again, the date is unknown but it was probably in late September or early October. The little girl was buried next to her mother. Collins observed that Bennelong and other Australians sat vigil throughout the night, a short distance from where she was interred. He also learned a valuable lesson. Bennelong made it be known that the names of the deceased should never be mentioned. ‘A custom they rigidly attended to themselves whenever anyone died.’3 By 17 October, probably in grief, Bennelong had resolved to leave Sydney. Phillip had contracted three of the transports to convey stores and personnel, including Gidley King and William Balmain, to Norfolk Island. On the return run, Robert Ross and his marine detachment, along with Captain Hill and Lieutenant Edward Abbott, were to be brought back to Sydney. Bennelong arrived in town with a swag containing most of his possessions: his spears, fishgig, hatchet and bone pieces to dress his weapons. He had tea with Phillip but he would never sail to Norfolk Island. It was at this time that the idea of his leaving with Phillip to visit Be-ana’s faraway country was first promulgated. There is little doubt that the two men rekindled what relationship they had enjoyed twelve months before. They became closer. The events of the previous few months had revealed the humanity in each to the other. Phillip wrote to Joseph Banks: I think my old acquaintance Bennelong will accompany me whenever I return to England and from him when he understands English, much information may be attained, for he is very intelligent.4 This rare moment in cross-cultural relations must not window-dress the reality. The Australians had suffered badly at the hands of the invaders, but they had given back to them. Barangaroo’s attitude towards the strangers probably reflects that of most Australians. However, men – warriors, alpha males – had been willing to take them on their own terms. The outlawing of Balooderry affected every Australian who was attempting to forge some way forward. With a measure of tolerance and a similar sense of their own dignity, some Australians were trying to make sense of their situation after almost four years of invasion. Boorong’s brother had been universally liked. His reaction to the destruction of his fishing livelihood hurt deeply, as he had demonstrated the strength of his character before the Governor just weeks before. 331

C H A P T E R 52

Harmless Fellow

George Barrington stepped out of the transport Active on 27 September, ‘tall, approaching to six feet, slender and his gait and manner, bespeak liveliness and activity’.1 His reputation before him, he would become Australia’s first celebrity and fraudster. A brace of publications would be written under his name but, already in 1791, he was known as the ‘Prince of Pickpockets’. Most biographical details are apocryphal at least, fantastical at best. His original name is uncertain but he was born in Ireland, probably near Dublin, thirty-five years previously. Intelligent and with some education, he had hooked up with the notorious swindler John Price when he was sixteen years old. Employing their guile, charisma, gift of the gab and a complete lack of scruples, the pair had swindled and pickpocketed their way through the nouveaux riches in Dublin and London, until Price got caught and transported to the American colonies. At the age of twenty-two, George Barrington went solo, becoming infamous. In 1776, he was arrested but only spent a fraction of his time on the hulks before he paid someone off. By 1778, he was good copy and his court appearances were written up in publications like the London Chronicle. Fate caught up with him in September 1790, when he was nabbed trying to pickpocket a gold watch at Enfield Racecourse. By the time Barrington set sail on Active, the humorous ballad ‘The Jolly Lad’s Trip to Botany Bay’ was doing the rounds of the taverns. In a verse where the convict avows to appoint a king when he gets to New South Wales, it says: ‘For who knows but it may be the noted Barrington’. The noted Barrington seems to have spent his first weeks in Sydney loitering about the bustling cove with many other new arrivals. He witnessed the disembarkation of emaciated convicts from Albemarle and noted that they were issued with new slops, after which their old clothes were burnt. As he admired the

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new brick buildings that lined the track to the Governor’s house, did he wonder at the industry that had erected them? He described Phillip’s house as making ‘a very handsome appearance’. James Bloodsworth, now fully emancipated, was being employed as the colony’s master bricklayer. He could be called Australia’s first ‘tradie’. As leader of the Brickfield boys, he was mostly responsible for these handsome buildings and had been rewarded. Whether other convicts were envious of his good fortune is not known, but most would not have begrudged him his position. He had worked alongside his contemporaries, physically hauling carts containing up to three-quarters of a tonne of bricks. As Barrington promenaded along the shore of Sydney Cove and Mary Parker was being entertained at dinner parties, the bricklayers were beginning the foundations of a new storehouse. Among them was probably James (Joseph) Downey. Downey will be remembered as a man who had fathered a child while on board the Lady Pen. The boy was one of the first children to be baptised in Sydney, in the presence of his mother, Sarah Bellamy. Sadly, within three weeks the child was dead and the couple disbanded. Since that time, Sarah had formed a relationship with Bloodsworth, who was Downey’s fellow workmate if not a friend. By October 1791, although not married, they had a year-old son – the first of seven children – and were living in decent circumstances. How Downey felt about all this is the stuff of conjecture. Meanwhile, Mary Parker – wife of the Gorgon’s captain – was having a delightful time: Our amusements here, although neither numerous nor expensive, were to me perfectly novel and agreeable. She regularly dined with Phillip, and the Gidley Kings, the Johnsons and probably the Macarthurs. She tasted kangaroo initially with ‘much glee’ and received gifts of eggs and milk from officers. At the same time, Phillip reached out to George Barrington. On 15 October, the latter wrote: I received orders again to attend the Governor at Sydney Cove – I took my leave of my messmates with unfeigned regret – His Excellency said, he had long wanted a proper person as superintendent of the convicts at Parramatta.

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He would even supply Barrington with his own small boat and accommodation – ‘a compact little cottage with four rooms in it’. All this for a thief who had spent less than a month in the country. The previous afternoon, he had taken another walk around the cove ‘where some considerable buildings have been erected’. Did he pass James Downey working on the new storehouse? On 16 October, Barrington moved down the harbour to Parramatta and the next day, with his convict servant, addressed a general muster of the convicts, while Mrs Parker took excursions on the harbour: The numerous branches, creeks and inlets that are formed in the harbour of Port Jackson, and the wood that covers all their shores down to the very edge of the water, make the scenery beautiful. Both Barrington and Mrs Parker were impressed with the little settlement. Barrington found the place ‘most delightful, being in the midst of pleasant gardens, the convict’s houses for a line in front’. Mrs Parker was ‘surprised to find that so great a progress had been made’. Neither would have much conception of the convict sweat that had been expended in realising the ‘progress’. Barrington found his convict charges ‘much more attentive to their business and respectful to those over them that I could possibly have imagined’. On 31 October, twenty of Barrington’s ‘attentive’ and ‘respectful’ convicts absconded from Parramatta with a week’s worth of provisions. Collins declared the mostly Irish band had the ‘chimerical idea of walking to China’. That same day, while Mary Parker was feasting on fresh oysters in cool recesses of a cove, James Downey was found hanging in his hut. Collins reported that the cause of this ‘rash action’ was the imminent discovery of a theft that he had committed. This seems far-fetched. Downey had a blemish-free record in the colony and would have faced no harsh punishment. Collins lamented: He came out in the First Fleet, had served his term of transportation, had constantly worked as a labourer in the bricklayers’ gang, and was in general considered as a harmless fellow.2

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CHAP TER 53

Collins

David Collins, Australia’s first public servant, could also be described as a harmless fellow, certainly at this stage in our history. Phillip’s loyal secretary, he had sided with him in his feud with Robert Ross. His deep loathing of the major may have coloured Phillip’s stance rather than the other way around. Performing the role of the colony’s first judge-advocate, he had little legal expertise but resided over the civil and military benches. It was Collins who had brought the suit against Duncan Sinclair on behalf of Henry Kable, finding in the convict’s favour back in July 1788, so establishing the rule of law in the country. Now, he would prosecute the masters of the Third Fleet transports for depriving convicts of food, replacing vital stores with consumer goods to trade, and filling their ballasts with lead and copper to flog on their trip back to England. This was a difficult time, even for David Collins. Now, thirty-five years of age, he was facing a crossroad in his life. Certainly, the last arrivals from England led him to contemplate his future and that of the colony that he had done so much to establish. Living in one of the fine brick houses close to the Tank Stream, his partner Ann Yates was expecting their second daughter. Their first was just about to walk. Ann’s son Joseph, whose father was a marine, was three and a half. The problem, of course, was that Collins was already married. On 22 September, he took delivery of a letter from his wife Maria of fourteen years, dated in January. This followed a letter from his father, received a month before and written in March. It would take Collins two months to compose his reply. He did not respond to Mary’s letter. As essentially the second-in-charge, he had more immediate concerns: It was not to be doubted but that the tranquillity and regularity of our little town would in some degree be 335

[disturbed] by the great influx of disorderly seamen who were at times let loose from the transports.1 Here is Collins at his diplomatic best and, true to form, he declared that it was not as bad as he had anticipated. Between litigating complaints, dealing with the hectic daily challenges and caring for his family, he slowly composed the letter to his father. Of course, no one in England knew of his colonial family. Collins’ next-door neighbour in his own fine brick house near today’s Macquarie Place was Augustus Alt, who might be remembered as the father of a child with Ann George. Like Ann next door, she was a veteran of the Lady Pen and there is no reason to conclude that they would have been other than the best friends. Ann George’s daughter, Lucy, was the same age as her own. Ten days before reading the letter from his wife, Collins drafted a letter to his father. He began it again in the middle of October. He was concerned that his wife was receiving only his half-pay and somewhat anxious about his career as an officer. He was never made for a life at sea anyway, and his marine battalion were beginning to assemble in Sydney in anticipation of their departure. He was dreading the re-emergence of Robert Ross at Sydney Cove and troubled about the power shift that was taking place in the colony with the increased numbers of New South Wales Corps men. His future position in the colony was unclear. Knowing this, Phillip had offered him a captaincy in the new corps but he had demurred, as he wrote to his father: Had I accepted the Company, I must have served under Captain Nepean, who is much my junior in rank as a captain – my civil and my military duties would have clashed most discordantly together – it might have been the means of detaining me for some years in a country, of which I am heartily tired – I have no prospect of getting on in the army, and I very much dislike the generality of the officers who compose the Corps – I now seem fixed in my former idea of retiring from the Marine Service, and employing the interest of such friends as I may have been fortunate enough to make, and procure myself an appointment in one of the public offices.

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Collins knew that this would not be good news to his father. He continued: I should be extremely happy to comply with your command to return to England with the Marines in the Gorgon – I am full as anxious to embrace my family again, as they can be to receive me, but there are one or two insurmountable objections against it. He pleaded to his father that he was, at present, indispensable, writing ‘who could succeed me?’ before providing another reason: Major Ross takes his passage in that ship – and with him I would not sail were wealth and honours attend me when I landed. The fact that the transport Queen was preparing to leave for Norfolk Island any day to pick up the execrable major was obviously on his mind, as well it should be. But he had more excuses: I could not reconcile it to my mind, to leave Governor Phillip. This would give him some grace, but he knew his future position in the colony was not certain. He had received little response when he had enquired as whether the New South Wales Corps would keep him as Judge-advocate after its new Major Francis Grose’s arrival. Collins again assured his father that his ardent wish was to return home but, as he noted, his workload had doubled of late and his salary had essentially decreased by the same amount. I am spending the prime of my life at the farthest part of the world – secluded from my family, my connections, from the world. He continued: All these considerations induce me to resolve to apply for permission to return to England, and to embrace the first

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opportunity that offers of escaping from a country that is nothing better than an place of banishment for the outcasts of society. Collins not once mentioned that the recipient of the letter was about to be grandfather for the second time. Less than a month after he wrote the above, Ann Yates had a baby girl. They named her Marianne. On the day after her christening, on 15 November, he completed his father’s letter. Time was on his mind: I am completely tired of New South Wales – and it is Time – Creswell will tell you what little Time I have to write for myself. He perhaps also may tell you, if you ask him, if I had had Time, I could have sent home for publication perhaps a journal as well worthy the public eye as any one that has yet appeared. But I assure you I have not Time.2

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CHAPTER 54

Unfinished Business

It fell upon David Collins to deliver the news. It was the Saturday following the departure of Queen to Norfolk Island to bring back Robert Ross, 5 November, and almost a year since their troubles began. The correspondence is unnecessarily haughty and reeks of grudge. The letter in Collins’ hand, dictated by Phillip, also reveals the real source of their disagreement. He begins: As it has been His Majesty’s pleasure that Lieutenant Dawes should be permitted to remain in this country as an engineer; with the same emoluments as are enjoyed by an officer of the corps of engineers of a similar rank, the Governor is willing to forget the impropriety of Lt Dawes’ conduct. He then itemised his grievances. Firstly, Dawes had traded goods and provisions with a convict almost eighteen months ago, contrary to his proclamation forbidding it. This decree, of course, was designed to stop corruption and exploitation of the convicts by sailors, soldiers and Navy men. The notion that Dawes would have engaged in any such behaviour is absurd. They both knew it. The exchange was mutually beneficial to both parties, irrespective of the rules. Evidence of the barter would have normally resulted in a quick harsh word. But there was more to Phillip’s effrontery than this. He condemned William Dawes for defying his orders of 13 December directing him to join Tench’s abortive expedition to avenge the spearing of his trusted ‘gamekeeper’. Thirdly, he condemned the ‘impropriety’ of Dawes’ conduct in a conversation with Lieutenant John Long of the marines – one of his ‘adjutants’. This was concerning Dawes’ eviction from his observatory on the

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point. Dawes had questioned Long’s moral and legal authority in making these orders, taking a difficult stand for a person so usually circumspect and tolerant. Phillip concluded: If Lieutenant Dawes is desirous of remaining in this country, and declares himself convinced of the impropriety of his conduct on the above occasions, and acknowledges it in such a manner as may leave no reason to suppose that anything similar will happen in future. Dawes was expecting the letter and immediately wrote his reply. It began: At present, I cannot think that I was guilty of any impropriety whatever – After responding to each allegation in the same assertive vein, he softened: These are my present sentiments; but as I wish to act with as much deference and respect as possible to his Excellency’s opinion, I would choose to defer giving a final answer until tomorrow, and of course do not wish this to be considered as such. So, he wrote to Phillip the next day. After declaring that that he was not ‘guilty of any impropriety’ in buying some leftover flour from the garrison’s baker, he addressed the events of 13 December: I beg leave to state to your Excellency, that after so long a time having elapsed, and repeated reflections on the subject, I feel at this instant no reason to alter the sentiments I then entertained. Whatever he had said to Phillip on that hot summer’s day, he was not taking it back. Dawes must have known what he was doing. He must have known how Phillip would react. As for the views Dawes had expressed to John Long, that his removal from the observatory was sudden and ‘without sufficient cause’, Dawes informed Phillip that he was ‘exceedingly pained’ by the whole situation, wondering if ‘it is possible something might have escaped me’. If so, he was ‘exceedingly sorry for it’. 340

There is no record of Phillip’s reply to Dawes’ letter of 6 November, but Phillip wrote to Lord Grenville the same day, enclosing Dawes’ letters, his replies and informing him of Dawes’ returns to England. His dream of staying in the colony in the role of Chief Engineer was shattered. He had no recourse but to start to pack up his books. His friend Watkin Tench, himself preparing to leave, makes no mention of Dawes’ plight. Phillip wrote to Lord Sydney on 11 November 1791, for almost the last time: I have said that we get on slowly, but we do get on – whoever comes after me will I hope reap some advantage from a labour which has worn me out. On 17 November, he told Joseph Banks, ‘my health is gone’. He was not the only one. Just days before, Augustus Alt – now in his sixties – had informed him that he could ‘no longer carry on the duties of a surveyor with that satisfaction to myself which I could desire’. Alt would eventually retire to a place next to the Parramatta Road, almost halfway between the two towns. He would call his property Ashfield. Meanwhile, Phillip took over the work by the stream at Sydney, ordering convict stonecutters to: cut tanks out of the rock which would be reservoirs for the water large enough to supply the settlement for some time.1 Phillip could not think of retiring until the arrival of Francis Grose, while there was so much unfinished business. In the flurry of letters written before the departure of Supply for England, he acquainted his superiors with his recent decisions concerning the granting of land. Contrary to his instructions, he had abandoned the system of establishing ‘driftways’ (vacant Crown lands) between grants, to deny cover and sanctuary to marauding convicts and, more importantly, the Australians. With these swathes of land acquisitions, the Australians were cut off from the harbour and freshwater creeks upon which they survived. Phillip still had plenty of suggestions as to the type of men required, stores to be shipped, ballast to be used on the transports and the need for a mill to grind grain and some form of coinage for the growing commercial businesses. The favourable reports from the ships of the Third Fleet of the potential for whaling in

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the southern oceans created more concerns. Perforce, Sydney would become the major port for such endeavours and it posed more questions: If the fishery draws an American vessel on the coast, in what manner are they to be received?2 The problem of alcohol concerned him as well. He had prohibited the landing of spirits but the measure had clearly not worked. He suggested the imposition of a duty. ‘You will, sir’, he asked Nepean, ‘favour me with your opinion on that head’. On 22 November, Henry Ball, preparing to leave Sydney Cove for the last time, took possession of a kangaroo – a gift from Phillip to King George III. Four days later, the indefatigable Supply weighed anchor and left the cove that been her base for almost four years. Phillip joined Ball and as he moved down the harbour, breakfasting with him. He was accompanied by Gorgon’s Captain, John Parker. There is no evidence that David Collins was aboard but he probably was. At nine o’clock, Phillip said his goodbyes and climbed up to the lookout to see the ship’s sails disappear to the south. Henry Ball intended to sail home via Cape Horn. Watkin Tench lamented the departure of what he described as ‘ever the harbinger of welcome and glad tidings’: It is impossible to view our separation with insensibility – the little ship which had so often agitated our hopes and fears; which from long acquaintance we had learned to regard as part of ourselves; whose doors of hospitality had been ever thrown open to relieve our accumulated wants, and chase our solitary gloom!3 This is Tench at his fullest bloom but his words are sincere and well founded. Ball was also a close friend. Collins, too, expressed the feelings of many in the colony: The services of this little vessel had endeared her, and her officers and people, to this colony. The regret which we felt at parting with them was, however, lessened by the knowledge that they were flying from a country of want to

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one of abundance, where we all hoped that the services they had performed would be rewarded by that attention and promotion to which they naturally looked up, and had an indisputable claim.4 On board His Majesty’s tender, sailing down the coast of New South Wales for the last time, was a letter Collins had written to his brother the day before. After complaining of the reduced rations recently imposed by Phillip, he mused: Perhaps you will say I am melancholy, but all this is true – Creswell, who will give you this, will, I have no doubt confirm it all. He will answer any question you ask him about me – I have told him to do so. When, when my dear brother shall I tell you all my own story. Collins was still dreading: the imminent arrival of Robert Ross from Norfolk Island. He wrote to his father: It is the prayer of everyone in this colony, that he may not stay two days in it, when he returns.5

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CHAPTER 55

Walking to China

Fifty-four convicts died in November and over 500 were too ill to work. Despite the fast passage of most of the transports, as many convicts died from the Third Fleet as the notorious Second. It just took a little longer. But for some of the recent arrivals, notably those who had come from urban English backgrounds, life at Parramatta in the summer of 1791, was not so bad, especially if you had a skill. In a letter back home, one convict told about how he fell on his feet: Rendering myself, during our passage from England, useful to the captain, by making several articles of clothes from him, I had soon the good fortune to be released from my irons; and on my arrival – was appointed – master tailor over the rest of the convicts of that trade – in consequence of this good luck, I work for all the gentlemen here – Barrington is made head constable here. I am fortunate to fall into so good a way, for the men in general, who do the work of felling trees, and burning them, in order to clear ground, are obliged to work from sunrise till sunset. For most convicts, work was hard. The promising rains of spring were a false harbinger of another hot, dry summer, with daily temperatures in November in the low thirties. The rapid expansion of land for cultivation necessitated massive tree-clearing. The British called it ‘opening new ground’ and this job befell the new arrivals around Parramatta, including gangs of Irish convicts. On 1 November, around twenty men and one woman absconded from Parramatta carrying a week’s worth of food with the ‘chimerical idea of walking to China’. Three days later, the woman was found – scratched up, starving and

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completely lost – by some sailor. The next day, they picked up her partner, delirious with sunstroke. Days later, three of the escapees were discovered at the lagoon at Narrabeen, who immediately ran off into the bush declaring their liberty. They were eventually rounded up and taken back to Parramatta but within forty-eight hours they absconded again for China. Eventually thirteen convicts returned. Four of them had been attacked by Australians, one had died from their wounds and another had died of fatigue. The rest of them would reach Broken Bay, which blocked their progress. They travelled to the coast, resolving to return to give themselves up. On the return trip, the ‘Chinese travellers’ met up with six new men fleeing, whom they convinced of the futility of their intentions. The next day, Phillip ordered a general muster at Parramatta. It was probably long overdue, since Parramatta had recently doubled in population. Collins’ prejudice towards the Irish is only exceeded by his attitude towards the Australians. There was no real evidence that the Governor held this view. He laid down to the new arrivals, much as he had done back in February 1788. He told them that if anyone attempted to flee, they would be shot. If taken alive, they would either be dumped on an island in the harbour or put in irons with bread and water. He told them that anyone thinking about arming themselves and attempting to storm the storehouses would be put to death, along with all of his confederates. Having said that, Phillip forgave a few of them who had recently been charged with petty theft and encouraged them to go ‘cheerfully to their labour’. He also changed the work hours: they now had weekends off and, due to the heat, a rest period between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. every workday. As Collins noted, on the day of Phillip’s address, over 400 convicts were administered medicines and dozens more were too old or feeble to work. The ‘prevailing disease’ was dysentery and everything that accompanies it. As for the young privates of the New South Wales Corps stationed at Parramatta, they were considerably better off than the convicts. Though still on much the same rations as the convicts, they were housed mostly in the new barracks and their workload was hardly taxing. An unknown soldier wrote in November: Having some leisure time, have made several small excursions into the woods. 345

But, he hated the place and the people, depicting the Australians as: All blacks of a ferocious nature. Probably, this anonymous soldier had not even met an Australian since his arrival at Parramatta. However, he did like the local wildlife: The possum – eat very well. And there was the odd kangaroo: We get to buy some for sixpence per pound, but it must be done privately, as the Governor will not allow it. This type of transaction would not have been tolerated six months ago. Being a member of the New South Wales Corps did have its perks, but at a cost. Now, for the first time, it was money that mattered. A thriving trade in consumer goods had emerged. Usually officers or those with access to ready money were the customers, with business being conducted among the soldiers. Sugar, tea, soap, tobacco, pipes and of course rum could all be bought, usually at exorbitant prices. Articles of women’s clothing were as scarce as the teeth of the paltry number of hens in the colony. Our unknown soldier was not so homesick. The gap between soldier and convict was only a bushwalk away: I saw a great number of faces whom I knew in London. One I saw in the woods who recollected me, and made enquiry after sundry persons belonging to Billingsgate.1 Phillip’s reading of the riot act to the convicts at Parramatta ended any more mass exoduses, but the lure of escape to China would prevail.

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CHAPTER 56

Goodbyes

On 2 December 1791, Tench took his final tour of Parramatta and the new settlements. Awaiting the arrival of the Queen carrying Robert Ross and the bulk of the marines, he had decided that this might be a good time to absent himself from Sydney. He and his fellow officers had written to Phillip eight months previously, reminding him that it was now three years since Major Ross had issued warrants for their ridiculous courts-martial. He had no desire to face Ross. Besides, his first publication had sold well in England and he needed material for his next instalment. There is no reason to believe that Will Dawes did not go with him when he made his last survey of the new farms that now dominated the western plain. His first stop was Parramatta itself. The ‘public buildings’ were ‘petty erections’ but in a colony of ‘a few hundred hovels’, Phillip was planning a ‘magnificent square’. The ‘noble’ main road was a straight mile long one, partially formed by filling in a number of little gullies, forming embankments of tree stumps and earth. Along one side of this road, Phillip had established the tradesmen – sawyers, carpenters, tailors and blacksmiths. There were huts, tents, sawpits and a forge. On the opposite side of the road, the neat huts that were the convicts’ homes. Most had well-tended gardens. Tench noted that the hospital built two years earlier consisted of just two long, thatched buildings with the capacity for two hundred patients. On 2 December, there were 382 people on the sick list. Parramatta was ‘less healthy than it used to be’. The dysentery he described as a ‘very violent putrid fever’. He visited the ‘Chinese travellers’ recovering from their spear wounds, noting that thirty-eight men were now missing – most living as bushrangers, plundering the farms at night.

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In Sydney, Phillip was overseeing the largest consignment of Australian flora and fauna to Europe so far. The Gorgon was being refurbished to facilitate the transport of tonnes of living specimens for His Majesty, Joseph Banks and others: hundreds of pots containing native plants, notably the waratah, boxes of seeds and cases of dried plants, a number of Norfolk Island pines, the skeleton of a kangaroo, the skins various birds including that of the Mulgoa or black swan. A young kangaroo had sailed on Supply, just the week before. On 3 December, Tench inspected the government farms at Parramatta supervised by Henry Brewer and young Thomas Clarke (a survivor of the Guardian). The wheat and maize were ‘both very bad’ – the corn ‘looked miserable’. But then he walked ‘The Crescent’ along the shore of the Parramatta River, ‘which certainly in beauty of form and situation is unrivalled in New South Wales’. Here, Phillip had planted his grapevines. Then, he took a look at the colony’s livestock with Clarke: ten horses, eighteen cows and a bull-calf. Along with thirty-six pigs, that was it. The next day – a Sunday – he went to the church service at Parramatta, performed by James Bain (Richard Johnson having been at Norfolk Island for the previous few months) and attended by a few hundred convicts – ‘the most miserable beings in the shape of humanity’. That night, another two of the ‘miserable beings’ stole John White’s runabout and headed north out of the Heads as the Queen hooved into view. Monday morning and Robert Ross stepped on to the shore of Sydney Cove along with New South Wales Corps Captain William Hill and his company. Ross had brought two letters from Gidley King, who had just assumed command of the island. He also disembarked six witnesses for a trial that he insisted should be launched immediately. It would have been utterly inappropriate for Phillip and Collins not to have lunched with him, so it can assumed that this would have been accomplished. Later, some men from the Gorgon found the two escapees somewhere just north, possibly Bondi. They took off, leaving the boat. The sailors disabled it and returned to Sydney, running into a convict still looking for China. Meanwhile, Tench took a walk to the Toongabbie farms, just a kilometre northwest of Parramatta. The first settlement was the Governor’s, near the junction of Parramatta River and Toongabbie Creek, planted with corn for the hospital. Although recently planted, the crop was flourishing in the summer,

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well watered by nearby freshwater ponds ‘sufficient to supply a thousand persons’. He crossed through the bush where he met Thomas Daveney, the supervisor. Daveney had managed to get a convict girl pregnant. After which, he got her pardoned before she gave birth to boy, who had recently died. They looked over the ‘cultivated land’. Dozens of hectares had been cleared of trees, their stumps remaining like scattered tombstones – ‘six weeks ago, this was a forest’. Five hundred men had been employed. They were now living in thirteen large huts on the site. It had been too late to sow corn or wheat, so some ground was planted with turnips. Having surveyed the public farms, he crossed over to Prospect Hill and the thirteen grants bestowed by Phillip months earlier. Of the nearly 500 acres of allotments, only twenty had been cultivated with maize – ‘not promising’ – and wheat – ‘miserable indeed’. Since the land had been taken, there had been one Australian attack when a hut was burnt to the ground. The greater problem was runaway convicts. Now, three soldiers lived amongst them. Tench crossed to the Boundary Farms to the north, where five allotments made been made totalling 220 acres. One of the grantees, William Bradbury, had disappeared a week earlier and not been seen since. Tench only found three farms here, guarded by the same number of soldiers. Nevertheless, they looked promising – ‘Were I compelling to settle in New South Wales, I should fix my residence here’. He proceeded to ‘The Ponds’ and the fourteen farms there, guarded in the same manner. These allotments were given to worthy men whose terms had expired – none of them had any farming experience and most were struggling. Recently, a caterpillar plague had attacked their corn. To the east, Sydney Town was bristling with soldiers, marines and sailors. This was a volatile time, with so many men in so small a town. At the centre of the perturbations was Robert Ross and the New South Wales Corps. Elizabeth Macarthur wrote: We are at present here rather in an unsettled state, which is not very agreeable in any country, and is particularly unpleasant here. I hope when Major Grose arrives we shall not have this evil to complain of.1

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As she was composing this letter, Tench visited Philip Schaffer’s farm, established back in April with his twelve-year-old daughter. He had several hectares of desultory-looking maize, tobacco and grapevines. James Bloodsworth had been employed by Phillip to build him a house. Near Schaffer’s plot were two small farms. One was held by Thomas Arndell, the old assistant surgeon, and the other of only a few acres was being worked by Lieutenant John Townson of the New South Wales Corps. Townson had recently fathered a daughter with convict Mary Anderson. It appears that he was the first corps officer to be given a land grant along with young Ensign Cumming. Tench finished his survey of Parramatta with visits to the nearby farms of Christopher Magee, James Ruse and the two seamen from the Sirius, Robert Webb and William Reid. Ruse and his wife were also living in a brick house. He ‘bade farewell to Rose Hill, in all probability for the last time in my life’. Tench arrived back in Sydney just in time to witness Ross’ fit of pique. On Monday 12 December, the same day as the surgeon John Harris was asserting his authority on behalf of the New South Wales Corps, Tench and John Macarthur witnessed the duel between Ross and Captain William Hill of the corps. This is the first example of this archaic ritual of chivalry on Australian soil: a British version of the Australian payback. John Macarthur would become an active practitioner. Like all disputes with Ross, this one was about his blinkered sense of honour. The two antagonists with their seconds met at the appointed time. Richard Johnson, who had just returned to Sydney from Norfolk Island with both men and probably knew the reasons behinds each party’s effrontery, described the ritualised contest: two shots were fired by each man, neither was hurt and the seconds stepped in, differences settled. Neither Phillip nor Collins mentioned the event – both were more focused in dispatching HMS Gorgon, with Robert Ross in it, with all alacrity. Life in the town had been radically altered since the arrival of Mary Ann just six months previously. The constant activities around the shores of Sydney Cove, the departures and arrivals of almost a dozen ships, many of them multiple times, had Sydney transformed into a busy port town with all the attendant advantages and depredations that such a place engenders. While hundreds of men were preparing to sail in the second week of

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December, the lists of convicts whose time had expired and musters showing the number of absconders continued to rise. Just two years before, convict agitation from those who believed that their term of transportation had expired led Phillip to establish James Ruse on a farm and develop his farming communities that would, like a virus, quietly spread across the land. And so it came to pass but now, in December 1791, men were disguising themselves to hide in ship’s compartments or taking off into the bush either singly or in groups. What interaction between these first bushrangers and the Australians occurred, or in what manner, is unknown. Between July and December, thirty-three convicts had absconded. Meanwhile, life went on in Sydney. There were hundreds of children living in town. Elizabeth Macarthur was a recent mother again, as forty-seven children were being readied for the journey to England, four of them from convict mothers. Ralph Clark and Mary Branham christened their daughter, Alicia – named after his wife – on 16 December. A few days previously, Richard Johnson had written to his friend: My little Milbah grows the most dear and engaging babe I ever saw in the life.2 Phillip passed on John Harris’ complaint to Nepean. Harris had railed about his lack of resources, declaring he could not establish his own hospital without such lack of assistance. Until that point, the men attached to the settlement had been treated by John White and his team of assistants. However, this was not good enough for the men of the New South Wales Corps who resisted being treated at the same establishment as the convict class. Meanwhile, kangaroos, dingoes and possums were boarded on the Gorgon and Phillip apologised to Joseph Banks: I am sorry the skeleton of a kangaroo has suffered in the breast by a dog, we shall take more care next time, and you shall have heads when I can get any, but the natives burn their dead.3 The day before Gorgon weighed anchor, David Collins wrote again to his father to warn him of Robert Ross:

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My friends Creswell and Long will be able to refute the calamities which perhaps you may hear from Mr Ross – of whom I will only say, I do not believe there is a worse man existing.4 Gorgon departed on Sunday 18 December. Phillip would have seen the ship disappear from view from his vantage at the lookout in the late evening. Two convicts had been caught on board just prior to departure. A woman was found disguised as a man in Bennelong’s old hut on the point. For the first time, the colony was without a permanent ship at its disposal. A week later, on Christmas Day, Phillip gave an extra pound of flour to all the women in the colony. That night, soldiers of the New South Wales Corps broke into the stores and took off with 22 gallons of rum. As the new brick storehouse was opened on the eastern shore of the cove – ‘by far the best store in the country’ – David Collins recorded his yearly tally of deaths: 171 persons – twenty-eight more than in the previous year.

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CHAPTER 57

Balooderry

The face that stares at the viewer is wide-eyed and focused. The Port Jackson Painter shows Balooderry’s upper body dressed in white clay and red ochre. He wears two armbands and his hair is adorned with fish bones. He had not been seen in either Sydney or Parramatta since June. Indeed, few Australians had engaged with anyone from the inland township, situated on Balooderry’s country, the home of his father Maugaron. The older man, also the father of Boorong, had survived the galgal-la over two years earlier and still existed in a twilight zone between two worlds. Balooderry was a mentor to younger men like Nanbaree and Imeerawanyee. Phillip’s decision to outlaw Boorong’s brother might have been his biggest miscalculation in his relationship with the Australians. In August, he was seen on the outskirts of Sydney with a number of other Australians. Soldiers were sent out to capture him. One of them threw a spear, wounding a soldier. Two muskets were fired but they escaped. David Collins wrote of the Australian: Those who knew Balooderry regretted that it had been necessary to treat him with this harshness, as among his countrymen we had nowhere seen a finer young man.1 Despite Phillip reaching out to his family and friends to convey to him that transgressions were forgiven, Balooderry refused; his trust in the Berewalgal was gone. Banishment from his country would have appalled him but in the last six months, he made no retaliation. No attack by any Australian on Parramatta is recorded. On the day when soldiers sighted Balooderry and his companions close to Toongabbie, a brace of soldiers were ordered to bring him in, but Nanbaree (and

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probably, Boorong) got the word. While the soldiers assembled on the parade ground, he took off and warned him: He afterwards showed himself to an officer’s servant and asked where the Governor and the soldiers were going, and being told, he laughed. And said they were too late, for the natives were all gone. This is from Hunter’s journal and there is no reason to believe it did not happen, although embellished by Phillip’s notes to promulgate the stereotype of the treacherous Australians. On Wednesday 14 December, Bennelong went to the hospital in Sydney, telling John White that Balooderry was ‘extremely ill’. The nature of his illness is not known, though it was not an obvious wound that one would expect from an ailing young Australian male. Nevertheless, proverbial tumbleweeds drift across the records when it comes to an explanation of what caused the young Australian’s death. The surgeon followed Bennelong to where he laid in a fever: The first question he asked was, whether the Governor was still angry. Finally convinced of his safety, he was brought into the hospital at Sydney Cove: At first, he seemed under great apprehensions but they presently subsided, on the Governor taking him by the hand, and promising that when he was recovered he should reside with him again. Over the next few days, his condition worsened. Bennelong performed a ritual using eucalypt leaves dipped in warm water, singing and touching Balooderry’s body ‘and seemed to treat him with much attention and friendship’. What else did Hunter expect? Two days later, Bennelong ushered towards the young man’s hospital bed an elder who attempted to apply his powers of healing, but it was unsuccessful. In the middle of the night, they carried Balooderry to a canoe. The British say that he died on the journey across the harbour and they were made aware of it by the

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chanting, singing and wailing of the women. This does not ring true. Balooderry would have already died when his body was transported across the water to the northern shore. The next day, Bennelong returned to the town and ‘agreed’ with Phillip that Boorong’s beloved brother should be interred in the Australian-only burial plot which had existed above the Governor’s sad-looking garden since the time of the galgal-la. This would not be a cremation. That evening, the fallen warrior was brought back, wrapped in a blanket. Bennelong and Colbee sat vigil, silent and still, over Balooderry, Hunter wrote, until about 1 a.m. Then, with Boorong taking a lead, the women began to sing, and to cry. This would have lasted some time – exhortations that seemed to make the ghostly trees cry. At dawn, Balooderry’s body was placed in his canoe along with his fish-gig, spear, woomera and the band he wore around his waist. This was performed by Bennelong, Colbee and other men, while Maugaron who stood silently watching – ‘a perfect picture of deep and unaffected sorrow’. They then proceeded to the grave site. Bennelong had insisted that British drums be played. Great care was taken in placing the body. Branches and shrubs were trimmed about the site to give his grave the maximum amount of sunlight. Then, the plot was filled. Phillip and Collins attended the service and witnessed the grief. The chief mourners at a funeral were called mooby and were painted red and white for the occasion: Nanbaree, Boorong, Colbee, Imeerawanyee and Bennelong. Our enigmatic Port Jackson Painter left us several ink and watercolour sketches of the moobys on that day. Boorong and Colbee are each adorned with red and white spots or lines on the forehead and in a V-shape across the chest. Crude as they are not posed portraits they are visual records of three people in funeral garb. Two other unnamed Australian men are similarly presented, both holding decorated clubs. Collins observed the bereaved father, Maugaron: I saw the tears streaming silently down the cheek of his father Maugaron; but in a little time they were dried, and the old man’s countenance indicated nothing but the lapse of many years which had passed over his head.2

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On the last day of 1791, a group of newly-arrived convicts, mostly Irish, assembled noisily outside the Governor’s House at Parramatta to demonstrate against the provisioning of rations. Law and order had begun to deteriorate at the settlement two weeks after convicts consumed their meagre weekly food provisions in days and started to bridle against the implacable control of the NSW Corps. Employing the same tactic in previous similar circumstances, Phillip enforced daily rations on the convict workforce which only riled them further. On 31 December, a weary Arthur Phillip managed to disperse the disgruntled, murmuring crowd before returning to his house on the hill in the town that he built.

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Epilogue

Arthur Phillip would finally depart Sydney Cove in December 1792 on board the Atlantic. For the next four years, the colony of New South Wales would be dominated by the officers of the New South Wales Corps, changing the culture of early Sydney (and Australia) forever. His Majesty’s brig Supply creaked back to England in April 1792. The stout little ship that had warped into Botany Bay on that afternoon in January 1788, after a voyage of more than half a year had arrived home. The demise of the famous ship is not known. Her captain Henry Lidgbird Ball who had done so much to relieve the distress of the young colony in those first four years, delivered the first kangaroo to hop on English soil. It did survive long but Henry Ball lived to the age of 61. Ralph Clark would continue in service before being fatally wounded in action off the West Indies in May 1794. He died aged only 32 years on the same day as his son, not knowing that his wife had already died in childbirth earlier that year. His unloved Major Robert Ross died at the age of 54. On disembarkation from Supply, Henry Hacking, Sirius’ former quartermaster and game-killer, took the first ship back to New South Wales where he continued to lead a chequered and peripatetic life about which little is known. In 1802, however, he shot dead Pemulwuy, McIntyre’s killer, who, with his band of brothers, had waged an effective guerrilla war against the invaders for the last decade. Pemulwuy was decapitated and his head was shipped by the third Governor of New South Wales, Philip Gidley King to Joseph Banks in England. The peer of the realm had got his Australian head at last. It has never been found. Watkin Tench’s later life was a comfortable one. His journal and subsequent writings sold well and he married, adopted children and established a happy family before dying in 1833 at the age of 75 years. William Dawes’ four years in New South Wales had changed his life. Shortly after arriving back in England, he garnered the admiration of William Wilberforce,

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the anti-slavery crusading Member of Parliament who had recently become an evangelical much like Dawes. Wilberforce had just established the Sierra Leone Company to establish a colony for those African-Americans who fought on the side of the British in the American War of Independence. Just months later, Dawes was appointed to help administer the colony. Despite difficulties, he would hold the governorship of the African settlement three times over the next decade. Towards the end of his life, he justifiably applied to the British Government for financial recompense for extra duties while he was stationed at Sydney Cove. It was denied, despite the testimony of his old mate, Watkin Tench. One of the most enlightened men and reluctant invader, Dawes died in 1836 at the age of 74.

*** The reasons behind the establishment of the penal colony on the eastern coast of New South Wales were twofold: secure a British bolthole in the Pacific and resolve a political problem for the Pitt Government. It was their ‘pacific solution’. Disease and overcrowding in city prisons predicated it and interests of the realm mandated the enterprise. The choice of Botany Bay killed two birds with one stone. Not only had they found a place from which their undesirables might never return but they could use the indentured labour to establish a power base in the Pacific for their burgeoning empire. Phillip’s rapid occupation of Norfolk Island within days of arrival at Warrane though part of his instructions was hastened with the sudden appearance of La Perouse’s ships and expedited when Gidley King discovered the French had already tried to land there. Despite the failure in developing the island’s resources for rope and sails, Phillip’s early decision to found a colony on Norfolk Island helped the Sydney enterprise survive in these first four years. From the afternoon when Supply dropped its anchor at Botany Bay, Arthur Phillip’s task was monumental: to carve a piece of England onto an unknown continent with a recalcitrant army commander and hundreds of mostly petty criminals who had never left their borough before they had been hauled before a magistrate. His instructions concerning the people whose land he was about to invade, as well as those regulations involving the governance of the colony, were both paternalistic and vague. It gave him the freedom to establish the settlement in his own way. The First Fleet left England with almost everything they could

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envisage that this daring enterprise needed, except a workforce to supervise the convicts and most of the relevant paperwork regarding their convict charges. However, Phillip did have the foresight to bring out the two Henrys, Brewer and Dodd, who had the abilities to quickly organise convict overseers and gangs to create his camp in the snug cove. After store ship Guardian was belatedly sent out to New South Wales, revealing some uncertainty about the whole enterprise and following the expensive outlay of the First Fleet, the Government decided to remove themselves from the whole transportation side of the enterprise. Like governments today, they privatised the enterprise by providing the funds but leaving the logistics of banishment to a private company with experience in human trafficking. This, of course, led to the outrages of the Second Fleet and the equally appalling conditions of the Third Fleet of human misery. Much like the atrocities that have alleged to have taken place in today’s off-shore detention centres, the government, through the tender process, attempted to remove itself from responsibility but it could not. This would be the British off-shore policy of transportation until the middle of the nineteenth century. The early settlement at Warrane was a camp of mostly poor, uneducated, streetwise people from the cities of southern and central England, mostly London. Often the only difference between the convict and the marine privates was the latter’s uniform. The blending of marine, convict, sailor and soldier/administrator within the settlement began in 1788. By 1790, even the soldier’s jacket could not distinguish him from his convict neighbour. It is worthwhile noting that more marines were hanged in the first two years of settlement than convicts. And while both convict and soldier would trespass from the camp and harass the Australians, it was only the military (with few exceptions) who carried firearms. The English invaded the lands of the Australians in January 1788; any notion that they were not invaders defies any definition. The Australians welcomed the invaders from the moment the Supply’s boat crew rowed towards the shore of Botany Bay on January 18, 1788. These people welcomed the strangers with safe haven, shelter, water and food. More than a year later, an elder at Pittwater gave the same welcome. Sadly, it wasn’t accepted in the manner of which it was given. It did not take long before they realised simple hospitality would not be enough to satisfy the invaders. As the town of Sydney was hacked out of the bush, facing an

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overwhelming adversary whose weapons were hitherto beyond their conception, the Australians fought a guerrilla war targeting the most dangerous or vulnerable, raiding their food resources as the British had depleted their own. At the end of 1789, the British kidnapped an Australian and did it again a year later as the beginning of Sydney’s urban sprawl began. Governor Phillip’s ritual payback the next year was the logical result. The Australians hoped the spearing would have been enough to deliver their message. The ‘coming-in’ of the Australians into Sydney Town in late September, seen by some historians as signs of reconciliation only reinforced to the Australians the lack of British response to their claims of sovereignty of their country. The murder of Phillip’s favourite game-killer just months later changed everything. The unalloyed tragedy is that the original instructions concerning the invaders’ behaviour toward the Australians were ignored by Phillip and dismissed by his successors. The officers of the NSW Corps would apply Phillip’s punitive military expedition after McIntyre’s murder as the template for dealing with the Australians. The acting Governors Grose and Paterson regarded their principal roles as the protection of the land grantees from those they had displaced as the rapid expansion of settlements spread to the Hawkesbury and the frontier wars began. From the time of the elders’ sudden appearance at the cove in the second week of February 1788, the Australians would have realised that the Berewalgal were not going away any time soon. Their policy, therefore, became one of containment but with little success. Conflicts quickly arose when the invaders strayed into country, harvesting precious foods, herbs and flowers, shooting kangaroos and emus with their alarming weapons. The abundant numbers of small marsupials around Sydney and then Parramatta were decimated in a very short time. The enormous mortality rate of those removed from the bowels of the Second Fleet transports in 1790 is completely diminished by the ravages of galgal-la that descended on the Australian population the year before. It was inevitable that the great cultural gap between the two cultures would lead to confusion and confrontation. By the end of 1791, both sides of the divide were unfaltering in their determination not to accommodate each other any further. In this contest, the Australians would lose. The first seriously bad decision that Phillip made was to abduct Arabanoo.

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The worst disaster that befell the Australians was the alleged smallpox epidemic – galgal-la. Historically, they are intertwined. Certainly, the kidnapping of Arabanoo, then Colbee and Bennelong led directly to his spearing – his payback. His second worst decision was the employment of a punitive expedition against the Australians in December 1790. The British had completely underestimated the Australians in most respects. That the English regarded the Australians as human in undeniable. That they presumed they were an inferior race, undoubtedly. Only William Dawes got close to enough to begin to understand the Australians’ view of the world. Primitive technology did not reflect the complexity of the culture that they confronted. Unfortunately, few in Sydney Cove knew this. Phillip’s last bad determination was the outlawing of an Australian from his country. The demise and mysterious cause of Balooderry’s death would be remembered by every Australian who visited the Cove. The Australian’s death is emblematic of his people’s plight over the last two hundred years. The trajectory of Phillip’s attitude to the Australians typified many of those in Sydney Town by the end of 1791. In 1788, with British arrogance and hubris, they could be easily dismissed as simple people with primitive brains. Later, they were regarded as savages with animal cunning. By 1791, they became intractable, disingenuous and not to be trusted in the eyes of the invaders. Some myths about early Sydney can be put to rest. There were no convicts working in chains in Sydney, unless you were sentenced for a secondary offence – even then, the shackles didn’t stay long. There was no ‘foundation orgy’ as some people still suggest. The picture of the stern redcoat watching over convicts breaking rocks would be fine if you also knew that the marine and convict might be drinking buddies or that one of the soldier was secretly having it off with a convict’s partner or that the marine corporal’s future wife was presently at laundry detail, washing clothes for the garrison. To dispel some more misconceptions: the number of convicts hanged at Sydney Cove between 1788 and 1791 was commensurate with the tally of soldiers dispatched by the rope; the number of the Berewalgal killed by the Australians pales into insignificance as does the numbers of people who simply perished in the bush. Over these first four years, reported incidences of Australian attacks on the British can be counted with two hands. Alternatively, the invaders fired their muskets repeatedly at the Australians and made them strangers in their own land.

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The belief that the Australians had no concept of ownership is incorrect. Indeed, it is was complex and nuanced. The land was (is) not theirs, they were (are) part of it and destined to take care of it. That which someone had manufactured from the land – be it a net, fishing line or spear – is part of that person and the land. The British believed that the Australians didn’t own their land because it was uncultivated and wild; that its inhabitants were savage and backward of intellect. Now, we know better. The reality of a starving colony in these first four years is beyond dispute. With the loss of the Guardian, Sirius, the difficult conditions and weather, the first Europeans endured starvation diets for months. Arthur Phillip has been praised for his equal rationing to all in the colony without taking into account his personal stock of animals and those of other officers as well as the fresh meat procured by the repellent John McIntyre who eventually got his comeuppance. From the journals and other sources of the First Fleeters, their wonderment at the new country they discovered is palpable until they are personally confronted with the vastness of the Australian bush. The bush became a natural, if somewhat porous, boundary for the early camp, effective only by the dread of the dangers within the country, of getting lost in its wilderness and the fear of the men who managed to live in such an alien landscape. It is something that most modern Australians still fear, sometimes for good reason. Cinema have explored this paradigm for decades: Walkabout, Wake in Fright, Rabbit Proof Fence, The Tracker, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, and Wolf Creek are a few examples. An understanding of Australian culture should be embraced to allow our country to develop a unique national identity commensurate with our proud heritage. Like the original Australians, we need to accept the notion that, if anything, the land owns us and deserves our respect. The Australians had created much of their landscape through fire management, just a manifestation of the depth of knowledge, history, spiritual life and understanding of the universe more profound than most modern Australians realise. This is the land we live in and that we must embrace. It began in January 1788, when someone showed strangers where to land their boat and where to get water. This welcome to country still abides.

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Notes

Preface: The Enterprise 1 2 3 4 5 6

Sian Rees, The Floating Brothel, p. 19. Ged Martin (ed.), The Founding of Australia: The Argument about Australia’s Origins, p. 79. Ibid., pp. 26–8. Rees, p. 41. Phillip’s Instructions, 25 April 1787, p. 89. The requisition of ammunition for the marine detachment was the responsibility of Major Ross as Marine Commandant. This oversight in planning indicates the lack of communication between Phillip and Ross from the earliest days of the enterprise.

Part One: 1788 Prologue: Lunch, 18 January 1788 1 2 3 4

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 35. Vanessa Collingridge, Captain Cook: Obsession and Betrayal in the New World, p. 166; Grace Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney, p. 35. David Blackburn, Letter to Richard Knight, 12 July 1788, p. 10. George Worgan, Letters to his brother William, 12–18 June 1788, p. 3; Daniel Southwell, Letter to Mrs Southwell, 12 July 1788.

1: Australians on the Beach 1 2 3

Thomas Keneally, Australians: Origins to Eureka, p. 4. They often had two wives: one younger and one older. Keneally, pp. 4, 31–2. Today, there are over 4,500 registered Aboriginal sites of significance in the Sydney area, there for all to see – if you know where to look. A significant site in Middle Harbour has recently been recognised.

2: Botany Bay 1

David Blackburn, Letter to Richard Knight, 12 July 1788, p. 6; Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 36.

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2 3

4

5 6 7 8 9

George Worgan, Letters to his brother William, 12–18 June 1788, p. 3. Tench, like Collins, White and Phillip himself, had been contracted by a London publisher to provide a journal of the enterprise. A number of journals would be published in the years to come. Both the British and Australians were dog lovers. The word ‘dingo’ was one of the first Eora words to enter the English language. Dingoes were bred to stalk prey and did not bark like the imported English canines. Tench, p. 31. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, p. 23. John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, p. 118; Worgan, p. 34. David Hill, First Fleet Surgeon: The Voyage of Arthur Bowes Smyth, p. 94. Michael Pembroke, Arthur Phillip: Sailor, Mercenary, Governor, Spy, p. 195; Cobley, Vol. I, p. 191.

3: Never Saw Any Like It 1

2 3

4 5 6 7 8

Arthur Phillip to the Marquis of Lansdowne, 3 July 1788, p. 2; John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, p. 120; Ralph Clark, Journals and Letters, p. 1; Daniel Southwell, Journal, 27 May 1788; David Blackburn, Letter to Richard Knight, 12 July 1788, p. 6. David Hill, First Fleet Surgeon: The Voyage of Arthur Bowes Smyth, p. 107. John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, p. 61; Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, p. 238. George Worgan, Letters to his brother William, 12–18 June 1788, p. 5. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, p. 126. This is the title of Bill Gammage’s inspirational book. Cobley, Vol. I, p. 32. Worgan, p. 8.

4: Warrane 1 2 3 4 5 6

Alan Birch and David Macmillan, The Sydney Scene 1788–1960, p. 28. George Worgan, Letters to his brother William, 12–18 June 1788, p. 9. Arthur Phillip, Letter to Lord Sydney, 15 May 1788. The word ‘kangaroo’ was introduced by the British via Cook based on a word he had picked up on the far north coast. To the Eora, the creature was a patyegarang. Daniel Southwell, Journal, 27 May 1788. Birch and Macmillan, p. 3.

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7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, p. 27. Peter Macinnis, Australia’s Pioneers, Heroes and Fools, pp. 175–6. Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p. 77. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 36. Ibid., p. 275. Susan E. Boyer, Across the Great Divide: True Stories of Life at Sydney Cove, p. 8. Arthur Bowes-Smyth, Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China, p. 87. Ralph Clark, Journals and Letters, p. 115. Birch and Macmillan, p. 34.

5: The Camp 1 2 3

4 5 6 7

Arthur Bowes-Smyth, Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China, p. 14. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, p. 192. Ralph Clark, Journals and Letters, p. 116; Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 38; Bowes-Smyth, p. 91; Alan Birch and David Macmillan, The Sydney Scene 1788–1960, p. 28. Cobley, Vol. I, p. 51; William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales December 1786 – May 1792, p. 84. Cobley, Vol. I, p. 47. Clark, p. 121. John Easty, A Memorandum of the Transaction of a Voyage from England to Botany Bay, p. 95.

6: Abandoned Wretches 1 2

3 4 5 6

Arthur Bowes-Smyth, Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China, pp. 66–78. Alan Birch and David Macmillan, The Sydney Scene 1788–1960, p. 34. This history confines itself to Sydney. The amazing history of Norfolk Island is the subject of another book. Bowes-Smyth, p. 95. Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia 1787–1868, p. 89. Ralph Clark, Journals and Letters, p. 121. Bowes-Smyth, pp. 95–101.

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7: Meeting the Locals 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The subsequent charts published by Hunter (with the assistance of Will Bradley) are masterpieces of cartography. Daniel Southwell, Journal, 5–6 February 1788. William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales December 1786 – May 1792, pp. 62–8. Ibid., pp. 68–71. David Blackburn, Letter to Richard Knight, 12 July 1788, p. 10. Bradley, pp. 74–6, 132–3; Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 69; Blackburn, p. 10. Bradley, p. 77. The recent banning of commercial fishing in Sydney Harbour in recent times has increased shark numbers.

8: Phillip’s Commission 1 2

3

Ralph Clark, Journals and Letters, p. 119. William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales December 1786 – May 1792, p. 69; John Cobley (comp.), Vol. I, Sydney Cove 1788, p. 61; Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, pp. 83–4. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 49.

9: The Visit 1 2

It is held at the Mitchell Library in Sydney, signed by Bradley and entitled ‘Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, 1788’. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, p. 65; Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 46; Arthur Bowes-Smyth, Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China, p. 99.

10: British Justice 1 2 3 4 5 6

Arthur Bowes-Smyth, Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China, p. 101. Ibid., p. 107. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, p. 102. George Worgan, Letters to his brother William, 12–18 June 1788, p. 30. Cobley, Vol. I, p. 132. Ibid., p. 134, John Easty, A Memorandum of the Transaction of a Voyage from England to Botany Bay, p. 101.

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11: Evites and Elders 1 2 3 4 5

William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales December 1786 – May 1792, p. 82. George Worgan, Letters to his brother William, 12–18 June 1788, p. 6. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 49. Daniel Southwell, Journal, 24 January 1788. Bradley, p. 141.

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, pp. 97–8. Ibid., p. 100. W.E.H. Stanner, White Men Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938–73, p. 174. Worgan, p. 28. It was probably kidney stones. Bradley, pp. 88–98. Cobley, Vol. I, p. 146.

12: Albion David Blackburn, Letter to Richard Knight, 12 July 1788, pp. 9–10. Arthur Bowes-Smyth, Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China, p. 103. 3 Ralph Clark, Journals and Letters, p. 133. 4 Alan Birch and David Macmillan, The Sydney Scene 1788–1960, p. 34. 5 From William Blake’s Jerusalem. 6 Daniel Southwell, Journal, 27 May 1788. 7 It didn’t. Thanks to bush regeneration, this plant has somewhat re-established itself in recent years. The lilly-pilly was too sour but made good jam. 8 George Worgan, Letters to his brother William, 12–18 June 1788, pp. 5–6. 9 Southwell, Journal, 5 May 1788. 10 The gradient of the hills between today’s Bathurst Street and Central Station was much reduced in the mid-nineteenth century. 11 John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, p. 115. It was too little, too late. The stream would soon be polluted by pig excrement and human waste. 12 Southwell, Journal, 12 July 1788. 13 Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 38. 14 Worgan, p. 36. 15 Over the next eight years, the herd went feral and was eventually found sixty head strong in open woodlands to the southwest that became known as the

1 2

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16 17 18

Cowpastures. Among the party who found the cattle was Henry Hacking. John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, 26 June 1788. Cobley, Vol. I, p. 168. Tench, p. 62.

14: Australian Justice 1 2

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 138. William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales December 1786 – May 1792, p. 85; Ralph Clark, Journals and Letters, p. 124. 3 David Blackburn, Letter to Richard Knight, 12 July 1788; p. 10; Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p. 55. 4 John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, p. 116. 5 Bradley, p. 104. 6 John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, p. 48. 7 Bradley, p. 105. 8 Tench, p. 50; Clendinnen, p. 97. 9 Bradley, pp. 106–7. 10 Blackburn, p. 10. 11 Tench, p. 135. 12 Bradley, p. 119. 13 Clendinnen, p. 96. 14 Southwell, Journals and Letters of Daniel Southwell. 15 John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, p. 242.

15: Lonely Winter 1 2 3

4 5 6 7

William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales December 1786 – May 1792, p. 117. Arthur Phillip to the Marquis of Lansdowne, 3 July 1788, pp. 3–4; John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, pp. 178–9. In the decades to come, the cabbage tree hat would become a fashionable item in early Sydney and its manufacture, one of the first large cottage industries in the country. Alan Birch and David Macmillan, The Sydney Scene 1788–1960, p. 34. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 134. Cobley, Vol. I, p. 205, Ralph Clark, Journals and Letters, Letter, 4 June. Cobley, Vol. I, pp. 192–3.

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16: Spring 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. 1, p. 237. Unknown female convict, 14 November 1788, quoted in Cobley, Vol. I, p. 248. Ralph Clark, Journals and Letters, Letter, November 1788, p. 57. Cobley, Vol. I, p. 244. Ibid., p. 246. Ibid., p. 252. Alan Birch and David Macmillan, The Sydney Scene 1788–1960, p. 34. Cobley, Vol. I, p. 235.

17: Abduction 1 2

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. 1, pp. 232–4. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 139–41.

Part Two: 1789 18: Arabanoo 1 2

Thomas Keneally, Australians: Origins to Eureka, p. 105 Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 142–50.

19: Troubled Village 1 2 3 4

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 133. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, pp. 5 & 11. Mary would die in her late eighties on Norfolk Island. Cobley, Vol. II, pp. 14 & 24.

20: Ambush 1 2

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 145. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 83.

21: Military Machinations 1 2

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 16, David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, pp. 83–4. Cobley, Vol. II, pp. 28 & 47.

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22: Galgal-la 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 88. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 146. Newton Fowell, Letter to his father, 31 July 1790, p. 3. James Scott, Remarks on a Passage to Botany Bay, p. 47. Tench, pp. 146–8. Robert Ross, quoted in Tench, p. 118. Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, p. 153. Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p. 100. William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales December 1786 – May 1792, p. 162. John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, pp. 100–1. Tench, p. 149. Bradley, p. 163; Tench, p. 153; Cobley, Vol. II, p. 38. Bradley, p. 163; Tench, p. 153. Bradley, p. 178.

23: Deerubin 1

3

David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 49–51. John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, p. 116. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 153.

4 5

Hunter, pp. 110–28. Grace Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney, p. 379.

2

24: Outposts of Empire 1 2 3 4 5 6

David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 92. Robert Jordan, The Convict Theatre of Early Australia 1788–1840, pp. 27–9. Sidaway would open the first permanent theatre in Sydney in 1796. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 152. William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales December 1786 – May 1792, p. 164. John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, p. 162.

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25: Crime and Punishment 1 2 3

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 73. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, pp. 94–5. Cobley, Vol. II, p. 79.

4 5 6 7

Ibid., p. 77–8. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., pp. 93–4; Collins, Vol. 1, p. 99. Cobley, Vol. II, pp. 113–14; Collins, Vol. 1, p. 103.

26: Heat and Dust 1

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 104.

27: Most Unpleasant Service 1 2 3 4 5

William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales December 1786 – May 1792, pp. 171–2. Ibid., pp. 181–2. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 159. Bradley, pp. 182–3. Tench, pp. 160–1.

Part Three: 1790 28: Gloom and Dejection 1 2 3 4

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 129. Ibid., p. 131. Ibid., p. 135. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 162.

5 6

Ibid., pp. 145–6. Ibid., pp. 155–7; David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, pp. 111–12.

29: Bennelong 1 2 3

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 159–60. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 194. Tench, p. 167.

371

30: Two Weeks with Ralph Clark 1 2

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 147. Ibid., p. 152.

31: William and Patye 1 2 3 4 5

Phyllis Mander-Jones, ‘Dawes, William (1762–1836)’. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 184. Susan E. Boyer, Across the Great Divide: True Stories of Life at Sydney Cove, p. 177. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 280. Boyer, p. 178.

32: Solitary Silence 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 162. Ibid., pp. 181–2. In 1907, one of Sirius’ anchors was salvaged and can be seen today at Macquarie Place. Cobley, Vol. II, pp. 166–78. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1788, Vol. I, p. 184. Ibid., p. 195. Cobley, Vol. II, pp. 183–200.

33: Second Fleet 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 127. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 224. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 172. Botany Bay Medallion, Grenville to Phillip. Cobley, Vol. II, p. 264. Collins, Vol. 1, pp. 129–30. Cobley, Vol. II, pp. 264–5. Ibid., p. 227. Ibid., p. 249. Ibid., p. 206.

34: New South Wales Corps 1 2

M.H. Ellis, John Macarthur, p. 12. Alan Birch and David Macmillan, The Sydney Scene 1788–1960, p. 4.

372

35: No Going Back 1 2 3

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 228. Ibid., pp. 253–4. Ibid., p. 242.

36: Lookout 1

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, pp. 266–7.

37: Payback 1 2

3 4 5

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1789–1790, Vol. II, p. 281. His journal would later be published in London featuring dozens of illustrations of the birds and other fauna of New South Wales, realised from sketches made by a convict artist. It would become a best-seller and be translated into several languages over the coming years. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 177. John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, pp. 163–9. Watling Collection (Nos 23 & 24).

38: Kirribilli Agreement 1

Boorong would have several partners. Her last husband would be Bennelong. Indeed, she is buried next to him on brewer James Squires’ property on the banks of the Parramatta River – Wangal country.

39: Rose Hill 1 2

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 192–5. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 140.

40: Coming In 1 2 3

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 275–7. Susan E. Boyer, Across the Great Divide: True Stories of Life at Sydney Cove, p. 158. Elizabeth Macarthur, Letter to Bridget Kingdon, March 1791.

41: Pemulwuy 1 2

Susan E. Boyer, Across the Great Divide: True Stories of Life at Sydney Cove, p. 245. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 205–15.

373

Part Four: 1791 42: Three Years On 1

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 217.

43: Daringa 1 2 3 4 5

Susan E. Boyer, Across the Great Divide: True Stories of Life at Sydney Cove, p. 245. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 277–80. Boyer, p. 176. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, pp. 147–8. Tench, p. 278.

44: Departures 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9

David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 148. Ibid., p. 144. His other long-time companion, Henry Brewer, remained in Sydney. Years later, his achievements and diligence were rewarded when he was appointed a superintendent on £91 per annum. He was finally being paid for the job that he had been performing for five years. The wage was similar to that of an assistant surgeon like William Balmain. Later, he bought land at the present-day suburb of Concord and retired there in 1795. He died aged fifty-seven years. Brewer Street in Concord commemorates his contribution to the early years of the colony. Collins, Vol. 1, pp. 150–1. Ralph Clark, from Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth. Collins, Vol. 1, p. 153. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, pp. 32–5. Collins, Vol. 1, p. 155. Cobley, Vol. III, p. 51.

45: Land Grab 1 2 3

Jan Barkley-Jack, Hawkesbury Settlement Revisited: A New Look at Australia’s Third Mainland Settlement 1793–1802, p. 42. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, p. 42. Barkley-Jack, p. 46.

374

46: Gonin-Patta 1

David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 157.

47: Parramatta 1 2 3

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 221–2. By this time, Collins and most others knew that ‘kangaroo’ was an unknown word to the Sydney tribes. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, pp. 161–2.

48: Tench and Dawes 1 2

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 234–8. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, p. 95.

49: Botany Bay Rangers 1 2 3 4 5

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, p. 40. Two decades later, Harris was to accompany explorer John Oxley on his exploration of the inland rivers. Cobley, Vol. III, pp. 35–6. Ibid., p. 101. Mrs Morgan cannot be definitively identified but may well be Mary Ann Morgan who was accused by Macarthur of stealing his tin plate. Cobley, Vol. III, p. 85.

50: Third Fleet 1 2 3 4 5 6

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 240–1. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 165. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, p. 112. Tench, p. 245. Cobley, Vol. III, pp. 126–7;Collins, Vol. 1, p. 171. Cobley, Vol. III, p. 131; Collins, Vol. 1, p. 172.

51: Barangaroo 1 2 3

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 291. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, pp. 107–8. Susan E. Boyer, Across the Great Divide: True Stories of Life at Sydney Cove, pp. 202–3.

375

4

Cobley, Vol. III, p. 178.

52: Harmless Fellow 1 2

Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 257. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, pp. 124–40; David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 174.

53: Collins 1 2

David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 174. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, pp. 128–9.

54: Unfinished Business 1 2 3 4 5

David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 179. John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, pp. 142, 148, 150, 154, 161. Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, p. 245. Collins, Vol. 1, p. 178. Cobley, Vol. III, p. 168; p. 157.

55: Walking to China 1

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, pp. 166–7.

56: Goodbyes 1 2 3 4

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, p. 185. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., p. 176. Ibid., p. 195.

57: Balooderry 1 2

David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, p. 168. Susan E. Boyer, Across the Great Divide: True Stories of Life at Sydney Cove, pp. 232–5.

Epilogue 1

John Cobley (comp.), Sydney Cove 1791–1792, Vol. III, p. 243.

376

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379

Index

Abbott, Edward (NSW Corps) 219, 234, 265, 275, 292, 331 Abrahams, Esther (convict) 17, 50, 53, 136, 176, 193 Alt, Augustus (surveyor-general) 17, 86, 109, 127, 139, 167, 173, 202, 249, 271, 287, 336, 341 Altree, Turnpenny (surgeon) 48 Arabanoo (Australian) 119, 122–6, 133– 4, 141–3, 145–6, 149, 174, 178, 181–2, 189, 195, 311, 330, 360–1 Arndell, Thomas (surgeon) 15, 151, 168, 170, 298, 350 Asky, Richard (marine) 110, 138 Baker, James (marine) 69, 110, 138 Ball, Henry Lidgbird (commander, Supply) 4, 6, 12, 36, 78, 84, 87, 104, 114, 142–3, 169, 202, 207–9, 228, 250–1, 256–7, 265, 276, 282, 288, 342, 357 Balmain, William (surgeon) 14, 53, 91, 103, 112, 142, 168, 170, 221, 238, 331 Balooderry (Australian) 248, 254, 281, 305–8, 310–13, 331, 353–5, 361 Banks, Sir Joseph 4, 12, 14, 20, 26, 185–6, 217, 228, 293, 296, 299, 331, 341, 348, 351, 357 Barangaroo (Australian) 180, 195, 203, 238, 242–6, 252–5, 257, 281–2, 285, 305, 311, 329–31 Barrett, Thomas (convict) 15, 69–70, 128 Barrington, George (convict) 332–4, 344 Baughan, John (convict) 167–8, 272, 274, 302 Bazley, John (convict) 128–9 Bellamy, Sarah (convict) 50, 161, 249, 274, 333 Bennelong (Australian) 180–2, 187,

194–6, 201, 203, 210, 227, 231, 235–9, 241–7, 252–5, 257–60, 262, 271, 278–82, 285, 289, 305, 311, 328–31, 352, 354–5, 361 Bennett, John (convict) 71 Berewan (Australian) 307 Blackburn, David (master, Supply) 6, 12, 14, 22–3, 59, 61, 81, 94, 97, 108, 288, 292, 296 Bloodsworth, James (convict) 17, 40–1, 85, 125, 161, 248–9, 272, 274, 333, 350 Bondel (Australian) 292, 330 Boorong (Australian) 143, 178, 180, 194, 202–6, 210, 241–5, 248, 252–4, 263, 265, 280–1, 283, 293, 305, 329, 331, 353–5 Bowes Smyth, Arthur (surgeon) 17, 23, 34–5, 39, 42, 48–9, 52–5, 64–5, 67–9, 82, 88 Bradbury, William (convict) 167, 302, 349 Bradley, William (marine lieutenant) 16, 19, 22, 25, 43, 56–61, 65–6, 72–8, 86–7, 91, 93–7, 99, 122, 145–6, 148, 153, 162–3, 175–6, 179–80, 189, 195–6, 208–9, 230, 288, 290, 292, 295, 329 Bramwell, Thomas (marine) 55 Brewer, Henry (superintendent) 16, 40, 70, 162, 209–10, 213, 262, 348, 359 Broughton, William (clerk) 17, 162 Brown, John Thomas (convict) 303 Bryant, Mary (nee Brand) 17, 64, 130, 250, 296 Bryant, William (convict) 17, 64, 83, 130, 250, 296–7 Bulmore, Thomas (marine) 110, 138 Burleigh, Elizabeth (convict) 170 Burn, Patrick (convict) 41, 259, 275, 315 Burn, Simon (convict) 302

380

Caesar, John ‘Black’ (convict) 40, 157 Calleghan, John (convict) 165–6 Campbell, James (marine) 17, 21, 42, 48–9, 68, 103–4, 138–9, 160, 169, 189, 197, 199, 211, 263 Chapman, Elizabeth (child) 168–70 Clark, Ralph (marine) 15, 23, 37, 42, 44, 54–5, 62, 70, 94, 103, 108, 136, 160, 169, 197–9, 209, 351, 357 Clark, Zachariah (agent) 222, 274 Clarke, Thomas (superintendent) 272, 290, 348 Colbee (Australian) 147, 180–2, 194, 196, 203, 235–6, 242, 246, 260, 262, 265, 280, 282, 284–5, 305–11, 313, 320, 355, 361 Colley, Elizabeth (convict) 52, 155 Collins, David (Judge-Advocate) 16, 22, 34, 42, 46, 50, 54, 62, 68, 70–1, 78, 86–7, 94, 104, 107, 109, 111, 113, 124, 127, 129–30, 133–40, 144–5, 148–9, 156, 157, 160, 162–3, 165– 70, 174–5, 177, 188–9, 191–2, 206, 209–10, 212, 216–18, 220, 222, 227, 234–7, 250, 259, 268, 279, 285–6, 289–91, 294–6, 299, 304, 311–14, 316, 323, 325, 327, 330–1, 334–9, 342–3, 345, 348, 350–3, 355 Considen, Dennis (surgeon) 83 Cook, James 3–4, 6, 11–14, 18, 20–1, 26, 51–2, 74, 80, 150, 185–6, 215, 217, 260, 267, 277 Creswell, John (Marine) 338, 343, 352 Cummings, William (NSW Corps) 303

Deedora (Australian) 317 Devine, Nicholas (superintendent) 185, 272 Dilboong (child) 330–1 Dodd, Henry (superintendent) 16, 40, 85, 109, 139, 151, 162, 164, 177, 248–9, 262, 271–2, 275, 290, 359 Downey, James (convict) 50, 333–4 Dukes, Richard (marine) 110, 138 Easty, John (marine) 14–15, 46, 70–1, 158, 217, 264–5, 296, 324 Edgar, Thomas (Lady Juliana) 215 Everingham, Matthew (convict) 274, 302 Faddy, William (marine) 169 Foveaux, Joseph (NSW Corps) 223 Fowell, Newton (marine) 140, 146, 174, 208 Fowkes, Francis (convict) 85 Fowles, Elizabeth (Ann) (convict) 113, 129–30, 160, 171 Freeman, James (convict) 69–71, 172 Furzer, James (marine) 89, 107 Gilbert, Thomas (ship’s captain) 104, 224–5 Gombeeree (Australian) 308–10, 317 Gooreedeeana (Australian) 255–6 Green, Ann (convict) 50 Grenville, William (Home Secretary) 177, 216, 218, 228, 303, 326, 341 Grose, Francis (NSW Corps) 217, 223, 299, 303, 319, 337, 341, 349, 360 Hacking, Henry (seaman) 16, 63, 174–6, 179, 209, 295–6, 357 Harris, John (surgeon, NSW Corps) 219, 225, 234, 275, 292, 320–1, 350–1 Haynes, Luke (marine) 110 Herbert, John (convict) 275, 301 Hill, William (NSW Corps) 223, 227–8, 264, 292, 319, 321, 330–1, 348, 350 Hubbard, William (convict) 167, 302 Hume, Andrew (superintendent) 185, 272, 275, 292, 302 Hunter, John (captain, Sirius) 16, 22, 33, 39, 56, 58–60, 68, 72–4, 77–8, 87, 93, 95, 97, 106, 108, 145–50, 163,

Daly, James (convict) 103–4, 111 Daringa (Australian) 180, 242, 265, 279– 81, 284–5, 305, 311, 313, 329–30 Daveney, Thomas (convict superintendent) 272, 290, 349 Dawes, William (marine) 6, 12, 18, 22, 43–4, 60, 78, 87, 97, 100, 102, 106, 109, 120, 122, 125, 139, 151, 156–8, 167, 173, 176–7, 194, 201–5, 207, 210, 229, 231–2, 240–2, 246, 250, 254, 257, 261–5, 275, 283, 304, 306–7, 316–18, 324, 326–7, 339–41, 347, 357–8, 361

381

169, 188–9, 197, 207–9, 230–1, 254, 281, 284, 288, 290–2, 295–6, 328–30, 354–5 Imeerawanyee (Australian) 242–3, 245, 255, 257, 262, 278–81, 286, 353, 355 Ingram, Benjamin (convict) 127 Inett, Ann (convict) 50, 52, 127, 207 Jamison, Thomas (surgeon) 16, 52 Johnson, Mary (wife of Richard) 17, 111, 143, 194, 206, 210, 241, 257, 283, 333 Johnson, Richard (reverend) 17, 46, 104, 111, 127–8, 135, 143, 178, 194, 202, 206, 210, 216, 220–1, 241–3, 252–3, 263, 271, 283, 293, 296, 325, 333, 348, 350–1 Johnston, George (marine) 17, 50, 53, 78, 114, 136, 148, 173, 176, 192–3 Kable, Henry (c0nvict) 15, 40, 64, 104, 135, 335 Kellow, Robert (marine) 199 Keltie, James (master, Sirius) 22, 148, 161, 288 King, Philip Gidley (lieutenant) 6, 12, 14, 18–19, 43, 51–2, 54, 84, 127–8, 155, 174, 177, 188, 191–2, 200, 207–8, 226, 324, 331, 333, 348, 357–8 Knight, Isaac (marine) 316–17 La Perouse, Monsieur de 36–7, 43–4, 52, 100, 108, 143, 241, 358 Levy, Amelia ‘Milly’ (convict) 50, 113, 129–30, 160, 171 Lisk, George (convict) 274, 301 Lowes, John (surgeon’s mate) 17, 151, 176 McCabe, Eleanor (convict) 300 Macarthur, Elizabeth (wife of John) 219, 224, 226, 228, 251, 257, 275, 284–5, 289, 294–5, 319, 349, 351 Macarthur, John (NSW Corps) 219, 223–6, 228, 257, 275–6, 292, 294, 300, 314, 319–21, 333, 350 McIntyre, John (convict) 14, 41, 63, 80, 82, 125, 174, 179, 209, 235–6, 253, 259–63, 277, 282, 285, 289, 316,

357, 360, 362 Marshall, Mary (convict) 50, 127–30, 159, 171 Maxwell, James (lieutenant, Sirius) 51, 212, 249, 295 Meredith, James (marine) 15, 89, 136, 161–2, 175, 189 Miller, Andrew (commissary) 16–17, 209 Nagle, Jacob (seaman) 22, 28, 33 Nanbaree (Australian) 142, 179–80, 194, 196, 203, 205, 234–5, 241–2, 255, 257, 262, 265, 278–80, 284–5, 353, 355 Nepean, Evan (under-secretary) 99, 111, 136, 224 Nicholas, Nepean (NSW Corps) 223–6, 234, 275, 292, 314, 316, 319–21, 336, 342, 351 Nichols, John (sailor, Lady Juliana) 275 Norton, Phoebe (convict) 50, 301 Ocraft, Thomas or John (convict) 314, 318 Oldfield, Thomas (convict) 167 Palmer, John (commissary) 17, 209, 232–4, 243, 323, 325 Parker, John (captain, Gorgon) 325, 333–4, 342 Parker, Mary (wife of John) 325, 333 Parish, William (convict) 275, 301 Patyegarang (Australian) 201–5, 240, 262–3 Peat, Charles (convict) 41, 85, 167, 274 Pemulwuy (Australian) 13, 259–60, 262, 265, 267, 282, 302, 357 Peyton, Samuel (convict) 14, 89–90 Phillip, Arthur (governor) 4–6, 12–14, 16–18, 20–2, 25–6, 28–31, 33–43, 45–6, 48, 51–3, 56–8, 62–6, 69–80, 82, 85–9, 91–4, 96–104, 106–9, 111–16, 119–21, 123–5, 127–8, 132–6, 138–42, 146–58, 160–8, 173–9, 182, 185, 187–92, 194–202, 207–9, 212–14, 216–18, 220, 222, 228–9, 231–8, 240–1, 245–54, 259–65, 267, 271–2, 274–9,

382

281–2, 284–6, 288–91, 293, 295–6, 298–300, 302–6, 310–14, 316, 320, 322–7, 329–31, 333, 335–7, 339–43, 345–62 Phillips, Mary (convict) 15, 110, 130 Poulden, John (marine) 264 Prentice, John (NSW Corps) 265, 292

234, 241–6, 248–50, 252–7, 260–8, 273, 275–7, 279, 283–6, 289, 292, 304–11, 316–18, 322, 324, 329, 339, 341–2, 347–50, 357–8 Tennyhill, Thomas (convict) 68, 212 Timmins, Thomas (marine) 169, 321 Townson, John (NSW Corps) 292, 321, 350 Traill, Donald (master, Neptune) 219, 225, 303 Turner, Mary (convict) 50, 130, 138

Ross, John (son of Robert) 14 Ross, Robert (lieutenant-governor) 14, 16, 39–40, 45–6, 53, 64, 68–70, 86–7, 89, 96, 101–4, 106–7, 111, 135–6, 138–9, 143–4, 148, 151, 157, 160, 165–6, 168, 173, 177, 189–92, 197, 199–200, 209, 212, 223, 276, 291, 294, 299, 322, 331, 335–7, 339, 343, 347–52, 357 Ruglass, John (convict) 129 Ruse, James (convict) 15, 40, 139, 163–5, 249, 299–300, 303, 320, 350–1

Waterhouse, Henry (marine) 87, 148, 153, 208, 234, 236–8, 250 Wheeler, Samuel (convict) 41, 125, 248, 274 White, John (surgeon) 14, 17, 20, 22, 24, 54, 69, 78, 83, 87, 91–2, 94, 101, 103, 133, 141–3, 146, 148, 162, 165–6, 179, 188, 190, 194, 222, 234–6, 240–2, 245, 254, 259, 279–80, 284, 304–5, 310, 320, 330, 348, 351, 354 Whitelam, Sarah (convict) 215 Wileemarin (Australian) 241, 246 Wilson, John (convict) 14 Worgan, Charles ‘George’ (surgeon, Sirius) 13–14, 16–17, 20, 23–4, 26, 29–30, 34, 37, 40, 48, 63, 71, 73, 77, 79, 84, 87–8, 92, 96, 148, 188, 208, 228–9, 264, 295 Wright, Henry (marine) 168–71

Schaffer, Philip (superintendent) 289, 300, 350 Scott, James (marine) 51, 141, 296, 322 Severs, William (captain, Lady Penrhyn) 50 Shea, John (marine) 33, 80–1, 135, 222 Shapcote, John (lieutenant, Lady Juliana) 218–19 Sidaway, Robert (convict) 69, 128, 159, 171, 274 Sinclair, Duncan (captain, Alexander) 105, 335 Southwell, Daniel (mate, Sirius) 6, 12, 17, 22, 33, 56, 73, 83–4, 87, 98, 120, 187, 189, 196, 200, 202, 205, 207–8, 220, 230–4, 236, 250, 295 Squires, James (convict) 197 Sydney, Lord (Home Secretary) 100, 104, 119, 139, 189, 212, 218, 293, 326, 341

Yates, Ann (convict) 50, 335, 338 Yellomundee (Yarramundi) (Australian) 310

Tench, Watkin (marine) 17–18, 26, 28, 34–5, 42, 57, 61, 63, 65, 67, 70–1, 73, 87, 90, 93, 95–6, 101, 106–8, 114–15, 120–4, 132, 134, 137, 140– 3, 151–3, 158, 160, 162, 173, 175–6, 180–2, 190, 194–6, 199, 201–5, 207, 210–11, 213, 217, 228–9, 231,

383