From the Edge

by Mark Mckenna

  It’s not an easy thing to do because most of the kids today still want to spear Cook. It’s an expected behavior that there was a confrontation and that it had to be hostile. Our mob struggle with the thought of the reconciliation, they’re good at being hostile … but we need more reverence for our culture. We need more cultural grounding. They acted according to their own law and Aboriginal people have behaved with those characteristics since dispossession.123

  The moment when peace is established between Cook and the Guugu Yimithirr is not only an allegory of reconciliation. It is also a parable of cultural integrity. At the same time as the story challenges non-Indigenous Australians to see their history from the Indigenous perspective, it also asks the Guugu Yimithirr to forsake some of their most deeply ingrained beliefs about Cook and the arrival of the British in Australia. Cook becomes more than the embodiment of invasion and dispossession; he is also the promise of peace and reconciliation. He plants the seeds and is gone. He claims possession without consent yet he also brings with him the law that will belatedly recognise native title more than two centuries later. He is at once the agent of destruction and the agent of redemption. A man who becomes a story that remains forever open-ended; a story that continually draws us back despite the fact that we know the whole tale will always elude us. Few have explained the significance of this transformation in the telling of Cooktown’s founding moment better than historian Iain McCalman.

  Cooktown is the Great Barrier Reef’s Ur or foundational place of modern European–Australian and Aboriginal meeting, engagement and struggle. As such, it carries both tragic and hopeful traces of the past, which are being actively rethought in the present by Guugu Yimithirr elders like the late Eric Deeral and his historian niece, Alberta Hornsby. The surrounding countryside is austere and tough but achingly beautiful; it stands on a type of borderland between the temperate south and the tropical north. For me it thus represents both our past tragedy and our future possibility.124

  Eric Deeral glimpsed some of this ‘future possibility’ before his death in 2012. Speaking of the ‘culture shock’, sickness and death that accompanied his community’s evacuation to Woorabinda in 1942, he recalled how his people had no time to ‘register’ their sorrows. They had to cling to one another in order to survive. Instead of ‘going down with it’, they built their community anew from ‘the remnants of that disaster’. Eric then cast his eye over the Guugu Yimithirr’s entire history since the arrival of Europeans:

  When I look back at the whole history of the invasion of the Cookian people and establishment of the first missions … [there] is that strong concept that our people have—we are not going to bow down, we’re just going to build the demolished Cookian nation again, and I believe that that strength is still there … we’re coming back again like the proverbial kangaroo leaping back again.125

  Survival, strength and cultural integrity were the histories Eric chose to tell. He remembered invasion, dispossession and displacement, but he did not allow this bleak legacy to cripple him. Instead he spoke of the future possibilities of the society that was created from that experience, a society in which Noel Pearson grew up with ‘layered identities’ and Alberta Hornsby spoke of having lived most of her life ‘on the border’—a society of European, Chinese and Indigenous ancestry, one that was built on the back of generations of Aboriginal labour that made the settler economy viable, and one in which Eric’s Christian faith merged with his Guugu Yimithirr spiritual beliefs, the ‘whole concept of religion’ being shared by white and black alike.126

  For any of us to develop a truly honest and informed historical consciousness in Australia requires a double-act: to hold both the violent dispossession of Indigenous Australians and the steady emergence of a society built on equality, democracy and freedom from racial discrimination in our imagination at the same time, and to do so by hearing both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives. The shared telling of Cooktown’s founding moment is one guiding light. The Guugu Yimithirr’s decision to reconcile with Cook transcends time and place. Both local and national in resonance, it changes Cooktown from a frontier town to a place of community and national rebirth.

  ____________

  On my last day in Cooktown, I climb Grassy Hill for the final time. Nearly two hundred and fifty years later, the outlook remains much the same as the one that greeted James Cook in 1770. Despite the road that rings the hill, the ubiquitous tourist viewing platform that crowns its crest and the dense vegetation that has long since replaced the open grasslands created by the Guugu Yimithirr’s burning, the landscape Cook encountered still stretches away before you, the river’s curl drawing your eyes deeper into the country beyond. Like the beaches of southern New South Wales and Victoria, the islands of Bass Strait, and the shores of Port Essington and Murujuga, it now seems impossible to separate the landscape from the stories that inhabit it. Lying at opposite ends of the country, their histories barely register in the nation’s consciousness, yet if we choose to see them, they interconnect and resound across the thousands of kilometres that separate them, informing and enriching the continent.

  Endeavour River from Grassy Hill at dusk, 2016

  Notes

  Eyeing the Country

  1 ‘Emotions of pleasure …’, George B Worgan, ‘Journal of a First Fleet Surgeon’, 20 January – 11 July 1788, http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/collection-items/collection-10-george-bouchier-worgan-letter-written-his-brother-richard-worgan-12-3; Banks observing the ‘moving lights’ on Botany Bay, 29 April 1770, in Ray Parkin (ed.), H.M. Bark Endeavour, Miegunyah, Melbourne 2006 (1997), p. 185.

  2 ibid., Parkin (ed.), pp. 182–6; Banks wondering if he had left England ‘for Ever’, in his ‘Endeavour Journal’, 10 September 1768, http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/banks/series_03/03_016.cfm

  3 Banks, 22 April 1770, in Parkin (ed.), p. 168.

  4 Banks, ‘Some Account of that Part of New Holland Now Called New South Wales’, follows his journal entry for 26 August 1770; available online, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0501141h.html#nsw

  5 Richard Dunn, The Telescope: A Short History, Conway Publishing, Royal Observatory Greenwich, London, 2006, p. 8.

  6 ibid., pp. 84–5.

  7 Biddy Coolman’s account in Keith Vincent Smith, ‘Voices on the Beach’, in Ace Bourke (curator), Lines in the Sand: Botany Bay Stories from 1770, Hazlehurst Regional Gallery, 2008, pp. 13, 15–16; available online, http://www.dnacreative.net.au/new/dna_creative__Hazelhurst_Regional_Gallery_files/LITS_96pp(FIN_REVREV)11-4-08.pdf; on possums, religious belief and the devil, see the evidence of Mahroot, the Aboriginal man from ‘Botany Bay’, taken before the 1845 ‘Select Committee on Aborigines’, 8 September 1845, Government Printer, Sydney, p. 2; and interpretive panels at Kamay Botany Bay National Park Visitors’ Centre.

  8 Banks at the opera; see Patrick O’Brian, Joseph Banks: A Life, The Harvill Press, London, 1987, p. 65.

  9 Watkin Tench, 1790, ‘A Complete Account of the Settlement of Port Jackson’, in L Fitzhardinge (ed.), Sydney’s First Four Years, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1979, pp. 162–3.

  10 Banks, ‘Some Account of that Part of New Holland Now Called New South Wales’ (see note 4).

  11 ibid.

  12 Tim Winton, Island Home: A Landscape Memoir, Hamish Hamilton, Melbourne, 2015, p. 10; on the demise of Britishness in Australia, see James Curran and Stuart Ward, The Unknown Nation: Australia after Empire, Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, 2010.

  13 See, for example, Ann McGrath and Mary Anne Jebb (eds), Long History Deep Time: Deepening Histories of Place, ANU Press, Canberra, 2015; many Australian historians (including Keith Hancock, Alan Atkinson, Bill Gammage, Janet McCalman, Grace Karskens, Tom Griffiths, Peter Read and many others) have written intimate histories of place, yet in popular consciousness, national histories, particularly those drawing on war and military experience, have recently been far more prominent.

  14 Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, Hamish
Hamilton, London, 2012, p. 323.

  15 Kylie Northover, ‘“Australian Cities Don’t Interest Me,” Says British Author Will Self’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 August 2015, http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/australian-cities-dont-interest-me-says-british-author-will-self-20150828-gj9e9w.html

  16 Greg Dening, ‘Reflections’, in The Death of William Gooch: A History’s Anthropology, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1995, p. 157.

  17 The best overview of this vast body of scholarship and the rise of Aboriginal history can be found in Bain Attwood, Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005, pp. 42–8.

  18 Noel Pearson, ‘A Rightful Place: Race, Recognition and a More Complete Commonwealth’, Quarterly Essay, 55, 2014, p. 36.

  19 I owe much here to Nicolas Rothwell’s Eric Rolls Memorial Lecture, ‘What Lies Beyond Us’, delivered in Canberra, October 2014. ‘Attention to the Australian landscape’, writes Rothwell, ‘itself dictates the best way of describing Australian experience’.

  Chapter 1 Walking the Edge: South-East Australia, 1797

  1 The outstanding scholarly work on the wreck of the Sydney Cove is Mike Nash, Sydney Cove: The History and Archaeology of an Eighteenth Century Shipwreck, Navarine Publishing, Hobart, 2009; Nash’s work is indispensable and as a maritime archaeologist he understandably devotes comparatively little space to the walk of the survivors, focusing instead on the history and archaeology of the wreck.

  2 For the identification of Aboriginal language groups I have relied on Bunjilaka, Melbourne Museum (http://museumvictoria.com.au/bunjilaka/visiting/first-peoples/victorian-languages), and the most recent scholarly work on New South Wales: Jutta Besold, ‘Language Recovery of the New South Wales South Coast Aboriginal Languages’, PhD, Australian National University 2013, pp. 1–5, Besold reproduces Tindale’s map p. 63; From Ninety-Mile Beach, Victoria, to the Royal National Park just south of Sydney, the language groups are as follows: Tatungalung and Krauatungulung (both part of the Gunai-Kurnai language family), Bidwell Maap, Thaua (also spelt Dhawa or Thawa), Djirringanj, Dhurga, Dharumba, Wodi Wodi and Dharrawal; also see http://www.vaclang.org.au/Resources/maps.html

  3 For the benefit of the reader and to avoid repetition, I have used contemporary place names throughout this chapter to mark the walkers’ progress.

  4 Including those places mentioned in the text, Cook named Ram Head, Cape Dromedary, Point Upright, Cape St. George, Red Point, Long Nose, Point Solander, Cape Banks and Point Sutherland.

  5 Clark’s name sometimes appears mistakenly in the historical record as ‘Clarke’. To date, the details of William Clark’s birth and death have not been known. But after discovering his death in Calcutta and the will of his brother John, I have been able to identify his place and date of birth after extensive searching of the Scottish government genealogy website www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk; a facsimile of William Clark’s birth certificate can be found on the same site (26/2/1769 Clark, William [O.P.R. Births 507/0000110369 Campbeltown]); his parents were William Clark, merchant, Campbeltown, Argyll, Scotland (died 12 December 1778), married to Margaret Kilpatrick. Their children, all born in Campbeltown, County Argyll, were: James, born 19 November 1765 (no date of death); John (who was with William in Calcutta and arrived before him), born 14 June 1767, died 21 June 1804, buried in Campbeltown; William, 26 February 1769, (died 30 April 1800 in Calcutta although his death is of course not listed in the Scottish records, only in India); Kilpatrick, born 16 December 1770, died 1 November 1774; Charles, born 19 January 1773, died January 1791; Kilpatrick Clark, born 18 December 1774, died 25 December 1774; Ann, born 10 December 1775, (she is still alive in 1804 as John Clark refers to her in his will); Janet Clark, born 8 May 1778 (date of death unknown, most likely dead by 1804). William’s mother, Margaret Kilpatrick, remarried after William Clark senior died in 1788, to James Pollock, ‘writer’ (lawyer), also of Campbeltown, to whom she had at least three more children, all of whom died in their first few years. She also gave birth to other children who were alive in 1804, because John Clark left his two ‘half-sisters’ 1500 pounds in his will. Margaret Kilpatrick died in 1788, while James Pollock died in 1819 in Campbeltown.

  On the history of Campbeltown, Scotland, see Carol McNeill, Old Campbeltown and Machrihanish, Stenlake Publishing, 2004; William Smith, Views of Campbeltown & Neighbourhood, Edinburgh, 1835; Frank Bigwood, ‘Campbeltown—A New Royal Burgh in the Eighteenth Century’, in The Campbeltown Book, Kintyre Civic Society, Campbeltown, 2003; The Statistical Account of Scotland 1791–1799, edited by Sir John Sinclair, Vol. VIII, Argyll, in which Reverend John Smith writes on the Parish of Campbeltown; on Scottish emigration and life expectancy, TM Devine, To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora, 1750–2010, Allen Lane, London, 2011; also Andrew Blaikie, ‘Rituals Transitions and Life Courses’, in Trevor Griffiths and Graeme Morton (eds), A History of Everyday Life in Scotland 1800 to 1900, Edinburgh University Press, 2010, pp. 89–114, 98; Campbell and Clark are both listed as ‘ship or boat owners’ in Campbeltown ‘from 1700–1800’; see Campbeltown Custom House Reports and Extracts from the Records Preserved in the Office of the Collector at Campbeltown 1738–1848, McEachran Collection No. 146, p. 56; ‘Clark, Campbell & Co. of Campbeltown’ were operating as merchants in Campbeltown in 1793; see Kintyre Instructions: The 5th Duke of Argyll’s Instructions to his Kintyre Chamberlain, 1785–1805, Commentaries by Angus Martin, The Grimsay Press, Glasgow, 2011, p. 157.

  6 For descriptions of Calcutta in the late eighteenth century, see Amasa Delano, A Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, Prager, New York, 1970 (first published 1817), pp. 237–49; and JP Losty, Calcutta City of Palaces: A Survey of the City in the Days of the East India Company 1690–1858, The British Library, London, 1990, pp. 37–8, 44–5; also see Krishna Dutta, Calcutta: A Cultural and Literary History, Signal Books, Oxford, 2003, pp. 22–7; and Suzanne Rickard, ‘Lifelines from Calcutta’ in James Broadbent, Suzanne Rickard & Margaret Steven, India, China, Australia: Trade and Society 1788–1850, Historic Houses Trust of NSW, Sydney, 2003, pp. 65–93.

  7 Descriptions of ‘the Course’ in Losty, Calcutta: City of Palaces, p. 43; details of theatre in Dutta, p. 221; location of Campbell & Clark’s agency in Theatre Street, in Margaret Steven, Merchant Campbell 1769–1846: A Study of Colonial Trade, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1965, p. 19; also see Janette Holcomb, Early Merchant Families of Sydney, Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne, 2013, pp. 16–21; advertisement in Calcutta Gazette, 27 October 1796, and see Mike Nash, pp. 21–4.

  8 On the country traders, see ibid., Nash, pp. 25–8; on Storey and Campbell, see ibid., Holcomb, p. 21; names of ships from India to Sydney in David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2, edited by Brian Fletcher, AH Reed, Sydney, 1975, pp. 228–9.

  9 Description of ship, Nash, p. 35; Hamilton was born on Arran, 1 March 1759 (birth certificate no. 553/0000100094); details on Hamilton in note 46; although his Christian name sometimes appears as Guy (the name he often went by), Gavin is the name that I have used.

  10 Description of Lascars in Delano, p. 242; on their origin, see http://www.banglastories.org/the-bengal-diaspora/history/ayahs-lascars-and-princes.html and Janet J Ewald, ‘Crosses of the Sea: Slaves, Freedmen, and Other Migrants in the Northwest Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1914’, American Historical Review, February 2000, pp. 69–91, 75–6; cargo of ship and details of crew in Gavin Hamilton, Ships’ Protests of Bills 1792–1815, Judge Advocate’s Office, Archives Office of New South Wales, Ref. 5/1162: pp. 64–73; also Nash, p. 39.

  11 Details of Hamilton’s instruments drawn from Sydney Cove exhibition panels at the Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston, Tasmania.

  12 All details of the wreck are drawn from Gavin Hamilton, Ships’ Protests of Bills 1792–1815, pp. 64–73.

  13 RM Fowler, The Furneaux Group, Bass Strait: A History, Roebuck, Canberra, 1980, pp. 8–9.

  14 Details of th
e survivors’ first days on Preservation Island are also drawn from Hamilton’s ‘Protest’; from this point on, the story of the walk is related in Clark’s journal, published as ‘Narrative of the Shipwreck of Captain Hamilton and the Crew of the Sydney Cove’, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 3, pp. 760–8; Clark’s account first appeared in the Asiatic Mirror, 27 December 1797 & 10 January 1798, followed closely by the Calcutta Gazette, Thursday 28 December 1797, pp. 1, 4, January 1798, p. 1 & 11 January 1798, p. 1.

  15 A comparable journey was undertaken fifteen years earlier by the survivors of the Grosvenor, which departed from Calcutta and was wrecked on the coast of south-east Africa in 1782; see Stephen Taylor, The Caliban Shore: The Fate of the Grosvenor Castaways, Faber & Faber, London, 2004.