by Mark Mckenna
16 On shoes, see Broadbent, Rickard & Steven, p. 156 and exhibition panels, Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston.
17 Clark, ‘Narrative of the Shipwreck of Captain Hamilton and the Crew of the Sydney Cove’.
18 Old Aboriginal man speaking via his son, Budginbro, quoted in Oswald Brierly, ‘Wanderer’ Journal, voyage from Plymouth to NSW 1841–1843, p. 6, Mitchell Library Microfilm 154530(0) (continued from 153510).
19 The names of Aboriginal territorial groups do not necessarily correspond with those of language groups. Territorial boundaries, language groups, tribal names and many cultural details remain contested due to insufficient evidence. See http://archives.samuseum.sa.gov.au/tribalmap/images/maps/level_3/images/E5.jpg (Tindale), also Jutta Besold, ‘Language Recovery of the New South Wales South Coast Aboriginal Languages’, ANU PhD, May 2013, Part A, p. 63; and on Tharawal, http://www.tharawal.com.au/who-we-are; details on Wallaga Lake see http://www.eurobodalla.com.au/indigenous
20 Bundarwa, see Besold, ibid., Part B, p. 112.
21 We know that Clark was speared in his hands not from his journal but from Hamilton’s ‘Protest’.
22 This portrayal of the carpenter can be found in Reverend TF Palmer to Reverend Dr Disney, 14 August 1797; published in The Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, Vol. 12, 1817, pp. 264–6; Palmer had talked with Clark after he arrived in Sydney.
23 Clark’s thoughts on Thompson, see Palmer, ibid.
24 Account of the rescue, Governor Hunter to Sir Joseph Banks, 1 August 1797, A1787, CY 866, pp. 33–7, Mitchell Library.
25 Hunter to Duke of Portland, 6 July 1797, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. III, pp. 277–8.
26 Clark’s arrival in Sydney, Hunter to Sir Joseph Banks, 15 August 1797, letters of Governor Hunter 1795–1802, Mitchell Library, A1787, CY866, pp. 33–7; journalist’s account of his voyage in Calcutta Gazette, 14 December 1797; on early Sydney: signal mast at South Head, see http://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/16488/South_Head_signal_st_sheet_2_-_layout.pdf; first church, see http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/history_nation/religion/places/; Government House, see http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/places/national/first-government-house; wooden bridge over the Tank Stream, see MF Peron, Account of Port Jackson and Sydney Town, New South Wales, reproduced in the Bombay Courier, Vol. 20, Issue 940, 8 September 1810; the polluted state of the stream, see Collins, p. 28.
27 Reverend TF Palmer to Reverend Dr Disney, 14 August 1797; Palmer had reportedly lived for a while with the Eora, see his biographical entry, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/palmer-thomas-fyshe-2535; ‘extremity of the globe’, Matthew Flinders, Tom Thumb Journal, in Tim Flannery (ed.), Terra Australis, Text, Melbourne, 2000, p. 3; ‘unsettled part’, Collins, pp. 27–8.
28 Hunter’s account can be found in his letters to Banks, 1 & 15 August 1797; also see Hunter to Duke of Portland, pp. 277–8; Collins, pp. 27–33; Flinders’s account in Matthew Flinders, A Voyage to Terra Australis Vol. 1, W Bulmer & Co, London, 1814, p. civ.
29 Hamilton’s ‘Protest’.
30 ibid.
31 Hunter to Banks, 1 August 1797; if, as Hunter claimed, Hamilton was the last European left on the island, then Thomas Valence, who signed Hamilton’s ‘Protest’ (together with Hamilton and William Clark), was not a member of the Sydney Cove’s crew, as is often claimed.
32 ibid.; also see Hamilton’s ‘Protest’; I am indebted to James Luddington for his advice on the flora and fauna of Preservation Island; on mutton-birds, see Flinders, p. cxxxiv; and Charles Begg & Neil C Begg, The World of John Boultbee: Including an Account of Sealing in Australia and New Zealand, Whitcoulls Publishers, Christchurch, 1979, p. 61.
33 ibid., Hamilton’s ‘Protest’.
34 ibid.
35 ibid.; storm in Sydney and account of the rescue, see Collins, p. 32; also Captain Kent to Secretary Nepean, 19 November 1797, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300541h.html; and Hunter to Banks, 1 August 1797.
36 Hamilton’s ‘Protest’; Hunter to Banks, 15 August 1797; also Reverend TF Palmer to Reverend Dr Disney, 14 August 1797; Bombay Courier, Vol. 7, No. 275, 1798, 6 January 1798 (‘By the Britannia, accounts are received of the loss of the ship Sidney [sic] Cove, Captain Hamilton, which sailed from hence on the 10th of November, 1796 for Port Jackson’).
37 On spirits, see Hunter, 12 December 1796, Historical Records of Australia, p. 70 and Collins, p. 57; on Irish convicts and Bass, see Hunter to Portland, 1 March 1798, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300541h.html
38 ibid., Hunter to Portland, 1 March 1798, and Collins, p. 68; also see Lieutenant James Grant in his account of the voyage of the Lady Nelson, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. IV.—Hunter and King. 1800–02, FM Bladen (ed.), NSW Government, 1896, pp. 478–9.
39 ‘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; on Hamilton’s return to Preservation Island, see Collins, p. 58; on Clark in Calcutta, see Calcutta Gazette, 4 January 1798 (‘Messrs Campbell & Clark beg to inform their friends and the public, that Mr. William Clark and Mr. Robert Campbell, Junior, are this day admitted partners in their house, and the business will for the future be carried on, under the Firm of Campbell and Clark’); examples of articles in England and Scotland, London Packet or New Lloyd’s Evening Post, 28 September – 1 October, 1798, Issue 4540; Morning Post and Gazetteer, 28 September 1798, Issue 9275; Star, 3 October 1798, Issue 3132; Caledonian Mercury, Midlothian, Scotland, 24 September 1798.
40 Flinders and Hamilton on Preservation Island, see Dan Sprod (ed.), Van Diemen’s Land Revealed: Flinders and Bass and Their Circumnavigation of the Island in the Colonial Sloop Norfolk 1798–1799, Blubber Head Press, Hobart, 2009, pp. 17–22; also Flinders, pp. cxxxiv–xxxv; on Hunter and the wombat, see Hunter to Banks, 5 August 1797 and Henry Nicholls, ‘The Tale of a Wombat: A Journey from Australia to Newcastle upon Tyne’, Guardian Australia, 30 December 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/science/animal-magic/2013/dec/30/wombat-australia-to-newcastle-upon-tyne
41 On sealers, see Charles Begg & Neil C Begg, pp. 58–60; on sealers and Baudin, see Tim Jetson, An Island of Contentment?: A History of Preservation Island, Garrots Pty. Ltd., Launceston, 1994, pp. 7–10.
42 On Campbell’s arrival and Hamilton’s death, see Collins, p. 84; inscription on Hamilton’s grave, JH Watson’s article on the wreck of the Sydney Cove, The McIvor Times and Rodney Advertiser (Heathcote, Victoria), 11 July 1907, p. 3.
43 Clark trading in Calcutta, Calcutta Gazette, 8 August 1799 (‘Messrs John & Wm. Clark, Having relinquished their shares and Interest in the House of Campbell, Clark & Co. beg leave to advise their friends at a distance from the Presidency, that it is their intention to continue to act as agents and to supply wines and goods of every description, that may be required from Calcutta … 13th July 1799’; shortly after this, John and William Clark took up in partnership with Allan Maclean); also see Margaret Steven, Merchant Campbell 1769–1846: A Study of Colonial Trade, p. 100; Clark’s death reported in Calcutta Gazette, 8 May 1800, p. 1, also in Bombay Courier, Vol. 9, 31 May 1800, and The Bengal Obituary, Holmes & Co., Calcutta, 1851, p. 84; conclusive proof that this is indeed our William Clark came in an advertisement placed by his brother, John, in the Calcutta Gazette, 8 May 1800 (‘Notice is hereby given, that in consequence of the death of Mr. William Clark, the Co-partnership of Clarks and Maclean, is this day dissolved, and the Business will, in future, be carried on by John Clark and Allan Maclean, under the firm of Clark and Maclean. Calcutta, April 30 1800’); on Campbell, see Holcomb, pp. 21–8.
44 Dutta, p. 80.
45 ‘Will of John Clark, Merchant of Calcutta, East Indies’, 27 August 1804, Public Record Office, The National Archives, Kew, catalogue reference: prob 11/1412/291; a PDF can be found online http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D339542; his death on 21 June 1804 is recorded in Scotland’s record of births, deaths a
nd marriages (‘OPR. Deaths 5070000200182 Campbeltown’); John Clark’s death is also noted in The Scots Magazine, 1 July 1804, p. 88 (Deaths: ‘21. [June] At Campbeltown, John Clark, Esq. late of Bengal’); same also noted in Caledonian Mercury, 30 June 1804, p. 3.
46 John Hamilton of ‘The Pound’, Heathcote, Victoria, to Captain JH Watson, vice-president, Australian Historical Society, 18 April 1910, in ‘Collection of Pamphlets Consisting Mainly of Australian Biographies’, Mitchell Library, Pam file/Q921-QA920; the discovery of this letter had significant implications. It was evidence that Peter Hamilton (born in Arran) was Gavin Hamilton’s nephew, which of course meant that Peter’s father and Gavin were brothers. With the help of Jean Glen on Arran, I was then able to trace Gavin’s birth on Arran (1 March 1759). Gavin’s father, James, also fathered a son William, who later became the father of Peter Hamilton (mentioned in the letter above by his son, John Hamilton). Further proof of the Heathcote Hamilton family’s connection to Gavin can be found in The McIvor Times and Rodney Advertiser (Heathcote, Victoria), 24 July 1913, p. 2 (‘Death. Hamilton. On the 20th July, at the residence of his nephew, Harry Hamilton, Heathcote, McIvor, James Thomas Gunn Hamilton, farmer, Cornelia, youngest son of the late Captain Peter Hamilton, mariner and shipowner, Port Glasgow, 1840, and grand nephew of Captain Gavin Hamilton, commander of the ship Sydney Cove, which was wrecked on 8th Feby [sic], 1797, on Preservation Island. Born in Melbourne, 9th March 1842. A resident in the district since 1847’).
47 ibid., 12 July 1910.
48 F Campbell, of ‘Yarralumla’ Queanbeyan, to Watson, 1 June 1910, in same folder above (the letter tells the slightly altered version of the story: ‘Captain Hamilton lost the “Sydney Cove” on an island in Bass’ Straits [sic] & took to a whaleboat with several of the crew, in which they made for the mainland of Australia. They sighted land at the ninety mile Beach, but unfortunately in landing the whaleboat was upset in the surf & all drowned except the Captain & three sailors. All was lost except the clothes in which they stood. Then they started to walk along the seacoast to Sydney. The blacks frequently met them but in no way molested them. After months of painful & slow progress they did manage at last to crawl to Sydney, where the Captain was laid up by his sufferings in the Hospital, from which he died”); on Hamilton’s grave, see ‘Old Sydney Cemeteries’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 January 1897, p. 3 and The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 August 1930, p. 11.
49 ibid., Campbell; and Holcomb, pp. 21–8. Bicentenary of walk and Hamilton family visit, Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston and Verna J Cooper, The Hamilton Story of Captain Peter Hamilton and His Wife Jane and Their Ancestors in Scotland and Their Descendants in Australia, self-published, 2006 (kindly sent to me by Jean Glen in Arran); I also spoke with Della Metzke and Peter Hamilton, both descendants of Peter (nephew of Gavin) Hamilton, who perished entering Port Phillip Bay in 1842.
50 MF Peron, Account of Port Jackson and Sydney Town, New South Wales; Hunter on Bass, Hunter to Portland, 1 March 1798, Historical Records of Australia, pp. 132–3.
51 The Mercury, 14 & 15 December 1944, p. 14.
52 ‘Protest Against Disaster’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 December 1951, p. 7.
53 ‘Forgotten History’, The Argus, 16 June 1917, p. 8; The Mercury, 14 December 1944, pp. 14 & 15 December 1944, p. 8; ‘History of Bass Strait Began with Wreck’, The Mercury, 14 December 1944, p. 14; and The Mercury, 9 October 1937, p. 14; similar first white man stories were published in England; see, for example, Shields Daily Gazette, 20 February 1892, p. 5 under ‘Facts and Scraps’ (‘The first European who trod Victorian soil is believed to have been Mr. Clarke [sic], the supercargo, and some of the crew of The Sydney Cove, a vessel wrecked in 1779 [sic] on Furneaux’).
54 Gippsland Times, 20 July 1922, p. 5.
55 ‘150th Anniversary of Coal Discovery in NSW’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 August 1947; note from Tathra Plaque, from my visit there.
56 Isaac Selby, The Pilgrims of New Holland or the Wreck of the Sydney Cove, a Drama in Five Acts, 1956, manuscript, State Library of Victoria.
57 ‘Forgotten History’, The Argus, 16 June 1917, p. 8; on 1 June 1804, Governor King wrote to Lieutenant Governor Paterson regarding an ‘American Vessel, now said to be lying in Kent’s Bay among Cape Barren Islands, where the crew are building [a] Vessel from the remains of the Sydney Cove’s Wreck and other Timber which they have collected on different parts of this Coast, and have erected a Dwelling’ (Historical Records of Australia, Series 3, Vol. 1, p. 589). He instructed Paterson to place the King’s mark on any of the timbers he found so as to stop this; Paterson reached the island in November, and this was the last record of the wreck. As Mike Nash points out, it remained undisturbed for 170 years.
58 The Launceston Examiner, 4 January 1977, p. 3.
59 Mike Nash’s Sydney Cove is the authoritative source on the excavation of the wreck and the survivors’ camp, and the developing story of its heritage status.
60 http://www.ulladulla.info/sydney-cove-wreck-1797
61 http://thedirton.therocks.com/2010/08/fire-water-sydney-cove-shipwreck.html
Chapter 2 ‘World’s End’: Port Essington, Cobourg Peninsula, Western Arnhem Land
1 ‘World’s End’ in John McArthur’s ‘Notebook’, Port Essington 1838–1850, rear inside cover, Northern Territory Archives, NTRS3601; the best general historical works on Victoria Settlement are Peter Spillett, Forsaken Settlement: An Illustrated History of the Settlement of Port Essington North Australia, 1838–1849, Landsdowne Press, Sydney, 1972; Alan Powell, Far Country: A Short History of the Northern Territory, Charles Darwin University Press, 2009 (first published 1982); John Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians 1606–1985, University of Queensland Press, 1989, pp. 68–74; Jim Allen, ‘Port Essington: The Historical Archaeology of a North Australian Nineteenth-Century Military Outpost’, Studies in Australasian Historical Archaeology, Vol. 1, Sydney University Press, 2008; and Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia, Melbourne University Press, 2002, pp. 76–80.
2 ‘check-mate’, George Windsor Earl to Captain Washington, 16 August 1838, in Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, edited by Bob Reece, Northern Territory University Press, Darwin, 2002 (first published 1846), p. 16; possession ‘much debated’, J Lort Stokes, Discoveries in Australia, T & W Boone, London, 1846, p. 388; ‘immense body of light’, Henry Ennis, Remarks on Board His Majesty’s Ship Tamar, facsimile edition, Richard Griffin, Melbourne, 1983 (1825), p. 14.
3 ibid., Ennis, pp. 10–11; Ennis described the ritual of taking possession as a kind of ‘magic’ while at Fort Dundas.
4 ibid., Ennis; John Septimus Roe, Letters: The Experienced Navigator Returns to Australian Waters: The Voyage of the Tamar 15 February 1824–18 July 1825, http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemdetailpaged.aspx?itemid=910906
5 On Dutch ship, 1705, see http://www.ntlis.nt.gov.au/placenames/view.jsp?id=17911; on King’s visit to Port Essington, Phillip Parker King, Narrative of a Survey of the Inter-Tropical and Western Coasts of Australia Vol. 1, Friends of the State Library of South Australia (first published 1827), Adelaide, 2012, p. 87; on Bremer at Port Essington, see ibid., Ennis, p. 11.
6 Sydney Gazette, 25 August 1838, p. 2.
7 ibid.; on spacious harbour, The Australian, 10 March 1825, p. 3; on the future emporium, George Windsor Earl, Sailing Directions for the Arafura Sea: Compiled from the Narratives of Lieuts Kolff and Modera of the Dutch Navy, Hydrographic Office, London 1839, http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/doview/nla.aus-f2747-p.pdf
8 George Chaloupka, Journey in Time: The 50,000-year Story of the Australian Aboriginal Rock Art of Arnhem Land, Reed New Holland, Sydney, 2010 (1993), pp. 191–4; also see Marshall Clark & Sally K May (eds), Macassan History and Heritage: Journeys, Encounters and Influences, ANU Press, Canberra, 2013, especially the chapter by Maggie Brady, ‘Drug Substances Used by the Maccassans: The Mystery of the Tobacco Pipe’, and her reference to Y
olngu informants claiming some of their people had ‘lived in Maccassar for many years’, p. 257; in addition, see ‘Trip of the Flying Cloud to Port Essington’, Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 20 February 1874, p. 3, in which Jack Davis ‘remembered the officers and men of the old settlement; he had been to Singapore and China with a Captain Bisset; and he said he could speak Malay as well as English’.
9 Bruce Birch, ‘Confalonieri’s Manuscripts’, in Stefano Girola and Roland Pizzini, Nagoyo: The Life of don Angelo Confalonieri among the Aborigines of Australia 1846–1848, Fondazione Museo Storico Del Trino, pp. 107–54, 108–9.
10 On rock art, see George Chaloupka, Journey in Time, pp. 191–92; on Indigenous place names in Cobourg today, see http://www.environment.gov.au/node/35961
11 On church, see Stokes, p. 385; on arrival at Port Essington, see George Augustus Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, with an Introduction by RHW Reece, NTU Press, Darwin, 2002, pp. 5, 32–4.
12 ibid., Earl; on Barker, see Mulvaney, Encounters in Place, p. 69; on Smyth, see John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838, UNSW Press, 2002, p. 74.
13 ‘not a soul among us’, Earl to Captain John Washington, 16 August 1838, in JM Cameron (ed.), Letters from Port Essington 1838–1845, Historical Society of the Northern Territory, Darwin, 1999, p. 15; otherwise, Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, pp. 32–40.
14 ibid., Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, pp. 59–60; ‘venetian blinds’ quoted in Cobourg Peninsular Historic Sites, Gurig National Park Volume 1, Conservation Plan, Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory, November 1999, p. 14; Bremer to Barrow, Secretary of the Admiralty, 9 February 1839, in Cameron (ed.), Letters from Port Essington 1838–1845, p. 26; details on Miro and other Aborigines, also ‘bringing in honey’, see ‘Port Essington’ in The Australian, 20 July 1839, p. 3.
15 McArthur to ED Thomson, 20 September 1842; on architecture at Port Essington, see David Bridgman, Acclimatization: Architecture at the Top End of Australia, Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Canberra, 2003, pp. 4, 18–21.