From the Edge

by Mark Mckenna

  16 Marine journeys inland, Lieutenant Peter Benson Stewart, 16 November 1838, in Cameron (ed.), Letters from Port Essington, p. 21; ‘charm of novelty’, Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, p. 38; crocodiles and white ants, Bremer to Captain Francis Beaufort, Hydrographic Office, London, 9 December 1838, in Cameron, Letters from Port Essington, pp. 16–17.

  17 Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, p.18; missing sailor found, ‘Port Essington’, The Australian, 20 July 1839 p. 3; Aboriginal bushcraft, Lieutenant PB Stewart’s journal of an expedition into the interior of the Cobourg Peninsula, May 1839, in Cameron (ed.), Letters from Port Essington, pp. 54–8; fish floating to the surface, Alfred Searcy quoted in Philip A Clarke, Australian Plants as Aboriginal Tools, Rosenberg, Sydney, 2012, p. 51.

  18 French officer quoted in Cameron, introduction to Letters from Port Essington, p. 7; bottles found, Allen, ‘Port Essington’, p. 48; d’Urville’s visit, Cobourg Peninsular Historic Sites Gurig National Park Volume 1, p. 14; Allen, ‘Port Essington’, p. 93; and Edward Duyker, Dumont d’Urville: Explorer and Polymath, Otago University Press, 2014, pp. 404–11.

  19 Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, p. 7 (Reece’s introduction) and p. 62; McArthur was the nephew of wool pioneer John Macarthur.

  20 On the cyclone, McArthur in Allen, ‘Port Essington’, p. 120; ‘Port Essington and the Passage to Timor and Swan River, from the Remarks of Commander Owen Stanley, H.M.S. Britomart’, Nautical Magazine, September 1840, pp. 583–4.

  21 Mulvaney, Encounters in Place, p. 69; Bridgman, p. 21.

  22 Waiting for letters, see Stokes, p. 384; on McArthur’s exasperation, see his letters, especially to ED Thomson, 24 August 1843 and to GW Hope, 28 November 1844, in Cameron (ed.), Letters from Port Essington, pp. 131–2, 139–42.

  23 Stanley’s production of the play, Cobourg Peninsular Historic Sites Gurig National Park Volume 1, p. 15; on Reynolds’ Cheap Living, see Google Books; Hutchings, see Henry Keppel, A Visit to the Indian Archipelago, Richard Bentley, London, 1853, pp. 174–5; on games, see McArthur to Gipps, 3 September 1841, in Cameron, Letters from Port Essington, p. 96.

  24 HJ Firth & JH Calaby (eds), Fauna Survey of the Port Essington District, Cobourg Peninsula, Northern Territory of Australia, CSIRO, 1974, pp. 2, 7, 10.

  25 Examples include Jim Allen and Peter Corris (eds), The Journal of John Sweatman: A Nineteenth Century Surveying Voyage in North Australia and Torres Strait, UQP, 1977; Alexander Sibbald, Diary, Northern Territory Archives, Manuscript; Henry Keppel, A Visit to the Indian Archipelago.

  26 ibid., Sibbald, Diary.

  27 The Journal of John Sweatman, pp. xxvii, 146–7.

  28 ibid., McArthur to James Stephen, 20 September 1842, in Cameron (ed.), Letters from Port Essington, pp. 106–10.

  29 On Neinmal, see John MacGillivray, Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, vol. 1, T & W Boone, 1852, pp. 152–6 and Mulvaney, Encounters in Place, p. 70.

  30 McArthur to Gipps, 2 November 1840, in Cameron (ed.), Letters from Port Essington, p. 78; Sibbald, Diary; details on Jack Davis, on-site information, Victoria Settlement.

  31 The Notebook of John McArthur, Manuscript, Northern Territory Archives; Gipps to Lord Stanley, 15 December 1845, and McArthur to GW Hope, 28 November 1844, in Cameron (ed.), Letters from Port Essington, pp. 139–42, 168; Victoria was never conceived as a convict settlement, although nineteen convicts worked there as stone masons in 1844–45 (Cobourg Peninsular Historic Sites, Gurig National Park Volume 1: Conservation Plan, Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory, November 1999, p. 23).

  32 EM Webster (ed.), An Explorer at Rest: Ludwig Leichhardt’s Journals, Melbourne University Press, 1986, pp. 19–23.

  33 ibid., p. 23.

  34 ibid., pp. 23–44, 69; on Leichhardt’s return to Sydney, see South Australian Register, 29 April 1846, p. 3.

  35 Citta del Vaticano, Roma, Archivio Propaganda Fide, Seritt Riferite nei Congressi, Oceania, 1842–1845, T.2 548–1067, Leaf 993, Letter from the Propagation of the Faith, Lyon, 19 July 1845, guaranteeing ‘quarante mille francs’ for the mission to Australia; Leaf 995–6, another letter from Cardinal Fransoni, Prefetto della S. Congne de Propaganda Fide, Roma, dated 15 July 1845 includes a guarantee of 100 ‘franche’; also see leaves 1002–03, Angelo Confalonieri (in London) to his superiors in Rome, 12 September 1845; and Rolando Pizzini, ‘Angelo Confalonieri in Australia’, in Stefano Girola and Rolando Pizzini (eds), Nagoyo: The Life of don Angelo Confalonieri …’, pp. 31, 44, 47; Archbishop Polding in Sydney believed Catholic missionaries would help to stem the settlers’ determination to emulate the Portuguese and Spanish in the Americas by enslaving the natives or hunting them to extinction; see Nagoyo, pp. 48–50.

  36 The best account of Angelo’s shipwreck is in The Journal of John Sweatman, pp. 114–16; on his treks in the Alps, Maurizio Dalla Serra, ‘A Biographical Profile of Angelo Confalonieri’, in Stefano Girola and Rolando Pizzini (eds), Nagoyo, p. 28; Angelo writing of his plight, see his letters written in May 1846 and published belatedly in The Sydney Chronicle, 6 January 1847, and another letter published in the same paper on 16 January 1847; on his intention to establish a mission before the Protestants, see Angelo’s letter to Rome, shortly before his departure from Sydney in April 1846, Citta del Vaticano, Roma, Archivio Propaganda Fide, Seritt Riferite nei Congressi, Oceania, 1846–1847, T.3, leaves 26–7 (my thanks to Nick Eckstein for this translation).

  37 immensa distanza, see Angelo Confalonieri’s letter to Propaganda Fide, 1 October 1847, Citta del Vaticano, Roma, Archivio Propaganda Fide, Seritt Riferite nei Congressi, Oceania, 1846–1847, T.3, leaf 791; also, Angelo’s letter in The Sydney Chronicle, 16 January 1847, p. 3; details of Angelo’s hut, Oswald Brierly Journal, Manuscript only, undated, 1848, H.M. Rattlesnake, North Australian Coast, Mitchell Library.

  38 The Journal of John Sweatman, p. 116.

  39 Angelo quoted in Rolando Pizzini, ‘Angelo Confalonieri in Australia’, in Stefano Girola and Rolando Pizzini (eds), Nagoyo, p. 61; his boast at having mastered their language, Angelo Confalonieri’s letter to his superiors in Rome, 4 October 1847, Citta del Vaticano, Roma, Archivio Propaganda Fide, Seritt Riferite nei Congressi, Oceania, 1846–1847, T.3, leaf 792; on Jim Crow, The Journal of John Sweatman, p. 148; on Angelo at Port Essington, also see Spillett, Forsaken Settlement, pp. 146–8.

  40 Angelo’s map, Bruce Birch, ‘Confalonieri’s Manuscripts’, in Stefano Girola and Roland Pizzini, Nagoyo, pp. 147–52.

  41 Angelo’s beautifully written ‘Specimen of the Aboriginal Language or Short Conversation with the Natives of North Australia Port Essington 1847’, ‘Angel. Confalonieri. Mis. [Missionary]’ is attached to his letter to Rome, dated 4 October 1847, Citta del Vaticano, Roma, Archivio Propaganda Fide, Seritt Riferite nei Congressi, Oceania, 1846–1847, T.3, letter and manuscript, leaves 794–807; Confalonieri produced an earlier draft of this manuscript in 1846, which varied slightly from the 1847 document he sent to Rome. The earlier draft is held in the Sir George Grey Collection of the Auckland City Libraries in New Zealand; Bruce Birch is the authority on both manuscripts. See his ‘Confalonieri’s Manuscripts’ in Stefano Girola and Rolando Pizzini (eds), Nagoyo, pp. 107–52.

  42 The Journal of John Sweatman, p. 116; also see TH Huxley’s Diary of the Voyage of HMS Rattlesnake, edited from the published Manuscript by Julian Huxley, Doubleday & Co, New York, 1972 (first published 1936), p. 116.

  43 ibid., Huxley, p. 117; The Journal of John Sweatman, p. 116; on ‘closely related’ languages and skin name see Bruce Birch, ‘Confalonieri’s Manuscripts’, in Stefano Girola and Roland Pizzini, Nagoyo, pp. 108–14, 120–4.

  44 ‘esteemed man’, McArthur to Polding, quoted in DF Bourke, The History of the Catholic Church in Western Australia, undated, Archdiocese of Perth; denying God, John MacGillivray, Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 1, p. 158; McArthur recorded dining with Angelo in his ‘Notebook’; the description of Dunbar’s visit is in Oswald Brierly, Jour
nal, Manuscript only, H.M. Rattlesnake, North Australian Coast, undated entry but November 1848.

  45 ibid., Brierly, Journal; curtains blowing, Brierly, Journal with Sketches, H.M. Rattlesnake, North Australian Coast, Port Essington, Manuscript, Mitchell Library.

  46 ibid., Brierly, Journal with Sketches, 9 November 1848.

  47 ibid., 11 November 1848.

  48 ibid., 15 November 1848.

  49 Sibbald, Diary.

  50 ‘great desert’, John Beete Jukes, Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Fly’, T & W Boone, London 1847, p. 363; ‘Malay curry’, Brierly, Journal with Sketches, 15 November; ‘beyond keeping the houses’, The Journal of John Sweatman, p. 140; ‘sombre …’, Jukes quoted in Alan Powell, Far Country: A Short History of the Northern Territory, Charles Darwin University Press, 2009, p. 45; ‘barren’, The Colonist, 14 July 1836, p. 2; McArthur on the ‘mimic Babel’, in his crucial letter to GW Hope, 28 November 1844, in Cameron, Letters from Port Essington, p. 141.

  51 ‘blot …’, ‘Abandonment of Port Essington’, South Australian Register, 21 November 1849, p. 3; T Huxley, Diary of the Voyage of HMS Rattlesnake, pp. 113–16; McArthur’s poems are in his ‘Notebook’, Manuscript, Northern Territory Archives; ‘pent-up’, Brierly, Journal with Sketches, 11 November 1848; ‘nostalgia’, Edward Duyker, Dumont d’Urville: Explorer and Polymath, p. 411; Huxley’s ‘ill-managed hole’, quoted in Iain McCalman, Darwin’s Armada, Viking (Penguin), Camberwell, Victoria, 2009, p. 193.

  52 Henry Keppel, A Visit to the Indian Archipelago, p. 150; Brierly, Journal with Sketches, 16 November 1848.

  53 ibid., Keppel, p. 154, and on his impressions of Port Essington and Aboriginal people, pp. 153–90.

  54 ibid., Keppel, p. 190; death of men while loading in Cobourg Peninsular Historic Sites Gurig National Park Volume 1, p. 27.

  55 ibid., Keppel, p. 190.

  56 ‘busy pushing capitalists’, McArthur to GW Hope, 28 November 1844, in Cameron (ed.), Letters from Port Essington, p. 140.

  57 Extracts from the private log of T Beckford Simpson, Master of the Barque General Palmer when employed by Her Majesty’s Colonial Government to make enquiries after Dr Leichhardt and his party, 2 June 1851; ‘ring-fence’, Sir John Barrow, quoted in Alan Powell, Far Country, p. 45; on Australian failed settlements, see Graham Connah, ‘It Didn’t Always Work: Investigating the Sites of Failed Settlement’, Chapter 4 in his The Archaeology of Australia’s History, Cambridge University Press, 1993; overseas examples of failed colonial settlements are numerous; see Ed Wright, Ghost Colonies: Failed Utopias, Forgotten Exiles and Abandoned Outposts of Empire, Millers Point, 2009; and Robert Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion, London, 1996, pp. 84–5.

  58 Cobourg Peninsula today, see National Parks information site, https://nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/200069/garig-gunak-barlu-national-park.pdf; on environmental legacy of the settlement, John Mulvaney, Encounters in Place, p. 74; on ‘Flash Poll’, see Alfred Searcy, In Australian Tropics, George Robertson & Co., Sydney, 1909, pp. 57–8, and ‘A Visit to the Abandoned Settlement of Port Essington’, South Australian Register, 18 May 1891, p. 6; on Jack Davis, ‘Trip of the Flying Cloud to Port Essington’, Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 20 February 1874, p. 3; on objects collected from Port Essington see ‘Encounters’ exhibition online, http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/encounters/mapping/port_essington & the exhibition catalogue, Encounters: Revealing Stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Objects from the British Museum, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, 2015, pp. 76–81. Traces of Port Essington’s story resurfaced in surprising ways. In 1977, composer Peter Sculthorpe wrote ‘Port Essington: for Strings’, a 6-movement piece he described as his ‘most Australian work’. Borrowing an Aboriginal chant originally recorded by AP Elkin, Sculthorpe transformed it into a ‘European idiom’, imitating the marines’ borrowing of Aboriginal words, movement and dance. See the liner notes to Sculthorpe’s ‘Port Essington’, 1977, ABC Classics ABC454504-2, 1996, originally commissioned for Thomas Keneally’s script for the ABC television film on Port Essington in 1974.

  59 Kangaroo dance on the deck of the Meander, Keppel, A Visit to the Indian Archipelago, p. 190.

  60 Iwaidja to English, free translation by Bruce Birch.

  61 George Chaloupka, Journey in Time: The 50,000-Year Story of the Australian Aboriginal Rock Art of Arnhem Land, pp. 45–6, 191–2, 214; the image of Leichhardt became public knowledge in 2009; see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-03-08/traditional-owners-unveil-leichhardt-rock-art/1612708.

  62 rock art as ‘history book’, Ronald Lamilami quoted by Sally K May et al., ‘Painting History: Indigenous Depictions and Observations of the “Other” in Northwestern Arnhem Land, Australia’, Australian Archaeology, No. 71, December 2010, pp. 57–65.

  Chapter 3 ‘Hip Bone Sticking Out’: Murujuga and the Legacy of the Pilbara Frontier

  1 My thanks to Rio Tinto and my guide, Mandy Leeming; information sheet provided by Rio.

  2 George Seddon, ‘Visions of the Pilbara’, in Ann Hamblin (ed.), Visions of Future Landscapes: Proceedings of the Australian Academy of Science 1999, Canberra, 1999; Iain Copp, Geology & Landforms of the Pilbara, Government of Western Australia, Department of Environment and Conservation, Kensington, 2011, pp. 2, 5.

  3 Nichola Garvey, A Sense of Purpose: Fortescue’s 10-Year Journey 2003–2013, Fortescue Metals, Perth, 2013, p. 123.

  4 On the ‘Climbing Men’, see Mike Donaldson, Burrup Rock Art: Ancient Aboriginal Rock Art of Burrup Peninsula and Dampier Archipelago, Wildrocks Publications, Mount Lawley, Western Australia, 2009, pp. 177–85; Ken Mulvaney has documented ninety-three archaic faces in the Dampier Archipelago, with only forty-five known on the Australia mainland, fourteen of which can be found in the hills above Karratha.

  5 Nicolas Rothwell, ‘A Void Is Peopled Once Again’, The Weekend Australian, 21 September 2013.

  6 Denis Vairasse, ‘The History of the Sevarites or Sevarambi (1677–1678)’, in Umberto Eco, The Book of Legendary Lands, Quercus, London, 2013, p. 339.

  7 Phillip Parker King, Narrative of a Survey of the Inter-Tropical and Western Coasts of Australia, Vol. 1, Marsden Horden & Friends of the State Library of Adelaide, 2002 (first published 1827), pp. xvi, 31, 37.

  8 Today there is West Lewis Island and East Lewis Island. These would have looked as one from a distance.

  9 King, pp. 29–49.

  10 FT Gregory, Journal, 17 May and 12 October, in Augustus Charles Gregory and Francis Thomas Gregory, Journals of Australian Explorations, James C Beal, Government Printer, Brisbane, 1884, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks14/1402621h.html

  11 ibid., Appendix.

  12 Susan Hunt, Spinifex and Hessian: Women’s Lives in North-Western Australia 1860–1900, UWA Press, Perth, 1986, pp. 14–15.

  13 Seddon, p. 161.

  14 On Aboriginal population of the north, ibid., p. 11; on Yaburara’s population, see TJ Gara, The Aborigines of the Dampier Archipelago: An Ethno-History of the Yaburara, n.p., 1990–96, p. 1; on British sovereignty, see Geoffrey Bolton, Land of Vision and Mirage: Western Australia Since 1826, UWA Press, 2008, p. 5 & http://www.wanowandthen.com/Edmund-Lockyer.html

  15 ibid., Gara, p. 41.

  16 Richard Thatcher, ‘The Pearl Station on the North West Coast’, The Herald (Fremantle), 30 October 1869, p. 3 and ibid., Gara, p. 39.

  17 Patricia Vinnicombe, Dampier Archaeological Project: Resource Document, Survey and Salvage of Aboriginal Sites, Burrup Peninsula, Western Australia, Western Australia Museum, 1987, p. 6.

  18 ‘First Settlement in the North West’, Diary of Charles Nairn, May 1863 – March 1864 (Karratha Library); numbers of sheep in the north sourced from information provided by Karijini Visitors’ Centre, Karijini National Park, 2015.

  19 ibid., Nairn.

  20 Guy Wright & Leonie Stella, Pearling in the Pilbara 1860s – 1890s, Research Unit, Native Title Tribunal, 2003 (held at National Library of Australia), pp. 11–14.


  21 ‘Swarms’ of pearling boats, Alexander McRae, 1868, quoted in ibid., p. 12; pearls in Aboriginal culture, p. 9.

  22 Wright & Stella, p. 1.

  23 R. Sholl quoted in Gara, The Aborigines of the Dampier Archipelago, p. 16.

  24 Wright & Stella, pp. 14–17.

  25 Quoted in Gara, The Aborigines of the Dampier Archipelago, p. 11.

  26 The Inquirer and Commercial News (Perth), 1 April 1863, p. 3; this includes the evidence of ‘Jacky’ and in a separate article, Sholl’s report, and in another article, the report of Alexander McRae. Gara aside, the best account of the Flying Foam Massacre (and the early history of north-west Australia) is Kay Forrest, The Challenge and the Chance: The Colonisation and Settlement of North West Australia 1861–1914, Hesperian Press, Carlisle, Western Australia, 1996.

  27 ibid., report of Alexander McRae.

  28 Withnell’s report is also published in The Inquirer and Commercial News, 1 April 1863, p. 3. Sholl’s letter is quoted in Forrest, The Challenge and the Chance, p. 61.

  29 Sholl in Perth Gazette and WA Times, 5 June 1868, p. 3.

  30 Quoted in Tom Gara, ‘The Flying Foam Massacre’, in Moya Smith (ed.), Archaeology at ANZAAS, Western Australian Museum, 1983, pp. 90–1; Gara’s article (pp. 86–94) is the most reliable article on the massacre. He was the first to point out the fact that Withnell’s party carried no chains or handcuffs to apprehend the murderers. He quotes both the Aboriginal evidence and Taylor. Also see Forrest, The Challenge and the Chance, p. 63.

  31 McRae quoted in Wright & Stella, p. 18.

  32 Mount Alexander Mail, 20 April 1868, p. 2.

  33 Quoted in Noel Olive, Enough Is Enough: A History of the Pilbara, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2007, p. 55.

  34 Perth Gazette and WA Times, 14 August 1868, p. 2; Rowland’s trial (he received a 12-year sentence) is covered in Forrest, The Challenge and the Chance, p. 62; a useful list of the legislation relevant to Aboriginal people in WA in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be found at http://www.noongarculture.org.au/list-of-wa-legislation/