Buckley's Chance

by Garry Linnell

  But that will never happen. Just a couple of months after the funeral a motion to posthumously pay the 88-pound gratuity to William Buckley is withdrawn by the Legislative Council of Victoria. There is no explanation given, but even the most charitable will not have a difficult time suspecting whose hand might be behind this final snub.

  It is a move that incenses John Morgan. The old newspaper editor, who has never used one word when he could use 20, takes out a lengthy advertisement in the local Hobart papers railing against the decision. ‘The Government of Victoria has refused all assistance to the widow of the late William Buckley, in aid of the payment by her of the expenses of hospital, lodgings, medical and other attendance and of the funeral,’ says Morgan. ‘These expenses and liabilities amount to nearly fifty pounds which, it was hoped, the Victorian Government would have paid and also that its legislature would have voted an annuity for the widow, sufficient to afford her food and shelter; she being … nearly blind, and therefore incapable of labour.’

  Morgan announces that he has secured the mayors of Hobart Town and Launceston to preside as Treasurers over a fund that will hopefully raise enough money to pay off the debts and ‘whatever balance may remain shall be applied (by weekly stipend) for the support of the widow, so long as it may last’.

  Nothing further exists on the record as to the success of Morgan’s fund-raising campaign. But a century and a half later the faded admissions book for St Mary’s Hospital will show the amount owing of three pounds and six shillings was never paid.

  Your death, her failing eyesight and all those debts are too much for Julia. Six months after the funeral, a small, sad paragraph appears buried deep in the columns of the Hobart Courier.

  ‘The widow of the late well-known Mr Buckley is an inmate of H. M. General Hospital, laboring under temporary aberration of mind.’

  It’s hard to think of that tiny woman with the lilting Irish accent slowly going mad, locked away amid all that squalor, her vision fading, alone with her grief, her future bleak without you.

  But surely, in her more lucid moments, Julia can still remember the days when she, like so many others, walked with a giant by her side.

  OTHER LIVES

  Julia Buckley never fully recovered from her ‘temporary aberration of mind’ or her fading eyesight. She moved to Sydney in the years after William’s death to be with her daughter Mary Ann and son-in-law. She died in the Hyde Park Asylum on 18 August 1863. She was 49.

  Mary Ann Jackson also died at the age of 49 on 17 May 1883. According to a death notice in the Sydney News, she passed away from ‘cerebral apoplexy’ – what doctors now call a stroke. She was buried in the Balmain cemetery and was survived by her husband and 10 children. Her two eldest daughters were married in the months after her death.

  John Morgan lived for another 10 years after the death of his friend William Buckley, passing away in April 1866 at the age of 74. He was married and had one daughter. According to the Tasmanian Morning Herald: ‘In late days Mr Morgan had fallen into considerable pecuniary distress in consequence of his having been unable to obtain settlement of certain claims for a remission order for land.’ One of his biographers, Peter Bolger, would write: ‘He died in 1866 as he had lived – lonely, annoyed and frightened.’

  John Batman was 38 when he died, effectively broke after borrowing heavily to buy land. He was buried in the old Melbourne cemetery but was later exhumed and placed in the Fawkner cemetery, named after his nemesis. His home on Batman’s Hill was taken over by the government shortly after his death and used as administration offices. By 2018 a social movement to erase his name from public places and monuments culminated in the federal seat of Batman being renamed Cooper in honour of an Indigenous rights activist. Several ‘Batman’ parks around Melbourne were also in the process of being renamed. Bronze sculptures of Batman and John Fawkner were also removed from the streets of Melbourne by the city council and placed in storage. Despite its flaws, his formal agreement with the Kulin people in 1835 remains the only treaty ever offered to Australia’s original inhabitants.

  John Pascoe Fawkner remains widely commemorated around Melbourne, including the two suburbs Fawkner and Pascoe Vale. Several parks and a private hospital also honour his name. He hand-wrote the first nine editions of Melbourne’s first newspaper, the Port Phillip Patriot, and, after weathering financial problems in the 1840s, emerged as one of the city’s most influential and controversial figures. He never lost his hatred for the Port Phillip Association and made rancorous speeches in the Legislative Council against squatters. While regarded as a liberal who pushed for greater rights for married women and a relaxation of divorce laws for deserted wives, he unsuccessfully opposed moves to introduce universal manhood suffrage – the concept of ‘one man, one vote’. A year after his death in 1869, Fawkner’s 70-year-old wife Eliza married 44-year-old John Walsh. She died at the age of 79 and was buried with her husband.

  James Bonwick published more than 60 books and papers, ranging from school textbooks and his biography of John Batman to screeds on Irish druids and the wool trade. He was appointed archivist for the New South Wales government and also transcribed a great deal of original source material for the Queensland government. He dabbled in mysticism and never lost his passion for the temperance movement. He died at the age of 89 in 1906 in Sussex, survived by five children.

  David Collins’ wife, Maria, petitioned the Colonial Office several times requesting financial aid after the death of her financially ruined husband in Hobart in 1810. She was granted an annual allowance of 120 pounds in 1813 in ‘consideration of her husband’s services …’ She died in 1830.

  King George III suffered a major relapse of his mental illness in 1810 after the death of his much loved daughter, the 27-year-old Princess Amelia. The following year, as George descended into permanent insanity, almost blind and racked with severe rheumatism, the Parliament passed the Regency Act, allowing the Prince of Wales to act on his behalf until George’s death at the age of 81 in 1820. George III fathered 15 children – two died in childhood. His reign continues to divide historians. Some have labelled him a tyrant, others viewing him as a more benevolent leader who steered England through the greatest social and political upheavals in millennia.

  Sir George Arthur was recalled against his wishes from Van Diemen’s Land in 1836 and went on to become Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada and, in 1842, Governor of Bombay. The architect of Tasmania’s Black War died a wealthy man, in part due to his heavy investments in land during his tenure in Van Diemen’s Land. These investments were described by some critics of the time as a ‘matter of notoriety’.

  John Helder Wedge left Port Phillip in 1838 for England. When he returned to Van Diemen’s Land five years later following the death of his father, he married Maria Medland Wills. Wedge was 50 at the time and Maria died in childbirth a year later. He became a member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council and went on to serve in the short-lived ministry of the second Premier of Tasmania, Thomas Gregson. Wedge died in 1872 at his home on the Forth River in the island’s north-west. He was 79.

  Alexander Selkirk returned to pirating after his rescue by Captain Woodes Rogers. He famously led a crew in pursuit of several wealthy Spanish women who had fled up a river in Ecuador, seizing gold and jewels hidden inside their clothing. He completed an around-the-world voyage as sailing master of the Duke in 1711. Selkirk later joined the Royal Navy and, while serving on an anti-piracy mission off the coast of Africa in 1721, died of yellow fever and was buried at sea. He was 45.

  Foster Fyans was an influential figure in the founding of Geelong, a derivation of the Wadawurrung word Djillong (‘land’ or ‘cliffs’). In 1840 he was named Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Portland area pastoral district. Prone to hosting balls with turban-wearing servants, Fyans’ eccentricities also included hiding jewels and diamonds in homemade furniture. He married Elizabeth Cane in 1843. She died 15 years later at the age of 42. Fyans died in 1870. He was about 80
years old.

  Robert Knopwood served as a magistrate and clergyman in early Hobart until 1828. He never lost his liking for strong drink and entertaining. His work habits were criticised as ‘dissipation’ by NSW Governor Lachlan Macquarie. He retired on an annual pension of 100 pounds and also received a series of land grants, but his later years were beset with financial problems and bitterness toward Lieutenant-Governor Arthur. Knopwood was at one stage accused by the bushranger Michael Howe of being connected to his gang. The reverend also adopted a young girl, Elizabeth Mack, shortly after the death of her mother. She lived with him for many years and Knopwood was shattered by her death in childbirth. He died in 1838 at the age of 75. His diaries remain one of the few first-hand records of the difficult early years in Hobart.

  James Hingston Tuckey was captured by the French along with the rest of the crew of the Calcutta in 1805. During his nine-year imprisonment he married Margaret Stuart, the daughter of an East India Company ship commander. He also wrote a monumental and highly acclaimed work on maritime geography, a 2500-page tome published in four volumes. The captain of the Calcutta, Daniel Woodriff, praised Tuckey in an inquiry into the capture of the ship, saying ‘his courage, cool intrepidity and superior abilities as a seaman and officer … render him most worthy of the attention of the Admiralty’. Tuckey died in October 1816, off the coast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His diaries about his journey into the Congo were published posthumously. His wife and four surviving children were granted pensions by the Prince Regent on behalf of the incapacitated King George III.

  William Marmon, Buckley’s regimental colleague who sailed with him on the Calcutta and formed part of the escape party in late December 1803, made it back to the settlement at Sullivan’s Bay suffering from scurvy, just in time to join the Ocean as it sailed for Van Diemen’s Land. He became a free man in 1818 and advertised his intention to leave for England in 1821.

  Captain William Lonsdale acted as Chief Magistrate of Port Phillip until 1840 when he became the colony’s sub-treasurer. By the early 1850s he was Victoria’s first colonial secretary and treasurer until he left for England in 1854. He died in London in 1864.

  Joseph Johnson married his housekeeper, Jane Baird, 11 months after the death of his first wife, unaware that ‘Baird’ was already married to an Englishman, William Hadden. When Jane left him following the arrival in Hobart of her original husband, Johnson advertised that he was not responsible for any debts she may have incurred. She later made successful claims for much of his property.

  Reverend George Langhorne oversaw the establishment of Port Phillip’s first Aboriginal mission, believing he had been asked to encourage the ‘intermixture by marriage of the Aborigines among the lower order of our countrymen as the only likely means of raising the former from their present degraded and benighted state’. The project was an abject failure marked by food shortages, police brutality, political tension and the inability to understand Aboriginal culture and customs. It was closed in 1839 as pressure by white settlers for more land increased. Langhorne became a pastoralist and died in 1897.

  William Lushington Goodwin’s constant attacks on the Establishment of Van Diemen’s Land cost him hundreds of pounds in defamation payments. He sold the Cornwall Chronicle after being declared bankrupt in 1842 but continued to act as proprietor. He then underwent a significant rehabilitation, becoming an alderman on the Launceston City Council and being appointed to several senior government positions. He died in 1862 at the age of 64 in George Town, Tasmania. Goodwin’s wife, Sophie, continued to manage the Chronicle until it was merged with the Launceston Times in 1869.

  WADAWURRUNG CLAN NAMES AND LOCATIONS

  Clan name

  Approximate location

  Barere barere balug

  Colac and Mt Bute stations

  Beerekwart balug

  Mt Emu

  Bengalat balug

  Indented Head

  Berrejin balug

  Unknown

  Boro gundidj

  Yarrowee River

  Burrumbeet gundidj

  Lakes Burrumbeet and Learmonth

  Carringum balug

  Carngham

  Carininje balug

  Emu Hill station, Lintons Creek

  Corac balug

  Commeralghip station, and Kuruc-a-ruc Creek

  Corrin corrinjer balug

  Carranballac

  Gerarlture balug

  West of Lake Modewarre

  Keyeet balug

  Mt Buninyong

  Marpeang balug

  Blackwood, Myrniong, and Bacchus Marsh

  Mear balug

  Unknown

  Moijerre balug

  Mt Emu Creek

  Moner balug

  Trawalla station, Mt Emu Creek

  Monmart

  Unknown

  Neerer balug

  Between Geelong and the You Yangs (Hovells Creek?)

  Pakeheneek balu

  Mt Widderin

  Peerickelmoon balug

  Near Mt Misery

  Tooloora balug

  Mt Warrenheip, Lal-lal Creek, west branch of Moorabool River

  Woodealloke gundidj

  Wardy Yalloak River, south of Kuruc-a-ruc Creek

  Wada wurrung balug

  Barrabool Hills

  Wongerrer balug

  Head of Wardy Yalloak River

  Worinyaloke balug

  West side of Little River

  Yaawangi

  You Yang Hills

  Source: Clark (1990)

  THE FIRST PEOPLE

  In the 1830s up to 60,000 Aboriginals were believed to live across the land that later became the state of Victoria. Less than a century later an estimated 500 remained. While they were subjected to the same pressures of frontier violence, introduced diseases and dislocation experienced by Indigenous people elsewhere in Australia, the occupation of their lands in Victoria took place at an unprecedented pace. The pastoral and grazing invasion decimated traditional food sources, from kangaroos and other fauna to the yam daisy, forcing more to turn to towns where the ready availability of sugar, rum and tobacco compounded other emerging health problems. Alcoholism, dysentery, typhus fever and syphilis shattered families and traditional clan structures and among the hardest hit were the tribes who originally lived around the Melbourne area – the Woiwurrung and the Boonwurrung. Four years after a group of clan leaders from these tribes signed the so-called Batman treaty, little more than 200 remained.

  In that same year, 1839, George Augustus Robinson was appointed Port Phillip’s Chief Protector of Aborigines following a recommendation from a British government inquiry. Robinson, a believer in conciliation, had been responsible for the relocation of most of the remaining Tasmanian Aboriginals to Flinders Island, particularly the Big River and Oyster Bay people. By 1835 there were fewer than 150 Tasmanian Aboriginals left from an estimated population of more than 5000 before white settlement. Robinson’s time in Victoria was unimpressive as Aboriginal people were lured or herded into remote missions, often in unfamiliar land or in territory previously occupied by rival tribes. Several other initiatives supported by London, including the introduction of a Native Police Force, also ended in failure.

  The ratio of deaths attributable to violence for Aboriginals and whites in this era was 12:1 and the Wadawurrung were among several tribes that suffered significantly at the hands of unauthorised hunting parties. By the end of the 1860s the majority of Wadawurrung had been moved to reserves and missions away from traditional lands.

  A census in 1871 reported only 65 Aboriginals remaining in Wadawurrung country.

  ‘… with eyes fixed on some distant object …’ A portrait of William Buckley in his final years in Hobart. Drawn by Nicholas Chevalier and engraved by Frederick Grosse. The image is based on an oil painting by Ludwig Becker. (State Library of Victoria)

  ‘… still grimly hanging on to life, still sucking the last of the marrow from those medieval
bones.’ The 1200-year-old oak tree in Marton, Cheshire – Buckley’s birthplace. Its bark was used by locals to ward off illness and warts. (John Beresford)

  ‘… unforgettable scenes of carnage.’ The British-Russian invasion of North Holland in 1799 in which Buckley was injured. More than 12,000 men died and 25 ships were lost in a devastating blow to the English. (Painting by J. A. Langendijk)

  ‘No hint of the madness to come … [or] foam forming in the corner of his mouth.’ King George III in his early 20s following his coronation in 1760. His 59-year reign spanned one of the most turbulent eras in British history. (Painting by Allan Ramsay)

  ‘I was considered the thief and though innocent sentenced to transportation for life.’ The Sussex Weekly Advertiser report of William Buckley’s death sentence, and subsequent reprieve, on 9 August 1802.