Time and time again during those first years we are shown that tribal divisions could cut deeper than race. Nonetheless I have made only the best-attested clan identifications, because too often the evidence we have is unclear. For example: because I remain in doubt as to the precise referent of ‘Eora’, the most popular collective term, which seems to have meant ‘we people here’, with the referent depending on context, I have avoided using it.
For the ‘tribes’ David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 1, London, 1798, A. H. and A. W. Reed, Sydney 1975, Appendix I, esp. p. 453, and John Hunter, An Historical Journal of Events at Sydney and at Sea 1787–1792, [1793], edited John Bach, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1968, pp. 274–5.
For a persistent inquiry into these obscure matters, see Keith Vincent Smith, Bennelong: The Coming In of the Eora, Sydney Cove, 1788–1792, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 2001.
DANCING WITH STRANGERS
Friendly encounters were not restricted to the British. French explorers in Australia, transient visitors and some with Rousseau’s writings tucked into their kits, were typically even readier to project active good will than were the British. When some officers and men from de Freycinet’s voyage landed at Shark Bay in Western Australia and suspected they might be under threat of attack, one of the officers had his men begin to dance in a circle, an old Australian man joined them—and laughter expunged aggression. Jacques Arago tells us that the French navigator Bruny d’Entrecasteaux’s sailors were so moved by their enthusiastic welcome in Van Diemen’s Land in February 1793 that they stripped off their clothing to present to their new friends. A naturalist graciously helped a young girl into his pantaloons while the expedition’s botanical artist submitted to having the visible parts of his person blackened with charcoal, so being made a more agreeable colour. We also know that Baudin’s expeditioners, either in a burst of patriotic fervour, covert imperialism or sheer mischief, taught ‘La Marseillaise’ to Western Australian people in 1802, so preparing a fine surprise for later visitors.
Paul Carter makes much—perhaps rather too much—of such moments of mimicry in his Living in a New Country: History, Travelling and Language. See especially chapter 8 for his account of what happened in 1801 when Matthew Flinders’ Investigator visited ‘St. George’s Sound’.
For Tierra del Fuego, Charles Darwin, A Naturalist’s Diary, chapter X.
For dancing, see plate 3, William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales: The Journal of Lieutenant William Bradley R. N. of HMS Sirius, 1786–1792. Facsimile reproduction, Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales, Sydney 1969. Original manuscript held in Mitchell Library, Sydney.
For ‘Marlbrooke’ and singing, Watkin Tench, Watkin Tench: 1788, edited and introduced by Tim Flannery, The Text Publishing Company, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 42–3; John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales by John White Esq., edited A. R. Chisholm, The Royal Australian Historical Society, Angus and Robertson, 1962, pp. 110–11, 152–4.
For solving the sexual puzzle, Philip Gidley King, The Journal of Philip Gidley King: Lieutenant, R. N. 1787–1790, edited by Paul Fidlon and R. J. Ryan, Australian Documents Library, Sydney, 1980, pp. 32–5.
For clowning pantomimes, John Bayley, Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch, Duckworth, London, 1998, p. 43.
For ‘La Marseillaise’, J. Arago, Narrative of a Voyage Around the World, London, 1823, p. 172.
MEETING THE INFORMANTS
For full references see bibliography, and for the mutual borrowings the ‘Note on Sources’ which precedes it.
For David Collins’ letters to his father dated 23 March 1791 and 17 October 1791, see John Currey, David Collins: A Colonial Life, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2000, p. 71, p. 76.
GOVERNOR ARTHUR PHILLIP
Arthur Phillip, The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, [1789], edited and annotated by James J. Auchmuty, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1970, passim. This is a composite work, incorporating ‘Contributions from Other Officers of the First Fleet’, maps and natural history illustrations. The volume was pulled together for publication in 1789 to catch the market with the first news from the new colony. It incorporates reports from Phillip to various recipients up to November 1788. While it cannot be relied on for exact wordings, it is reasonable to assume the tenor and emphases are his.
See also Phillip in John Hunter, An Historical Journal of Events at Sydney and at Sea 1787–1792, [1793], edited John Bach, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1968, pp. 299–375. Another selective account drawn from Phillip’s official reports for the period from July 1790 to the departure of the Gorgon in December 1791. Hereafter ‘Phillip in Hunter’.
For accounts of his first meetings with the Australians see Phillip to Lord Sydney, 15 May 1788, Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. 1, part 2, p. 129, and Phillip, Voyage, chapter 6, esp. pp. 48–9.
For the material benefits he intended to bring, e.g. Phillip, Voyage, pp. 76–9.
For Phillip’s letter of July (?) 1788, see Mitchell ms C 213, transcribed in Alan Frost’s unpublished, unpaginated notes. (I thank Professor Frost for his generosity here, and throughout this enterprise.)
For Phillip the hasty sailor, Bowes Smyth, Journal, pp. 47, 62–4. For Phillip on land e.g. Journal, pp. 67–9, 74–6. For Bowes Smyth’s radiant account of another Tahitian idyll, the month he spent in the islands on his voyage home, again on the Lady Penrhyn, in July 1788, see pp. 99–110. A sample of his euphoria:
There cannot be a more affectionate people than the Oteheiteans nor is any country more capable of affording refreshments of various kinds both animal and vegetable, to Ships long at Sea, or any people more ready to part wt. them & all for the trifling barter before mention’t vizt. Hatchetts, Knives, old Hoop, Lookg. glasses, red feathers &ca. &ca.
(Ibid. p. 106.) On p. 105: ‘These Girls are total strangers to every idea of Shame in their Amours…This day I was tattowed on both arms…’
For Worgan’s opinions, George B. Worgan, Journal of a First Fleet Surgeon, The Library Council of New South Wales, Sydney, 1978, esp. p. 3.
For the Morton discussion, see Anne Salmond’s absorbing study, Between Worlds: Early Exchanges between Maori and Europeans, 1773–1815, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1997.
On the later trade with Tahiti, see Collins, Account, 2, p. 238.
For a lesson not learnt, William Dampier, A New Voyage Around the World: The Journal of an English Buccaneer, [1697], Hummingbird Press, London, 1998, p. 221.
For the English intellectual world most elegantly analysed see Alan Atkinson’s The Europeans in Australia: A History. Vol.1; The Beginning, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1997, and for ‘a panorama of his [Phillip’s] life and times’, and the literary dimensions of that world, Alan Frost, Arthur Phillip 1738–1814: His Voyaging, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1987. For the dynamic controversies centring on the transportation of convicts, John Hirst, Convict Society and its Enemies: A History of Early New South Wales, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1983.
CAPTAIN JOHN HUNTER
Jane Austen, quoted Gillian Dooley, Australian Book Review, March 2002, p. 47. Dooley draws attention to Noel Purdon’s pursuit of the nautical connection in Austen in ‘a splendid brace of articles written for the Adelaide Review in 1987’. Ibid. p. 45.
For a magnificent brief essay on the great Stubbs, Robert Hughes, Nothing If Not Critical, The Harvill Press, London, 1999, pp. 43–6.
For Hunter, An Historical Journal, passim; for the shooting scene, Hunter, Journal, pp. 56–7, and chapter 3 passim; for the Australian woman and the baby, pp. 96–100; for the quoted comment on savages, pp. 41–3.
Granted, the rescue of the woman and baby was a single case. E. P. Thompson has taught us how little chivalry or compassion tempered ‘Old Corruption’ at home. There is an occasional whiff of that pervasive corruption in the colony, too, but I think there it was challenged by an emerging culture of professionalism, especially in its naval manifestation.
However—for a necessary corrective to Jane Austen, see any of the works of E. P. Thompson, but most conveniently ‘The Peculiarities of the English’, in his The Poverty of Theory, Merlin Press, London, 1978, pp. 35–91, esp. p. 49, and ‘The Patricians and the Plebs’, in his Customs in Common, Merlin Press, London, 1991, pp. 16–96.
SURGEON-GENERAL JOHN WHITE
For White’s establishing of the health regimen on board ship, White, Journal, pp. 48–50; for the amputation, pp. 85–6; for his amorous adventures in port, pp. 83, 97–9.
For the airy grating between the sexes, p. 63; for the girl and the buttons, p. 160.
Arthur Bowes Smyth reports a fine compliment paid to Phillip in Rio. ‘At night the town was most beautifully illuminated & the Tops of the Churches & several Monasteries also, in honour of the Commodore who had some years ago been employ’d with much credit in the Portuguese Service…’ See Bowes Smyth, Journal, esp. pp. 28–30.
For the officer’s comment on the slave trade, Rienits, Biographical Introduction, White, Journal, p. 21; for White’s figures on the numbers lost on the voyage over, ibid. p. 231 n. 11; Phillip to Sydney, 12 February 1790, Historical Records of Australia, ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 144; Rienits p. 20. For discrepancies see Collins, Account, 1, p. 534.
On birds’ songs, or noises. Tench, 1788, pp. 73–4; Collins, Account, 2, p. 66. Jacob Nagle noticed when he was charting around Botany Bay that when they landed on a ‘small island with lofty trees and no under wood, but like a grass plat’, it was ‘so numerous with smal birds call’d parrekeets that we could scarcely hear when we spoke to each other’. Jacob Nagle, The Nagle Journal: A Diary of the Life of Jacob Nagle, Sailor, from the year 1775–1841, edited John C. Dann, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, New York, 1988, p. 100. Nagle’s life as represented in his journal is so picturesque as to raise doubts regarding its authenticity, but his distinguished editor is persuaded that Nagle really was at all the places he claimed he was, and his account of how he handled the surf at Norfolk Island after the Sirius was wrecked persuaded me he was there. See esp. Nagle Journal, pp. 121–2. See also the shipwright Daniel Paine: ‘Of Birds there are great numbers of all Sorts excepting singing birds of which none have as yet been found’—and Paine was writing in 1796. His assessment of the Australians is even bleaker than those of the most dismissive First Fleeters. The Journal of Daniel Paine 1794–1797, edited R. J. B. Knight and Alan Frost, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1983, p. 37, p. 39.
For White’s biographical details, Rex Reinits’ fine ‘Biographical Introduction’ to White’s Journal, passim.
JUDGE-ADVOCATE DAVID COLLINS
For Collins’ motives in keeping his Account, see Fletcher, Introduction, Collins, Account, 1, App. XV; for George Worgan’s comments to Dick Worgan, 2 July 1788, quoted in John Cobley, Sydney Cove, 1788, Hodder and Stoughton, Sydney, 1962, p. 173, pp. 180–90.
For an agricultural metaphor painfully elongated see Collins’ ‘Advertisement’ for his second volume, Account, 2, xiii; for convict solidarity, Collins, Account, 1, p. 28; for the raid on the British fishing party, Collins, Account, 1, p. 29.
For Collins’ life, Fletcher in Collins, Account, 1, p. 519, n. 33, and especially Currey, David Collins: A Colonial Life.
WATKIN TENCH, CAPTAIN-LIEUTENANT OF MARINES
Tench, 1788. See also L. F. Fitzhardinge’s superb backnotes to his edition of Tench’s narratives: Sydney’s First Four Years, being a reprint of A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay and A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson by Captain Watkin Tench of the Marines, with an introduction and annotations by L. F. Fitzhardinge, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1979.
On language, Tench, 1788, fn. p. 195; Tench on sharks, p. 76.
For W. E. H. Stanner see After the Dreaming: The Boyer Lectures 1968, ABC, Sydney, 2001, pp. 44–5. For Stanner’s terse history of Aboriginal–European interactions over that early period, see his ‘The History of Indifference Thus Begins’ (1963) in White Man Got No Dreaming, pp. 165–97. As will become clear, I think more can be done to retrieve Australian intentions than Stanner allows.
For the probable identity of the little boy on the beach, see Fitzhardinge, Sydney’s First Four Years, pp. 82–3, n. 6.
On canoes, James Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyage of Discovery edited by J. C. Beaglehole, 4 vols., Hakluyt Society Extra Series xxxiv, Cambridge, 1955, vol. 1., p. 283, p. 301; Bradley, quoted in Tim Flannery, The Birth of Sydney, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999, p. 55; Hunter in Hunter, p. 44.
SETTLING IN
For La Pérouse and for the islanders’ attack on his men, and the order to settle Norfolk Island, Philip Gidley King, The Journal of Philip Gidley King: Lieutenant, R. N. 1787–1790, edited by Paul Fidlon and R. J. Ryan, Australian Documents Library, Sydney, 1980, pp. 36–40. King gives an envious description of the ‘Philosophic instruments’ on the French ships which were ‘fitted out with the greatest liberality’.
For the attack see also Phillip, Voyage, chapter 7, for a typical disclaimer: ‘This fatal result from too implicit a confidence may, perhaps very properly, increase the caution of Europeans in their commerce with savages, but ought not to excite suspicion. The resentments of such people are sudden and sanguinary, and, where the intercourse of language is wanting, may easily be awakened by misapprehension.’ For the (utopian) instructions to King regarding Norfolk Island, pp. 71–4.
For the wild night of the landing of the convict women see, e.g., Bowes Smyth, Journal, p. 67, and Flannery, The Birth of Sydney, pp. 60–1. Bowes Smyth, luckily for his peace of mind, slept on board ship that night.
For the King’s Birthday festivities, Worgan, Journal, p. 28, p. 40; White, Journal, pp. 140–4. Phillip’s account corrects the women convicts’ issue to a quarter pint. See also Cobley, 1788, p. 158, and for the White/Balmain quarrel, Cobley, 1788, p. 220. For Tench on the play, Tench, 1788, p. 109. Note: pace Thomas Keneally’s The Playmaker, there is no evidence that Ralph Clark had anything to do with the play’s production.
On dogs and dingos: Ralph Clark, Journal and Letters 1787–1792, Sydney, 1981, p. 32, p. 50; Hunter, Journal, pp. 46–7; Collins, Account, 1, App. VI, p. 469; Phillip, Voyage, chapter 22, p. 275.
For Major Ross’s letter to Nepean, Flannery, The Birth of Sydney, pp. 81–2.
For Collins’ existential swoon in the harbour inlet, Collins, Account, 1, p. 57, note.
For the body on the path to Botany Bay, Collins, Account, 1, p. 34. See also Tench, 1788, pp. 55–6; for the durability of the ‘China’ story, Tench, 1788, pp. 211–12.
On the deteriorating conditions in the colony see e.g. Collins, Account, 1, p. 81, pp. 96–7; for Maxwell, see Nagle, The Nagle Journal, pp. 85, 105–6, 109, 111, 131; Collins, Account, 1, pp. 80, 83, and also p. 551, n. 8. For Collins on the condition of the convicts, Collins, Account, 1, pp. 99–100.
WHAT THE AUSTRALIANS SAW
For White on the fishing incident, Journal, pp. 153–4.
For Furneaux in Van Diemen’s Land, ‘The History of New Holland’ in Phillip, Voyage, p. 305.
For the old man and the spade, Tench, 1788, p. 146; Phillip, Voyage, p. 45.
For Australians’ hunger and the consequences of the British presence, Phillip to Sydney, 2 July 1788, in Alan Frost’s transcription in his ‘The Papers of Arthur Phillip (1738–1814)’, unpublished ms.
For Tench’s reflections on the landing, Tench, 1788, pp. 43–5.
For the how-will-we-cross-the-water story see Hunter, Journal, p. 107.
For W. E. H. Stanner’s reflections, White Man Got No Dreaming, p. 218, p. 162.
For an unforgettable account of the physical toughness of Arnhem Land hunters seventy years ago, see Nicolas Petersen’s compilation from Donald Thomson’s papers, Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land, Currey O’Neil Ross, South Yarra, 1983. Note especially the rigours of the goose hunt.
For an elaboration on the austere ecological hand dealt the Australians, and a penetrating analysis into the consequ
ences, see Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, Chatto and Windus, London, 1997, especially chapter 15. This volume deserves to be read end to end, with its steady exposition of facts too large for us to notice. It contains the most comprehensive and systematic arguments against cultural arrogance, or even cultural complacency, I know.
ARABANOO
For the friendly incidents of July 1788, Collins, Account, 1, p. 29.
For Arabanoo’s anguish, Collins, Account, 1, p. 496.
For Tench on Arabanoo, Tench, 1788, pp. 95–108.
For the smallpox hypothesis, Judy Campbell, Invisible Invaders: Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia 1780–1880, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2002. The question has been elegantly and decisively analysed by Alan Frost in his Botany Bay Mirages: Illusions of Australia’s Convict Beginnings, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 190–210.
ENTER BANEELON
For the seizing of Baneelon and Colbee and its aftermath, Hunter, Historical Journal, pp. 114–16; Tench, 1788, pp. 117 et seq. For Bradley’s participant account, A Voyage to New South Wales, pp. 181–3. I urge readers to seek out a copy of Bradley, which is reproduced in facsimile, to enjoy both the smooth elegance of his handwriting and his skill as a watercolourist.
For Australian naming practices, Collins, Account, 1, App. XI, p. 504. For Tench on Baneelon’s prowess as a fisherman, Tench, 1788, p. 260. For Baneelon’s many names see Keith Smith’s list in his Bennelong, Appendix, pp. 159–6.
For Plains Indians, see e.g. Karl N. Llewellyn and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Cheyenne Way: Conflict and Case Law in Primitive Jurisprudence, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1941.
On Phillip and his clothing strategy, and a description of Baneelon, Phillip in Hunter, Historical Journal, pp. 269–70; on Colbee and Baneelon’s comparative rank, p. 116.
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