A note on Structure


Land Exploration: 1817-1819



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Land Exploration: 1817-1819


In September 1817 Benjamin Singleton mounted a small expedition to explore the country between the Colo and MacDonald Rivers. He was accompanied by an Aboriginal man, who may have been Miles. Somewhere around Putty he turned back.344
Between October – November 1817 Thomas William Parr accompanied by Benjamin Singleton undertook a journey to Putty and the west of Mt. Yengo. Singleton left the party and returned early. Parr’s party reached the headwaters of the MacDonald River before making his way back. At Wheelbarrow Ridge they met a party of Aboriginal people, some of whom came from Richmond, and they were guided to McDougal’s farm on the Colo.345
In April 1818 Benjamin Singleton set off again with four settlers and a Aboriginal man. On the tenth night out they camped at the foot of a mountain and during the night they were “Disturbed by the Voice of Natives Cracking of Sticks an Rolling By with stones down towards us every man of us arose an fled from the fire secreting ourselves behind trees with our guns an ammunition”. On the following day at Mount Monundilla he encountered “upwards of two hundred Natives who Had Never seen a White Man before except one the name of Mawby who could speak a little English.” Mawby advised Singleton that he would find a tidal river two days to the north east. Not believing that this was the Hunter and fearing attack, Singleton returned. 346
John Howe, with five settlers and two Aboriginal men, one of whom was Miles, set out in late October 1819 in search of a route to the Hunter River. On the 1st of November at Burrowell Creek (to the east of Putty) they “fell in with a Natives Camp in No about 60 many of which had never seen a white man and more had never seen a Horse many young ones run away, and others got up trees for fear - Stopt to dinner and distributed about 7nor 8 doz biscuits among them”. On the 4th of November the Aboriginal guides from Burrowell pointed to “Coomer Roy” (Kamileroi country). “Coomer Roy” survives today as Comleroy Road which for many years was the only way to cross the Colo River. Howe reached the Hunter River in thirteen days, but he did not believe he had found it, thinking he had found a river that flowed further north into Port Stephens. The route Howe had found was not, however, suitable for waggons.347
On 27th November 1819 Commissioner Bell questioned Lieutenant Archibald Bell, about his son William, who had followed John Howe’s northwards explorations to the Hunter. “Boottie” is a reference to Putty. Bell’s claim that “some of them have expressed a wish that My son would come to reside at Boottie” was more opportunistic than optimistic. Andy Macqueen, in Somewhat Perilous, 2004, examined the expeditions from the Hawkesbury into the Hunter and showed that the role of the Bells in exploring the area was slighter than what Lieutenant Bell claimed.
‘You do not apprehend the natives would oppose any settlement that might be made in the district your son has discovered?

I do not; several of them have expressed a wish that My son would come to reside at Boottie the name they give to the district.348

Do they shew a great facility in acquiring the English Language?

A Wonderful facility, & they have very great imitative powers particularly in ridiculing peculiarities of persons.’349
Louis de Freycinet led an expedition in L’Uranie to the South Seas and NSW in 1817-1820. Part of his orders were “to add new particulars to the history of savage nations”. Freycinet who had been here in 1802 arrived in November, 1819 and left shortly afterwards. During his stay he spent time with Piper, Judge Field, and the Macarthurs. He spent a fortnight travelling to Bathurst via Prospect and Regentville.
Jaques Arago, the ship’s artist, stayed at John Oxley’s Kirkham property, which adjoined the Macarthurs where he saw Aboriginal people. In Souvenir d’un aveugle: Voyage autor du monde, Hortet et Ozanne, Paris, 1839, Arago described his observations of the natives including a conversation with John Oxley which was particularly illuminating regarding his comments on declining Aboriginal numbers and his use of the word conquest.
“I don’t want you to leave my home without making some acquaintance with the men who roam these solitudes, and who are disappearing little by little, especially since our fire-arms deprive them of resources they used to have before our conquest.”350
The artist Alphonse Pellion sketched two Aboriginal men, Tara and Peroa, at their camp on the Nepean. Both men were wearing coats, but not pants. Significantly these men were portrayed in a dignified manner. Neither displayed the drunkenness or degradation that the English were commenting on at this time.
In December1819 Myles went back and was shown a better route by local Aboriginal people to the Hunter. Myles later took Howe over the route.351
In 1821 the Reverend George Augustus Middleton and John de Marquett Blaxland undertook first cattle drive to the Hunter. Middleton was going to take up clerical duties in the Hunter where he had a 400 acre glebe grant. Blaxland was to expand his family’s cattle holdings into the Hunter. The Bell's took up land at Patrick's Plains in 1821 and George Bowman was granted Arrowfield and Archerfield in 1824 on the Hunter. Trouble broke out in 1825 when the early Hawkesbury settler Joseph Onus's352 station on Wollombi Brook was plundered. 353

1823: Confusing evidence - Bell’s Line of Road


The first printed account of Archibald Bell junior’s crossing of the Blue Mountains appeared in the Sydney Gazette, Thursday 9th of October 1823. It has only passing resemblance to modern understandings of the crossing.
“We are happy to announce that Mr Archibald Bell, jun of Richmond Hill, has, after one unsuccessful attempt, at last effected a passage from that part of the country to Cox's River (on the other side of the Blue Mountains), which as the pass across these mountains tends so much to the northward, will not only be the readiest route from the Hawkesbury and Hunter's River, but will be as near from Paramatta, as the old road over the mountains by way of Emu ford, and infinitely less difficult and sterile. Mr. Bell is entitled to the sole merit of this discovery; and is now gone to repeat and survey the route accompanied by a gentleman from the surveyor general's office, and with government men and horses.”
Barron Field essentially plagiarised the Gazette in his account of 1825.
‘Since this was written, Mr. Archibald Bell, jun. of Richmond Hill, has, after one unsuccessful attempt, effected a passage from that part of the country to Cox's River, which as the pass across the mountains trends so much to the northward, will not only be the readiest route from the Hawkesbury and Hunter's River, but will be as near from Paramatta, as the old road over the mountains by way of Emu ford, and infinitely less difficult and sterile. Mr. Bell is entitled to the sole merit of this discovery, and the route has since been surveyed by a gentleman from the surveyor general's office’.354
Modern understandings of Archibald Bell Jnr.’s crossing of the Blue Mountains have been largely shaped by Cooramill, Hawkesbury Herald, 15th January 1904, and Alfred Smith, Windsor and Richmond Gazette, 8th January 1910. Their accounts share in common a story of half a dozen to a dozen Aboriginal women of the Belmont mob being kidnapped by warriors from over the Blue Mountains. One of the women escaped and returned via what is now Bell’s Line of Road which led to young Archibald discovering the new route. The story of the kidnapped woman has become firmly cemented into the Hawkesbury consciousness; despite the inherent improbabilities of there even being six to ten Aboriginal women at Belmont at that time; let alone that any of them would have revealed the route to a settler.
Cooramill’s account like Smith’s was recorded many years after the events. It is unclear what his source was. (I have excluded a few sentences which are irrelevant from the account.)
‘When speaking of the blacks in a former paper, I mentioned the Belmont tribe as being numerous. They and the Piper’s Flat tribe often came into contact. It appeared that their battle were principally to rob each other of their gins. The Piper’ Flat blacks would come over the mountains by way of Springwood, cross the Grose River, and surprise the Belmont tribe. It was, I think, the last battle between these two tribes that was the cause of Bell’s line of road being opened.

…

As I before stated, it was through the last battle between the Belmont and Piper’s Flat blacks the road was opened. It appears the latter were victorious, and carried away six of the Belmont gins, and in about six days one of the gins returned alone, but from a different direction than by the way she was taken off; and when questioned she pointed to the Big Hill (Kurrajong Heights),355 saying, “that feller.” This event caused some surprise, not only to the Bells, but to the blacks also, as it was thought there was no other way of getting over the mountains than by Springwood. Mr. Bell, after a little term, organized a party, taking the gin with them, and blazed a track through to what is now Lithgow, for which Mr. Bell was amply rewarded by the authorities. Hence Bell’s line of road.’356


Alfred Smith, 1831-1917, was brought up by George James, one of the Hawkesbury’s earliest police officers. Smith may have got account from James. While it was possible that there may have been two Aboriginal men called Cockey on Bell's farm it is unlikely. Cockey was certainly killed in 1816.357 It is also highly unlikely that there were even nine or ten gins at Belmont let alone that number being taken away in 1823.
‘“Belmont” in the early days was a great place for blacks. Some blacks belonging to Piper’s Flat came over and took away about nine or ten gins while the Belmont blacks were away. Some little time later, after one of the gins turned up at Belmont on a Sunday. They were all surprised to see her come back by herself. The whites asked her which way she came, and she pointed up to the present Kurrajong Heights. She told them she came that way over the mountain, and a man could get that way on horseback. Mr. Archibald Bell, son of the old man Bell took two men with him (old William McAlpin was one) and two blackfellows, “Cocky” and “Emery” and a couple of pack horses.358 They went as far as Lithgow (Brown’s Swamp in those days). Mr Bell found out that a bridle track could be made to bring stock over. He reported it to the proper authorities and was sent back to mark a line. I believe he got something like 400 pounds for doing it. That is how it came to be called Bell’s Line.’359
Sarah Louise Matthew, wife of Felton Mathew, accompanied her husband on his surveying expeditions in 1833-34. Her journal came to the National Library of Australia in 1938 and was published by the Royal Australian Historical Society in 1943. Young Archie accompanied the Mathews on a river journey from Windsor to Wiseman’s in February 1833 before leaving them to go to his Hunter River estate. His crossing of the Blue Mountains would have been a topic of conversation.360 In March 1834 the Mathews visited Belmont before journeying up Bell’s Line of Road, camping “at Bilpen a farm of Mr. Howell’s about four miles from the cut rock”.361 In describing Archibald’s road she recounted that the “track was shown by a native to Mr. Archie Bell, and he explored it as a road to Bathurst, at the time when a new route thither was being sought”.362
Archibald Bell’s diary of the crossing did not come into the possession of the State Library till 1977. A transcription was published by R. Else-Mitchell in the 1981 Journal of the Royal Historical Society. Bell’s diary makes no mention of an Aboriginal girl. It does, however, show that Bell followed the traditional settler discourse of ascribing an active role for settlers and a passive role for Aboriginal people. If one rejects this model and assumes an active role for the Aboriginal people then it becomes clear that Bell was deliberately led astray without his knowledge. On the 3rd of August Bell followed a road, which he noted that was completely overrun with Brush and that on four times our Native Guides were forced to ascend a tree to look for the road. There can be little doubt that the Aboriginal people hugely enjoyed their role of misguiding Archibald.
‘ found a very level Ridge the land appears generally excellent for cultivation on this we headed Big Venne363 the Road is completely overrun with Brush that we found it impossible to travel more than Six Miles in a Straight Direction this Day. And four times this Day our Native Guides were forced to ascend a tree to look for the road. We this Night found ourselves within 4 miles of the foot of a mountain Distinguished by the Natives by the name of Tomah Which is a Round Hill plainly seen to the Right of the Weather-Boarded-hut.364 All this way we found Plenty of excellent Water on both sides of the Road’.365
There can be little doubt that when Bell attempted a crossing of Mount Tomah on the 5th of August his guides had deliberately directed him away from the “road”.
‘We this Day began Compass the back of the mountain which we found so Steep and Slippery that in many places our Horses Slipt Down some Yards and as we Descended we found it continue to get Worse. We returned back and made various attempts at Different Places but still found ourselves more Perplexed at every attempt the Natives themselves had told us from the time we Started that this Hill would put them out though they thought they could find a good passage Down it.’
Bell came back in September 1823 and found the saddle between Mount Tomah and Mount Bell. When the road was made the descent was so steep it became known as “Jacob’s Ladder”.366
His diary also throws some light upon the confusion of settlers attempting to transcribe Aboriginal words. On the 1st of August 1823 Archibald Bell Jnr. “Left Currajong Mills367 about 1 O’Clock and crossed two blind creeks onto the main Ridge and Stopped that Night at a place called by the Natives Coolematta”. On the 2nd of August he recorded travelling on a Remarkable Level Ridge Called by the Natives Bulcamatta.368 On the 5th of August he reached “the top of Coolmatta”. “Coolematta”, “Bulcamatta” and “Coolmatta” were almost certainly the same ridge. By the time G. M. C. Bowen took up his grant at Berambing in 1829 it had become “Bulgamatta”.
Some of the more interesting pieces of confusion concerning the Bell’s crossing of the Blue Mountains can be found in the Wikipedia entries for Bilpin369 and Archibald Bell, Jr.370 According to the Bilpin website “The town was originally named after Archibald Bell, Jr., - Bilpin = "Bell's Pin", (pin as in pinnacle) an adventurous man who crossed the Blue Mountains at the age of nineteen in 1823”. The “Archibald Bell, Jr.” website states that Archibald Bell Jr., gave his name to “Mount Bell, Bell Range, the town of Bell, Bell’s Line of Road and Bilpin was originally named ‘Belpin’”. As yet I have not found any evidence of Bell coining the word “Belpin”. A collection of early variations on the name can be found in Meredyth Hungerford’s work on Bilpin. James Raymond, author of The New South Wales Calender and Directory recorded “Belpin” in 1823. Mrs. Felton Mathews recorded “Bilpen” in 1834.371 However, “Pulpin” was one of the native guides of 1816372 who was rewarded with a breastplate by Governor Macquarie;373 and “Bilpin” was recognised as an Aboriginal word in the Hawkesbury Advocate, 20th April 1900,374 suggesting the linking of Bell to Bilpin is tenuous.

1817-1831: Disease


Interpreting historical records of disease among Aboriginal people in this period is difficult. Firstly, references to disease among Aboriginal people were often as an addendum to outbreaks among Europeans. Secondly, there are only a few direct references to the Hawkesbury. While one can extrapolate from the records that what was happening in one part of the County of Cumberland was also happening in another; it was not necessarily so, e.g., in the case of small pox a carrier could entirely miss a small isolated group on the move. Thirdly, contemporary understanding of the causes, nature and treatment of disease in the early nineteenth century were extremely limited. Thus the relationship between declining Aboriginal birth rates and gonorrhoea was largely unnoticed because knowledge of differences between sexually transmitted diseases and their effects was little understood.
Measles, whooping cough and scarlet fever were unknown among Aboriginal children. There may have been a measles outbreak in newly settled districts in the 1830’s.375
Judy Campbell has noted that colds and influenza (catarrh) led to Tuberculosis (consumption),376 another disease unknown to Aboriginal people that appeared in Sydney in the 1790’s.377 In 1820 the Russian Antarctic explorer, Captain Bellingshausen, called into Sydney on the way to Antarctica and commented upon consumption and dysentery among Aboriginal people.378 Settlers often attributed to the presence of these diseases among Aboriginal people to their poor resistance to cold weather.

August 1820: Influenza


‘A cough has pervaded for the last month, which would require men of the first science to dip into its etymology. From the state of the atmosphere we may be allowed considerably to judge ; and yet so universal has been the disorder, that it has visited us more in the shape of influenza than in the ordinary visitation of colds and coughs. From the medical gentlemen of the Colony we should have expected something upon this head. We should have happily recorded anything from them upon the subject; but, having received nothing of the kind, we are necessarily compelled to notice that which receives notice from no other quarter. For the last month a cold has been gradually growing and in the last fortnight it has been terribly confirmed. Scarcely a family in Sydney has escaped; men, women, and children have fallen under the same disaster; coughs and colds run through every family; and it is only to be accounted for from the state of the atmosphere. - Now we have watched the atmosphere; and find westerly winds, inclining to the southward, have been extremely prevalent. Whether the sudden changes of the wind from west to south may be the cause we know not. We know that our blights come from the north-west; and how to account for this blighting: cold, which seems to have almost affected everybody, and many dangerously, it is impossible to make out. - It has all the appearance of a specific contagion, not proceeding from a weak and relaxed habit of body, but from a humid state of the atmosphere. We do not hear that it has been attended by any considerable degree of inflammation. The pulsation has been considerably altered, but without circumstances indicating gangrene; the breath has been altered; hoarseness has ensued; the loss of voice has in many places almost taken place; and in children, who have not the means of complaining, their parents and nurses ought indeed to be particularly attentive to them. Doctor Hooper recommends gentle acids, termed subacids. The cough is met with a phlegm, and the patient, however young, should be incited to expectorate, that is to persons who do not understand the word to throw off the phlegm as fast as they conceive it, and a free expectoration, that is, a total throwing off the phlegm from the stomach, will relieve it ; and children ought to be particularly instructed in this habit. It is difficult, and little children are not capable of attending to the advice of their parents and guardians, but considerable care should be used. The fever of Batavia, that sweeps so many off every year, cannot be compared to anything worse than the distemper now predominating here, whether called influenza or febris malignatae. Water gruel is its chiefest cure; a dark room, total tenderness of deportment, and gentle acids, such as weak lemonade, which will cool, heal, and prevent the painful cough.’379
‘A letter from a Medical Gentleman of Bunbury Curran,380 gives an interesting account of the mortal efficacy of the late influenza that raged throughout the Colony for many weeks with increased violence, and particularly among the scattered tribes of natives. After giving the account of his own confinement by a severe visitation of the malady, and his lady being on the verge of suffering under the like disaster, the letter proceeds to state that the natives of the interior had suffered excessively from the same cause, which had produced a great mortality; and that many young stout and robust people among them had become its victims, during the winter. In one severe instance a father, a very stout man, not exceeding forty years of age, with the mother and two daughters, and the infant of one of them, had all been carried off within the space of a month, leaving but one alive, a male about three year old, very distressed, until taken into protection by a European inhabitant of the settlement. Some cases, this Gentleman observes, appeared to him to have terminated in inflammation of the lungs; and that they had for the most part quitted the thinly wooded and more open tracts of the interior, and betaken themselves to the sea-coast, and brushy and broken country, where were quantities of honey, and where they would undoubtedly remain until the return of summer. That these poor people should suffer intensely under every such contagion is not to be wondered at, when their state of privation from all comforts of life is considered; and that when prevented by bodily ailment from seeking their precarious means of sustenance, they are likely to become victims to famine, as unhappily from distemper. Thirty years ago a prodigious mortality was spread among them by a contagious distemper resembling the small pox,381 of which the indented marks remained on many till very lately; and which, had it continued to rage any longer, would probably have left but few alive in our vicinity.
The natives of Broken Bay, and other tribes, not very distant from Sydney, reported that the calamity had proved fatal to many of them; and one, who was considerably intelligent, being enquired of the cause, gave it as his firm and unalterable opinion that it was owing to the putrescence of a whale that had gone on shore to expire on a neighbouring part of the coast, which, as is reported of the Upas in the island of Java,382 had communicated its direful effluvia to a great distance, and if imbibed among living subjects, would there as well as here spread a contagion, only that the Upas killed so suddenly, that those who were affected never lived to join in the community they had left; and, however indescribable, however undiscernable the causes that had operated with us, yet the opinion of this native would appear to have been somewhat held out by the knowledge that some months ago a whale was fastened on by a boat, headed by Mr. Murray, of South Head, and escaped although so severely wounded as to deny the supposition of its long surviving. Its spreading throughout whole and many families would appear to denote that it was communicative from person to person, and that if contracted by any one, the whole in the same close connexion were liable to receive the contagion. Many have witnessed the effects, but we have not heard that its causes have been as yet defined.’383
The death of Rowland Hassall from influenza in August 1820 saw a passing reference to its impact on Aboriginal people, ‘the first visitation of influenza: The complaint was general, many of the inhabitants were consigned to the grave in a few days, from the violence and fury of the attack, and some few have to this day the remains of the visitation still as a painful companion. Great numbers of the poor aborigines fell victim to this novel and severe distemper. Mr. Rowland Hassall, a gentleman universally loved as a pious, benevolent, and valuable member of society, and who had been a resident in the Colony for over twenty years, died August 30th, 1820.’384
Aboriginal numbers on the Sydney Plain were declining. William Walker, the missionary noted on “a visit to Windsor in November 1821 he did not see any Aboriginal people.”385

June 1822: Tuberculosis


Another Russian traveller, A.P. Shabel'sky, in June 1822 noticed the impact of tuberculosis, attributing its causes to drunkenness and the climate.
‘But nothing is comparable to the pitiful life that they lead in the bush. The hollow of a large tree serves them as a house, and in it they have only the warmth of their own body as protection against the cold of night. In the summertime they feed on meat and thereby contract a skin disease (a kind of scurvy), of which they cure themselves as soon as they begin to eat plants instead. Those of the natives who settled in proximity to the English colonies became infected with smallpox. They died by thousands, and whole generations vanished. The survivors of that awful time now abandon them-selves to drunkenness which, in conjunction with the rapid changes of temperature typical of the climate of Cumberland County, makes consumption quite common amongst them.’386

1824: catarrh and consumption


The French naval surgeon René Lesson, “reported that measles and scarlet fever were absent in Sydney in 1824, but most Aborigines had chronic cattarah and some women had consumption.”387

John Macarthur, junior: A few Memoranda


John Macarthur, junior, 1794-1831, theoretically wrote A few Memoranda respecting the aboriginal (sic) natives sometime between his return from England in 1817 and his death in 1831. 388 However, as he did not return to New South Wales after leaving in 1801 he could not have written the document. It is more likely that the document was written by James or William who returned with their father in 1817. The observation on returning from England in 1817 that “I was greatly surprised to observe how much the natives were thinned in their number” related not only to the imposition of martial law in 1816 but the impact of disease. It is likely that this extract was written in the mid to late 1820's.389 It is an important primary source for its stylistic construction which through the phrase “when the savage comes in contact with civilized man”, which turns the Aboriginal people into the initiators of contact and “civilized man” into the passive recipient of their attentions. It is this reversal of roles that allows the young Macarthur to deny any oppression or ill-treatment and again in a masterful neutralisation and removal of a Aboriginal presence to assert that they “have melted away”. This was somewhat contrived.
However, apart from its stylistic manoeuvring the extract is important for its details of the impact of disease. Influenza, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea were sweeping through the Aboriginal populations. Differences in venereal diseases were little understood in late eighteenth century Europe. They were known collectively as lues venereal. Early observers of the presence of the disease, such as Collins and Malaspina have to be read with caution when describing these diseases, particularly when it appears that endemic syphilis, which was present in Aboriginal communities, presented symptoms similar to syphilis. Whether Collins and Malaspina saw venereal syphilis, endemic syphilis, or both, is unclear. Malaspina’s observation that Aboriginal people had “thighs and calves short, slender and bowed”, suggests that he was seeing the effects of endemic syphilis.390 Peter Cunningham, a naval surgeon and superintendent-surgeon on four convict ships between 1819 and 1828; and a Hunter Valley settler between 1825-6 displayed in the following record a knowledge of the symptoms of gonorrhoea, an ignorance of its causes and a not uncommon willingness to blame its spread upon Aboriginal women. “From their natural filthiness, the women soon became diseased with gonorrhoea, and propagate this infectious malady amongst the convict-servants who cohabit with them.”391
Campbell estimates that ten percent of Europe’s population had syphilis at this time. Probably more had gonorrhoea. Gonorrhoea, which unlike syphilis is not lethal, was more common, probably because it has a longer infectious period than syphilis. Left untreated it can result in sterility among females, which would explain Macarthur's comments about falling Aboriginal birth rates, which he related to tuberculosis.392 Hospital records in 1820’s suggest that gonorrhoea was more present among patients than syphilis.393
‘Early in 1809, I accompanied my father and brother to England, - when we returned to the colony, late in 1817, I was greatly surprised to observe how much the natives were thinned in their number. For some days we saw none. …
Of the numerous tribes I remember during my boyhood belonging to Parramatta, South Creek, Pennant Hills, not one native now remains. They have melted away, not the victims of oppression or illtreatment or from any diminuation in their means of obtaining food, but as another instance of a result; I believe must ever take place when the savage comes in contact with civilized man. They acquire a taste for our luxuries, smoke and drink to excess, when they can obtain the means, lose their manly independent bearing, will rarely take the trouble to seek, their food as they used to do in the woods, - and with their constitutions impaired by bad habits and excessive sloth, they are swept off in numbers by every epidemic. The influenza is always very fatal. They appear to suffer much under any cattarrhal affliction. – The women producing few or no children, there are none growing up to supply the places of those carried off by disease.’394

1828: influenza


In a circular to the London Missionary Society, 8th October 1828, Threlkeld wrote: “In the past year, death has under the form of influenza, made sad havoc amongst the Aboriginal tribes, nor have Europeans much better escaped; Our men, our children, my wife, and myself were all at one time severely laid up with this pestilence.”395

1828-32: small pox and chicken pox


Another small pox epidemic was noted in South-East Australia in 1828-1832. Regimental surgeons, Imlay and Mair, of the 39th Foot, saw smallpox among Aboriginal people in Bathurst in 1831 and later in the same year on the east coast.396 It was reported in the Sydney Gazette as being at Bathurst. It did not appear to be in the Hawkesbury in 1831, however, chicken pox apparently was.397

Peter Cunningham: Two Years in New South Wales


Peter Cunningham, 1789-1864, travelled between Australia and Britain a number of times as a surgeon on the convict ships. He was a settler in the Hunter for several years. In his work Two Years in New South Wales, Edited by David S. Macmillan, First Published 1827, Reprinted, Angus and Robertson, 1966, he clearly articulated colonial perceptions about Aboriginal people. They were “debased”; their hands were “paws”; they “aped” their superiors; they paraded the streets of Sydney in natural costume. There was a strong sexual frisson in the following passage. Despite all the apparent evidence of their savagery, Cunningham, like Wentworth and Field before him noted that: “All the natives around Sydney understand English well, and speak it too, so as to be understood by residents”.
‘The women every where, that I have seen, wrap themselves in some species of cloak made of opossum skins, or else in a blanket, but the men walk carelessly about quite naked, without betraying the least shame; even many at this day parading the streets of Sydney in natural costume, or with a pair of breeches probably dangling around their necks, which the modest-meaning donor intended to be applied elsewhere. It is amusing to see the consequential swagger of some of these dingy dandies, as they pace lordly up our streets, with a waddie twirling in their black paws. No Bond-Street exquisite could ape the great man better, for none are better mimicks of their superiors; our colonial climatised females mincing it past these undraperied beaux, or talking with them carelessly face to face, as if unconscious of their nudity; while the modest new-comers will giggle, blush, cover their eyes with their fingers, and hurry confusedly by.
All the natives around Sydney understand English well, and speak it too, so as to be understood by residents.’398
The following passage combines not only elements of Enlightenment thinking that can be traced back to the “tabula rasa” but also brings together various contemporary observations from settlers. His account of the failure of the various civilising efforts and the references to the 1816 campaign very much reflect the writings of Saxe Bannister. Towards the end of the extract Cunningham clearly articulates the classic attitudes of “Other”.
‘Towards the Hawkesbury and Cow-pasture, the aborigines are not so near debased as around Sydney, and most of them will live in huts if they are built for them. Many of these too will work at harvest, and attend to other matters around the farm, having been brought up from infancy among the farming whites; but their working is only by fits and starts, little dependence being to be placed thereon. Several are employed and paid as constables, and many now retained on clothes and rations, in pursuance of Governor Darling's admirable regulations, for tracking thieves and bush-rangers.’399
‘They are excellent marksmen when accustomed to the musket, and dangerous and subtle enemies when at variance with the whites, as, from their quickness of sight, they can detect instantly the smallest object moving in the woods, and track readily almost every animal that perambulates the forests. Therefore, it is quite impossible to surprise them, at any time except early in the morning, through the assistance of a native guide: while they can always steal in upon the whites, by gliding from tree to tree; for even when you do see them it is no easy matter to distinguish them from a burnt stick. They are fearful to attack the whites, though ever so few in number, if armed with muskets, knowing the unerring destructiveness of these weapons; and the best way of retreating safely is by only pointing the musket at them, to keep them at bay, as the moment it is fired they rush in and spear their victim.
During the harassing warfare with them in 1816, a stockman told me, that while watching his cattle, and amusing himself in carving a walking-stick, with a fine kangaroo dog beside him, he was startled several times by the loud snorting, snuffing and restlessness of the herd, betokening somewhat disagreeable to them at hand; but altogether examining carefully with his eye every object around he could perceive no cause for their alarm, till a sudden whizz pointed out his cunning enemy, the spear passing him, and pricking his canine companion to the ground. The savages, who had closed upon him in a semicircle, as in their usual way, gave a tremendous shout and let fly a shower of spears, which he evaded by crouching behind a tree, and seizing his musket, he kept them from closing, retreating slowly toward home, till he saw a fair chance for a race, when bolting off, with the savages yelling at his heels, he gained a river, and crossed it by swimming, in defiance of them all. …
In common with almost all savages, revenge with them is never satiated till quenched in the blood of an adversary. Like the Chinese, they are not particular about the person; but if a white injures them they generally satisfy their rage upon the first of that colour they can conveniently meet with. They know not, in their wild state, what it is either to forget or forgive; and when once they murder a white, always expect to be retaliated upon for it, whatever appearances of friendship the other whites may put on, still believing they are yet to suffer, and that only fear or want of opportunity prevents a reprisal. Hence, until some of the tribe are killed by the whites, they never conceive themselves safe, and usually continue their murderings until, in retaliation, blood is expiated by blood.
Throughout the county of Cumberland in 1816, and more lately at Bathurst, the most dreadful excesses were committed by them till hunted down by bodies of soldiers and settlers with the aid of other natives. Many, very many lives might have been saved had timely and efficient means been adopted; for it has been observed that the various tribes of savages have always one time or other essayed a trial of strength with the whites, and, when once fairly satisfied of their inferior power, live ever afterwards in perfect harmony with them.
They had often, no doubt, just cause of hostility in the misconduct of the convict stockmen, but as the innocent suffered equally with the guilty in their murderous assaults, and it was known that forbearance only rendered matters worse, determined means ought to have been instantly adopted to crush the hostile confederacy.’400
‘The mode of their government, however, is I think by far the most insuperable bar to their civilisation; and I know of no savages living in the same state, who have as yet readily been exalted above the debased condition in which they were originally found. The first symptom of advancement in a savage body is the establishment of chiefs, either elected or hereditary, to whom all pay submission, and to whose protection they trust their persons and properties. But here no such institution exists; might alone constitutes right; and as, consequently the weak and industrious have no protection for their property against the strong and lawless, they have no inducement to accumulate that which may draw down violence upon their persons.
In primitive communities, generally speaking, the chiefs must be hereditary, and must have acquired power to control the others, before much improvement can take place; when, if these chiefs exercise their power with justice, and secure the inviolability of persons and property, industry will soon be encouraged, and various useful arts originated. If, in this state of embryo advancement, a chief of ability starts up who employs the resources of his mind in the amelioration of his people, the society he governs will proceed far more rapidly….
A degree of force we find to be absolutely necessary to urge man toward civilisation, in his primitive debased state, and cause him to break up those habits he had acquired. It is only when the mind is more enlightened, and reason supersedes animal instinct, that civilisation will steadily advance among the community by the exertions of individual members. In countries, therefore, where absolute hereditary chiefs exist, you have only to gain them over to forward your views; but in countries differently circumstanced you must absolutely secure the young, wean them from parental influence, and infuse into them new ideas and opinions before you can make much progress.
We had an institution here, in Governor Macquarie's time, where the native children were educated, and turned out of it at the age of puberty good readers and good writers; but being all associated together, and their native instincts and ideas still remaining paramount, they took to their old habits again as soon as freed from thraldom. Major Goulburn401 saw the defects of this system when he had the direction of colonial affairs, and wisely broke up this institution, quartering the boys in the Male and the girls in the Female Orphan Asylum, where, mixing with a numerous population of white children, they will gradually imbibe their ideas, and manners and customs too; and if care is only taken to provide them with humane masters, no doubt good effects will result.
I have seen some native youths who made very tolerable servants for knife-cleaning and such-like, even although taken into the house after being grown up; but fixed occupations will probably never answer, for the first and second generations of these young savages, at least; the wild feeling inherent in them must have time to wear out.’402

X.Y.Z: A Ride to Bathurst, 1827


X.Y.Z.’s observations of the effects of gonorrhoea display all the ignorance of the times and not unusually blamed Aboriginal people for the spread of the disease. A close reading of the last sentence raises the question of whether the greater temperature range produced by extensive land-clearing on the Cumberland Plain had affected Aboriginal health.
‘The black race is visibly declining in numerical strength every year ... For want of white female companions the distant stock-keepers are eaten up with disease, the result of their connection with the black women. The contagion is going through the natives with the most fatal ravages, and will more certainly put an end to them, more certainly than sword or musket. But it is astonishing how long they linger under it, the cause of which can only be discovered in that extreme rigour of life, of cold, hunger, and nakedness, in which they pass many of the winter months.’403

17th of August, 1831: looming extinction


On 17th August 1831 Captain Cyrille Laplace visited Sydney. During his stay Laplace visited Sir John Jamison’s property at Regentville where he witnessed the obligatory display of Aboriginal tree climbing. Laplace left in September 1831, later he reflected, "'Not long ago,' concluded Laplace, echoing his earlier compatriots, 'one encountered plentiful tribes of natives around Sidney. Today one scarcely discovers but a few families, and soon the immoderate consumption of alcohol and epidemic illness brought from the Old World will have wiped them out . . .The government of Sidney has done everything possible to tame this unfortunate race [cette malheureuse race] .. . but these attempts have not succeeded.'”’404


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