Alex McDermott - Australian History For Dummies

Bennelong clearly wasn’t too thrilled at the prospect of becoming the Governor’s captive ambassador. He engaged, he picked up the newcomers’ language, and he filled them in on local names and peoples — and he then took off pretty much as soon as he got the chance, shortly after the leg irons had been removed and he’d gained his captors’ trust.

Bennelong wasn’t against continued relations with Phillip and the whitefellas, and was willing to engage in ongoing cultural broking between the two groups. As much as we can tell from this distance, he and Phillip seemed to actually like and respect each other. And it absolutely made good cultural sense for Bennelong to establish close relations with the leader of the white folk, for himself, his clan, and the wider Eora nation.

First, though, some sort of payback was required.

Phillip was speared at Manly Cove near Sydney, after he’d been invited there by Bennelong as he and his clan feasted on a stranded whale there. Manly was the place Bennelong had been originally abducted from, and this hardly seems a coincidence. The spear wound wasn’t fatal, but then it wasn’t meant to be. Soon after this, Bennelong re-established relations with the Governor, this time not as captive but on some sort of equality, or mutual recognition.

For the rest of the time Phillip was governor of NSW, Bennelong was invited to Government House regularly. He was welcome company at the Governor’s dinner table, where lively conversation dominated proceedings. Phillip had a hut built for Bennelong to live in at the settlement. (This hut was built on the point where the Sydney Opera House stands today.)

When Phillip left Sydney to return to London in 1792, Bennelong went with him. He wasn’t the first Indigenous Australian to be abducted by the Governor (another man, Arabanoo, preceded him), but along with a young kinsman, Yemmerrawanne, Bennelong was the first Indigenous Australian to voyage out from their home country to make their own journey of discovery, to the alien country of Britain, at the other corner of the world. Here he lodged in Mayfair, was measured for and wore Georgian frock coat and breeches, went to the theatre, watched Opera from a private box, caused a minor sensation when he visited the Houses of Parliament at Westminster, pined badly when Yemmerrawanne died of a lung complaint, and sailed back to Australia on the HMS Reliance .

He returned to life as clan leader, described by one settler as ‘the chief, or king of his tribe’.

While Bennelong adopted some of the habits and customs of the British, dressing in their clothes and learning their language, Barangaroo, Bennelong’s wife, wasn’t as impressed. She opposed what she saw as her husband’s conciliatory relationship with the people who were establishing themselves on Aboriginal land. She refused to adopt the European customs or clothing, angering her husband. All she ever wore was a slim bone through her nose, even when dining with the Governor.

For more on relationships between local Aboriginal people and the new arrivals, see Indigenous Australia For Dummies , 2e, by Larissa Behrendt, Wiley Australia Publishing.

While things had been going badly at Sydney, in the rest of the world the situation was changing rapidly and not for the better, especially for the new colony. In particular, the following events affected them:

The great hope of Norfolk Island — that it would provide vital supplies for Britain’s navy and maritime trade — fell through. The great tall pines that Cook had originally admired proved to be no good as masts. And the flax plant proved to be the wrong type for making cords and sails.

War broke out in Europe in the aftermath of the 1789 French Revolution. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars lasted from the early 1790s until Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. Britain’s energies and attention began to be drawn inexorably into this great conflict, with action seen across the most of the northern hemisphere. Exactly how a bunch of convicts on the other side of the planet were faring started slipping down the list of Things to Be Worried About. But things would change once that war was over — see Chapter 5to read about what happened when the British started paying attention again (which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, either).

A new decision was finally made in 1793 on the trade monopoly of the British East India Company: Instead of being terminated, the monopoly was renewed for another 20 years, lasting until 1813. The hope of Sydney being parked on the side of a burgeoning new trade region seemed to be dashed.

Instead of being a source of vital strategic supplies, and on a new shipping route where trade was burgeoning, the colony was now marooned on the other side of the world, unable to grow its own food, in the middle of a no-go trade zone, and Britain was preoccupied. And Phillip was going home.

The convicts, intended to be a stopgap measure to be used to establish a key British strategic post, were now the whole purpose of the colony. Interesting times promised to ensue.

Chapter 4

IN THIS CHAPTER

Watching a settlement go from surviving to thriving under the care of the NSW Corps

Encountering convict entrepreneurs, officer traders and raucous living with Governor Hunter

Introducing reforms with Governor King

Rebelling against Governor Bligh

Australia, originally planned to serve multiple purposes, ended up being solely a prison dump for convicts (refer to Chapter 3). At the same time as the new colony was settled, Britain became seriously distracted by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Britain, fighting off invasion threats and struggling for world domination, wasn’t massively concerned with what the penal dump on the other side of the world was doing.

Facing failing crops and a huge wait between resupply ships, life for arrivals on the First and Second Fleets — convict and soldier alike — was pretty grim. Yet, within 20 years of settlement, many of those who’d been sent out here in exile were making fortunes, and were making a life much freer and in most ways better than they could ever have hoped of getting in Britain.

In this chapter, I cover the way officers of the NSW Corps stepped into the vacuum left by Britain’s lack of real planning or ongoing involvement in the development of the economic life of NSW. From 1792, resourceful officers from this permanent regiment of soldiers started using government money — and rum, that other great motivator — to expand cultivation and settlement. They also established a cartel on incoming trade, and made themselves seriously wealthy in the process. I also look at how their monopoly was short-lived — convict men and women who the officers originally set up to handle the retail side of things pretty quickly cut in on their turf.