Tag Archives: Bennelong

Labour Day

01 Monday Oct 2018

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On this public holiday, Labour Day or Eight-hour Day, we should be singing the songs of the workers. Songs like The Eight-hours System, a little history lesson in its own right, ending with the rousing stanza:

Eight hours to sleep in midnight deep.
Eight hours of toil a day:
Eight hours to rove in learning’s grove.
For pleasure and for play.

Or something more recent, like The Eight-Hour Day, which just seems to become more and more relevant.

But no, we spent the day at the Manly Jazz Festival, listening to songs of a different ilk. It was good to be in Manly, with the sun on my face and a light breeze blowing, as I’ve just read the section of Grace Karskens’ essential book, The Colony, in which she talks of the naming of Manly Cove. The core of the story is well known – as Governor Phillip entered Port Jackson, seeking an alternative to Botany Bay for the settlement, his boat was approached by about twenty Aboriginal men who Phillip found to be so ‘manly’ that he called the place ‘Manly Cove’. Those men would have called it Kay-ye-my but Phillip failed to ask the men about this.

In passing near a point of land in this harbour, the boats were perceived by a number of the natives, twenty of whom waded into the water unarmed, received what was offered them, and examined the boat with a curiosity which impressed a higher idea of them than any former accounts of their manners had suggested. This confidence, and manly behaviour, induced Governor Phillip, who was highly pleased with it, the give the place the name of Manly Cove.[1]

Two years later, Manly Cove was the place of an important interaction between the Aboriginal people and the British. The story started with a whale. In July 1790, four British men in a small boat came upon a whale in the harbour, ‘… (for the first time since we have been here) …spouting and dashing about in their usual manner. This monstrous creature, either through being mischievous or playful, no sooner espied the boat then he pursued and never left her till he had overturned and sent her to the bottom.’[2]Three of the four men drowned (the fourth was ‘sadly affected, and indeed disordered’) and the whale was subsequently pursued and harpooned. It died of its wounds and washed up in Manly Cove.

In September, a small party of British, accompanied by Nanbaree, an Aboriginal boy adopted by the colony’s surgeon, John White, when he was orphaned by the smallpox, landed at Manly Cove, intending to walk to Broken Bay. They came across a large group of Aboriginal people, including Bennelong, feasting on the remains of the whale. The two groups met without incident, and as the British were leaving they were given ‘three or four great junks of the whale … the largest of which Bennelong expressly requested might be offered, in his name, to the governor.’ Phillip was nearby, at South Head, and on hearing the news ‘procured all the firearms which could be mustered there, consisting of four muskets and a pistol’ and set out for Manly Cove.

According to Watkin Tench (an officer of the First Fleet commissioned by a publisher before his departure for Botany Bay to write an account of the voyage) this second boat was also well received by the feasters, and Phillip was conversing with Bennelong when ‘a native with a spear in his hand came forward, and stopped at the distance of between twenty and thirty yards from the place where the governor, Mr Collins, Lieutenant Waterhouse and a seaman stood.’ Phillip threw down the knife that he wore on his belt – an act which he understood to be one of peace – and walked towards the man, but the Aboriginal man – Wileemarin – threw his spear, wounding Phillip in the shoulder. [3]

This incident is the subject of much analysis by Inga Clendinnen, the author of the other essential book on early Sydney – Dancing with Strangers. She argues, very persuasively, that this spearing was a ritual act, ‘where Phillip would face a single spear-throw in penance for his and his people’s many offences’.[4]She conjectures that Wileemarin would have expected Phillip to deflect it, as Aboriginal warriors would have done, and was confused by Phillip approaching him rather than standing his ground in order to evade it.

I wonder if the timing of this ritual act may be explained by the arrival of the Second Fleet in June 1790. This was a disaster for all involved, with hundreds dying during the voyage and hundreds more sick and dying landed at Sydney. If the Aboriginal people hadn’t been worried by the ‘many offences’ of the British up until then, how would they have felt on seeing this new group of settlers?

[1]The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, 1789 http://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/data-2/phivoya.pdf

[2]Daniel Southwell, 27 July 1790, quoted in The birth of Sydney, Tim Flannery, Text Publishing, 1999, p104.

[3]Watkin Tench, 7 September 1790, quoted in The birth of Sydney, Tim Flannery, Text Publishing, 1999, p107.

[4]Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, Text Publishing, 2003, p124.

Bennelong (part 2)

13 Monday Aug 2018

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Judge-Advocate David Collins clearly acknowledged that it wasn’t just Bennelong who could lay claim to a particular area of land:

Each family has a particular place of residence, from which is derived its distinguishing name. This is formed by adding the monosyllable Gal to the name of the place: thus the southern shore of Botany Bay is called Gwea, and the people who inhabit it style themselves Gweagal. Those who live on the north shore of Port Jackson are called Cam-mer-ray-gal, that part of the harbour being distinguished from others by the name of Cam-mer-ray[i]…

But Governor Phillip, the man who had carefully observed the Aborigines, had, within his own limitations, been positive about their courage and generosity, and in nearly every altercation assumed that the whites had been the aggressors; the man who had said, “Conciliation is the only plan intended to be pursued”[ii]returned to Britain in 1792. This left Major Francis Grose, as lieutenant-governor, in charge of the colony for two years, then Captain Paterson as administrator until John Hunter arrived as governor in September 1795. Grose “displayed no desire to follow Phillip’s practice of maintaining a close personal watch over every aspect of the settlement”.[iii]He encouraged members of the NSW Corps to trade, and to farm the land that he granted them. He opened up the Hawkesbury River area for settlement, taking the colony’s survival out of the hands of the governor and into the hands of private enterprise. It worked as a means of motivating trade and agriculture, but it removed the protection and respect for the Aborigines afforded by Phillip’s inclination, and instructions. By the time Hunter arrived the damage was done. The NSW Corps was accustomed to rule, and their rule was for personal profit. Land was for farming and making money from the proceeds – not for the Aboriginal people.

So although no-one in the very early days of the colony disputed Bennelong’s claim to custodianship of Me-mel, that claim wasn’t honoured. Me-mel became Goat Island, and it went the way of all colonised land. In the 1830s it was quarried, and the stone used to build a wharf and gunpowder complex by convicts housed firstly in the hulk Phoenix, and then on the island, in wooden ‘boxes’. They wore fetters around their ankles for the first two years and were controlled by the threat of the cat-o-nine tails. One convict was chained to a rock for several weeks in 1837. A number of Aboriginal people were also imprisoned there, separated from the whites. In 1900, during the outbreak of plague in The Rocks, Goat Island was used by the Health Department for bacteriological research. (Twelve years earlier, Rodd Island had been used for a similar purpose when a laboratory was set up to find a biological agent to combat the rabbit plague. From 1890 the laboratory was used to produce a vaccine against anthrax.) As the gunpowder complex neared completion on Goat Island, Cockatoo Island was selected as the next prison and workplace. Convicts dug silos out of the rock with hand tools, quarried sandstone for building Sydney’s edifices, and excavated the dry dock. From 1871 to 1887 there was an Industrial School and Reformatory for Girls on the island, and from 1888 to 1908 an overflow prison for Darlinghurst Gaol. Convicts also toiled away at Spectacle Island, building a Powder Magazine between 1863 and 1865 as Goat Island’s became inadequate.[iv]

These days Goat Island is a little green mound with a row of pretty stone houses. You’ll see it if it’s daytime as you come round under the bridge towards Balmain, Hunters Hill, Meadowbank or Parramatta, and you might dream of a life in the middle of the harbour.

[i]An Account of the English Colony of NSW Vol 1 by David Collins, Appendix 1. http://gutenberg.net.au/first-fleet.html

[ii]The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, London 1789 (facsimile edition Hutchinson 1982, p140).

[iii]ADB online. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010444b.htm. Francis Grose.

[iv]The Islands of Sydney Harbour. Mary Shelley Clark and Jack Clark. Kangaroo Press, 2000.

Bennelong

04 Saturday Aug 2018

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Bennelong must have been a very adaptable man. Captured by the British in November 1789 he stayed in captivity, learning the English language and customs and teaching some of his own to the British – an act that seems voluntary as the man captured with him, Colbee, was able to escape almost immediately. In May 1790 Bennelong went back to his people, but returned to the settlement after Governor Phillip was speared at Manly in September – an event that Inga Clendinnen convincingly argues was a ritual spearing, designed to redress the many wrongs that the colonists had committed since settling the area.[i]

Not only was Bennelong willing to change from a life within the only framework that he and his relations had ever known – he was then willing to sail, with Phillip, and Yemmerrawannie, to England. They left Sydney in December 1792. Bennelong was presented to King George III in 1793, and didn’t return to Sydney until 1795, with Governor Hunter. Yemmerrawannie succumbed to respiratory disease in the damp British climate, but Bennelong survived, adopting the new clothes and customs that he found.

It’s hard to imagine a more courageous act than the steps taken by Bennelong and Yemmerrawannie onto the Atlantic, sailing with strangers, on a strange vessel, to a completely unknown land, when only five years earlier their physical world had been defined by what could be walked or travelled in a canoe.

Bennelong was from the Wangal people – most sources say that their territory extended from Goat Island to Auburn and Silverwater, although other sources say it starts further west at Leichhardt.  He told the colonists that Goat Island (more tunefully called Me-mel) belonged to him and his family. Judge-Advocate David Collins noted:

… Bennillong, both before he went to England and since his return, often assured me, that the island Me-mel (called by us Goat Island) close by Sydney Cove was his own property; that it was his father’s, and that he should give it to By-gone, his particular friend and companion. To this little spot he appeared much attached; and we have often seen him and his wife Ba-rang-a-roo feasting and enjoying themselves on it. He told us of other people who possessed this kind of hereditary property, which they retained undisturbed.[ii]

Bennelong’s understanding of ownership would have been very different to ours. Heather Goodall explains it as:

In Aboriginal societies, individual men and women hold particular relationships to land, inherited from parents and arising from their own conception and birth sites … Yet despite the specificity of these relationships, they do not allow automatic rights. Instead they confer obligations and responsibilities … It is the fulfilment of one’s obligations, the active embracing of responsibility, which allows a custodian to be accorded the fullest benefits of their landholding role …[iii]

So if you were barred from carrying out your responsibilities, by a fence or a gun, you would lose your whole heritage.

[i]Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, Text Publishing, 2003.

[ii]An Account of the English Colony of NSW Vol 1 by David Collins, Appendix 1X. http://gutenberg.net.au/first-fleet.html

[iii]Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales 1770-1972, Allen & Unwin in association with Black Books, 1996, p9.

Terra nullius

20 Friday Apr 2018

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A ferry ride on Sydney Harbour is always a little holiday, a period of delight, rocking gently on the waves while the glinting buildings, the swathes of bushland, the waves at the shore, the yachts and warships and tugs and cruisers pass by.

Today is no exception. The ferry chugs its way out of Circular Quay, past the exuberant flamboyance of the Opera House. I’ve seen it blue, and pink; covered in paisley patterns and butterflies; I’ve seen it with ‘No War’ gallantly painted on its sails, the red paint dripping. Today it is gleaming white.

The point on which it stands, Bennelong Point, was named for Bennelong, an Aboriginal man of the Wangal people captured by Governor Phillip in late 1789 in a desperate attempt to communicate with the Aborigines. The first Aboriginal man kidnapped for the same purpose, Arabanoo, had died of the smallpox in May 1789. A house was built for Bennelong on Bennelong Point; since then, it has been Fort Macquarie, and a tram shed.

Fort Denison comes into view on our right hand side and the woman behind us excitedly tells her little girl, ‘That’s Fort Denison. We can go there too. That was here when the convicts used to come to Australia. Before anyone was here.’ The myth of terra nullius, so convenient in the 19thcentury, rejected in the Australian High Court in 1992, lives on.

It’s not true that no-one was here before ‘the convicts used to come to Australia’.

[there were] Colbee … Bereewan, Bondel, Imeerawanyee, Deedora, Wolarawaree, or Baneelon, among the men; … Wereeweea, Gooreedeeana, Milba, or Matilba, among the women. Parramatta, Gweea, Cameera, Cadi, and Memel, are names of places.[i]

The Cadigal, the people whose land was immediately usurped by the colonists, was a clan of about 60 people. Jakelin Troy calls their language ‘the Sydney language’, and defines it as being spoken by a tribe that lived across an area from the coast to the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers to the north and west, and as far south as Appin[ii]. According to Troy there were at least two dialects of the Sydney Language spoken by the various clans within the tribe, and the name ‘Eora’ or ‘Iyora’ is now given to the people who lived on the coast, and their dialect[iii]. A number of the early colonists were interested to record this language, despite the difficulties on both sides in understanding particular sounds. Troy points out that only the officers of the First Fleet recorded the Sydney Language. A contact language, New South Wales pidgin, rapidly took its place. The Aboriginal people were much more linguistically adept than the British, picking up both English and the pidgin. David Collins (deputy judge-advocate in Sydney 1788-1796) wrote in April 1792 that the Aboriginals, “conversed with us in a mutilated and incorrect language formed entirely on our imperfect knowledge and improper application of their words.”[iv]

Jakelin Troy’s book, The Sydney Language, provides a 50 page wordlist, bringing to life the people who spoke the language. Their words for people and kin, body parts, weapons, implements and other made objects, plants and animals show the priorities that they had – three words for different types of baskets, four types of shields, ten types of spears.  They had five different ways of saying ‘stop’, from ‘wari wari’, meaning to stop something being done that you don’t like, to ‘mayalya’ meaning ‘a little stop’.  It’s when you read their words for tickle (‘gidi gidi’), shiver, embrace, afraid, pick teeth, laugh, sexual desire, breathe, snore, love … that you feel the connection.[v]

 

[i]Tench, W. 1788. First published 1789 and 1793. Reproduced in Flannery, T, Two Classic Tales of Australian Exploration. Text Publishing, 2002, p265.

[ii]Troy, J. The Sydney Language. Produced with the assistance of the Australian Dictionaries project and AIATSIS, Canberra 1993 p8.

[iii]Troy, J. The Sydney Language. Produced with the assistance of the Australian Dictionaries project and AIATSIS, Canberra 1993 p9.

[iv]Collins, 28 April 1792. Quoted in Jack Egan, Buried alive: Sydney 1788-92, Allen & Unwin 1999 p287.

[v]Troy, J. The Sydney Language. Produced with the assistance of the Australian Dictionaries project and AIATSIS, Canberra 1993 p33-84.