1790 DECEMBER – BOTANY BAY
‘On 14 December a troop of 50 men departed for Botany Bay armed with muskets, hatchets for beheading, and bags for carrying heads’. Michael Pembroke. Arthur Phillip, Sailor Mercenary Governor Spy. Hardie Grant Books, 2013
1790 – 12 December, head quarters Sydney: ‘The governor pitched upon me [Tench] to execute the…command…those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay….put ten [10] to death…bring in the heads of the slain [and] two [2] prisoners to execute in the most most public and exemplary manner’. His Excellency Governor Arthur Phillip Orders to Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. F.L Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961
Tench’s Sydney’s First Four Years informs this narrative unless otherwise indicated.
Can we know what drove Governor Arthur Phillip’s ferocity?
Yes we can – SIMMERING REBELLION
Certain officers of the New South Wales Corps, recently arrived (June 1790) sent from England to relieve Sydney’s ‘troubled’ marine garrison marooned; ‘on the shores of this vast ocean’ since January 1788, were circling Governor Phillip’s tent.
The New South Wales Corps were first of; ‘twenty-five [25] regiments of British infantry [who served] in the colonies between 1790 and 1870′. Dr Peter Stanley, A Remote Garrison, the British Army in Australia 1788-1870, Kangaroo Press 1986
THE BACK STORY
1787 – 13 May, Portsmouth: A large squadron of eleven (11) ships, known in Britain and Australia as the ‘First Fleet’, left England on 13 May 1787 under command of Captain Arthur Phillip RN to sail 13,000 miles (21,000 km) across the globe’s oceans to Botany Bay in the island continent of New Holland.
1788 – 20 January, Botany Bay: All ‘First Fleet’ males, marine and convict alike fed as serving soldiers, were available for combat. After a voyage of eight (8) months by way of Tenerife, Rio de Janerio and Cape Town the fleet arrived at Botany Bay between 18 to 20 January 1788.
1788 – 26 January, Sydney Cove: The fleet quit Botany Bay to sail nine (9) miles, fourteen (14km) north to Sydney Cove where more than three-quarters of the ‘First Fleet’s overwhelmingly male complement of 1,500 souls (1300 men, 200 women, 40 + children) disembarked and remained marooned until June 1790.
MAROONED – JANUARY 1788 TO JUNE 1790 – WHY?
Impending war with France, institutional inertia and maladministration, specifically Britain’s failure to communicate with or re-supply the ‘First Fleet’ from 13 May 1787 ‘the day of our departure from Portsmouth‘ until 3 June 1790.
Mind-bending uncertainty, profound isolation, prolonged semi-starvation led to desperation and moral degradation in military ranks and among the criminal population.
1790 – JANUARY: SYDNEY
‘Thirty-two [32] months from England. Here on the summit of the hill, every morning from daylight until the sun sunk, did we sweep the horizon, in hope of seeing a sail…at every fleeting speck which arose from the bosom of the sea, the heart bounded…But the misery and horror of such a situation cannot be imparted, even by those who have suffered under it’.
1790 JANUARY – ENGLAND A SECOND FLEET
1790 – 12 January, Portsmouth: More ships bound for Botany Bay. Not until the beginning of January 1790 did; ‘a fine westerly wind enable the ships [of a second fleet] sail down the [English] channel under clear skies’. Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet, Britain’s Grim Armada, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1993.
1790 JUNE – ‘FLAG’S UP! SHE IS FROM OLD ENGLAND’
1790 – June, Sydney: ‘ We had now been [thirty-six] months from England in which long period no supplies…From the intelligence of our friends and connections we had been entirely cut off, no communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th May, 1787 the day of our departure from Portsmouth’.
1790 – 3 June, Sydney: After thirty-six (36) months Lady Juliana with ‘London on her stern’ brought an end to the excruciating ‘misery and horror’ of isolation and uncertainty for Englishmen marooned since 1788.
A convict transport Lady Juliana was first of four (4) ships of a second fleet. She carried two hundred and twenty-six (226) women prisoners, eight (8) free children and letters from home.
But aside from a small flock of sheep salvaged following Australia’s Titanic – HMS Guardian’s – tangle with an iceberg off Cape Town on Christmas Eve 1789, Lady Juliana brought very little food.
1790 – 30 June: Neptune, Suprize and Scarborough, the death ships of ‘Britain’s Grim Armada’ reached Sydney by the end of June 1790. Rather than relieving pressure, this second fleet – Britain’s first true convict transportation fleet – increased the Sydney settlement’s distress and exacerbated the now ailing Governor Phillip’s many woes.
William Wyndham Grenville, the young politician and cousin of Prime Minister William Pitt, who in mid 1789 replaced Lord Sydney as Home Secretary, had contracted these three (3) vessels with a prominent London firm of ‘Guinea’ Atlantic slave traders.
Government issued the company, Camden, Calvert and King, a regular slaving contract whereby they were paid per body boarded. Deaths in transit did not diminish profit. Rather ‘earlier in the voyage they die[d]‘ greater company profit.
Neptune, Scarborough and Suprize were contracted to transport one thousand (1,000) mainly male prisoners. Overcrowded, chained and locked below deck, starved and brutalized one-quarter (25%) of those embarked In England, died before reaching Sydney.
Of those convicts landed alive a further 15% died within weeks of disembarking. Most who survived were brutalised, permanently damaged in mind, body and spirit.
Captain William Hill, officer of the first contingent New South Wales Corps, an infantry regiment raised to replace the marines of 1788, sailed to Sydney aboard Suprize.
Hill wrote at length of the horror voyage to William Wilberforce leading advocate of England’s anti-slavery movement. He told of atrocious sufferings inflicted on defenseless prisoners.
‘The slave trade is merciful compared with what I have seen in this fleet...[Suprize] ‘unfit…to be sent so great a distance…the most trifling gale…the convicts were considerably above their waists in water.
The irons used upon these unhappy wretches were barbarous. The contractors had been in the Guinea trade, and had put on board the same shackles used by them in that trade.
[Prisoners] could not extend either leg from the other more than an inch or two at most; thus fettered, it was impossible for them to move but at the risk of both their legs being broken’. Captain William Hill, Sydney Cove , July 28, 1790, extract, letter to William Wilberforce, Historical Records of New South Wales.
What traumatized survivors of that dreadful passage saw or didn’t see on arriving in Sydney filled them with intense fear. Barely six (6) months from England, fresh from hustle and bustle, most from London’s teeming streets, nothing was familiar.
No house only tents, no shops or cobbled streets, no horses or carriages, no bridges or spires, no taverns or coffee houses, no alleys or rag-fairs, no nooks or crannies, no gin and no pockets to pick. Man or women soldier or criminal, none could comprehend their surroundings.
Panicked at the prospect of staying in such a desolate place some, Tench said; ‘all came out on the last fleet‘ simply walked north hoping to reach China; ‘with a view of asserting their freedom’.
Governor Phillip perceived danger in such widespread unrest. He recognised resentment, especially well documented open hostility that surfaced between the ‘First Fleet’ old lags and these new comers, military and criminal alike, could destroy his hard-won success in securing New Holland for Britain.
In time of war with France, island England although safe from invasion at that time was vulnerable to economic blockade. But a loyal military and naval presence at Sydney could provide Britain alternate strategic and supply routes to and from India, Africa, China and South America via the Southern Oceans.
1970 – June, Sydney: Despite the arrival of Justinian, a fully laden stores-ship from England, food was still not plentiful. Protein foods were especially scarce and the ration progressively scaled down. Phillip responded by increasing numbers of official hunting and fishing parties that, from 1788, had been essential for survival.
1790 – DECEMBER
1790 – Friday, 9 December: One such party set off for Botany Bay to hunt kangaroo on 9 December 1790. The group included John Mc Intyre, Governor Phillip’s own game-keeper, a convict known to be hated by local Aborigines.
Saturday, 10 December, Botany Bay: In the dead of night; ‘ a rustling noise in the bushes’ woke the hunters. ‘Two natives with spears…one [Pemulway] launched his spear at M, Entire, and lodged it in his left side…’I am a dead man’.
At dawn the party began retracing its steps towards Sydney where Mc Intyre died some weeks later.
Phillip a wily commander saw in Mc Intyre’s spearing an opportunity to create a diversion and change the settlement’s dangerous dynamic. He gave the guys with the guns something to do; ‘infuse universal terror…bring back the heads of the slain’.
‘BRING BACK THE HEADS OF THE SLAIN’
1790 – 12 December: ‘ Put ten to [10] to death…cut off, and bring back the heads of the slain…bring away two [2] prisoners to execute in the most public and exemplary manner, in the presence of as many of their countrymen as can be collected’. General Orders, Governor Phillip to Marine Captain Watkin Tench.
Pemulway’s spearing of Mc Intyre had been a targeted attack; Philiip’s ‘put ten [10] to death’ indiscriminate retaliation.
‘On its face the object of the hunting party was to take the lives of the innocent instead of the guilty.’ Michael Pembroke, Arthur Phillip, Sailor Mercenary Governor Spy, Hardie Grant Books, 2013
‘The innocent instead of the guilty’; Captain Tench registered shock; ‘here the governor stopped, and addressed himself to me said, if I could propose any alteration of the orders under which I was to act’.
Tench proposed; ‘capture [of] six [6]…a part should be set aside for retaliation; and the rest, at a proper time, liberated, after seeing the fate of their comrades. This scheme, his excellency was pleased instantly to adopt, adding, if six [6] cannot be taken, let this number be shot’.
To that end Tench instructed his troops; ‘be ready to go out tomorrow morning at daylight…with three [3] days provision, ropes to bind our prisoners with and hatchets and bags, to cut off and contain the heads of the slain’.
The detachment consisted of fifty (50) men – ten (10) Officers and the regulation ratio of non-commissioned men to forty (40) other ranks.
For Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples the makeup of this detachment is of utmost importance. By December 1790 marines of the ‘troubled’ garrison, marooned since 1788, were incapable of sustained effort.
Malnourished, suffering profound lethargy from prolonged semi-starvation, most marines could barely stand let alone undertake a three (3) day march in full kit under a blazing December sun.
What is certain, when the section moved out for Botany Bay, its forty (40) privates would have been troops of the New South Wales Corps. The first of ‘twenty-five regiments of British infantry [who] participated in the great struggle at the heart of the European conquest of this continent’. Stanley, The Remote Garrison. ibid.
1790 – Wednesday, 14 December: ‘At 4 o’clock in the morning of the 14th we marched…by nine o’clock this terrific procession reached the peninsula at the head of Botany Bay’.
1790 – Saturday, 17 December: Three (3) days later Tench’s exhausted troops returned to Sydney with no heads or the prisoners Phillip planned; ‘to execute in the most public and exemplary manner, in the presence of as many of their countrymen as can be collected’.
‘An extravagant charade…the expedition served only as a melodramatic show of force’. Michael Pembroke, Arthur Phillip. ibid.
‘An extravagant charade’ – nothing could be further from the truth.
Governor Phillip had a strategic vision for New Holland; ‘stationing a large body of troops in New South Wales…when we want to add to the military strength of India’. And an economic vision; ‘an empire had been founded in the south which time will render much superior to that lost in the west [America]’.
In December 1790 Governor Phillip, a naval officer adrift in a sea of hostile military men, had but one objective, maintain strategic and economic control over a ‘superior’ outpost of empire, New South Wales.
In this endeavour Phillip was without support. One hundred and sixty (160) of his Royal Naval confreres, crew of the wrecked HMS Sirius, had been stranded on Norfolk Island since March 1790.
HMS Supply had returned from Jakarta in October 1790 after an absence of six (6) months but her severely depleted crew would have been incapable of defending their commander.
Failure; no heads or prisoners to execute in ‘the most public and exemplary manner’. In military terms no British Commander could be seen to accept such humiliating defeat.
Blood was up. Phillip’s orders of 13th December 1790 had moved a potential challenge to his position as supreme commander from possible to probable. To shore up his authority Phillip ordered a second assault.
‘Our first expedition having so totally failed, the governor resolved to try the fate of a second and the ‘painful pre-eminence’ again devolved on me.
Infuse universal terror…the orders under which I [Tench] was commanded to act…if six [6] cannot be taken, let this number be shot…differing in no respect from the last’.
Tench stated his orders; ‘differ[ed]] in no respect from the last’ yet deception, an important change in tactics, bear Governor Phillip’s imprint.
‘In order to deceive the natives, and prevent them from again frustrating our design…we feigned that our preparations were directed against…(Wileemarin) the man who [in September 1790] had wounded the governor was the object of the punishment’.
1790 – Thursday, 22 December, Botany Bay: ‘A little before sun-set on the evening of the 22d, we marched, Lieutenant Abbot, and ensign Prentice, of the New South Wales corps, were the two [2] officers under my command and with three [3] serjeants, three [3] corporals, and thirty [30] privates, completed the detachment’.
1790 – Friday 23 December: Seasonal tidal surges flooded the area; ‘we were suddenly stopped by a creek, about sixty [60] yards wide‘. Firm ground became a muddy swamp cutting the detachment into two (2) sections.
1790 – Saturday, 24 December: Troops weary, weighed down by sodden uniforms, straggled into Sydney Town on Christmas Eve, again with no prisoners or heads.
‘Only a dramatic show of force’. Again all evidence is to the contrary.
This was not the first time Governor Phillip had sniffed rebellion and snuffed it out. On 27th February 1788, one (1) month after disembarking in Sydney Cove, Phillip had stamped his authority with the sadistic hanging of Thomas Barrett.
Barrett was a potential leader of men with connections among the military. One (1) of very few ‘First Fleet’ convicts who could read and/or write his fine hand engraved colonial Australia’s most prized artifact the Botany Bay Medallion.
But to Arthur Phillip the charismatic Barrett represented danger, he had to be eliminated and quickly. Barrett’s dramatic execution, the first act in a grotesque pantomime played out over three (3) days, was calculated to ‘instill universal terror’.
1790 – December: So who can doubt Arthur Phillip an astute operator known for his insight, failed to recognise a dangerous enemy in John Mac arthur, a junior Lieutenant of the New South Wales Corps?
In this Arthur Philip proved prophet. Macarthut ambitious, arrogant was a stand-out trouble maker who truly earned his nickname ‘The Perturbator’.
‘From 1788 there had been continuous disputation between the civil power represented by the autocratic uniformed naval governors and the military’. Not a Rum Rebellion but a Military Insurrection, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 92, John Mc Mahon, 2006
Lieutenant John Mac arthur was pivotal to the recall of Phillip’s immediate successors, the naval governors, John Hunter, Phillip Gidley King and William Bligh. He lent a practiced hand in the character assassination of Governor Lachlan Macquarie the first commissioned governor to be taken from military ranks.
1790 – December, Botany Bay: ‘ A charade’ or ‘ melodramatic show of force’ ? Neither, when Governor, Captain-General Arthur Phillip RN, issued his general orders in December 1790 all evidence points to him quashing rebellion within military ranks.
‘ Infuse universal terror’ Arthur Phillip’s rules of engagement placed no limits on brutality; ‘whenever any future breach of good conduct on their side shall render it necessary’.
The ‘future’; there is no evidence Governor Phillip’s orders were countermanded. Extant, they served as a template that went onto govern all future confrontations between the First Nations’ Peoples and;
‘Twenty-five regiments of British infantry [who] participated in the great struggle at the heart of the European conquest of this continent’. Dr Peter Stanley, A Remote Garrison. ibid.
When the first of these infantry troops arrived with the second fleet in June 1790 Major Francis Grose, their commanding officer, was not with them. He remained in England to recruit sufficient men to meet establishment requirements.
1792 – 14 February, Sydney: Major Grose arrived in Sydney on 14th February 1792 aboard Pitt a convict transport. But by then Macarthur, ever the opportunist, had taken advantage of Grose’s absence to establish and wield power over certain officers of the New South Wales Corps.
1792 – 12 December: The Home Office finally agreed to Governor Phillip’s many requests for repatriation. On 12th December 1792, after five (5) years at Sydney, he sailed for England in the Atlantic taking Bennalong and, Yemmerrawannie a young warrior, with him.
‘There are two kinds of error; those of commission, doing something that should not be done, and those of omission, not doing something that should be done. the later are much more serious than the former’. Kenneth Hopper and William Hopper, The Puritan Gift, Foreward, Russell Lincolm Ackoff, I.B. Tauris, 2009
Tragically for the First Australians London failed to commission a governor to succeed Governor Phillip. The second governor, Captain John Hunter RN, would not reach Sydney until September 1795.
‘For the length of the interregnum [1792-1795] the British government was greatly at fault’. Australian Dictionary of Biography, John Hunter. J.J. Achmuty
‘Omission, not doing something that should be done’; by default the immense power invested in Arthur Phillip as Governor of New South Wales, said to be unique in Britain’s long history of empire building, devolved to the military.
1792 – 13 December, Sydney: Immediately on Phillip’s departure Major Francis Grose took command of the Sydney settlement and introduced absolute military rule.
‘Major Grose, by virtue of his military status, assumed the command as Lieutenant Governor. He had been trained from his youth to arms and was essentially and only a soldier.
He had not been many hours in charge before he introduced into the Government of the colony the same system, and very much the same form, which prevailed in his regiment. From this period, the ascendancy of the military dates. They became an aristocracy’. Journal, Royal Australian Historical Society, M. Bladen, Vol. 1
With dire consequences for the First Nations’ Peoples the dominance of military power coincided with ‘the spread of agriculture’.
‘ British troops…fought in one of the most prolonged frontier wars in the history of the British empire, and for the first half of their stay were probably more frequently in action than the garrison of any other colony besides that of southern Africa‘. Dr Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison, The British Army in Australia 1788 – 1870, Kangaroo Press, 1986. ibid.
For the next twenty-five (25) years that; ‘frontier war, nasty and decidedly lacking in glory’ centred on Aboriginal river lands, the Hawkesbury, Nepean and Grose River systems.
‘The frontier…extended to almost everywhere there was good water and grass‘. C.D. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, Pelican Books, 1986
1794 – December, Sydney: Major Grose weak-willed, wounded in the American War (1775-1783) found the harsh conditions and Sydney’s intense summer heat impossible to endure and returned to England at the end of 1794.
Captain William Paterson, physically and emotionally damaged, a veteran of the American War, assumed the role of military dictator.
1794 – December: At the time of Grose’s departure over four hundred (400) settlers were farming ‘thirty miles along the banks on both sides of the [Hawkesbury] River it has been estimated that between 1794 and 1800 at least twenty-six [26] Whites and up to two [200] Aborigines were killed’. Dr Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison. ibid.
The Hawkesbury River lands were Dharug lands. Settlers denied them access to their hunting grounds, watering holes and yam fields. To feed their hungry families, the Dharug mounted hit and run raids, spearing, making off with sheep and stealing corn, a poor substitute for yam.
‘CONVINCE THEM OF OUR SUPERIORITY’
Governor Hunter RN was still on the high seas when Captain Paterson, despite reservations, found it necessary to activate Phillip’s rules of engagement; ‘whenever any future breach of good conduct of their side, shall render it necessary’ and moved against the Dharug.
1795 – June: ‘I therefore sent a detachment of two [2] subalterns and sixty [60] privates of the New South Wales to the river…to destroy as many as they could… as well to drive the natives to a distance, as for the protection of the settlers.
It gives me concern to have been forced to destroy any of these people, particularly as I have no doubt of their having been cruelly treated by some of the settlers who went out there’. Captain William Paterson to Right Hon. Henry Dundas, 15 June, 1795, Historical Records of Australia.
The troops Captain Paterson deployed to the Hawkesbury saw limited skirmishes escalate to ‘open warfare‘ accelerating destruction of the Dharug whose spears, guts and guile could not match the increased fire-power.
1795 – SEPTEMBER: Governor John Hunter RN, Britain’s second commissioned Governor, reached Sydney in late September 1795. Despite spirited resistance directed at him by Lieutenant John Macarthur, Hunter restored what passed for ‘English civil law’ in New South Wales.
1799 – March, Sydney: Four (4) years later in 1799, Governor Hunter had ‘five [5 European] men charged with the murder of two [2] natives boys’. Lieutenant Neill Mac Kellar, in command at the Hawkesbury from 1797 to 1799, was called to give evidence.
‘Under questioning he [MacKellar] stated that the orders issued [1795] for the destruction of Aboriginal whenever encountered, after they had committed outrages, had not been countermanded during his command at the Hawkesbury nor to his knowledge since’. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Neill MacKellar, Brigadier M. Austin.
1799 – London: While the trial was in progress Whitehall responded to Lieutenant Macarthur’s malicious white-anting by ordering Governor Hunter’s recall to England.
Hunter’s sin? He attempted, as Whitehall had instructed, to stop the importation of ‘fiery Indian rum’ from Bengal.
‘The traffic in spirits was commenced by the officers and was destined to be the chief factor which savaged the undercurrent of public life for twenty-five years after the departure of Governor Phillip’. Commentary, Historical Records of Australia.
Teetotaler John Mac arthur was prime mover in the importation of rum. Bought cheaply, sold at exorbitant mark-up, rum generated immense profits for certain officers of the New South Wales ‘Rum’ Corps and their cronies.
A tsunami of rum caused widespread lawlessness throughout the colony. When Captain William Paterson sent a detachment of troops to the Hawkesbury in June 1795 he was in no doubt local Dharug Aborigines ‘had been cruelly treated’ by drunken ex-criminals.
1810 – 1 January, Sydney: Lieutenant-Colonel Lachlan Macquarie took up his commission as Britain’s fifth Governor of Australia on New Years Day 1810.
Macquarie, the first governor to be drawn from military ranks brought insurance, a regiment of Highlanders the 73rd Black Watch, troops he commanded previously. Now under Colonel Maurice O’Connell their Irish commander, the Scots were only too willing, to take on rebellious English soldiers.
1810: High on Governor Macquarie’s list of instructions from Westminster was scrutiny of corrupt land grants, issued to the military by the military, during two (2) years of anarchy that followed the ‘Rum Rebellion’ of 1808.
1811: Macquarie visited Dharawal country on the Grose River. The area reminded his wife Elizabeth of her birth place in Scotland’s rugged West Highlands. Soon after this visit Macquarie made the first of a multitude of ‘lawful’ grants of Aboriginal land during his tenure (1810-1821).
‘As the spread of agriculture disrupted their ancient economy, the Aborigines were forced to take some of the settlers’ crops and spear their stock. Reprisals by the Whites led to guerilla warfare of a large part of the Cumberland Plain’. The Aborigines of the Sydney District before 1788, Peter Turbet, 2001
1811 – Appin: William Broughton, a civil official of the ‘First Fleet’, received one thousand (1,000) acres of Dharawal land. More land grants followed; forty (40) acres to ex-convicts, up to one hundred and fifty (150) acres to soldier-settlers.
These holdings sprawled across the Dharawal landscape. Trees were felled, ground cleared, fences erected, dwellings built, crops planted, sheep and cattle grazed.
‘The natives’ challenged the take-over of their lands and, fought to protect their resources. Their actions were deemed to fit Arthur Phillip’s criteria ‘future bad conduct’.
ALIVE OR DEAD – WITH OR WITHOUT HEADS
The frontier…extended to almost everywhere there was good water and grass’. C.D. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society. ibid.
But Australia; ‘a land of drought and flooding rain’ dictated static European-style cultivation introduced in 1788 delivered, will always deliver, erratic and unpredictable outcomes.
1814: So when in 1814 severe drought entered the equation crops failed, cattle died and starving settlers despaired. Starving ‘natives became extremely troublesome’ and clashes between black and white intensified.
Governor Macquarie, a Jekyll and Hyde character when it came to ‘the natives’ offered substantial rewards for the capture and delivery of Aboriginal ‘outlaws’ dead or alive.
DECEMBER 1790 – GOVERNOR PHILLIP – BOTANY BAY
‘INFUSE UNIVERSAL TERROR’
APRIL 1816 – GOVERNOR MACQUARIE – APPIN
‘STRIKE THE GREATER TERROR’
1816 – April 10, Sydney – Governor Macquarie: ‘I have this day ordered three [3] separate military detachments to march into the interior and remote parts of the colony for the purpose of punishing hostile natives by clearing the country of them entirely, and drive them across the mountains.
‘In the event of the natives making the smallest show of resistance – or refusing to surrender when called upon so to do – the officers commanding the [three] military parties have been authorised to fire on them to compel them to surrender, hanging up on trees the bodies of such natives as may be killed on such occasions, in order to strike the greater terror into the survivors’. Governor Macquarie, Diary, 10 April, 1816
Combined operations; ‘drive them across the mountains’. Three (3) predatory raids carefully planned to achieve optimum outcome ‘clear the country of them entirely’; maximum clearing of Aborigines from the Hawkeskbury, Nepean and Grose agricultural districts.
To achieve their mission Macquarie’s troops spent twenty-three (23) days in the field attacking, wounding, killing and beheading.
Captain James Wallis, allocated an area around Appin, set off from Liverpool with a detachment to attack a known men’s hunting camp.
1816 – April 16, Appin: In an unequal battle, fourteen (14) Dharawal men were killed; ‘to strike the greater terror’ three (3) warriors were beheaded and ‘bodies hang[ed] up on trees’.
‘MY MEN HEARD A CHILD CRY’
1816 – April 17: Having murdered the tribe’s men the women and children were ripe for annihilation. Captain Wallis ordered his section move onto the home camp at Broughton Pass arriving in the early hours of 17 April, 1816
‘A few of my men heard a child cry I [Wallis] formed line ranks…I regret to say some had been shot and others met their fate while rushing in despair over the precipice…In the end only five [5] of the Dharawal could be counted’. Captain Wallis, Journal, 1816, National Archives.
Governor Phillip’s highly-charged orders of December 1790 were implemented by; ‘twenty-five [25] regiments of British infantry [who]…fought in one of the most prolonged frontier wars in the history of the British empire’. Dr Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison, The British Army in Australia 1788 – 1870. ibid.
‘Whenever any future breach of good conduct on their side shall render it necessary’.
With laser accuracy the near annihilation of Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples can be plotted from Governor Phillip’s General Orders of December 1790.
‘An Ugly War’ the only war for which Australia has no stomach.