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Authors: John Birmingham

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On board the
Sirius
John Hunter took note of his extra passengers: six cows with calf, two bulls and numerous sheep, goats, hogs and poultry. Throughout the remaining ships no less than 500 animals had been squeezed on – rams, stallions, mares and colts – creating a vision which ‘excited the idea of Noah's ark'. Cramped passageways were blocked by sacks and barrels of seed and plants, the first wave of a botanical invasion to complement the white man's conquest of Australia: cotton bushes, coffee and banana trees, oranges, lemons and guava, tamarind, prickly pear, bamboo, Spanish reed, sugarcane, grapevines and apple trees, pear trees, strawberry, oak and myrtle. If these preparations were not enough to impress upon the travellers' minds the fundamental nature of the void which loomed, on the evening of their first day out of Cape Town a ship from London passed. For Collins, this last chance encounter with an agent of their native country, ‘its pleasures, its wealth and its consequence', presented a striking contrast to the destiny which rolled towards them on the precipitous blue waves of the southern Indian Ocean.

A week of gales and monstrous seas welcomed the adventurers to the underside of the globe. The livestock taken on in Cape Town were so unnerved by the violent roll and pitch of their new world that Hunter feared they would perish long before wobbling ashore in New South Wales. Suggestions to sling them in harnesses, to let them ride out the wild buffeting in a sort of bovine hammock, were dismissed because of a fear their legs would atrophy from lack of exercise. The animals were not the only ones suffering. Hardened sailors who had spent their lives fighting the cruel seas of the North Atlantic could not have seen waters so uniformly huge and unremitting as those they sailed into from Africa. In that part of the world – a massive band of deep ocean circling the planet between the latitudes 40© and 60© south – dry land accounts for but three percent of the earth's surface. The howling westerly winds which blow all year round pick up great volumes of water and push them along at staggering speeds for thousands of kilometres. A tiny vessel like
Supply
, struggling up the windward slope of one of those immense, cobalt blue rollers, would have been like a child's toy set on the side of a hill. With dense streaks of foam breaking and streaming along in the wind, with the crests of other waves tumbling and toppling and spinning away, with yawning black chasms opening up in the waters all around, it was not uncommon for the seamen on one vessel to lose sight of nearby ships, hidden behind roiling towers of salt water. Sometimes a ship would tip over a crest, skiing down the black face of the wave which would then detonate right over it, sending roaring geysers down through the ships' innards, washing marine, convict and officer, and man, woman and child alike from their beds.

Wrestling these seas twelve days out of Cape Town, with the fever which did for Daniel Cresswell running hot through his shipmates, Phillip decided to transfer command from the
Sirius
to the hardier, faster
Supply
. He had carpenters, sawyers and blacksmiths transferred to the best ships in the fleet –
Supply, Alexander
,
Scarborough
and
Friendship
– and ordering the other vessels to follow him, split the convoy in two. His own leading detachment was expected to arrive at least a fortnight earlier and prepare a landing site. John Hunter, who could still see
Supply
a day later, took the slower, wallowing whales south with
Sirius
where they picked up even stronger winds and a large following sea to unknowingly keep pace with the fast squadron.

On 9 January 1788, with the gloomy mist shrouded forests of Van Dieman's Land hiding somewhere off the port bow, Edward Johnson, once of Dorset, paid the ultimate price for the ill-conceived act of larceny which had seen him sentenced to transportation. On a dark hazy day assailed with random, contrary winds, Johnson, ‘worn out with a melancholy and long confinement' simply closed his eyes and expired. White, who attended him, thought it a pity ‘as he seemed sensible of the impropriety and imprudence of his former life, and studious to atone for it'. A day later the sea threw one last trial at Johnson's surviving companions. A sudden violent white squall blew up from nowhere, ripping the
Charlotte
's mainsail like tissue paper and carrying off the
Prince of Wales
's mainyard.

The tag end of the First Fleet was spared any further excitement and ten days later they swung left into Botany Bay, where Phillip had only just preceded them. A voyage of mythic stature was over. Eleven vessels, thrown over 24 000 kilometres of poorly charted, angry seas to lodge upon the fringe of an invisible, fantastic land. Even with the tremendous task in front of them many of the First Fleet diarists still had time to marvel at their fortune. Although so many had started the voyage sick and undernourished, only a small fraction had been cut away by death. No ships had been lost, contrary to expectation. Gazing at the drab, unpromising shores which encircled their battered armada, they were right to give thanks. But they were the only ones doing so. Collins noted that as Phillip moved along the coast towards Port Jackson and the founding of Sydney, ‘the natives everywhere greeted the little fleet with shouts of defiance and prohibition'; the words
warra warra
– go away, go away – resounding wherever they appeared.

 

The first white man officially acknowledged as being killed by native Australians was Peter Burn, transported for stealing a thirty-six gallon barrel of beer. The thirst which cost him his liberty lost him his life four months after he arrived in New South Wales. Burn and another convict, William Ayres, had wandered away from the main camp late in the day looking to gather sarsaparilla herb, a common substitute for tea and coffee in the starving, isolated settlement. They walked around to Woolloomooloo Bay, then a broad shallow valley drained by a fresh-water creek, and cut off from the camp by the hilly terrain and wild scrub. When the natives attacked, Burn and Ayres might as well have been a thousand miles from help.

Ayres crawled back to the Cove after nightfall and was carried into the hospital with a barbed spear thrust deep into the flesh between his shoulder blades. Burn had abandoned him, running off after he'd been hit. The natives quickly surrounded Ayres and stripped him. Burn meanwhile did not get far. Wounded, bleeding and terrified, Ayres saw him captured a short distance away. The war party were dragging him off, kicking and screaming, his head already bashed and pulped. His clothes were discovered a few days later, torn and rent by spears, tacky with dried blood.

A week later two more convicts were killed in the same area. The whites were not of one mind about who to blame. Phillip wrote to Lord Sydney that he had not ‘the least doubt of the convicts being the aggressors'. Judge Advocate David Collins, however, thought Burn ‘had fallen a sacrifice to his own folly and the barbarity of the natives'. The colony was lucky to have in Phillip a restrained leader, acutely aware of the balance of power between white and black in the earliest days. Frequently marching out to treat with the natives, he knew the chances of his own community surviving would be limited without the Aborigines' tolerance. The marines, with their musketry, drill and brightly coloured uniforms were no match for the Iora's bush skills and spears. As Robert Hughes points out, a proficient warrior could put four spears into a soldier in the time it would take the white man to fire off one ball and reload. By December 1790 seventeen Englishmen had been killed or wounded in attacks by Aborigines, none of whom had been captured or killed in return.

Phillip himself was speared in a botched encounter at Manly Cove, although his liberal policy was not affected by the incident. He understood that the man who speared him acted in self-defence, assuming as Phillip advanced on him with his open upturned palms that he was about to be snatched up and carried away. In the Governor's opinion most of the native violence involved either misunderstanding or justifiable retaliation. For instance, the convicts were in the habit of stealing the Aborigines' canoes and spears, making it necessary for Phillip to publish decrees, enforceable under pain of death, to stop his people from interfering with the locals. He explicitly banned any revenge raids on Iora camps and, recognising their prior claims over the land's resources, ordered that fishermen encountering any Aborigines on the harbour should hand over a portion of their catch.

However, when his gamekeeper McEntire was killed, Phillip finally authorised a large posse to track down those responsible. McEntire had trekked over to Botany Bay with two other convicts and a sergeant of the marines, hunting kangaroos to restock the colony's depleted larder. They bashed out through the scrub along the northern arm of the bay, making camp at a small hut recently erected on the peninsula for just this purpose. A rustling noise in the bushes awoke the sergeant with a start around one in the morning. Assuming some kangaroos had wandered up close, he called to the others, who quickly roused themselves. Peering into the obsidian blackness of the Australian night, they were alarmed to spy five natives advancing on them with spears at the ready. McEntire, who was more familiar with the bush and its indigenes than his companions said, ‘Don't be afraid, I know them'. He laid down his rifle, stepped forward and spoke in their language. They began to withdraw, McEntire following and chatting as he went. Then, without warning, one of the ‘Indians', as the colonists then called them, leapt onto a fallen tree and loosed his spear at the advancing white man. It pierced his chest with a sick wet crunch, the barbed wooden head driving hard between two ribs and puncturing the left lung. Prematurely but presciently McEntire cried out, ‘I am a dead man!'

He staggered back to the hut, where someone broke off the protruding shaft while the others chased his attackers. The Indians, however, were too swift, too agile and too much at home in their own world and their pursuers soon gave up the trail. McEntire, awash with his life's blood, begged them not to let him die in the woods. A large, muscular type, he dragged himself back to Sydney where the surgeons could only tell him that yes, he was a dead man. Watkin Tench, who would soon be appointed to lead a revenge party, described the change which came over the once fearsome gamekeeper as he received the news.

The poor wretch now began to utter the most dreadful exclamations and to accuse himself of the commission of crimes of the deepest dye, accompanied with such expressions of his despair of God's mercy as are too terrible to repeat.

As he lingered on the tables of the rugged camp hospital for the next three days a number of Aborigines made their way in to see him. They seemed to know what had happened and when surgeons made signs of extracting the spearhead, still lodged tightly in the swollen, supperating wound, they gestured violently. Death would quickly follow any attempt at removal. The medical staff demurred, and on 12 December they removed the spear's head. Out came a large wooden barb with several smaller stone spikes fastened on with yellow gum. However most of the spikes tore free with the force of extraction and remained embedded in the gamekeeper's flesh. This primitive surgery did not really help. McEntire had already seen his last Christmas and on 20 December he died.

Governor Phillip ordered a patrol of fifty marines to kit up and search out the tribe from which the murderer hailed. At the same time he expressly forbade any unauthorised attacks on the Aborigines. He called in Tench and tasked him with a three-day march ‘to bring in six of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or, if that should be found impracticable, to put that number to death'. Tench had wrangled the body count down. Originally the young captain was to execute ten and bring more back as prisoners. They ‘were to cut off and bring in the heads of the slain; for which purpose hatchets and bags would be furnished'. But no signs of friendship or invitation were to be used to lure the victims into a trap. Phillip thought such conduct treacherous, giving the natives reason to distrust the English in the future. So it was to be an honest, straightforward killing, a thoroughly British massacre. Phillip explained to Tench his reasons for ordering the strike; seventeen colonists had been killed or wounded by the natives; he thought the Bideegal tribe to be the principal aggressors and he was determined to strike a decisive blow, to convince them of English superiority ‘and to infuse an universal terror, which might operate to prevent further mischief'. His observations of the natives had led him to conclude that although they did not fear death individually, a tribe found its strength and security in its numbers; hence the necessity of decimating the whole rather than just punishing the individual. Phillip told his subordinate he had long held off violent measures, believing that in every former instance of hostility the Aborigines had acted out of misunderstanding or in retaliation.

‘To the latter of these causes,' said Phillip, ‘I attribute my own wound, but in this business of McEntire, I am fully persuaded that they were unprovoked, and the barbarity of their conduct admits of no extenuation.'

Tench, on being asked whether he saw any way around the impending action inquired whether, instead of destroying ten people, the capture of six might suffice, ‘as out of this number, a part might be set aside for retaliation' and the rest released some time later to spread the word. Phillip agreed, adding that if six couldn't be taken, Tench should ensure that number were shot.

Thus at four in the morning on 14 December, Watkin Tench strode to the head of a column consisting of another captain, two lieutenants, two surgeons, three sergeants, three corporals and forty enlisted men. Loaded down with heavy packs, canteens, bayonets and firearms clanking in the dawn and clouds of dust billowing up around their boots, they clomped south; a ‘terrific procession' Tench called it, neatly anticipating the clumsy, impotent lunge of another technologically advanced but hopelessly misplaced army in the jungles of Vietnam a hundred and seventy years later. Reading Tench's caustic, self-aware narrative of the hunt for McEntire's killers, it is hard to shake a sense of strange familiarity, some exotic kin to deja vu as the lost patrol drags itself through an unpleasant alien landscape suddenly devoid of all sign of the enemy, in fact of all sign of life. The soil was shallow and sandy, ‘and its productions meagre and wretched'. When forced to quit the sand, they had to drag themselves through deep crevices and ‘clamber over rocks unrefreshed by streams and unmarked by diversity'. Tench wrote that by nine o'clock they had reached the peninsula at the head of Botany Bay, ‘but after having walked in various directions until four o'clock in the afternoon, without seeing a native', they halted for the night, exhausted.

BOOK: Leviathan
11.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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