August 20.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Early frontier warfare
From 1805 there was little warfare on the Hawkesbury frontier until 1808, when [Pemulwuy's son] Tedbury led a number of raids. These attacks ended on 19 November 1809, when the main Darug leaders met William Paterson (who had become lieutenant-governor again, following the arrest of [Governor] Bligh) and were pardoned in exchange for promising to cease their attacks. [1] After this, the frontier was relatively quiet and the corn harvests from 1809 to 1814 were not attacked. [2] This seems to have been a consequence of the decline of the Darug population due to disease and warfare. As numbers dropped there were no longer enough people to mount corn raids.
When frontier warfare broke out again, the fighting took place on the Nepean River to the south. British settlers had started occupying land on the Napean from about 1809. In this phase of the frontier war, which began in May 1814, the Darug were joined by the Darawal and Gandangara peoples. The Darawal and Gandangara had traditional lands in this area, and they had also begun to move onto what was previously Darug land which had become empty with the decline in the Darug population. [3]
...The Darawal and Gandangara were able to carry out corn raids because their populations were large enough to allow them to form raiding parties of sixty or eighty. Like the Darug before them, the Darawal and Gandangara carried out farm raids and forced some settlers to abandon their farms and flee from the river. [4] Traditional and frontier warfare also continued to be fought simultaneously. Gandangara raiding parties attacking British farms also raided Darug and Darawal communities, so it was logical for the Darug and the Darawal to cooperate with the British against the Gandangara...However, as the fighting continued at least some of the Darawal and Gandangara formed an alliance against the British, since Gandangara and Darawal warriors were known to have shared camps during 1816. [5]
The British army continued to use the same tactics against Aboriginal raiding parties on the Hawkesbury-Nepean during both the first phase (1795-1805) and the second phase (1814-16) of frontier warfare. This was to send 'arm'd parties...to scower the country' and track down the raiders. The soldiers' muskets meant they could exact serious casualties on raiding parties if they made contact. For example, a New South Wales Corps punitive expedition killed two of 'the most violent and ferocious' Darug warriors in 1804. However, skirmishes of this nature rarely happened. Darug warriors travelled more lightly than British soldiers and knew the country better.
Letter – King to Viscount Castlereagh, British Colonial Secretary, 27 July 1806, HRA, V: 753; Sydney Gazette, 30 January 1808, 20 August, 1 October 1809; James Finucane (ed. Anne-Maree Whitaker), Distracted Settlement: New South Wales after Bligh. From the Journal of Lieutenant James Finucane 1808-1810, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1998, pp 87-88
Sydney Gazette, 20 July 1811, 14 May 1814.
Goodall, Invasion to Embassy, pp 25-26.
Sydney Gazette, 9 & 30 March 1816; letter – Macquarie to Bathurst, 18 March 1816, HRA, IX:53.
Liston, 'The Dharawal and Gandangera in Colonial Campbelltown', p 54.
Acknowledgment: John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838, pp. 46-47,135 n.39, n. 40, 136 n.41, n.43, n.45.