May 22.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Pemulwuy – war leader
Pemulwuy and ‘open war’ on the Hawkesbury
...the colonists, in their search for better territory to support their growing but malnourished population, had found fertile country for their crops to the west on the banks of a river, called Derrebin, which they renamed the Hawkesbury. The land lay within Pemulwuy’s domain of influence in the estate of the Gandangarra and the inland Darug, and extended to the mountain ranges in the west. Pemulwuy was member of the Bediagal clan. Unlike Bennelong, Pemulwuy had no wish to find an accommodation with the British. They had no great regard for Pemulwuy and regarded him as ‘a riotous and troublesome savage’. [1]
The colonists set about burning the forests, clearing then for farmland. Within a year, many more colonised the area and were soon in the majority. They escaped starvation in Sydney, but their land-clearing soon caused the Gandangarra and inland Darug the same fate. Instead of native yams and other staples, the colonists’ crops covered the most fertile parts of the valley. In May 1795, Judge Advocate David Collins reported that their crops were at risk: ‘the natives appeared in large bodies, men, women, and children, provided with blankets and nets to carry off the corn...determined to take it wherever and whenever they could meet with opportunities.’ [2] The settlers retaliated violently, and the traditional owners fought back. Collins described the ensuing conflict on the Hawkesbury as an ‘open war’. [3]
In May 1795 the acting Governor, Captain William Paterson, aware of his responsibility for the food security of the colony, acted to save the vulnerable periphery from the rage of the traditional owners. He sent sixty soldiers to the Hawkesbury to destroy the Aboriginal people, and, as David Collins related, ‘several of these people were killed...but none of their bodies...found’. [4] In contrast to the official records, the Reverend Thomas Fyshe Palmer recorded of the escalating violence: ‘They seized a native boy who had lived with a settler, and made him discover where his parents and relations concealed themselves. They came upon them unarmed and unexpected, killed five and wounded many more. The dead they hang on gibbets, in terrorem. The people killed were unfortunately the most friendly of the blacks, and one of them more than once saved the life of a white man.’ [5]
[Governor] Hunter had failed to put down the native uprising; he had been unable to stop the rum trade; and he had no success in stopping the power of the military. He was forced to resign. Pemulwuy had remained at large...[Pemulwuy] inspired admiration among his own, and, for his ruthless attacks, hatred among the settlers. Before long the troops were in battle with Pemulwuy and his colleagues.
Pemulwuy survived several attacks and although wounded five times, he fought on at every opportunity. He burnt farmhouses and crops, starting the blazes several kilometres away. In another battle, Pemulwuy was captured after receiving seven bullet wounds to his head and body. Yet, a month later, still with irons on his legs, Pemulwy escaped. John Washington Price, surgeon on a convict ship, who thought him ‘brave and courageous’, wrote in 1800, ‘having killed some of our people an order was given to shoot him, yet few attempted it… [He]...has been known to say “that no gun or pistol can kill him”’. [6]
David Collins, An Account of the English colony in New South Wales, AH & AW Reed/Royal Australian Historical Society, Sydney, 1975 [1798], p. 348.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Reverend Thomas Fyshe Palmer to Dr John Disney, Sydney, 3 June 1796, MSS 948, p. 18, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney.
JW Price, The Minerva Journal of John Washington Price, A Voyage from Cork, Ireland, to Sydney, New South Wales 1793-1800, trans., ed & intr. By Pamela Jane Fulton, Miegunyah Press, Carlton, 2000, p. 174.
Acknowledgment: Marcia Langton, “Ngura barbagai Country Lost – ‘They made a solitude and called it peace’ in First Australians, Rachel Perkins and Marcia Langton eds, The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, 2010, pp.21-23, 254, n.51, n.52, n.53, n.54, n.55, n.56.