January 2.
“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey
Barbarous dispossession
“...the wanton and barbarous manner in which many of them have been destroyed...”
[The Aborigines] violence against the military proceeded from a soldier having in a most shameful and wanton manner killed a native woman and child...You will discover, my Lord, what a host of evidence is brought forward...to prove what numbers of white people have been killed by the natives; but could we have brought with equal ease such proofs from the natives as they are capable of affording the wanton and barbarous manner in which many of them have been destroyed...we should have found an astonishing difference in the numbers.
Acknowledgment: Governor Hunter to the Duke of Portland, 2 January, 1800 in Historical Records of New South Wales, IV, p.2
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“While they entertain the idea of our having dispossessed them of their residences, they must always consider us as enemies...”
Many of the principal features of frontier conflict became apparent during the founding years of settlement in and around Sydney. The soldiers of the New South Wales Corps served a dual purpose: they were to both guard the convicts and meet any resistance to settlement from the resident Aborigines. While the instructions to Governor Phillip exhorted him to treat the Aborigines with 'amity and kindness', there was no question of allowing Indigenous hostility to compromise the new colony. The British would use whatever force was necessary to impose their will, their control of required land and their legal code. The senior officers of the colony quickly realised that the local Aborigines presented no threat of a massed frontal attack on the settlement...But what could not be prevented were the constant attacks on small parties striking or travelling on the outskirts of settlement. The local Aboriginal bands often could not be found or could not be caught by encumbered soldiers with little knowledge of the country. The regular attacks led Governor Phillip to express his exasparation with what he called, 'this state of petty warfare and endless uncertainty'. The settlers responded when they could with volleys fired by quickly assembled detachments. Such action was unfortunate but necessary, as Lieutenant David Collins explained to readers in Britain. 'It was much to be regretted', he wrote:
that any necessity existed for adopting these sanguinary punishments, and that we had not yet been able to reconcile the natives to the deprivation of those parts of this harbour which we occupied. While they entertain the idea of our having dispossessed them of their residences, they must always consider us as enemies; and upon this principle they made a point of attacking the white people whenever opportunity and safety occurred. [1]
D Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, two volumes, Cadell & Davies, London, 1798 and 1802, vol. 1, p. 122.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Forgotten War, NewSouth, Sydney, 2013, pp. 54-55, 259 n.2.
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On this day
2 January, 1813 – Bennelong, a Sydney Aborigine, who became an associate of Captain Arthur Phillip, died.
2 January, 1800 – A black community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, petitioned the US House of Congress to abolish slavery in the United States of America.
2 January, 1868 – Arrival in Brisbane of the Syren with Kanaka labourers – 12 died on the way and another 12 were quarantined- causes a public outcry.
Acknowledgment: Anthony Barker, When Was That – Chronology of Australia from 1788, John Ferguson, Sydney, 1988, p.162.