To Begin the World Over Again

by Matthew Lockwood

  For their part, the British quickly recognized Bennelong’s understandable wariness about returning to the settlement, and attempted to use his wife, Barangaroo, as a conduit for improved relations. She was given a petticoat to wear, but was quickly “laughed . . . out of it” by the combined ridicule of Bennelong and the British. Her hair was combed and cut, and her timid behavior during this attempt to impose European standards of feminine beauty was enough for one observer to suggest that she brought to mind the “civilized women” they had left behind. Watkin Tench recorded his surprise:

  that amidst a horde of roaming savages, in the desert wastes of New South Wales, might be found as much feminine innocence, softness, and modesty (allowing for inevitable difference of education), as the most finished system could bestow, or the most polished circle produce. So little fitted are we to judge of human nature at once! And yet on such grounds have countries been described, and nations characterized. Hence have arisen those speculative and laborious compositions on the advantages and superiority of a state of nature.50

  The British may have viewed her through a misogynistic lens of female simplicity, but Barangaroo was no fool. Not only did she fail to encourage Bennelong to return to the British settlement, she vociferously opposed it, and even went so far as to attempt to persuade Boorong, another Eora captive, to return to her people. Fearing the loss of yet another Eora interpreter, the British requested that Bennelong find a husband for Boorong, hoping to both placate Boorong and tie Bennelong more closely to the British settlement. A likely candidate was found in the guise of a 16-year-old Eora youth named Yemmerrawannie, Bennelong’s future companion on his European voyage, but Boorong was not at all interested. Though rejected as a potential suitor, Yemmerrawannie, with his youthful energy and adventurous spirit, soon became a regular fixture in British–Eora relations.

  One British gambit to smooth over relations with Bennelong and the Eora had failed, but another was quickly tried. Since the first days of contact, the Eora had regularly complained about, and sometimes responded violently to, the new arrivals’ penchant for stealing their boats and fishing equipment. Bennelong’s previous affiliation with the British had both increased his authority among his own people and made him the most obvious candidate to request the return of stolen goods. Knowing they could easily derail the sensitive process of building a harmonious relationship with the local peoples, Governor Phillip had always attempted to prevent such thefts and tried to return stolen property when it came to his attention. Later, when a convict was charged with stealing fishing tackle from an Eora man, the governor immediately ordered a severe flogging in the presence of as many Eora as could be convinced to attend. Many Eora men and women gathered for the punishment, and the reasons for the procedure were explained to them, but their reaction was anything but accepting of European penal practice. As Watkin Tench observed,

  If the behaviour of those now collected be found to correspond with it, it is, I think, fair to conclude that these people are not of a sanguinary and implacable temper. Quick indeed of resentment, but not unforgiving of injury. There was not one of them that did not testify strong abhorrence of the punishment and equal sympathy with the sufferer. The women were particularly affected; Daringa shed tears, and Barangaroo, kindling into anger, snatched a stick and menaced the executioner. The conduct of these women, on this occasion, was exactly descriptive of their characters. The former was ever meek and feminine, the latter fierce and unsubmissive.51

  In October 1790, an arrangement was made to fulfill Bennelong’s request that the stolen property be returned, which seems to have precipitated a general relaxation of tensions. The full and final reconciliation between the two camps, however, seems to have been almost wholly on Bennelong’s terms. Once he had succeeded in getting the British to return his people’s stolen property, he made a calculated inquiry after the governor’s health. From all his actions, it is clear that Bennelong’s regard for Phillip was genuine and his desire to see him well not manufactured, but it seems probable that he was also asking about the governor as a means of signaling that he was once more willing to visit the British settlement. In mid-October, he did just that, traveling to Port Jackson with several companions, but only after a British hostage was left under the watchful eye of one of his countrymen.

  Over the next several months Bennelong made regular appearances among the British. He was regularly bestowed with gifts, and Governor Phillip even had a brick house, 12 foot square, built for his personal use at what is now known as Bennelong Point in Port Jackson—today the site of the Sydney Opera House. Bennelong’s return to his position as intermediary between Eora and British helped to ensure good relations with the native peoples of the immediate area. Further afield, however, the violence engendered by British encroachment continued to rage.

  The solicitousness with which the British approached Bennelong was in other interactions with the local peoples nowhere to be found. Like the recurrent theft of Eora property, much of this brutish treatment ran counter to Governor Phillip’s express orders and his own instructions from Britain. Nonetheless, the behavior of some settlers was enough to repeatedly undermine efforts to prevent open hostilities between the invaders and the invaded. The situation took a conspicuously dark turn when a convict was killed in December of 1790. McEntire—a convict who doubled as the governor’s gamekeeper—and a small group of settlers had traveled out beyond the north arm of Botany Bay to hunt kangaroos. The strange creatures were best tackled at night, so the hunting party hunkered down for the evening in a hut made of boughs. Around 1 a.m., the hunters were awoken by a rustling in the brush. Assuming the sound was made by their would-be prey, McEntire and the rest crept out of the hut with guns primed and ready.

  To their surprise, in the place of kangaroos, they found five Eora men stalking into their camp, spears in hand. McEntire, recognizing a few of the Eora, laid down his gun and approached the men, speaking to them in their own language. After being spotted, the Eora began a slow retreat, followed by McEntire who continued his attempts at calming conversation. In a flash, everything went wrong. Seemingly out of nowhere, one of the Eora, a man named Pimelwi, leapt up onto a fallen tree and drove his spear deep into the side of the advancing McEntire. With the spear lodged between two ribs, a fading McEntire was taken back to the settlement. Despite deeming the patient beyond hope, the surgeons sought the medical advice of a number of Eora who happened to be visiting the settlement. Even if it was too late to save the gamekeeper, the surgeons hoped to learn from the local men how best to treat the wounds made by native spears. With their backward-facing barbs, these spears were difficult and dangerous to remove, and the Eora’s unanimous medical opinion was that removing one as deeply lodged as the one in McEntire’s side would spell a quick and certain death. At first the surgeons complied with the advice they had received, but two days later they made a rather clumsy attempt at the operation. As the Eora had foreseen, the spear was removed, but the barbs broke off inside the patient, who expired a short time later.52

  Perhaps because he had grown attached to his gamekeeper, or because the killing was just the latest in a series of attacks on British settlers, Governor Phillip was apoplectic when he learned of McEntire’s demise. To his mind, he had done his best to ensure that the clash of civilizations between British and Australian was as peaceful and harmonious as possible. Learning his lesson from the hair-triggered violence of the settlement of North America, Phillip had visibly punished those who stole from the local peoples, and even limited the use of guns outside of the settlement as a means of preventing the understandable tension of early encounters from devolving into shooting. He had given gifts, forged friendships, and upheld justice, and still, by the end of 1790 he could count seventeen separate instances when Eora had killed or wounded his men. While he wished to maintain the peace, Phillip believed that this would be impossible if the Eora believed they could attack the settlers with impunity, and so he ordered a party of upwards of fif
ty men to proceed to the place of the attack on McEntire to capture the guilty men. An order was issued to this effect stating:

  Several tribes of the natives still continuing to throw spears at any man they meet unarmed, by which several have been killed, or dangerously wounded, the governor, in order to deter the natives from such practices in future, has ordered out a party to search for the man who wounded the convict McEntire, in so dangerous a manner on Friday last, though no offence was offered on his part, in order to make a signal example of that tribe. At the same time, the governor strictly forbids, under penalty of the severest punishment, any soldier or other person, not expressly ordered out for that purpose, ever to fire on any native except in his own defence; or to molest him in any shape, or to bring away any spears, or other articles which they may find belonging to those people. The natives will be made severe examples of whenever any man is wounded by them; but this will be done in a manner which may satisfy them that it is a punishment inflicted on them for their own bad conduct, and of which they cannot be made sensible if they are not treated with kindness while they continue peaceable and quiet.

  The governor was aware that the Eora were not an undifferentiated mass but divided into tribes or clans, each with its own territory and with its own political relationships with other tribes. Warfare was as endemic among the Eora as it was among Europeans, and as in North America, the coming of the British had done much to destabilize the delicate balance between the local clans. This balance, as Phillip surmised, was central to indigenous politics, observing that “although they did not fear death individually, yet that the relative weight and importance of the different tribes appeared to be the highest object of their estimation, as each tribe deemed its strength and security to consist wholly in its powers, aggregately considered.” Phillip identified the Bidjigal clan, whose territory lay to the north of Botany Bay where McEntire had been assaulted, as the prime agents in the attacks on British settlers. What the governor might not have fully realized, however, was that by forging a close relationship with the clans of Port Jackson he had upset the local balance of power, inviting a hostile response from clans threatened by any alliance between the newcomers and their age-old rivals. The authorities in Britain, and Phillip himself, had been concerned to learn from the mistakes of North America, and had taken steps to ensure that the violence that consumed Atlantic colonies was not repeated in the Pacific. And yet, once more, British settlement had led to devastating disease, casual violence, and factional fighting. Violence was simply a necessary condition of imperialism and the British, as ever, agents of disruption and death.

  The instructions given to the British party sent to chastise the Bidjigal, led by Watkin Tench, project a mixture of justice and terror. On the one hand, Governor Phillip wanted “to strike a decisive blow, in order, at once to convince them of our superiority and to infuse an universal terror, which might operate to prevent farther mischief.” To that end, he ordered Tench to capture two Bidjigal men and put ten to death on the spot. They were instructed to cut the heads off the executed men and bring them back as grisly proof of British power. On the other hand, Tench was to ensure that no women or children were harmed, no huts burnt, and nothing but weapons taken or destroyed. He was also to proceed in the open and not use treachery or promises of a friendly meeting as a means of getting close to the targets. In all their behavior it was to be clear to all observers that this was a judicial mission, designed to punish the guilty, and by no means an act of war. Phillip hoped to demonstrate the fate of those who attacked the British, while not undermining future relations with the local peoples. This was hardly likely to be the message received by the Eora, but it does reflect Phillip’s attempts to maintain a firm line between the methods of Australian settlement and those used in North America.53

  As it transpired, the avenging party was a conspicuous failure, in every sense of the word. News of McEntire’s death and the governor’s intended retaliation spread quickly through the area, and when Tench’s cumbersomely large raiding party approached the nearby Eora simply melted into the bush, leaving the British to slog between one empty village and another with nothing to show for it. After two humiliating attempts to punish the Bidjigal, the cause of justice was abandoned. In the end, Governor Phillip’s righteous rage came to naught. Even among the British many pointed the blame for McEntire’s death squarely at the dead man himself. The convict cum-gamekeeper, as everyone knew, had a black reputation among the Eora. Bennelong openly despised the man, and he was not alone in his hatred. Tench himself records that the aversion toward McEntire was so universal as to lead many of the settlers to believe the rumors that the gamekeeper regularly shot at and injured Eora he encountered on his hunting trips. So widespread was this belief that on his deathbed he was questioned about it. The dying man admitted to once shooting an Eora man, but claimed it was in self-defense. Despite his strident deathbed denials, most remained convinced that he was killed not in cold blood but in retaliation for his own previous barbarity. McEntire had been reassured when he recognized his soon-to-be assailants, but the fact that they knew him and his previous atrocities likely sealed his fate.

  On September 7, 1795, HMS Reliance finally landed at Port Jackson. Bennelong had been away from home for nearly three years. He had seen the wonders of London and the gentle beauty of the English countryside, but he had also lost his companion and experienced the unrelenting cold of an English winter and the illness it brought in train. He had been dressed in fine clothes, fed fine food, entertained and fêted by London society, he had seen the best that Britain had to offer, the best of European culture, of Western modernity. He found it wanting. He had been impatient to return to his homeland, but not just for familiar sights and familiar faces. After nearly three years living as the British did, Bennelong was eager to throw off the guise of Europeanization and return to his people. According to one observer, he “laid aside, all the ornaments and improvements he had reaped from his travels, and returned as if with increased relish, to all his former loathsome and savage habits. His clothes were thrown away as burthensome restraints on the freedom of his limbs, and he became again as compleat a New Hollander, as if he had never left his native wilds.” He still visited the British settlement from time to time, but less often than he had in the time of Governor Phillip. “Upon his return to the Colony,” it was recorded, “he fell off spontaneously into his early habits, and in spite of every thing that could be done to him in the order of civilization, he took to the bush, and only occasionally visited Government House.” The British could still not quite grasp that their culture was part and parcel of the coercion of imperialism. It was their fatal blind spot, even among those with the best of intentions.54

  In the years after 1795 Bennelong rose to a position of considerable authority among his people. He became head of a clan of around one hundred people living along the Parranatta River, becoming a prominent figure among the Eora of the area and a fixture in the ritual duels and warfare that determined status and power among and between clans. He died on January 2, 1813, in a house he had built in the orchard of the brewer James Squire, and was buried with one of his wives at Kissing Point. His death was well marked by European settlers, though with more venom than regard, in language that demonstrates a hardening of attitudes toward the native people of Australia and a new separation of European and Aboriginal society.

  Bennelong died on Sunday morning last at Kissing Point. Of this veteran champion of the native tribe little favourable can be said. His voyage to and benevolent treatment in Great Britain produced no change whatever in his manners and inclinations, which were naturally barbarous and ferocious.

  The principal officers of Government had for many years endeavoured, by the kindest of usage, to wean him from his original habits and draw him into a relish for civilised life; but every effort was in vain exerted and for the last few years he has been but little noticed. His propensity for drunkenness was inordinate; and when in that state
he was insolent, menacing and overbearing. In fact, he was a thorough savage, not to be warped from the form and character that nature gave him by all the efforts that mankind could use.55

  Since his death Bennelong has often been held up as an example of a man between two worlds, a man who, through contact with Europeans, could never again be fully accepted in his own society nor ever attain equal membership in European society. His likely cause of death, succumbing to a combination of wounds from traditional payback battles and the effects of alcohol introduced by the British, seems to reflect the negative consequences for the man who tried to live in both worlds. But this picture is not the whole reality. Bennelong seems a man caught between two clashing civilizations because he was adept at operating in both, taking what he needed from each and rejecting the rest. He used his connections with the British to gain goods, protection, and power among his own people. Bennelong stands out in Australian history not because he simply represents the costs of British settlement, but because he lived in a brief time in which an Eora man could successfully play both sides and live in two worlds, a moment when attitudes and animosities were not yet fixed, when the balance of power was yet to swing so drastically in British favor. By the time of his death in 1813 things had changed. British settlement was expanding rapidly, pushing the Eora off their lands. Missionaries and schools were targeting Eora culture—after his death Bennelong’s own son would attend one such school—and Europeans were becoming increasingly intolerant of indigenous civilization. Bennelong’s people had faced invasion, epidemic disease, and violence. A few, like Bennelong, thrived in these times, but for most this was an era of suffering and of dislocation.