The Fatal Shore

by Robert Hughes

  67. Harris, Settlers and Convicts, pp. 149–53.

  68. Bigge NSW, Appendix. CO 201:142, p. 336ff, cit. in Clark HA, vol. 2, p. 43. On Wentworth, see Clark HA, vol. 2, p. 41ff.

  69. William Charles Wentworth, “Where’er the sickening Muse,” in Wentworth Papers, Miscellanea, ML, Sydney.

  70. “I will not suffer”: W. C. Wentworth, May 1, 1820, in Wentworth Letters, ML, Sydney. The term “bunyip aristocracy”—still occasionally used in Australia to deride the pretentious—was invented by the young Irish politico Daniel Deniehy in 1853, in a speech against Wentworth’s self-serving proposal for a hereditary colonial noblesse. The relevant passage, as reported on Aug. 16, 1853 in the Sydney Morning Herald, runs. “Even the poor Irishman in the streets of Dublin would fling his ube at the Botany Bay aristocrats. In fact, he [Deniehy] was puzzled how to classify them … Perhaps it was only a specimen of the remarkable contrariety that existed at the Antipodes. Here they all knew the common water-mole was transformed into the duck-billed platypus, and in some distant emulation of this degeneration, he supposed they were to be favoured with a bunyip aristocracy. (Great laughter.)”

  71. W. C. Wentworth, A Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales …, pp. 349–50

  72. Sidney Smith, Edinburgh Review, July 1819.

  73. The text of the Emancipists’ petition to the Crown is given in HRA X549–52.

  74. The winner was William Mackworth Praed, who knew little about Australasia but was soon to become the wittiest writer of vers de société in England Against him, Wentworth’s clumping measures had little chance; but that second prize was the first cultural kudos earned by an Australian overseas.

  75. Brisbane to Bathurst, Oct. 28, 1824, in “Transcripts of Missing Despatches,” A1267, ML, Sydney.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN To Plough Van Diemen’s Land

  1. On Thomas Davey, see ADB entry, Robson, Hist. Tas., pp. 64–67 and 78–94; and J. W. Beattie, Glimpses of the Lives and Times of the Early Tasmanian Governors, pp. 23–25.

  2 William Sorell, Memorandum in HRA 1114.

  3. In July 1817, shortly after assuming office in Van Diemen’s Land, Sorell was ordered to pay damages of £3,000—a colossal sum—to Lieutenant Kent for alienating the affections of his wife. When Mrs Kent arrived in Hobart and settled into residence at Government House, the notoriously choleric Anthony Fenn Kemp, merchant, landowner, former New South Wales Corps Captain and conspirator in the “Rum Rebellion” plot against Governor Bligh, used this “evil example to the Rising Generation” as his main weapon in a campaign to unseat Sorell. Partly because the normally prudish Governor Macquarie distrusted Fenn Kemp for his role in the Rum Rebellion, these objurgations failed

  4. Sorell to Cuthbertson, in standing orders, Dec 8, 1821, CSO 1/133/3229, TSA, Hobart.

  5. John Barnes to SC 1837–38 (11), Minutes, pp. 45–46.

  6. James Backhouse, A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies, pp. 44–45.

  7. Pine logging statistics for the year 1827: T J. Lemprière, The Penal Settlements of Van Diemen’s Land, p. 39.

  8. Barnes to SC 1837–38 (11), Minutes, p. 37.

  9. Monotony relieved by hunting privileges J. Butler to Arthur, Aug 28, 1828, CSO 1/290/6944, TSA, Hobart Taste of echidna Lemprière, Penal Settlements, pp. 43–44.

  10. Vegetables against scurvy Sorell to Cuthbertson, Dec 10, 1823, CSO 1/134/3229. Rapid increase of scurvy: J. Spence (asst surgeon at Macquarie Harbor) to James Scott, Colonial Surgeon, Feb. 8, 1823, CSO 1/134/3230.

  11. Lemprière, Penal Settlements, pp 37–38

  12. Barnes to SC 1837–38 (11), Minutes, p. 37.

  13. Davies, “Memoir of Macquarie Harbour,” Ms 8 in MSQ 168, Dixson Library, Sydney

  14. For occupational disease among the convicts and guards at Macquarie Harbor, see Spence to Scott, CSO 1/134/3230.

  15. Davies, “Memoir,” pp. 2–3.

  16. Barnes to SC 1837–38 (11), Minutes, p. 45.

  17. Ibid., p. 46.

  18. Ibid., p 43.

  19. J. Butler (commandant at Macquarie Harbor) to Arthur, June 9, 1825, CSO 1/220/5313.

  20. Butler to Col. Sec. Burnett, Nov 25, 1827, CSO 1/216/5236, p 189

  21. CSO 1/216/5188, Minute 312, Dec 17, 1827, pp. 239, 243, 247

  22. Lemprière, Penal Settlements, p. 31.

  23. Ibid., p. 32.

  24. Barnes to SC 1837–38 (11), Minutes, p. 43.

  25. Robson, Hist. Tas., p 137. On Arthur, see ADB entry, Anne McKay, “The Assignment System of Convict Labour in Van Diemen’s Land, 1824–1842” (M.A. thesis); and W D Forsyth, Governor Arthur’s Convict System.

  26. Arthur to Huskisson, cit in P. R. Eldershaw, “The Colonial Secretary’s Office,” in “Guide to the Public Records of Tasmania,” Thrapp, vol. 15, no. 3, Jan. 1968, p. 57.

  27. Arthur to Bathurst, July 3, 1825.

  28. Backhouse, Narrative, p 19

  29. Arthur, Observations Upon Secondary Punishment, pp. 27–28.

  30. George Washington Walker to Margaret Bragg, May 24, 1834, Walker Papers, UTL, Hobart.

  31. McKay, “Assignment System,” p. 78.

  32. George Taylor to John Thompson, CSO 1/624/14148, collected as No. CXXVIII in Eustace Fitzsymonds, ed., A Looking-Glass for Tasmania

  33. The first major landowner and capitalist of Van Diemen’s Land was Edward Lord; see E R. Henry, “Edward Lord: the John Macarthur of Van Diemen’s Land.” On his unrelated namesake, the convict’s son David Lord (1785–1847), see ADB entry (vol. 2, p 126)

  34. On the Rev Carvosso at the scaffold, see Robson, Hist Tas, p. 276.

  35. Arthur to Montagu, January 1831, CSO 1/224/5434, CSO 1/141/2493, cit. in McKay, “Assignment System,” pp 124–25.

  36. Petition of Isaac Solomon to Arthur, CSO 1/430/9642. On Isaac “Ikey” Solomon, see ADB entry.

  37. John West, The History of Tasmania, part 3, sect. XVII, p. 138.

  38. Arthur, memo, Oct. 20, 1827, CSO 1/172/4150.

  39. “Slanderers and slaves”: West, Tasmania, part 3, sect. xvii, pp. 139–40.

  40. Arthur’s opinion of Baxter ADB, vol. 1, p. 75.

  41. On John Burnett, see ADB entry and corr. file under Burnett, J., in TSA.

  42. On Roderic O’Connor and his relations with Arthur, see ADB, vol. 2, p. 296.

  43. On Goodwin, Bent, Melville, Murray and other pioneers, however flawed, of journalism in Van Diemen’s Land, see ADB entries and E. M. Miller, Pressmen and Governors

  44. Melville to Arthur, Nov. 17, 1835, CSO 1/836/17722. In a covering note to Melville’s letter, the jailer, Thomas Capon, gives an interesting side-light on public opinion of Australian journalists. He had offered Melville a cell on the side of prison reserved for debtors, but “the Debtors had expressed their great repugnance to any person connected with the Press being put on their side of the Prison.”

  45. On Gellibrand, see ADB entry (vol. 1, p 437), and Robson, Hist. Tas., pp. 289–92.

  46. Margaret Weidenhofer, Maria Island A Tasmanian Eden, pp. 18–22.

  47. On the growth of the “demonic” reputation of Port Arthur, see Decie Denholm, “Port Arthur: the Men and the Myth.”

  48. Arthur’s Standing Instructions for Port Arthur are in CSO 1/639/14383.

  49. Lemprière, Penal Settlements, p. 61.

  50. John Russell to SC 1837–38 (11), Minutes, p. 50.

  51. On early years at Port Arthur (administrations of Russell and Mahon, 1830–32) see Margaret Weidenhofer, Port Arthur: A Place of Misery, pp. 7–12.

  52. Russell to SC 1837–38 (11), Minutes, pp 51–2.

  53. Logan to Col Sec., Dec 31, 1832, CSO 1/633.1/14299.

  54. For number of sentences served at Port Arthur, see Decie Denholm, “Port Arthur,” p. 408.

  55. Charles O’ Hara Booth, Journal, ed. Dora Heard, May 18, 1833.

  56. C. P. T. Laplace, “Considerations” p. 152, cit. and trans. in Booth, Journal, p. 28, Booth, Journal, Feb. 20, and Dec. 7, 1833.

/>   57. Lemprière, Penal Settlements, p. 94.

  58. John Frost, The Horrors of Convict Life, pp. 30–31.

  59. Backhouse and Walker to Arthur, CSO 1/807/17244, cit. in Weidenhofer, Port Arthur, p. 24.

  60. Frost, Horrors, p. 59.

  61. Punishment record of Robert Williamson is in TSA, Hobart.

  62. Absconder disguised as kangaroo. Lemprière, Penal Settlements, p. 69.

  63. Ibid., p. 95.

  64. Details of the semaphore system are in Dora Heard’s Introduction to Booth, Journal, pp. 24–25, W. E. Masters, The Semaphore Telegraph System of Van Diemen’s Land (Hobart, 1973); and Weidenhofer, Port Arthur, p. 25.

  65. Characteristics of Port Arthur coal: Lemprière, Penal Settlements, pp. 78–80.

  66. For the convict-propelled railway, see Godfrey Mundy, Our Antipodes, and William Denison, Varieties of Vice-Regal Life, both cit. in Weidenhofer, Port Arthur, pp. 37, 39.

  67. Ross, “Excursion to Port Arthur,” in Elliston’s Hobart Town Almanack (1837), p. 91.

  68. On Point Puer, I have relied on F. C. Hooper’s M Ed. thesis, “Point Puer,” University of Melbourne, 1954 (subsequently revised and published as Prison Boys of Port Arthur, Melbourne, 1967). Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from Hooper’s thesis, the standard and only full study of this curious pedagogical experiment.

  69. Arthur to Turnbull, Feb. 8, 1834, cit. in Hooper, “Point Puer,” p. 21.

  70. Champ to the Comptroller-General of Convicts, June 3, 1844, cit. in ibid., p. 3.

  71. On the religious instruction of inmates at Point Puer, see Hooper, pp. 72–79.

  72. Benjamin Horne, “The Report of B J Home to the Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land,” cit. in ibid., pp. 43–44.

  73. Hooper, pp. 36–39.

  74. Punishment record of Thomas Willetts is in TSA, Hobart.

  75. Corr. Military Operations 1831, Minutes of Evidence for Committee for Aboriginal Affairs, testimony of Edward White, pp. 53–54

  76. James Carrott Report of Committee for Aboriginal Affairs, Corr. Military Operations 1831, p. 36.

  77. Corr. Military Operations 1831, Minutes of Evidence, testimony of James Hobbs, pp. 49–50. A full account of European settlers’ and sealers’ aggression against the Tasmanian Aborigines is given in Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Chapters 3–7.

  78. Figures from Robson, Hist. Tas., p. 260.

  79. Richard Stickney to his sister Sarah, June 21, 1834, Stickney Papers, UTL The Vandemonians, Stickney thought, “are a facsimile of the Americans both in body and mind, tall, raw-boned and muscular, with a most exalted opinion of themselves.… They are mostly ignorant to the last degree.”

  80. Corr. Military Operations 1831, Report of Aborigines Committee (Mar. 19, 18301, p 41.

  81. Ibid., Minutes, testimony of Gilbert Robertson, p 48.

  82. Ibid., encl. 7, Arthur to Murray, Apr. 15, 1830, p. 16.

  83. Ibid., p 48. For Arthur’s views on treatment of Aborigines by free settlers, see ibid, p. 16.

  84. Ibid., p 47 (Sherwin, Espie), pp. 54–55 (O’Connor)

  85. Ibid, p 4 Arthur to Goderich, Jan. 10, 1828. The dogs were not dingoes, but the descendants of kangaroo-dogs and sheep-dogs “originally purloined from the settlers,” which now formed enormous semi-wild packs.

  86. Ibid.

  87. Proclamation by Arthur, encl. 2 in Arthur to Huskisson, Apr. 17, 1828, Corr. Military Operations 1831, pp. 5–7.

  88. Arthur’s proclamation of martial law and his definition of restricted aboriginal territory in Van Diemen’s Land, issued Nov. 1, 1828 ibid., pp. 11–12. Arthur was careful to “strictly order, enjoin and command that the actual use of arms be in no case resorted to … that bloodshed be checked as much as possible, that any tribes which may surrender themselves up shall be treated with every degree of humanity, and that defenceless women and children be invariably spared.”

  89. Robson, Hist. Tas, pp. 214–15.

  90. John Burnett, Government Order 2, Feb. 25, 1830, Corr. Military Operations 1831, p. 35.

  91. Arthur to Murray, Nov 20, 1830, ibid., p. 58.

  92. Murray to Arthur, Nov. 5, 1830, ibid., p. 56

  93. Robson, Hist. Tas, p 230.

  94. Fear of bloodbath Anstey to Arthur, Aug. 22, 1830, CSO 1/316. “The most rancorous animosity”. Report of Aborigines Committee, in Corr. Military Operations 1831.

  95. Arthur, Memorandum, encl. 7, Corr. Military Operations 1831, p. 72.

  96. For an account of the Black Line and its effects on the big River and Oyster Bay tribes, see Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, pp. 110–12.

  97. On George Augustus Robinson, see ADB entry (vol 2, pp. 385–87) and Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, Chapters 8–9.

  98. For the story of Trucanini, and a useful criticism of the myths that grew up around her (including the fiction that she was an Aboriginal “Queen”), see Vivienne Ellis, “Trucanini.”

  However, the most pernicious—and seemingly, the most durable—myth is the one exposed by Lyndall Ryan, in The Aboriginal Tasmanians the belief that Trucanini was “The Last Aborigine,” and that after her death the Tasmanian Aborigines became an extinct race. It has been repeated, with varying degrees of outrage and pathos, by historians, anthropologists and journalists for over a century, with the result that the surviving Tasmanian Aborigines—who now number about 2,500—have found themselves treated as ciphers or non-persons by conservative Tasmanian whites, and as embarrassments by liberal ones with a vested emotional interest in the tale of their “extinction.” Consequently, the Tasmanian State Government recognizes neither the ethnic identity of the surviving Tasmanian Aborigines, nor any of their claims to ancestral territory or sacred sites—as other Australian State Governments, in varying degrees, grudgingly do with mainland Aborigines. What happened, as Ryan shows in detail, was that a substantial number of Aborigines survived, interbreeding with the descendants of white sealers, on the islands in the Bass Strait, especially Cape Barren Island. In 1847 the Cape Barren islanders numbered thirteen families, comprising some fifty people. Their descendants, though as racially dilute as most American blacks or mainland Australian Aborigines, form the present black population of Tasmania. It should also be noted that Trucanini was not even the last full-blood Aborigine to die, that person was Suke, an old woman who had been taken by sealers from Cape Portland in Tasmania to Kangaroo Island off South Australia, and who lived until 1888.

  CHAPTER TWELVE Metastasis

  1. Shaw CC, p. 142.

  2. Peel to Smith, Mar. 24, 1826, cit. in Shaw CC, pp. 144–45.

  3. James Dowling, “Norfolk Island Journal,” Feb. 25, 1828, ML, Sydney.

  4. Alexander Harris, Settlers and Convicts, p. 11.

  5. Figures based on Gipps to Glenelg, Nov. 8, 1838, HRA xix:654.

  6. Harris, Settlers and Convicts, p. 12

  7. John Barnes in SC 1837–38 (11), Minutes, p. 37.

  8. Report of Ernest Augustus Slade, Appendix to SC 1837–38 (11), paper 518, pp. 89–90.

  9. Bourke to Rice, Dec. 14, 1834, HRA xvii:604 and n., Col. Sec. circular 33/38, NSWA, Sydney.

  10. Replies to Col. Sec. circular 33/38, Oct. 1–8, 1833, at NSWA 4/2189:1.

  11. Darling to Bathurst, Mar. 1, 1827, cit. in Shaw CC, p. 195.

  12. Darling to Huskisson, Mar. 28, 1828, HRA xiv 70.

  13. Darling to Huskisson, Mar. 28, 1828, ibid There were 1,045 “colonially convicted” men at Port Macquarie, Moreton Bay and Norfolk Island put together. On the road gangs, Darling’s count ran to 500 men, supervised by 22 “trusty” convict overseers, split into gangs of a few dozen at work stations along the 150-mile Great Western Road, out of Parramatta, some 400 gangers on the Great Northern Road north from Windsor; 249 on the Great Southern Road, connecting Sydney to Stonequarry and Throsby Creek beyond; and 119 on the unfinished road to Newcastle.

  14. As Governor Bourke found six years later, when he tried using privately contracted roadwork “at a very high rate, notwithstanding that
the bonus of an assignment of three convicts per mile has been given to the contractors.” Bourke to Stanley, Jan. 15, 1834, HRA xvii:317.

  15. Cook EL, p. 18.

  16. “The mere fact” Bourke to Stanley, Jan. 15, 1834, HRA xvii 315. Two fat bullocks: Cook EL, p. 28.

  17. “They have no time”: Bourke to Stanley, Jan 15, 1834, HRA xvii:321. Iron-gangers running to work in double time: Cook EL, p. 58.

  18. Cook EL, pp. 58–60.

  19. Bigge NSW, p. 99.

  20. Ibid., p. 155.

  21. Lachlan Macquarie had proposed outward colonization by convict gangs before Bigge, in the wake of the disastrous Nepean floods of 1816–17, when settlers were actually returning assigned convicts whom they could no longer support on their ravaged farms to the government. In May 1818, having received five ships carrying 1,046 men within a single month, Macquarie sent 450 of the new arrivals down to Van Diemen’s Land and proposed, as a long-term buffer, that convicts working for the government should break ground to the south of Sydney, at Jervis Bay and Illawarra. (Macquarie to Bathurst, May 1818, HRA ix:795.)

  22. James Jervis, “The Rise of Newcastle.”

  23. William Sacheverell Coke, letter, 1827, in DRO, D1881.

  24. W. S. Coke, letter in DRO, D1881.

  25. On conditions in the Newcastle coal mine, see Bigge NSW, p. 115–16. A harrowing account of both coal-mine and lime-kiln labor at Newcastle is given in the early Australian novel Ralph Rashleigh, written about 1840 by “Giacomo di Rosenberg,” supposedly the pseudonym of the convict James Rosenberg Tucker (1808–1888?), an Essex clerk tranported for life in 1826 for writing a threatening letter.

  26. Jervis, “Newcastle,” p. 149.

  27. Bigge NSW, p. 117.

  28. Ibid., p. 116.

  29. Jervis, pp. 149–50.

  30. W. S. Coke, letter, Apr.-Aug. 1827, DRO D1881.

  31. James Backhouse, A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies, p. 405

  32. Woomera [pseud.), The Life of an Ex-Convict, p. 6.

  33. James Bushelle, “Memoir,” Ms.

  34. Woomera, Life, p. 15.

  35. Bushelle, “Memoir.”

  36. Woomera, Life, p. 6.

  37. Cook EL, pp. 79–80.