by Watkin Tench
I confess that I never looked at these people without pity and astonishment. They had miscarried in a heroic struggle for liberty after having combated every hardship and conquered every difficulty.
The woman, and one of the men, had gone out to Port Jackson in the ship which had transported me thither. They had both of them been always distinguished for good behaviour. And I could not but reflect with admiration at the strange combination of circumstances which had again brought us together, to baffle human foresight and confound human speculation. [The woman in the story Tench tells was Mary Bryant who was defended in court by James Boswell, and finally pardoned in 1793.]
14 Travelling diaries in New South Wales
* Look at the map for the situation of this place.
*2 Our method, on these expeditions, was to steer by compass, noting the different courses as we proceeded; and, counting the number of paces, of which two thousand two hundred, on good ground, were allowed to be a mile. At night when we halted, all these courses were separately cast up, and worked by a traverse table, in the manner a ship’s reckoning is kept, so that by observing this precaution we always knew exactly where we were, and how far from home: an unspeakable advantage in a new country, where one hill, and one tree, is so like another that fatal wanderings would ensue without it. This arduous task was always allotted to Mr Dawes who, from habit and superior skill, performed it almost without a stop, or an interruption of conversation: to any other man, on such terms, it would have been impracticable.
† Sugar-gliders, and ringtail and brushtail possums.
*3 Their general favourite term of reproach is gonin-patta, which signifies, ‘an eater of human excrement.’ Our language would admit a very concise and familiar translation. They have, besides this, innumerable others which they often salute their enemies with.
†2 Another reminiscence of Milton, Paradise Lost, X, 475.
†3 Tooth evulsion is part of some Aboriginal initiation ceremonies, whose secret nature may have made Colbee and Boldaree reluctant to discuss the practice. It is also interesting to note that Governor Phillip was missing a foretooth. Did this predispose the Aborigines to accept him?
*4 How easily people, unused to speak the same language, mistake each other, everyone knows. We had lived almost three years at Port Jackson (for more than half of which period natives had resided with us) before we knew that the word bèeal, signified ‘no’, and not ‘good’, in which latter sense we had always used it without suspecting that we were wrong; and even without being corrected by those with whom we talked daily. The cause of our error was this. The epithet weeree, signifying ‘bad’ we knew; and as the use of this word and its opposite afford the most simple form of denoting consent or disapprobation to uninstructed Indians, in order to find out their word for ‘good’, when Arabanoo was first brought among us, we used jokingly to say that any thing which he liked was weeree, in order to provoke him to tell us that it was good. When we said weeree, he answered beeal, which we translated and adopted for ‘good’; whereas he meant no more than simply to deny our inference, and say, ‘no—it is not bad.’ After this, it cannot be thought extraordinary that the little vocabulary inserted in Mr Cook’s account of this part of the world should appear defective—even were we not to take in the great probability of the dialects at Endeavour River and Van Diemen’s Land differing from that spoken at Port Jackson. And it remains to be proved that the animal called here Patagaram is not there called Kangaroo.
†4 A doctor to the Greeks in the Trojan war.
*5 All the trees of New South Wales, may, I apprehend, be termed evergreen. For after such weather as this journal records, I did not observe either that the leaves had dropped off, or that they had assumed that sickly autumnal tint which marks English trees in corresponding circumstances.
15 Transactions of the colony to the end of November 1791
† George Barrington was a celebrated pickpocket who became chief constable of Parramatta in 1796.
†2 Jervis Bay.
* Just before I left the country, word was brought by a ship which had put into Port Jervis that a large freshwater brook was found there.
†3 Probably Wine Glass Bay on the Freycinet Peninsula which Captain Wetherhead mistook for an island.
16 Transactions of the colony until the 18th of December 1791, when I quitted it, with an account of its state at that time
* Dod, who is mentioned in my former journal of this place, had died some months ago. And Mr Clarke, who was put in his room, is one of the superintendents sent out by government, on a salary of forty pounds per annum. He was bred to husbandry, under his father at Lewes in Sussex; and is, I conceive, competent to his office of principal conductor of the agriculture of Rose Hill.
*2 I have received a letter from Port Jackson dated in April 1792, which states that the crop of wheat turned out fifteen bushels, and the maize rather more than forty bushels.
*3 See the state of this farm in my former Rose Hill journal of November 1790, thirteen months before.
*4 A very considerable addition to this number has been made since I quitted the settlement, by fresh troops and convicts sent thither from England.
17 Miscellaneous remarks on the country. On its vegetable productions. On its climate. On its animal productions. On its natives, etc.
† Blue Mountains.
†2 Kurrajong Heights.
* Look at the Map.
†3 Tench was proven right in his summations.
*2 In my former narrative I have particularly noticed the sudden disappearance of the cattle which we had brought with us into the country. Not a trace of them has ever since been observed. Their fate is a riddle, so difficult of solution that I shall not attempt it. Surely had they strayed inland, in some of our numerous excursions, marks of them must have been found. It is equally impossible to believe that either the convicts or natives killed and ate them, without some sign of detection ensuing.
†4 Native sarsparilla, Smilax slyciphylla.
†5 Cabbage tree palm, Livistona australis.
†6 An apt description of the Sydney heath flora.
*3 Look at the journal which describes the expedition in search of the river, said to exist to the southward of Rose Hill. At the time we felt that extraordinary degree of cold, we were not more than six miles south-west of Rose Hill, and about nineteen miles from the sea coast. When I mentioned this circumstance to Colonel Gordon, at the Cape of Good Hope, he wondered at it; and owned that, in his excursions into the interior parts of Africa, he had never experienced anything to match it: he attributed its production to large beds of nitre, which he said must exist in the neighbourhood.
†7 Flying foxes, Pteropus.
†8 Parrakeets.
†9 ‘Summer or light clothing.’
*4 To this cause, I ascribe the great number of births which happened, considering the age and other circumstances, of many of the mothers. Women who certainly would never have bred in any other climate here produced as fine children as ever were born.
*5 Kangaroo was a name unknown to them for any animal, until we introduced it. When I showed Colbee the cows brought out in the Gorgon, he asked me if they were kangaroos.
†10 Swamp wallaby, Wallabia bicolor.
*6 I once found in the woods the greatest part of a kangaroo, just killed by the dogs, which afforded to three of us a most welcome repast. Marks of its turns and struggles on the ground were very visible. This happened in the evening, and the dogs probably had seen us approach and had run away. At daylight next morning they saluted us with most dreadful howling for the loss of their prey.
†11 Emus.
†12 Eastern whipbird, Posphodes olivaceus.
†13 Snapper, Crysophrys guttulatus.
*7 I mentioned this, among other circumstances, to Colonel Gordon when I was at the Cape, and he told me that it indicated poverty and inadequacy of living. He instanced to me the Hottentots and Caffres. The former fare poorly, and have small hands
and feet. The Caffres, their neighbours, live plenteously and have very large ones. This remark cannot be applied to civilised nations, where so many factitious causes operate.
†14 ‘Venus of the beautiful buttocks’.
*8 It is to be observed that neither of these ceremonies is universal, but nearly so. Why there should exist exemptions I cannot resolve. The manner of executing them is as follows. The finger is taken off by means of a ligature (generally a sinew of a kangaroo) tied so tight as to stop the circulation of the blood, which induces mortification and the part drops off. I remember to have seen Colbee’s child, when about a month old, on whom this operation had just been performed by her mother. The little wretch seemed in pain, and her hand was greatly swelled. But this was deemed too trifling a consideration to deserve regard in a case of so much importance.
The tooth intended to be taken out is loosened by the gum being scarified on both sides with a sharp shell. The end of a stick is then applied to the tooth, which is struck gently several times with a stone, until it becomes easily moveable, when the coup de grace is given by a smart stroke. Notwithstanding these precautions, I have seen a considerable degree of swelling and inflammation follow the extraction. Imeerawanyee, I remember, suffered severely. But he boasted the firmness and hardihood with which he had endured it. It is seldom performed on those who are under sixteen years old.
*9 ‘It is remarkable,’ says Cicero, ‘that there is no nation, whether barbarous or civilised, that does not believe in the existence of spirits.’
*10 As they often eat to satiety, even to produce sickness, may not this be the effect of an overloaded stomach: the nightmare?
†15 ‘The longest and most difficult thing for people to learn is how to reason.’
*11 This may serve to account for the contradictions of many of their accounts to us.
*12 Their native hardiness of constitution is great. I saw a woman on the day she was brought to bed, carry her newborn infant from Botany Bay to Port Jackson, a distance of six miles, and afterwards light a fire and dress fish.
†16 Source unidentified.
*13 They broil indiscriminately all substances which they eat. Though they boil water in small quantities in oyster shells for particular purposes, they never conceived it possible until shown by us, to dress meat by this method, having no vessel capable of containing a fish or a bird which would stand fire. Two of them once stole twelve pounds of rice and carried it off. They knew how we cooked it, and by way of putting it in practice they spread the rice on the ground before a fire, and as it grew hot continued to throw water on it. Their ingenuity was however very ill rewarded, for the rice became so mingled with the dirt and sand on which it was laid, that even they could not eat it, and the whole was spoiled.
†17 Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, plate 16.
*14 Mrs Johnson, wife of the chaplain of the settlement, was so pleased with this name that she christened her little girl, born in Port Jackson, Milba Maria Johnson.
19 Facts relating to the probability of establishing a whale fishery on the coast of New South Wales, with thoughts on the same
† A fisherman’s phrase for ‘harassed’ or ‘disturbed’.
* Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society.
