Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (7 page)

And, just as had happened in ol’ Ireland, the British forces proved equal to the task, ruthlessly crushing the insurrection. After 29 soldiers, backed by 50 armed civilians, caught up with the convicts, the battle lasted no longer than 30 minutes. When the smoke had cleared, 15 of the rebels had been killed, with another nine subsequently hanged for their trouble – including Cunningham, that very night, without trial.

Nevertheless, for a brief time those Irish rebels had indeed had their freedom and it, too, would inspire Irish people in Australia for generations to come.

———

Generally, however, such disturbances were few, and the colony continued to grow – and well beyond Sydney, at that. Sometimes as the colony expanded, settlers discovered things that, while nothing to the natives, were potentially extremely valuable to them. A case in point came in 1823 when, after the white settlers had pushed through to get west of the Blue Mountains that book-ended the Sydney settlement on one side with the Pacific Ocean on the other, an Irish-born government surveyor by the name of James McBrien was surveying a new road 15 miles south-east of Bathurst, right by the Fish River, when his attention was caught by ‘numerous particles of gold convenient to the river’.

Look, if it had been an extraordinary amount of gold, or if he had not been on government business at the time, perhaps he might have followed up on it. As it was, it wasn’t really that much gold to worry too much about, so he merely took some specimens and reported it to his masters when he returned to Sydney.

But for the authorities, too, it was problematic. They were running not just a colony but a penal colony, where the most important thing was a certain dull stability. Who knew what might happen if the convicts, and perhaps more particularly their guards, felt that a fortune in gold might be had if only they broke free of their shackles, or put down their guns and batons and took to the hills?

Already there was a growing gap between those who ruled in the colonies and those who were meant to be ruled. For there was something troubling about this growing generation of young people who had not been born in, or even been to, England. There was an increasingly distinctive way they had in dressing – sort of slovenly and uncaring – and of speaking – dashed ambivalent about pronouncing vowels for one thing. They tended to be bigger and more raw-boned than recent arrivals of the same age come from the motherland. They were darker for being more exposed to the sun and, while they were not necessarily insolent, there was a certain lack of automatic deference to their obvious betters.

Most troubling of all, more and more of them appeared to identify more with being from the colonies than with being the sons and daughters of Great Britain! They were, in short, disloyal ingrates best summed up by an editorial in a Sydney newspaper in 1826, which put its finger right on the rough nut of the problem: ‘They have lost their English spirit and have degenerated into Australians.’

This sneering aside, nothing altered the fact that there were more and more of these Australians, both born to that fatal shore and crossing the oceans to get there to make new lives.

The inevitable result was that down in the south-eastern part of the continent the 60,000 years of sole Aboriginal occupation was coming to an end. In those mid-1820s, two intrepid explorers, Hamilton Hume and William Hilton Hovell, had successfully trekked all the way from Appin in New South Wales down to Corio Bay in the south-western corner of that massive expanse of protected water named Port Phillip Bay to find hundreds of square miles of what was clearly arable land on its foreshores, stretching into the hinterland, and duly reported their discovery to the authorities. A decade later, the first of those who had settled in Van Diemen’s Land, and had found the going tough, began to venture across Bass Strait – becoming the ‘Overstraiters’ – and found a place where the only thing that lay between them and claiming huge swathes of land were a few easily-dealt-with natives.

One of the most significant Overstraiters was John Batman. A native of Sydney, born of a convict father of wild disposition – from whom he inherited his passions for drinking and womanising, though not necessarily in that order – he had worked variously as a farmer and bounty hunter, and in 1826 had even captured the infamous bushranger Matt Brady, known as ‘the Wild Colonial Boy of Van Diemen’s Land’. After tiring of farming without any success in an area near Launceston, Batman had thought to try his luck on the mainland.

In late May 1835, having formed the Port Phillip Association with four other settlers in Van Diemen’s Land, Batman left Launceston with three domestic servants and seven Aboriginal workers and travelled across Bass Strait upon the sloop
Rebecca
.
It was his hope that his Aborigines would be able to act as interpreters with the local Indigenous population so he could conduct the business he had in mind. For Batman did not want to just
occupy
the vast acreage of land that he knew awaited there. Not a bit of it. He wanted to buy it. And it was for that very reason that he was carrying lots of trinkets, some mirrors and many, many blankets.

After entering Port Phillip Bay on 29 May,
Rebecca
anchored in a small bay about twelve miles into the harbour and Batman made the first of several trips ashore. Exploring the rich surrounding land on foot, he quickly fell in with fresh tracks of the ‘locals’ before coming across ‘a beautiful plain about 3 to 400 Acres of as rich land as I ever saw’.

The following day he saw the local natives for the first time from a distance and was awestruck by this potential pastoralist’s paradise: ‘A light black soil covered with Kangaroo Grass 2 feet high and as thick as it could stand . . . The land was as good as land could be – the whole appeared like land [laid] out in farms for some 100 years back.’

On 31 May, Batman’s Aboriginal scouts made contact with the Wurundjeri for the first time. There were 20 women toting heavy loads along with 24 children and four dingos, their men having gone up river. Batman – trying hard not to look at their naked breasts, though they didn’t seem to mind – gave them blankets, necklaces, looking glasses, a tomahawk, some apples and handkerchiefs (in case they were caught short with a runny nose). In return, he was presented with some spears, a basket and a bucket.

Over the ensuing days, Batman continued to sail towards the head of the bay, stopping off each day to walk the country. Each time he was more enamoured with the vast expanses of open land that at times extended 30 miles in every direction. The land near the rivers and creeks teemed with ducks and other waterfowl, and he noticed the Aborigines had constructed stone fish traps in the creeks.

On 3 June, Batman began an extended trek up the river the Wurundjeri men had followed. He surveyed the land and discovered good supplies of fresh water in places away from the river, which itself had good drinking water. On sighting the Keilor Plains, he described it as ‘the . . . most beautiful sheep pasturage I ever saw in my life’. Wildlife was plentiful – kangaroos, emus, dingos and wild geese in glorious profusion. With such vast, open, well-grassed plains and rich black soil, the only deficiency for the grazier was that there were so few trees for firewood – just scattered she-oaks, wattle trees and small gums.

On 6 June, Batman was indeed able to make contact with eight elders of the Wurundjeri clan. The three principal chiefs were brothers, all with the name Jaga-Jaga, and two of them were notably superb physical specimens, ‘six feet high and very good looking’ as Batman recorded in his diary. Many of their companions had daubed their faces with red, white and yellow clays.

An enormously significant exchange ceremony soon took place by the bank of a small stream, as the sounds of the Australian bush pressed close. Through sign language – for, of course, the language of the Aborigines from Van Diemens Land was entirely different – Batman succeeded in making their elders understand that he and his people wished to settle on the very land in which the natives could trace their own origins to the Dreamtime. Furthermore, in return for the land stretching from where they stood to all natural barriers in view – amounting to 600,000 acres of land and delineated by marks made upon trees – he was prepared to give them many of the ‘treasures’ he had with him, which he was quick to display.

To make them properly understand what the deal entailed, Batman had the elders put some dirt in his hands to signify that the land now belonged him, while he physically put the treasures in their hands – 20 pairs of blankets, 30 tomahawks, 100 knives, 50 pairs of scissors, 30 looking glasses, 200 handkerchiefs and 100 pounds of flour and six shirts – to make them understand that this was a swap. A yearly rent of 100 pairs of blankets, 100 knives, 100 tomahawks, 50 suits of clothing, 50 looking glasses, 50 pairs of scissors and five tons of flour were also included in Batman’s treaty.

The eight elders seemed to agree – although it is possible that they thought the deal was simply to allow Batman and his men safe passage across the land – and applied their marks to the treaty that Batman presented to them.

And so it was done. To celebrate, once it was all completed, the Aborigines who had come with Batman danced in a corroboree with the Wurundjeri, their joyous cries and stomping causing the kookaburras and other birds for hundreds of yards around to take flight in fright. Or was it that they sensed what was about to overtake the superb natural habitat in which they had made their home?

On 7 June 1835, Batman took up his quill and carefully transcribed in triplicate copies of the deed of his land purchase from the Wurundjeri. That accomplished, he wandered over to another meeting by a nearby creek with the tribal elders to deliver more of the promised ‘property’. In turn, the two handsome principal elders presented Batman with a chieftain’s mantle and took no small delight in his modelling the garment before them. Then, encouraged by the example of one of Batman’s Aborigines who had (away from the women, as this was men’s business) made his Sydney clan’s mark upon a tree, the principal elder of the Wurundjeri inscribed the mark of his own country and tribe. This Batman excised and adhered to a copy of the deed.

Business and pleasure concluded, Batman’s party began their return trek by a different route, crossing and naming the creeks and valleys as they progressed towards the mouth of the river, where his vessel was waiting. Soon after re-joining the Saltwater River, he came upon a fecund march he quickly named Batman’s Marsh, recording in his diary, ‘I think at one time I can safely say I saw 1000 Quails flying at one time, quite a Cloud. I never saw anything like it before I shot two very large ones as I was walking along.’

At one end of the marsh lay a huge space of open water – a small lake of near-perfect oval shape – at the other end of which the incoming river had turned into a large waterfall. Notwithstanding the myriad mosquitoes and flies that were also here in abundance, the whole place looked at first blush as if Adam and Eve could happily have made their home there, and probably did once upon a sunlit time.

The Saltwater River they were travelling on now joined a much larger river from the east, that which the Wurundjeri call Birrarung: ‘river of mists and shadows’. Two of Batman’s Aborigines swam the seven miles to the head of the river to retrieve Batman’s small boat. However, foul weather the following day prevented them heading down the Saltwater River. Instead, Batman recorded, ‘The boat went up the large river . . . and . . . I am glad to state about six miles up found the River all good water and very deep. This will be the place for a village.’ He decided to call the whole place – what else? – ‘Batmania’.

When Batman left on a brief trip to Launceston to gather his wife, Eliza, and seven daughters, he left behind his three white domestic servants and several of his Aboriginal workers, effectively to hold the fort. By that river, in the middle of that scrub, those white men felt that they were the only members of their race for many hundreds of miles in any direction.

And yet, on 6 July, while gathered around the fire eating their damper, they looked up to see the most extraordinary figure approaching. At least six foot six – perhaps there is something in the water at that extraordinary lake – the fellow was robed in kangaroo skins and carrying boomerangs and spears, but there was clearly something different about him . . .

‘Hello . . .’ he said, a little uncertainly.

He was a white man! Yes, a very dark white man and – truth be told – a very ugly one, with a heavy brow and deeply pockmarked face, but a white man nevertheless. A tattoo on his forearm read ‘WB’, giving credence to his claim that his name was William Buckley.

Little by little over the next few days, as his long-lost ahh-billl-itees in the English language started to return, the story came out. Though he at first claimed to have been a soldier who had survived a shipwreck, in short order he revealed the truth of the matter. He had, in fact, been a convict aboard the ship
Calcutta
that, with the good ship
Ocean
,
had first attempted to settle these parts in 1803, with 308 convicts and half as many officers, soldiers and free settlers. Their troupe had landed on the southern shore of Port Phillip Bay, at a place they named ‘Sullivan Bay’, after the undersecretary for the colonies, John Sullivan, and tried to make a go of it.

The venture had been a disaster from first to last and, just before the settlement was abandoned to retreat to Van Diemen’s Land, he and several other convicts had escaped. Two were quickly recaptured and two others decided to try to walk to Sydney, never to be heard from again. But Buckley had decided to stay in the area, walking around the contours of the bay, at first living off berries and shellfish. One day he had seen what looked to be a spear planted in some freshly upturned earth and used it as a walking stick. Shortly thereafter he had come across native women who recognised the spear as belonging to the grave of their most revered, recently departed tribal elder, and they recognised him as that man’s spirit returned to life!