Revisiting the ‘middle ground’ of Aboriginal and European co-existence in NSW in the early 1800s

While the extensive outdoor gallery of Aboriginal engravings carved into sandstone over generations of occupation may be gradually fading, a quiet revolution has been unfolding in our understanding of the ‘culture clash’ that followed the 1788 arrival of the . And just as the ‘10,000 artworks, carved or painted on stone’1 become harder to see year by year, so too do widely accepted understandings of the past fade, to be replaced by newly incised, ‘out of the rut’ perspectives. Many baby boomers and their antecedents, for example, grew up with the impression that the Aboriginal people who once peopled the Sydney Basin quickly succumbed to disease, dispossession, and demoralisation.

But as Grace Karskens explains in The Colony ‘the Sydney region was not suddenly transformed into white space when the first white feet sloshed onto the beaches in that year.’ Indeed, it took ‘six years before whites began building huts and planting maize on 2 the river of the Hawkesbury’.

Aboriginal people made a place for themselves

Writing about the aftermath of the European’s arrival, Karskens reminds that, ‘On the plain and near the coast, Aboriginal people came to live ‘between’ the lines of the Europeans’ cadastral grids and boundaries, in areas not yet taken, or not wanted, making other histories in places which were hidden from view’.3 As she points out, ‘Despite the disasters that befell them, Aboriginal people successfully made a place for themselves in Sydney for at least four decades’.4

Conflict versus co-existence and the middle-ground history

In summarising the overarching message of the late Inga Clendinnen’s Dancing with Strangers, Karskens reminds us that, ‘’s race relations did not begin with racism and violence, but a remarkable ‘springtime of trust’5, one that involved both parties dancing hand in hand as depicted in Lieutenant William Bradley’s watercolour,

View of Broken Bay, New South Wales, March 1788. Similarly Clendinnen was at pains to clarify that Governor Phillip:

brought a determination verging on obstinacy to the business of persuading the local populations 6 to friendship; a determination rare, possibly unique, in the gruff annals of imperialism.

According to Karskens, ‘much of the story of what happened after the early colonial period has been retrieved, patiently pieced together by historians and archaeologists, Indigenous and non-Indigenous’. But she issues a challenge to her fellow historians when she says that as ‘. . . much more of this ‘middle-ground’ history still needs to be 7 recovered and acknowledged; the story remains, and remains to be told’.

1

Drawing from A Voyage to New South Wales, December 1786–May 1792 by William Bradley (c. 1757-1833), compiled after 1802, (ML ref. Safe1/14 opp. P.90). Reproduced with permission of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

Citing anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose’s description of how the ‘great wheel of colonisation’ impacted the northern Australian frontier, Karskens reminds that in ‘one newly taken area after another, Aboriginal people disputed and disrupted this new version of time, place and ownership; they challenged the Europeans’ conviction that colonisation was both inevitable and justified by larger historical processes’.8 But in acknowledging such inevitable disputations and dispossessions, Karskens argues for the examination of:

the interwoven counter-theme: the one recorded only in fleeting glimpses, as in the corner of our eye—the ‘middle ground’. The world of relations and negotiations between settlers and Aborigines, of words, concepts and practices which crossed over, were grasped, of cultures which 9 overlapped and sometimes ran together on common ground.

In The Colony, Karskens saw her ‘ground truthing’ role as continuing Inga Clendinnen’s and Kate Grenville’s ‘project of examining and rethinking early colonial race relations’. In doing so, her aim was to take ‘a broader and longer view’.10

Inner Western Sydney co-existence - The Blaxland and Walker families

Based on research into the John Blaxland and Thomas Walker families, this article brings to wider public attention some little known examples of Karsken’s so-called middle ground history of co-existence that occurred after the early colonial period.

John Blaxland Esquire11 was arguably the first of his class to voluntarily relocate his family and entrepreneurial business endeavours to the fledgling colony. He arrived with

2 his family in 1807, almost 20 years after the arrival of the First Fleet, and set up enterprises in Sydney and in the vicinity of what is now the inner western suburb of Newington. His younger brother, Gregory Blaxland12 preceded him, arriving with his family in April 1806.

Such were John Blaxland’s hopes for his mid life career change that he named his first ‘native’ born child, Louisa Australia Blaxland. The same Louisa Australia (1807-1888) was one of the principal chroniclers of the life and times of the Blaxland and Walker families, assisted by her niece, Anna Francis Walker (1830-1913). A floral artist in her own right, Anna was the granddaughter of John and Harriett Blaxland, and daughter of Anna Elizabeth Blaxland and Commissary Thomas Walker (1791-1861).13

Anna Francis Walker, c1840, pencil sketch of Newington Estate and house from the Parramatta River.

From one generation to the next, Louisa and Anna collected and transcribed by hand their emigrant family’s experiences of the penal colony, bringing together surviving family reminiscences and anecdotal scraps of information.14 The extent to which these are self- censored and selectively reported is beyond the scope of this article, although it is widely accepted that the chroniclers of history tend to put the best light on their part in it. While some of the instances of co-existence chronicled by the Blaxland/Walker families occurred in what is now routinely regarded as inner Western Sydney, namely the suburbs of Newington and Rhodes, other episodes took place in Greater Sydney—specifically the Illawarra—as well as the in Upper Hunter Valley.

3 Bungaree’s mimicry skills

One of the better-documented Aboriginal men who survived the early colonial period and remained highly visible in the fledgling colony was Bungaree. A Broken Bay tribesman, he proved himself invaluable when he accompanied Matthew Flinders ‘on his northern explorations in mid-1799, and again in 1802 when the Investigator set out to circumnavigate the continent.’

Bungaree: King of the Aborigines of New South Wales. Augustus Earle, 1826. Courtesy State Library of New South Wales

Bungaree was valued for his boating and fishing skills, cheerfulness and ability to tactfully communicate with Aboriginal tribes that they encountered on the voyages.’15 He was also ‘. . . one of these confident, straight-walking people’, Karskens reminds us, describing him as follows:

Strangers could see he was a person of authority by the way he carried himself. When he said to them, ‘This is my shore’, he was not talking about ancestral lands, but this new-made country near 16 Sydney, where Aborigines had woven themselves into the urban fabric.

While he adopted some of the trappings of the European way of life, the failure of Bungaree and his ‘people’ to embrace farming at Georges Heights was a disappointment to Governor Macquarie. The assumption, falsely held, was that ‘the blacks’, as they were widely termed, would automatically covet the European way of life and its life changing material technology.17

4

Bungaree Creator: Augustus Earle (1793-1838) © In the public domain

Bungaree, spelt Bongaree by the Blaxland/Walker chroniclers, makes a number of appearances in family reminiscences, including the nature of the conversations between Commissary Thomas Walker and Bungaree as the following examples illustrate:

In . . . [Governor] Macquarie’s time, there was an amusing old aboriginal whose name was Bongaree [sic] and who was king of Broken Bay – The blacks of these Colonies are great mimics – The Governor gave him some old regimentals and a cocked hat. Bongaree used to dress himself up in these, strutted about, and thought himself a great man. He could imitate the Governor’s walk exactly: anyone could see what he meant when far up the street and he would say “Me walk like Gubner now”. He liked Commissary Walker and would say to him, “Commissary, shake-em- hands.” “Yes, Bongaree [sic],” the Commissary would say, “Shake-em-cane,” offering the other end of his walking stick. 18 “No, not that a way, shake-um-hands the way you do with Gubner”.

Fish hook crop failure

Unsurprisingly, the Indigenous Australians regarded the Europeans’ stores with a proprietary air, considering that the supply of their own traditional food sources was increasingly being interrupted or jeopardised by the demands of the incomers.

In his role of commissary, Thomas Walker, who had learned his provisioning trade in the Napoleonic Wars as a young man, had responsibility for the all-important stores, initially in Van Diemen’s Land and after 1819 in Sydney and district. A good-natured relationship existed between Bungaree and the Commissary, with ‘taking the mickey’ out of the former in evidence in the following account:

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Bongaree [sic] wanted to fish with fish hooks: he went one day to the Commissariat stores and saw the rations being issued to the men. After waiting some time, he said “Commissary, I want Pish [sic] hook, many pish [sic] hook, do pish [sic] hook grow?” “Yes, Bongaree, here are six, you go and plant them.” “Then I have big tree, all pish [sic] hook, eh?” “Yes, you plant them.” “How soon em [sic] grow?” “In three weeks time.” At the end of that time he came with a long face – “Baal, pish [sic] hook grow” (Baal means 19 not).

This interest in accessing the material goods of Europeans especially demonstrated itself when it came to useful tools, as well as the creature comforts of food and clothes, the latter especially valued during the colder months.

Bongaree and the intoxicating Bul

While Aboriginal people were regularly depicted drinking European spirits, as Watkin Tench wrote in 1788, a taste for liquor was an acquired one. ‘Salt beef and pork 20 they like rather better, but spirits they never could be brought to taste a second time’. Inga Clendinnen confirms this initial distaste for alcoholic beverages:

In those first encounters on the beach most Australians had shunned the wine or rum pressed on them-except for Baneelon [Bennelong] . . . The general refusal did not last. The Europeans discovered the only lures which could coax services from the Australians were flour, sugar, tea— 21 and alcohol and tobacco.

Rum wasn’t the only source of alcohol that appealed to the first Australians, with Karskens drawing our attention to a beverage variously spelt as ‘bull’, ‘bul’ or ‘bool’:

Alcohol was also the payment for those who agreed to wash out the spirit barrels for the publicans by the late 1810s—their payment was the ‘bull’ (bool—originally the word for a sweet drink made 22 of flower nectar and water) or first wash of brandy-infused water from the cask.

According to the Blaxland/Walker reminiscences, another kind of do-it-yourself source of intoxication sufficed in the absence of such options, explaining how:

Bongaree [sic] used to make what the blacks call “Bul”, which is this – when the ration sugar is emptied out of the bags into boxes, sufficient was left clinging to make an intoxicating drink, by soaking several of these bags in a cask of water for three days or so. The tribe then collected round a cask and dipped their hands in, suck them till they get quite intoxicated, and make a great 23 noise.

There were consequences for overindulging in Bul, as the Europeans witnessed to their evident amusement:

On one occasion when Bongaree [sic] and his wives were all the worse for drinking Bul, he went out with them to fish in their canoe: a squall arose and the canoe rocked about a great deal and then turned over. Bongaree [sic] called out to his wives “You Gooseberry, you Dinah, make-um- right,” but they could not. They clung to the bottom of the canoe for some time. At last the sousing

6 made them sober and they succeeded in getting the canoe righted, and took their place amidst 24 roars of laughter among the onlookers.

Comforting a bereaved mother

While recording close shaves with bushrangers, and family members falling foul of corrupt sea skippers, the family reminiscences contain only one reference to hostilities between the incomers and the displaced local blacks. In contrast, the following encounter suggests friendly relationships:

In the early days of the Colony the sharks used to come a long way up the Parramatta River – much farther than they do at the present day. A poor black went out fishing with his gin and piccaninny infant not far from Parramatta. Unfortunately the canoe was upset by one of those horrible monsters – the parents escaped, but the poor little piccaninny was seized by the shark as it fell out, and never seen again.

The poor gin came to Newington and told Mrs Blaxland between her sobs what had happened. These canoes are very slight and narrow, being made from a sheet of green bark fastened securely 25 at each end.

Newington fishermen supplied the table

One of the key roles played by the surviving ‘Sydney tribe’ blacks was catching fish, as documented by Judge Barron Field, who lived in the northern end of The Rocks in the 1820s:

They are not common beggars, although they accept our carnal things in return for fish and oysters, which are almost all we have left them for their support. They are . . .the carriers of news and fish; the gossips of the town; the loungers on the quay. They know everybody … have bowing acquaintances with everybody, and scatter their How-d’ye-do’s with an air of friendliness and 26 equality, and with a perfect English accent . . .

The Blaxlands of Newington were luckier than most when it came to having fish on the table. As family reminiscences attest, the local blacks made it possible for the family to serve fish to visitors to Sydney, including ships officers, scientists and explorers—not to mention the Blaxlands’ equals in society including the governors of the day:

Fish in those days were most plentiful, and the rocks were covered with oysters. Three black men who lived at Newington, used to do nothing but fish; consequently we had fine Garfish for breakfast, while the season lasted, and once a year when the salt pans were emptied to take in fresh salt water for the ensuing year, there were barrow loads of fish to be gathered in them, and we used to go down after our studies were finished to see them – such fine prawns (some were ten inches long) and when sufficient were sent up to the house, the rest were taken to the different 27 cottages in the neighbourhood, so that all had a good feast for a week.

‘Sitting down’ on the large estates

The fact that the fishermen lived at Newington tallies with Karskens’ summation that there ‘was another more visible way for Aboriginal people to remain in their country: by ‘sitting down’ on the large estates’.28 As she notes, Surveyor Govett observed in the

7 1830s that the settlers often encouraged families of Aboriginals to stay on the estates ‘to 29 keep [away] strange blacks who might otherwise make dangerous incursions’.

Earle, Augustus, 1793-1838. A native family of New South Wales sitting down on an English settlers farm [1826?] 1 watercolour; 17.5 x 25.7 cm. nla.pic-an2818442

Arguably the impetus for encouraging such ‘sitting down’ for security reasons may have been more valid for farming families living in remote up country localities. For the Blaxlands, the supply of daily fish was a more practical reason for the ‘live and let live’ attitude apparently adopted by the family. The three fishermen were presumably remnants of clans that over the generations had periodically camped on the banks of Duck River and contributed to the massive accumulations of shells along its banks.

Fronting onto the Parramatta River, John Blaxland’s Newington estate occupied the land east of the Duck River tributary and west of Homebush Bay. In his 1919 manuscript, The History of Granville, Thomas Fowlie, chronicled that:

The discovery of immense kitchen middens along the [Parramatta] river banks . . . enabled the settlers of the district to obtain sufficient lime to meet their requirements.

The presence of those great heaps of shells was the works of the aboriginals; they represented the places and relics of their festivals, and had doubtless taken ages to accumulate. The River in the early days was unpolluted and was the habitat of the great mud oyster, schnapper [sic] and other 30 edible fish that are rare or absent today.

8

Joseph Lycett, ca 1775-1826, ‘The residence of John McArthur Esqre. near Parramatta, New South Wales, National Library of Australia.’

On the western side of Duck River, Fowlie documents John and Elizabeth Macarthur’s use of shells on their Elizabeth Farm estate, specifically chronicling vast shell deposits along this Parramatta River tributary. He also refers to extensive deposits on the Blaxlands’ estate:

On the Newington estate on the east side of Duck River from the Macarthurs’ estate, great masses of shells can still be seen. And from the evidence revealed by these shells, it would appear that the 31 great-mud oyster frequented the waters of Parramatta River at this period.

It is probable that the black men who supplied the Blaxlands’ table were ‘sitting down’ on Newington in the vicinity of these middens and their traditional hunting and fishing grounds. No doubt they also took advantage of the bountiful local supplies of kangaroos, wallabies and ‘water-fowl’ reported by Fowlie.32

How long did the co-existence last? Based on the annual blanket returns from 1834-1843, historian Michael Flynn monitored the shrinking numbers of the Duck River people and other surviving Aboriginal groups in the vicinity of Duck River, Prospect, Kissing Point and Breakfast Creek (the modern suburb of Marayong).

The 1837 blanket return lists eight individuals who normally resided at Duck River, including a 41-year-old William Wilson, and two other men of unknown age, George and 33 Jonathon. He goes on to record that, ‘A noticeable feature of the blanket returns after 1837 is the disappearance of the Aboriginal recipients from Kissing Point, Duck River and Concord’. Furthermore, Flynn concludes that, ‘The blanket returns appear to suggest that all or most of the Aboriginal people from Kissing Point, Duck River and Concord

9 had disappeared by 1842’.34 This tallies with Karskens conclusion that, ‘by 1845 the Sydney aboriginal population, in places where they could be seen and counted, was in 35 serious decline’.

Certainly by early 1840s, the period of co-existence, such as it was, was over, not through hostility or ill will necessarily but because of the continuing introduction of diseases such as influenza that impacted white and black alike. As Flynn reminds us, ‘The land booms of the 1830s, and large number of immigrants landing in the second half of decade, probably put additional pressures on surviving Aboriginal groups in the Sydney area’.36

Blaxland’s overland route to the Hunter

The participation of the Blaxland and Walker families in a co-existence of sorts extended to the remoter reaches of NSW. John Marquet Blaxland, the eldest son of John Blaxland Esquire, was granted land at the Gammon Plains near Merriwa in the upper Hunter Valley,37 at some distance from the established settlements of Sydney, Morpeth and Newcastle. According to the family chroniclers, it was John [Marquet] Blaxland who discovered the “Bogan Pass” in the Wollumbi Range of the Mountains, where now stands a flourishing village.38

The so-called Bogan Pass, in all probability an Aboriginal pathway that John Marquet stumbled across, served as a Windsor to overland stock route at a time when coastal shipping was the customary form of transport to Newcastle and the Hunter River. 39 It was later superseded by both the Finch Line of road and the Great North Road.

Collecting local curiosities

The Blaxland/Walker family records indicate that John Marquet was relaxed in Aboriginal company:

When John Blaxland was travelling for weeks in the wild districts scarcely known to white people, and among tribes of Blacks [sic], who were but little accustomed to white folks, searching for pasturage for his flocks, he always got on well. They frequently brought him numbers of large 40 clear stones of crystal carnelian and agate.

Family reminiscences indicate that John Marquet was encouraged to put together collections of curiosities from a young age, a craze that Karskens describes as a ‘rage for curiosity’, with interested parties ‘collicking’ unusual specimens that could be packed into boxes of curiosities for sending home.41 According to family records, the young Blaxlands were encouraged to collect plants, animals, insects or stones. The children evidently treasured opportunities to show off their collections to ‘the Botanists and Scientists of the Men-of-war – British, French, German and Russian’42 that called into Sydney Harbour and dropped anchor:

As there were so few amusements for boys and girls in the early days, and as Mr Blaxland’s family were growing up, he, through Mrs Blaxland, directed the children’s attention to the study of Botany, principally the girls, whilst the boys were told to shoot any pretty or curious birds and animals, and when their lessons were over their Mother provided them with baskets when going

10 for their daily walks. The eldest boy John was now fifteen and trusted with a gun, and the other 43 boys were told to pick up any curious pieces of stone that looked to have metal in them.

Practical joking at his brother-in-law’s expense

Commissary Thomas Walker and his brother-in-law John Marquet Blaxland sometimes rode up country, travelling through the bush and encountering Indigenous tribes along the way:

Mr John Blaxland’s eldest son, also named John, was very fond of practical jokes, he and Commissary Walker being great friends. They used to go sometimes for long trips. John Blaxland was of an enterprising turn of mind, and used to go among some of the friendly tribes of blacks, who were not so well known to be so friendly tribes as other Blacks [sic]. As he and Commissary Walker rode along, to the great surprise of the Commissary, they came suddenly upon a large camp of blacks, who till then were hidden in the thick scrub. One of these blacks was very tall and powerful. Just as the Commissary said, “I think we had better gallop of as fast as we can, John, have you ever been among this tribe before?” “I don’t know”, said he, and gave a sly wink to the tall black, who immediately jumped up behind the Commissary, and hugging him tight round the waist, clinging his long legs round the horses stomach and there he sat!44

While the chance encounter was an unpleasant learning curve for the unsuspecting Thomas Walker, John Blaxland clearly had little sympathy for his brother-in-law’s predicament.

In vain did the Commissary try every manoeuvre to shake off his disgusting torment – he changed the horse’s pace from a rough trot to a gallop, then zig-zag, but in vain did he try to shake off his offensive companion, till at last when he thought he had had enough of it, he got off. John Blaxland, riding leisurely behind, was in fits of laughter, thoroughly enjoying the joke, but the next day the poor Commissary looked at his clothes and hung them out in the sun to get them sweet; they were all over grease, reeking with the unguent smell of iguana fat, his nice shell jacket [a waist-length fitted jacket with cuffs and a waistband] was quite spoilt, as neither the smell or 45 the grease could be got out.

Louisa and Anna also documented the practical uses of the ‘iguana fat’ of the lace monitor lizard, as follows:

The Blacks [sic] use the fat of the iguana as a protection from mosquitoes and venomous insects, also the grease is a protection from the sun. The Iguanas attain the length of six feet [1.8 metres], and are broad in proportion; when killed they yield many pounds of yellow fat: the flesh of these reptiles forms part of their food. Their large mouths are well armed with teeth, and they have savage claws. Should any horse or man come between them and the tree they are going to climb, they will rush up them instead, scratching most terribly. When this is the case, they nearly drive the horses mad.46

In the same way that the Europeans helped themselves to the land of the blacks, so too did the blacks help themselves when it came to the former’s produce and other food sources. According to the family reminiscences, John Marquet Blaxland:

Made splendid rich soup from the tails of the Kangaroo [sic] by stewing the tail all night by a good camp fire, straining it by the next day and pouring it into bottles; but the blacks thought it smelt

11 vey good, and managed to tap the bottles in such a way that they got it out and enjoyed it so much, 47 that when he came expecting to find a good supply of soup, it was all gone.

Helping out people who helped them?

As part of a middle ground experience, Karskens reminds us that ‘plagued by chronic labour shortages, . . . [the Europeans] persuaded some Aboriginal people to work for them on their farms, too—they were said to be extremely useful, hoeing the earth 48 more efficiently than the convict workers’. She described this as the Aboriginals ‘helping out people who have helped them’.

According to Peter Cunningham whose account of life in the colony was published in 1827:

The maize is planted with the hand-hoe, in holes containing five grains at from four to five feet each way in distance. . . . The cobs are pulled off by hand when rope, and carried to the barn, being spread out thinly till quite dry, and then housed away.

The natives often assist in this operation on being rewarded with a good feast of boiled pumpkin and sugar for their labour. You must give them nothing, however, until the day’s work is over; as, the moment their appetites are satisfied, they leave off, hunger alone having the power of impelling any portion of them to labour, while a good jorum of bull (washings of a sugar bag) or tumble down (grog) at the conclusion of the harvest, sends them all merrily and gaily away.49

The Blaxland/Walker family reminiscences parallel this assertion that some blacks could indeed be induced so to work on farms. John Blaxland junior in particular, was a beneficiary of such services:

John Blaxland found that he could make a tribe of blacks very useful in one way. When they chanced to camp on his ground and the maize crops had been gathered in, being a great favourite with them as he was, he would get them all together in the barn; women and children also, and tell them if they would shell all those cobs he would give them a great feast, then he locked them up for three days successively, till their work was done.

To wile away the time they hummed and sang their songs. Then he had some sheep killed, gave them some flour, and sugar bags to make “Bul”, and they would have three days of feasting and 50 rejoicing, then decamp.

Protecting one’s crops

When 19-year-old Elizabeth Ritchie, granddaughter of John and Harriett Blaxland, married Charles Boydell (1808-1869) in 1837 ‘. . . [the latter] took his young wife to his fine up country station, Camyr Allyn, on the Allyn River near Gresford’.51 Faced with crop losses, Boydell devised a novel solution to scare off local clans who had few qualms about helping themselves to what they regarded as the fruits of their land:

When Mr Boydell used to find his maize taken in large quantities, he used to frighten them by riding up to the camp near it, when he and his policeman would tie up their horses: he wore a Yeomans [sic] cloak lined with red. He and his man stole softly up one night, and saw men women and children roasting and eating his corn in great glee; he took a great leap and bounded into the midst of them.

12

The women and children screamed and ran away in the scrub and hid: he said to the men “Give me your spears, everyone of you”. As they one and all looked upon him as a great chief of King they all delivered their spears to him. His man then rode home and packed them all up in a bundle in his store room [sic]. After a little while he told them they might have their spears back if they 52 liked to come for them, but only two or three came back for them.

An undated water colour by Conrad Martens c1840s that is catalogued 'on the Paterson River' (State Library of NSW). It is probably a painting of Camyr Allyn showing a rocky stretch of the Allyn River just above the mill pond in the foreground.

Friendly relations, rubbing along

In addition to his human scarecrow tactics, Charles Boydell’s interactions with the local clans provide interesting insights into an upcountry co-existence:

Mr Boydell was greatly amused with a black who had committed some offence. He thought Mr Boydell had not forgotten it, and was angry: as soon as he saw him at some distance off, he crept close along by the other side of the fence, and looking up saw Mr Boydell laughing a great deal and very much amused. With one leap he bounded over the fence and said, “Me murry gerrunt” 53 (which means me very frightened”) but when me see you laugh me come”.

Equally intriguing is the conversation between Boydell and a teary old aboriginal man who is apparently contemplating his life after death:

On another occasion he [Charles Boydell] saw a poor old black man crying, so he went up and said, “What makes you cry?” 54 “Oh, me getting very old, and when me die me jump up “possum or kangaroo”.

Bush medicine did the trick

The Charles Boydell family passed down into family history the apparent efficacy of bush medicine, specifically a concoction of eucalyptus leaves:

13 When two tribes were at war a gentleman who was travelling in that direction saw a native so badly wounded by a spear that he [Boydell] thought he soon must die, but a few days afterwards he had occasion to go in the same direction and seeing a “Gunyah” or native hut, saw the same man recovering; his gin was sitting by his side bathing the wound with warm water in which was steeped some eucalypts leaves – her basin was a large round “nob” cut from the gum tree, which are often seen on some of these trees and grow to the size of an ordinary basin, the wounds looked healthy and were closing from the bottom. 55

‘Great chief of King’ witnessed a funeral

A curious recollection documents the apparent respect extended by the Aboriginal people to Charles Boydell whom they regarded as a ‘great chief of King’:

The natives paid Mr Boydell a great compliment: they are very tenacious about anyone seeing them bury their dead, but they asked him to come and see their chief’s funeral. He was buried in a 56 sitting posture, boughs of trees were placed under and over him till he was firmly fixed.

Tennis ball-sized crystals cause trouble

The following example of cultural insensitivity raises more questions than it answers, and tracking down an official record of the incidents has proved elusive.

At Camyralyn in those early days, some of the tribes were friendly, and took a great fancy to Mr Boydell, who was very kind and considerate to them. There is a curious narrative about these tribes: in sandy rifts, among rocky ground in the neighbourhood, large clear white crystals about the size of tennis balls of the present day, could be dug up within a short distance of each other.

These were considered to be so very wonderful and precious that the “gins” and the “lubras” were never allowed on pain of death, to look at them.

Unfortunately, five shepherds belonging to neighbouring stations, showed some of these stones, which they had found, to some of the gins, and when the native men heard of it they were furious, and said at first, they would kill all the whites, and so great was the terror of the settlers there, that Mr Boydell went immediately to Sydney and represented the matter to Sir George Gipps, the Governor [1838-1846], who at once sent 30 rank and file of soldiers back with him, and they all lived on Mr Boydell’s property for many weeks at his expense, searching up and down the steep 57 hills for the blacks, who were not to be found.

The anecdote ends with a rather alarming twist in the tail, namely the apparent murder of the five shepherds who had triggered the uproar by coming between the men and their women by breaking the rules:

Upon consideration, the Chief Justice came to the conclusion that it was neither right to kill the gins or lubras, or the people who had done no harm, but the blacks said it was the shepherds who must be killed, so they followed the shepherds down to the river, when they went to get a drink, laughing and talking with them as though they were quite friendly, and as soon as they stooped their heads down to drink, chopped their heads off with a “nullah”: thus their vengeance was 58 appeased.

Whether the killing of the five shepherds indeed occurred remains unclear.

14 Respecting a request to spare a sacred tree

The family recollections documented another glimpse of apparent respect for Aboriginal culture and the ‘live and let live’ principle as demonstrated by a family friend, a Colonel Breton:

Colonel Breton bought a very pretty little farm in Illawarra where he intended to settle. On this property was a Fig [sic] tree which covered more than an acre of ground, about an acre and a half; this tree was covered with Parasites [sic] of all kinds, and the Colonel set some workmen to chop it down. The tribe of natives who owned that part of the country, when they saw their heredity landmark thus being summarily dealt with went in a body to the Colonel, and asked him to spare that tree, as it was, a great many moons old, their ancestors for many years had gathered round it and they looked up to it with great affection; whereupon the men were told to leave it and clear someone

else.59

How interesting that the family chronicler referred to the ‘tribe of natives who owned that part of the country’, a telling acknowledgement from an incoming European.

Native Hops and Nardoo in the Namoi River district

The extended Blaxland family took up land on the Namoi River, 56km west of Tamworth and in the vicinity of the current-day Keepit Dam. Wildflower artist Anna Frances Walker, the granddaughter of John and Harriett Blaxland, periodically visited this property and in addition to painting the local trees, shrubs and herbs, made ethnographic notes of the blacks who lived on the property. She recorded that:

There are three kinds of Native Hops abounding in the gullys [sic] about Keepit by which the gin Lilly (the wife of Fred the yellow half bred man who is her husband) made them known to me. The two kind of hops are of no use – but the third kind is used by the aborigines to make their Nardoo into cakes.60

Anna went on to note that the ‘Nardoo is a large species of grass seed which abounds in Queensland and is preferred by the gins pounding the seed between two flat stones’ and how she rode to visit ‘Tilly and her mother Bootha, the last of that tribe, to ask which kind of hop was used & (sic) how was it prepared for use. Bootha and Tilly said they would send a branch of it to Mrs Rodd when it was in season’.61

In her meticulous way, Anna recorded that ‘this hop must be quite ripe before being gathered’ and that after the seeds had been pressed and dried, one took ‘a handful of these’ and boiled them ‘with some native honey and water’.

This Native Hop yeast Mrs Johnston, the wife of the overseer on Keepit Station, assured us, makes the most beautiful white bread – whiter than that produced by any other kind of yeast. Tilly makes her bread of ordinary wheaten flour with this particular yeast. Another kind of Native flour is made from the seeds of the Currajong Tree.62

15 Conclusion

Based on these family reminiscences, members of the extended Blaxland and Walker families show themselves to be on congenial terms with Aboriginal people in Sydney’s Inner West, the Illawarra, the Hunter Valley and the Namoi River district. In part, these instances of middle ground relationships provide an answer for Michael Flynn, who in 1995 questioned how the Duck River people might have supported themselves up to, and including, the 1830s.

They may have followed a partially traditional lifestyle on Crown land along Duck River, perhaps around what became the Clyde railway in the 20th century. Much of the land along the marshy banks of Duck River north of the Parramatta Road was owned by John MacArthur and John 63 Blaxland. Whether these wealthy families gave the Duck River people any assistance is unclear.

The Blaxland/Walker family reminiscences presented in this article certainly suggest that the families were sympathetically disposed to the blacks, be it in the vicinity of the Parramatta River or on the upcountry estates of their extended families. For a time, the extended families relied on the services of Aboriginal people they came in contact with, and vice versa, particularly those who sat down on their lands, the latter in doing so, perhaps living a little longer than those not granted the same courtesy and concessions.

The Blaxland/Walker papers add weight to Karskens’ interpretation of Augustus Earle’s painting ‘A Native Family of New South Wales sitting down on an English Settler's Farm'. In The Colony she questions whether Earle is conveying a ‘pictorial narrative . . . of dispossession and impending catastrophe’ or whether what the well-known painting 64 may instead convey is ‘endurance, patience and dignity’.

Barbara Cameron-Smith Kirribilli NSW 2061

18 September 2016

Notes

1 Grace Karskens, The Colony - A history of early Sydney, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2009, p 33. 2 Karskens, The Colony, p 33. 3 Karskens, The Colony, pp 4-5. 4 Karskens, The Colony, p 14. 5 Karskens, The Colony, p 13. Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2003, pp 8-9. 6 Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p 25. 7 Karskens, The Colony, pp 14-15. 8 Karskens, The Colony, p 456. 9 Karskens, The Colony, p 456. 10 Karskens, The Colony, p 14. 11 Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/blaxland-john-1796, accessed 29 March 2012. 12 Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/blaxland-gregory-1795, accessed 29 March 2012.

16 13 Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/walker-thomas-2766, accessed 29 March 2012. 14 A. F. Walker, (1806-1867?), Family traditions and personal recollections of the Walker family, ML C195, CY Reel 3505, Mitchell Library, pp 1-59. 15 Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p 273. 16 Karskens, The Colony, p 432. 17 Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p 274. 18 Walker, Family traditions, p 10. 19 Walker, Family traditions, p 10. 20 Watkin Tench 1788 - A narrative of the expedition to Botany Bay, ed. Tim Flannery, The Text Publishing Company, Melbourne, 1996, p 54. 21 Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p 274. 22 Karskens, The Colony, p 436. 23 Walker, Family traditions p 10. 24 Walker, Family traditions p 10. 25 Walker, Family traditions, p 10. 26 Karskens, The Colony, pp 431-432. 27 Walker, Family traditions p 46. 28 Karskens, The Colony, p 537. 29 Karskens, The Colony, p 537. 30 Thomas Fowlie, 1919, The History of Granville, ZA1492, CY 1037, Mitchell Library, p 392. 31 Fowlie, History, p 28. 32 Fowlie, History, p 4. 33 Michael Flynn, Holyroyd History and the Silent Boundary Project, Research report for Holroyd City Council, August 1997, p 54. 33 Michael Flynn, Holyroyd History and the Silent Boundary Project, Research report for Holroyd City Council, August 1997, p 54. 34 Flynn, Holroyd, p 49. 35 Karskens, The Colony, p 522. 36 Flynn, Holroyd, p 49. 37 Ian A W McAllan, ‘The type-locality of Epthianura aurifrons Gould 1838 The Orange ·Chat’, South Australian Ornithologist, no 30, September 1989, pp 199-200. 38 Walker, Family traditions, p 16. 39 Convict Trail – Caring for the Great North Road, http://www.convicttrail.org/history.php?id=a2b7, accessed 5 April 2012. 40 Walker, Family traditions p 16. 41 Karskens, The Colony, pp 254-60. 42 Walker, Family traditions p 4. 43 Walker, Family traditions p 4. 44 Walker, Family traditions p 15. 45 Walker, Family traditions p 15. 46 Walker, Family traditions pp 15-16. 47 Walker, Family traditions p 16 48 Karskens, The Colony, pp 456-57. 49 Peter Miller Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales A series of letters, comprising sketches of the actual state of society in that colony of its peculiar advantages to emigrants; its topography, natural history, &c. &c., Henry Colburn, , 1827, p 236. 50 Walker, Family traditions p 16. 51 Walker, Family traditions p 25. 52 Walker, Family traditions p 26. 53 Walker, Family traditions p 27. 54 Walker, Family traditions p 27. 55 Walker, Family traditions p 27. 56 Walker, Family traditions p 26. 57 Walker, Family traditions p 26. 58 Walker, Family traditions p 26.

17 59 Walker, Family traditions p 24. 60 Anna Frances Walker 1879-1910 Letters to Miss A F Walker, with holograph notes on Australian plants, A 1576, Mitchell Library. 61 Anna Frances Walker 1879-1910 Letters to Miss A F Walker, with holograph notes on Australian plants, A 1576, Mitchell Library 62 Anna Frances Walker 1879-1910 Letters to Miss A F Walker, with holograph notes on Australian plants, A 1576, Mitchell Library 63 Michael Flynn, Parramatta and the Aboriginal People of the Sydney Region, Research report for Parramatta City Council, March 1995. Part 2 Appendix One, p 41. 64 Karskens, The Colony, pp 538-539.

1 Grace Karskens, The Colony - A history of early Sydney, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2009, p 33.

2 Karskens, The Colony, p 33.

3 Karskens, The Colony, pp 4-5.

4 Karskens, The Colony, p 14.

5 Karskens, The Colony, p 13.

Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2003, pp 8-9.

6 Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p 25.

7 Karskens, The Colony, pp 14-15.

8 Karskens, The Colony, p 456.

9 Karskens, The Colony, p 456.

10 Karskens, The Colony, p 14.

11 Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/blaxland-john-1796, accessed 29

March 2012.

12 Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/blaxland-gregory-1795, accessed 29

March 2012.

13 Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/walker-thomas-2766, accessed 29

March 2012.

14 A. F. Walker, (1806-1867?), Family traditions and personal recollections of the Walker family, ML

C195, CY Reel 3505, Mitchell Library, pp 1-59.

15 Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p 273.

16 Karskens, The Colony, p 432.

17 Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p 274.

18 Walker, Family traditions, p 10.

18

19 Walker, Family traditions, p 10.

20 Watkin Tench 1788 - A narrative of the expedition to Botany Bay, ed. Tim Flannery, The Text Publishing

Company, Melbourne, 1996, p 54.

21 Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, p 274.

22 Karskens, The Colony, p 436.

23 Walker, Family traditions p 10.

24 Walker, Family traditions p 10.

25 Walker, Family traditions, p 10.

26 Karskens, The Colony, pp 431-432.

27 Walker, Family traditions p 46.

28 Karskens, The Colony, p 537.

29 Karskens, The Colony, p 537.

30 Thomas Fowlie, 1919, The History of Granville, ZA1492, CY 1037, Mitchell Library, p 392.

31 Fowlie, History, p 28.

32 Fowlie, History, p 4.

33 Michael Flynn, Holyroyd History and the Silent Boundary Project, Research report for Holroyd City

Council, August 1997, p 54.

33 Michael Flynn, Holyroyd History and the Silent Boundary Project, Research report for Holroyd City

Council, August 1997, p 54.

34 Flynn, Holroyd, p 49.

35 Karskens, The Colony, p 522.

36 Flynn, Holroyd, p 49.

37 Ian A W McAllan, ‘The type-locality of Epthianura aurifrons Gould 1838 The Orange ·Chat’, South

Australian Ornithologist, no 30, September 1989, pp 199-200.

38 Walker, Family traditions, p 16.

39 Convict Trail – Caring for the Great North Road, http://www.convicttrail.org/history.php?id=a2b7, accessed 5 April 2012.

40 Walker, Family traditions p 16.

19

41 Karskens, The Colony, pp 254-60.

42 Walker, Family traditions p 4.

43 Walker, Family traditions p 4.

44 Walker, Family traditions p 15.

45 Walker, Family traditions p 15.

46 Walker, Family traditions pp 15-16.

47 Walker, Family traditions p 16

48 Karskens, The Colony, pp 456-57.

49 Peter Miller Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales A series of letters, comprising sketches of the actual state of society in that colony of its peculiar advantages to emigrants; its topography, natural history, &c. &c., Henry Colburn, London, 1827, p 236.

50 Walker, Family traditions p 16.

51 Walker, Family traditions p 25.

52 Walker, Family traditions p 26.

53 Walker, Family traditions p 27.

54 Walker, Family traditions p 27.

55 Walker, Family traditions p 27.

56 Walker, Family traditions p 26.

57 Walker, Family traditions p 26.

58 Walker, Family traditions p 26.

59 Walker, Family traditions p 24.

60 Anna Frances Walker 1879-1910 Letters to Miss A F Walker, with holograph notes on Australian plants,

A 1576, Mitchell Library.

61 Anna Frances Walker 1879-1910 Letters to Miss A F Walker, with holograph notes on Australian plants,

A 1576, Mitchell Library

62 Anna Frances Walker 1879-1910 Letters to Miss A F Walker, with holograph notes on Australian plants,

A 1576, Mitchell Library

20

63 Michael Flynn, Parramatta and the Aboriginal People of the Sydney Region, Research report for

Parramatta City Council, March 1995. Part 2 Appendix One, p 41.

64 Karskens, The Colony, pp 538-539.

21