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 Sydney 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 First Fleet. 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, ‘Australia’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: 5 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).