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Monday 23 March 2020

Bolters, part 8 of many


The secret city.

Let us begin with three comments from original sources. The first two accounts cover a mass departure in 1791, the third reveals that 12 years later, the lesson of the first party’s suffering was yet to be learned.

The first party that essayed this undertaking consisted of twenty persons, who set out on the journey in August, 1791; but through want of signposts, or some other essential, on the way, they became bewildered in the woods, and returned to the settlement so squalid and lean, that the very crows would have declined the proffer of their carcases. [1]
Three of these miserable people were some time after met by some officers who were on an excursion to the lagoon between this harbour and Broken Bay [Narrabeen Lake?]; but, notwithstanding their situation, they did not readily give themselves up, and, when questioned, said they wanted nothing more than to live free from labour. These people were sent up to Parramatta, whence, regardless of what they had experienced, and might again suffer, they a second time absconded in a few days after they had been returned. Parties were immediately dispatched from that settlement, and thirteen of those who first absconded were brought in, in a state of deplorable wretchedness, naked, and nearly worn out with hunger. Some of them had subsisted chiefly by sucking the flowering shrubs and wild berries of the woods; and the whole exhibited a picture of misery, that seemed sufficient to deter others from the like extravagant folly. [2]
It has been reported, by persons who were careless whether, they asserted facts or falsehoods, that the natives of the interior have made mention of a set of people whose manners and customs strongly resembled our own; and others, willing to give a still more improbable colour to the imposture, asserted in addition that these distant inhabitants were possessed of bells, churches, masted vessels, a sterling specie, and every other requisite that might seem calculated to convey the idea of civilization. [3]

When the convicts of the First Fleet came ashore, they had little idea of where they were in the world, and for a short while, those who ran away thought China was nearby — or at least within walking distance. Just a few hills away, and they would be in another country, they told each other.

Perhaps they believed it for a while, but then they switched to a more promising tale. This concerned a mythical colony of white people, vaguely located “three or four hundred miles south-west of Sydney”. There were even written travel instructions circulating, complete with a compass rose to make them appear absolutely genuine.

Nobody had been there, so the “route” was drawn with no knowledge of the country. We know now that a south-west path running that far would take escapers through the rugged Snowy Mountains and down into eastern Victoria, somewhere between Albury, Shepparton, Sale and Mallacoota. The country on the way is not for the faint-hearted, but nobody knew that.

Governor John Hunter was a decent sort of person. As an educated man, he knew there could be no mysterious white civilisation out in the wilderness. He worried that many gullible convicts would die in agony or end up returning to an almost equally agonising punishment after pointless travels.

He wrote to a magistrate at Parramatta, instructing him to go to Toongabbie, where most of the believers were working. As it would be impossible to reason the convicts out of their beliefs, the magistrate was to tell them that four picked men would be allowed to start out and satisfy themselves of the impossibility of escape in that direction.

More importantly, three experienced men would be sent with them as guides, to make certain that they returned safely. On the day, a large mob turned up, all agitating to be allowed to go, but in the end, they selected four of their number.

The convicts were determined not to be fooled by the governor. They had hatched a cunning plan to hijack the expedition, with a larger body absconding, meeting the explorers at a pre-arranged spot, murdering the guides and then proceeding to the safety of the fabled white colony.

Luckily for them, this scheme was discovered and four soldiers were added to the party, scotching the plot. One of the guides was a former convict named John (or James, according to some accounts) Wilson, who had spent much of his time with the first inhabitants.
Wilson was a bushranger in the old sense of the word. He had served his time, but then largely turned his back on those of his own nation and learned to live in the bush, taught by his new friends.

His friends gave him an Indigenous name and people said his body was ‘marked and scarred after their fashion’, which, taken together with his being named, suggests that he was an initiated man. Wilson came back to visit the whites from time to time and told tales of wonders he had seen in the bush, but the settlers in Sydney all thought he was a liar.

It didn’t matter: Wilson knew his way around the bush, so he went with the party when they set out on 14 January 1798. Ten days later, the soldiers returned with three of the convicts.

The soldiers had been instructed to return when they reached the foot of the mountains, but the three convicts said they had seen and suffered enough, and begged to be allowed to return with them.
The rest of the party arrived back at Prospect Hill, on the outskirts of the settlement, on 9 February, praising Wilson for keeping them alive. They said they had seen creeks and a large river, but like Wilson’s yarns, some of their tales must now be taken with a grain of salt.

They claimed to have met few natives, but those they saw were dressed in skins from head to foot (unlikely in summer), and they reported seeing a fat mountain wallaroo. They returned with a specimen of a lyrebird and reported dining on ‘a kind of mole’, apparently a wombat, but that was the limit of their achievements.

Wilson died soon after, speared by men of his adopted tribe for breaking one of their customs in attempting to take possession of a woman. (As an accepted member of the Indigenous community, he was expected to know and obey these customs, but it seems that even if he knew, he did not obey.) In Wilson, Australia lost either a good bush wanderer or an excellent storyteller, or maybe both. He remains as a good example of what the early bushrangers (in the original sense of the term) could do.



[1] Peter Cunningham, Two Years In New South Wales, vol. 2, 1827, 196 – 7.
[2] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, volume 1, 1798, 154 – 5.
[3] The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 3 July 1803, 2 – 3, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/625655

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