It was hard for a convict to hide on a ship, with a view to
quitting Australia. After the transport Neptune
was unloaded in Sydney in August 1790, she was to sail to China to pick up a
cargo, but before the ship weighed anchor, John Long, the town-adjutant,
searched the ship and found a man and a woman hidden in the ship’s firewood
supply. [1]
This was probably no chance search, because there was little honour among the
convicts, and informers were everywhere.
Those who went off into the bush never lasted long. They had no
idea of how to get food in the bush, no idea of how to stay warm and dry, and
Governor Phillip said they stood little chance of being helped by the locals. [2] So
if a convict wanted to escape, stealing a small boat was the best choice. It
got you away from settled areas.
On the night of September 26, 1790, five male convicts took a
small punt from Rose Hill and headed for Sydney. David Collins said the punt
would have been a death trap, once they left the shelter of Port Jackson, but
the party made their way to Watson’s Bay, or Look Out Bay as it was called back
then, stole a small leaky boat with a mast and sail, and headed out to sea.
They had each taken provisions for one week; their cloaths
and bedding; three iron pots, and some other utensils of that nature. They all
came out in the last fleet, and took this method of speedily accomplishing
their sentences of transportation, which were for the term of their natural
lives. Their names were, John Tarwood, a daring, desperate character, and the
principal in the scheme; Joseph Sutton, who was found secreted on board the
Neptune and punished; George Lee; George Connoway, and John Watson.… They no
doubt pushed directly out upon that ocean which, from the wretched state of the
boat wherein they trusted themselves, must have proved their grave… [3]
Collins called this boat small and weak, but it had a mast
and a sail. Rather optimistically, they were planning to reach Otaheite, or as
we would say now, Tahiti, which was more than 6000 km away.
That, at least, is what they told the people they left behind,
but perhaps they were leaving a false trail. They were searched for in the
harbour, and when no trace was found, the authorities assumed they had sailed
out across the ocean and died. In fact, the men sailed up the coast as far as Port
Stephens and put in there.
Sutton later died, but the other four men were taken in by the
local people, and when Captain Broughton of the Providence put in there during a storm in August 1795, he found
four white men (if four miserable, naked, dirty, and smoke-dried men could be
called “white”, David Collins commented) who begged to be taken back to Sydney.
They had had enough of the primitive life.
By that time, almost five years on, each had a native wife and
one or two had children, and according to them, the natives worshipped them as
the spirits of their countrymen, which, after death, had gone away and then
returned in pale human form. Worshipped or not, they had had enough. David
Collins was fascinated by them:
Each of them had had names given him, and given with several
ceremonies. Wives also were allotted them, and one or two had children. They
were never required to go out on any occasion of hostility, and were in general
supplied by the natives with fish or other food, being considered by them (for
so their situation only could be construed) as unfortunate strangers thrown
upon their shore from the mouth of the yawning deep, and entitled to their
protection.
It appeared from these four men, that the language to the
northward differed wholly from any that we knew. Among the natives who lived
with us, there were none who understood all that they said, and of those who
occasionally came in, one only could converse with them. He was a very fine
lad, of the name of Wur-gan. His mother had been born and bred beyond the
mountains, but one luckless day, paying a visit with some of her tribe to the
banks of the Dee-rab-bun (for so the Hawkesbury was named) she was forcibly
prevented returning, and, being obliged to submit to the embraces of an amorous
and powerful Be-dia-gal, the fruit of her visit was this boy. Speaking herself
more dialects than one, she taught her son all she knew, and he, being of quick
parts, and a roving disposition, caught all the different dialects from Botany
Bay to Port Stephens. [4]
Nobody seemed to comment on it at the time, but well before
Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth made their “first” crossing of the Blue
Mountains in 1813, here was clear evidence that the “savages” could cross the
mountains at will.
Soon after Tarwood and friends took off, there were others
with similar plans, according to an informant who claimed that the plotters “…had
provided themselves with oars, masts, sails, etc. for the purpose, which were
concealed in the woods…” [5]
The authorities moved in, but found only a few stakes of timber
that might have been made into oars. The authorities kept a close eye on the
alleged plotters, but nothing came of it. It was likely to be a problem, said
Collins, because there were those whose sentences had expired, who wanted to
return to their wives and children.
If these people found any obstacles in their way, they would
naturally be driven to attempt the attainment of their wishes in some other
mode; and it would then become an object of bad policy, as well as cruelty, to
detain them.[6]
[1]
See David Collins, An Account of the
English Colony in New South Wales, volume 1.
[2]
Arthur Phillip, The Voyage Of Governor
Phillip To Botany Bay, 118.
[3]
David Collins, An Account of the English
Colony in New South Wales, volume 1, 1798, 112 – 3.
[4]
David Collins, An Account of the English
Colony in New South Wales, volume 1, 1798, 356 – 7.
[5]
David Collins, An Account of the English
Colony in New South Wales, volume 1, 1798, 115 – 6.
[6]
David Collins, An Account of the English
Colony in New South Wales, volume 1, 1798, 116.
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