If John Batman never tells you about those dark days hunting Aboriginals, William, does he at least admit to you he is dying?
The man with the flattering tongue and the merry eye has been led astray once too often and now it is a race between the syphilis raging through his body and the amounts of mercury being used to treat it to see which will claim him first. All that energy – that ability to endure fatigue and privation – is already draining from him; in the next couple of years the bacterial infection festering inside will become apparent to all when it begins eating away at his nose.
What about the Port Phillip Association that Batman leads? They are little more than trespassers on Crown land – the area around Port Phillip has already been proclaimed the territory of New South Wales in complete disregard of its original inhabitants. But if the authorities in Sydney and London have made it clear they are not supportive of a colony being established by lawless squatters caught up in a frenzy of land seizures, it has hardly stemmed the flow of ships heading across Bass Strait.
Grab the land and deal with the consequences later – that’s what being a bold man on the frontier is all about. Besides, there are many who suspect that back in Hobart Town Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur is quietly supporting their move – and may even be a silent investor. And even Batman, competitive and driven though he may be, is welcoming the news that others like little Johnny Fawkner are making their way to the mainland. There will be comfort in numbers.
You probably know none of this. But what you are beginning to understand after just a few weeks of living at the depot at Indented Head is that, rather than being at the mercy of these settlers because of your convict background, your knowledge of the land and your reputation among the Wadawurrung is giving you influence you never dreamed possible.
Look at the way they lean in and listen when you talk in faltering English about the land and how it provides food for all; how they hang on every word when you describe some of the Aboriginal customs. This Todd, he’s a good listener, is he not? Conscientious. A diligent note-taker. But you won’t be seeing him for much longer because there’s something else about Batman you definitely don’t know. It’s as if the man is cursed, that if you grow too close to him fate’s black hand will ensure a miserable outcome. Todd will be one of many whose lives will end in tragedy. He will soon return to Van Diemen’s Land (there’s a suggestion he may fall out with John’s brother, Henry) and become an invalid. And then one day years later he will be admitted to hospital, singing to himself and ‘relating imaginary exploits’ before stuffing part of his shirt down his throat and choking himself to death.
It takes three weeks before you feel confident enough to admit to Todd and the others you have lied about your past. There never was a ship skipper who you slung over your shoulders before swimming to shore. Todd will note that you did not tell them the truth at first because ‘he was very much frightened of us, & he thought if he had told us the truth we should have shot him’.
When the Rebecca returns to the camp carrying Henry Batman and his wife and family – along with a man called John Helder Wedge – you suddenly find you have another audience to entertain and hold spellbound with your physical presence and stories.
If Batman is the chief executive and public face of the Port Phillip Association, answerable to a board of investors and pastoralists far wealthier than himself, then Wedge is chief operations officer. An Englishman close to Batman who has been in Van Diemen’s Land for a decade, Wedge has just resigned his role as a government surveyor because this venture offers far more potential.
Wedge is one of the very few characters turning 1835 into such a pivotal year in Australian history whose image will endure photographically. In one he stares at the camera, hair parted down the middle and falling each side to just below the ears, a slightly bemused look on his face, looking every inch the dapper gentleman explorer so many of the era fancy themselves to be. An expertly tied cravat – the fashionable neckwear of the era – sits around a freshly laundered shirt. In his right hand he clasps a large hat, perhaps the one he once wore while climbing Ben Lomond with Batman. It is not hard to imagine his ever-present journal to the side, just out of view, pressed flowers drying between pages of notes about undulating fields and latitudes and longitudes. Wedge is far more literate than Batman and to him will fall the responsibility of attempting to achieve your free pardon.
But one of the first things he does when arriving at Indented Head is sketch you. It is four weeks after you walked out of the bush and you look nothing like the way you will be depicted by artists in the years to come. Gone is the bearded wild white man, hair down to the shoulders, spear in hand. Drawn from the side, your hair has been cut, beard shaved and the only notable feature is that sharp, upturned nose. It is a crude drawing; as a surveyor Wedge is all about boundaries and straight lines, not the meandering subtleties of the human face. He performs better when he sketches the Indented Head depot; two basic sod huts, a tent next to them, surrounded by sloping open ground and scattered gum trees.
Wedge’s mission is to map the territory Batman has secured from the Kulin ‘chiefs’ and ensure each member of the Association knows how much land he has been allotted. But before he sets off – grateful to have you by his side leading the way – Wedge writes to the authorities in Hobart seeking a pardon for a man he already knows will prove invaluable to the Association.
The petition is a lengthy document detailing your history and how you saved the lives of Batman’s party at Indented Head. Apart from noting the extraordinary amount of time that has passed since that escape from the Sullivan Bay settlement, Wedge also plays the fear and loathing card. It’s a move you might normally associate with a William Lushington Goodwin or a John Morgan, not a mild-mannered surveyor. Wedge wants it known that if a pardon is denied, this huge white man next to him might very well retaliate by unleashing the dogs of war.
‘I beg most earnestly to recommend this petition to the favourable consideration of His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor,’ writes Wedge, ‘and in doing so, I feel that I scarcely need advert to the danger that would ensue to the lives of those who may in future reside here, by his being driven to despair by the refusal of his petition, which would probably induce him to join the natives again.’
Wedge feels no need to resort to subtleties. He is dealing with the Colonial Secretary, John Montagu, who reports directly to George Arthur, the man who instigated martial law and personally took charge of the Black Line.
‘There is no calculating on the mischief that might ensue by the hostile feelings that he would have it in his power to instill into the breasts of the natives.’
Letter dispatched to Hobart Town, you and Wedge embark on a week-long tour of the area. Each day he is reminded how critical a role you will play in the months and years to come. It’s almost as if you are showing off to the man. You impress him with your knowledge of the local customs. You guide him across the land, pointing out its features and sources of water. The following year the Royal Geographic Society in London will publish Wedge’s Narrative of an Excursion amongst the Natives of Port Phillip on the South Coast of New Holland. It is in this, along with his field notes, that you are suddenly transformed from a curiosity to an indispensable aide.
You guide Wedge to one of your favourite haunts, that place on the Barwon River you know as Woorongo ‘where I had caught a vast quantity of eels’. Well, Wedge is having none of that. He renames Woorongo ‘Buckley’s Falls’ – and who are you to disagree? You take him to your old hut on the Karaaf River, where ducks and geese are shot in the presence of local Aboriginals ‘to entertain great dread of the use of fire arms. I was authorised to tell those I met with that if they would go to the settlement presents would be made to them of blankets, knives etc, and many promised to visit us.’
You are also quick to provide Wedge with an assessment of the various characters of the Wadawurrung. There is the head of one family, Murradonnanuke, who, you tell Wedge, ‘is more to be dreaded on account of his treachery than any of the other chiefs’. Wedge is quickly satisfied that most of the Aboriginals are not dangerous ‘although I learnt from Buckley that in the treatment of each other they were treacherous …
‘To command their respect I found it was necessary to make them fully understand that it was in our power not only to minister to their wants and comforts, but amply to avenge any outrage. In impressing them with this idea Buckley was of great use to us by making known to them the ample means we had of furnishing them with food, blankets … and explaining the object we had in view in settling amongst them, and our desire to be on friendly terms with them.’
But that question everyone wants to know … you’ve been waiting for Wedge to ask it. Sure enough, it doesn’t take long. ‘I learnt from Buckley that they were cannibals,’ writes Wedge, ‘… but they do not seem to indulge in this horrible propensity except when the tribes are at war with each other when the bodies of those who are killed are roasted and their bones are infallibly picked by the teeth of their enemy …’
On one occasion Wedge is bemused ‘although it was no fun to the four women concerned’ – when Murradonnanuke punishes his wives for not fetching enough food for him by throwing fire sticks at them ‘in the most furious manner’.
A week after returning to Indented Head, Henry Batman pulls you aside and tells you a letter has arrived from Hobart Town with news you are to be pardoned. The letter is from John Batman, who says he has just met with Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, who will move to have the pardon confirmed through Sydney and London as quickly as possible.
A free man, after all these years? To never look over your shoulder again? It’s enough to make even a man like you break into Tuckey-style prose: ‘… whose heart, bounding from so many long years of solitude and captivity into freedom could, or can, beat like mine?’ you and Morgan will write.
Wedge, the author of the pardon request, is also relieved, delighting in your happiness. ‘Nothing,’ writes Wedge, ‘could exceed the joy he evinced at once more feeling himself a free man, received again within the pale of civilised society.’ But below the bonhomie, something sticks in Wedge’s craw. In the battle for land and wealth, egos bump hard against one another. He senses the hand of Batman taking all the credit and writes to him immediately.
‘I could not shut my eyes or be deaf to the remarks you made respecting Buckley’s obtaining his pardon through your influence with the Lieutenant-Governor,’ Wedge tells Batman. ‘A very few minutes after your brother had perused your letter he remarked to Buckley that it was very fortunate that you happened to be in Hobart Town at the time the memorial arrived there, that you had waited on the Governor and obtained his free pardon, etc, giving him to understand that it was through your influence alone that Col. Arthur conceded to the prayer of the petitioner … I cannot do otherwise than suppose that what he stated was your instructions …
‘If the pardon was through your influence, every credit is due to you for it, and no-one would feel under greater obligation to you than myself. If, on the other hand … I do not think it fair toward others … for it certainly looks as though you intended to get the whole credit for yourself, and by which to obtain an undue influence over the mind of Buckley and through him over the minds of the natives.’
Those natives. Wedge knows all about dealing with Aboriginals – probably far more than he will ever tell you. The man is a collector and very soon a large array of Aboriginal artefacts bearing his name will sit in a museum near his home in the market town of Saffron Walden in Essex. There will be spears and clubs and boomerangs, souvenirs from the Black War and Wedge’s first months in Port Phillip. Among them, according to notes made by the museum in 1844, will be ‘four of Buckley’s clubs of various shapes rudely ornamented’. They will be described as being solid and heavy – invaluable relics of your time with the Wadawurrung and testament to how deeply embedded you had been in their culture.
But weapons, dried flowers and insects were not the only additions to the John Helder Wedge collection. In 1828 he had been surveying a lease for the Van Diemen’s Company in the island’s remote north-west, territory of the Peerapper people who were now fighting back against the white predators stealing their land and killing their warriors. Wedge’s party had opened fire on a group of Aboriginal men and then watched as one of them dived into the ocean to escape. Exhausted by the rough swell, he was soon washed ashore and revealed to be a boy no more than 10 years old. Here was another addition to the Wedge collection. The surveyor had the boy’s hands tied for three days as they continued on their march into unknown territory.
The bachelor Wedge made the boy, Wheete, his ‘constant companion’, showing him off at dinner parties as yet another curiosity he had unearthed in his travels. He was heartbroken when the boy died two years later from a chest infection but it was not the end of his experimentation with Aboriginal children under his ‘care’. He would eventually – and unusually – take five of them under his wing. Like Batman, several historians will portray Wedge as a noble humanitarian. The man himself will say he took Wheete into his home ‘for I always dissented from the prevailing opinion that, however kindly treated even if taken in their infancy, they would be treacherous and take the first opportunity to return [to] their tribes again’.
But there will always be some who will feel uncomfortable about John Helder Wedge and his collection of the living and the dead.
In early 1836 Charles Darwin visits Hobart Town after a stint in Sydney as his five-year voyage around the world on the Beagle draws to a close. If the journey of the Endeavour half a century earlier had been the trigger for Britain’s foray into New Holland, Darwin’s experiences in Australia and elsewhere are already laying the ground for an idea that will transform humanity’s understanding of how life evolved on earth.
Still in his mid-20s, balding and with large mutton chop sideburns, Darwin had been fortunate to secure a berth as the Beagle’s resident gentleman naturalist because the ship’s captain, the temperamental Robert FitzRoy, did not like his nose. FitzRoy is an admirer of 18th-century Swiss philosopher Johann Kaspar Lavater, an influential figure in the field of physiognomy, a method of assessing a person’s character and personality traits by their physical appearance. FitzRoy had seen in Darwin’s large and fleshy nose the telltale signs of someone with a weak constitution who would find the perils of a long sea journey too difficult to handle.
He has not been that wrong. Darwin walked away from medical studies because he disliked the sight of blood and was horrified by the butchery of the era’s surgeons. On the Beagle he has endured extreme seasickness and constant stomach complaints. But on land Darwin has overcome these ailments – and FitzRoy’s doubts – through sheer perseverance and an insatiable curiosity. By the time he arrives in Hobart Town he is already something of a celebrity back in London. A selection of his geological letters has been published and circulated by his old botany professor, and the scientific establishment is already beginning to take notice of the young naturalist.
In Van Diemen’s Land Darwin climbs Mt Wellington – ‘a severe day’s work’ – and is paraded in front of the Bunyip aristocracy, all of them dressed in their finest. He remains on the island for 10 days and as the Beagle begins her voyage home, the naturalist has plenty of time to reflect on his experiences in the new colonies.
‘The Aborigines have been removed to an island in Bass’s Straits, so that Van Diemen’s Land enjoys the great advantage of being free from a native population,’ he will write in his book The Voyage of the Beagle. ‘This most cruel step seems to have been quite unavoidable, as the only means of stopping a fearful succession of robberies, burnings, and murders, committed by the blacks; and which sooner or later would have ended in their utter destruction. I fear there is no doubt that this train of evil and its consequences originated in the infamous conduct of some of our countrymen.’
Darwin had already seen the impact of white culture on Australia’s Aboriginals during his couple of weeks in New South Wales. There, he reported, ‘The number of Aborigines is rapidly decreasing. In my whole ride, with the exception of some boys brought up by Englishmen, I saw only one other party. This decrease, no doubt, must be partly owing to the introduction of spirits, to European diseases (even the milder ones of which, such as the measles, prove very destructive), and to the gradual extinction of the wild animals … Besides these several evident causes of destruction, there appears to be some more mysterious agency generally at work. Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the Aboriginal.’
But the man whose theory of natural selection will trigger a scientific and cultural revolution – and horrify FitzRoy who will see it as a slap to the face of God – is largely unimpressed with his experiences in Australia. ‘Farewell, Australia!’ he writes, ‘you are a rising child, and doubtless some day will reign a great princess in the South; but you are too great and ambitious for affection, yet not great enough for respect. I leave your shores without sorrow or regret.’
What has stuck in Darwin’s craw is the culture of the place. Forget about his still embryonic theory about the survival of the fittest; what he has seen in this young colony is the survival of the fattest; he who accumulates the most land and places the greatest number of sheep on it will emerge triumphant.
‘The whole population, poor and rich, are bent on acquiring wealth,’ writes Darwin. ‘The subject of wool & sheep grazing amongst the higher orders is of preponderant interest.’
It’s a safe bet you have no idea just what sort of stir you have created. The world is now being notified of your existence. Ink wells are running dry and quills worn out with the amount of letters being sent containing your name. John Montagu, the secretary to George Arthur, writes to Wedge on 25 August confirming that Arthur will support the request for a pardon, and that it is ‘founded upon a desire to prevent bloodshed, and with a view to remove any inducement on Buckley’s part to make common cause with the natives in the commission of any outrages upon the white immigrants, which might lay the foundation of a war of extermination … if this man’s energies and influences be well directed, the Aborigines may be so thoroughly conciliated as to ensure a lasting amity between them and the present or any future immigrants …’
Another, dated 28 August, is sent by Arthur to Lord Glenelg in London, who has been Secretary of State for war and the colonies only since April. Arthur, bowing and scraping and ever mindful of managing up, says he is in no doubt that he has no lawful authority to grant a pardon as a mere Lieutenant-Governor, and while Batman and Wedge and the rest of the Port Phillip Association are nothing but intruders on Crown land, ‘I have nevertheless felt it to be my duty at once to grant the prayer of Buckley’s petition; from very dear bought experience I know that such a man at the head of a tribe of savages may prove a dangerous foe …’
This can only be a reference to the man who became known as Musquito, a man of the Eora people in Port Jackson who, after being sent to Van Diemen’s Land, waged a guerilla war against settlers on the east coast before being hanged on flimsy evidence in early 1825. The execution of Musquito is often seen as the trigger for the island’s Black War. But Musquito was just one of many Aboriginal resistance leaders.
The most famous had been Pemulwuy, another Eora man of the Bidjigal clan who spent 12 years fighting the British, burning crops and destroying cattle.
Known among his people as a healer who could talk with the spirits of the land, Pemulwuy had been born with a turned left eye. But the deformity hardly held him back; he was regarded as the strongest and the fastest of his clan and more adept with the spear than anyone else. In 1790 he had launched his weapon with great accuracy into the side of Governor Phillip’s gamekeeper, John McIntyre. Outraged, the Governor ordered a company of marines to pursue Pemulwuy’s group and return with 10 of their heads to be displayed in the settlement. Like all subsequent missions it failed and Pemulwuy’s reputation continued to grow, particularly after John ‘Black’ Caesar, the first Australian bushranger, cracked Pemulwuy’s skull during an encounter at Botany Bay.
A few years later he was shot in the head and body but continued to survive, his people now believing he was impregnable to the buckshot fired from the white men’s muskets. Various search parties were sent out regularly but all returned empty-handed, their loud and blundering forays into the bush easily avoided by Pemulwuy’s people. It was not until 1802 that his decade-long insurgency came to an end. Shot dead, his head was preserved in a jar of spirits and sent to Sir Joseph Banks in London, accompanied by a note from the Governor advising that ‘Although a terrible pest to the colony, he was a brave and independent character.’
So it is no surprise that strong fears are held among the members of Batman’s Association of an organised resistance by the Port Phillip Aboriginals. They have seen how much damage Aboriginals can create with their tactical use of fire and their ability to stealthily track prey, attack and then vanish back into the landscape. But imagine, suddenly, a general leading these warriors, a white man no less with a history of fighting white men’s wars, but one who can also command and turn hundreds of small clans and family units into an organised army …
One of the most influential members of the Port Phillip Association is Charles Swanston, a man who knows more than most about native insurgencies. He is one of Hobart Town’s most prominent citizens. A member of the Legislative Council, he has just established the Derwent Savings Bank and is well on his way to making a fortune, dabbling in the importation of rum and tea, the exporting of wool. But don’t mistake Swanston for a banker with soft hands. Made lieutenant in the private army of the British East India Company at just 16, he fought in several legendary battles and later captured an elusive Marathi leader so despised the British had placed a 10,000 pound bounty on his head. But perhaps his most impressive feat was his arrival in Istanbul after a quick trip back to England. Travelling by horse via Baghdad, Swanston made the 3000-kilometre journey back to India in just 48 days. Two portraits of Swanston seem to capture him best. In one he is a handsome and dapper captain, sideburns trimmed exquisitely and stretching almost to the corners of his mouth. In another, said to have been painted in 1819 as he became captain of the Poona Auxiliary Horse brigade, he holds the reins of a rearing white horse, the dry red plains of India stretching endlessly behind him.
Swanston is a hardened Scot and has kept in close contact with several friends from his time in India, including George Mercer, a fellow Scot who has become one of the Association’s investors and a critical advocate for it in London. In July, Swanston writes to Mercer to update him on the Association’s progress in Port Phillip and has some concerning news regarding Batman.
Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur has told a confidant of Swanston’s that Batman ‘had destroyed more natives than any other man, and that he was, consequently, an unfit person to place in charge and in communication with the natives of Port Phillip. On what grounds Col. Arthur has made this statement we are unable to discover. All I can say is this, that Col. Arthur up to this hour treats Mr Batman with confidence.’
A month later, Swanston updates Mercer on the news that has everyone talking: ‘The account of Buckley is most curious. To him, Col. Arthur has sent a free pardon so that now, with his aid, we shall have most complete control over all the natives and will, through his information, be enabled to take possession of the finest tracts. He is chief of a tribe and possesses the most complete control over his people …’
Now, William, if John Batman never quite gets around to telling you about his prowess hunting Aboriginals, or the fact that he is dying, then it’s a safe bet he never tells you what the Association has in store for you, either. You’re going to be their blunt instrument. Charles Darwin is right about these people. They are bent on acquiring wealth and do little but talk about sheep and land and the need to control the natives of Port Phillip.
‘No means will be left untried to conciliate and keep them on good terms,’ writes Swanston about the Kulin people.
‘Buckley will be our mainspring.’