Promises, promises. These white men have made a lot of them in the past few months. They keep saying they don’t want a war with the black man and will do their best to protect them. Batman, Gellibrand, Wedge and the others – all insistent that white man’s justice will apply equally. Well, here’s a chance for them to live up to those words, an opportunity for you, William, to take their measure.
You heard a rumour a couple of weeks ago that bark strippers in Western Port, almost 50 miles south-west of Port Phillip, had been up to their usual mischief and had attacked a group of Aboriginals. You alerted Wedge and sent word for the wounded to be brought to the Yarra. Here they are now, limping into the settlement. The parents of one teenage girl have carried their daughter on their backs the entire way. John Wedge is shocked – given his past he may well be overacting a tad – and picks up his quill to send a letter to the authorities in Hobart Town.
‘It appears the natives were fired upon soon after sunrise whilst lying in their huts and one young girl about 13 years of age, was wounded in both her thighs, the ball passing through one into the other, grazing the bone in its passage … her parents were obliged to carry her on their backs … and it is apprehended that she will not recover the use of her legs.
‘To rescue this poor girl the mother took her in her arms and in carrying her away was fired at and wounded in the arm and shoulder with buckshot. Notwithstanding this inhuman attack the natives persisted in removing the girl and two more of them, a girl and a boy, also received wounds.’
Outrages like this are nothing new. Isn’t this one of the reasons why you avoided places like Western Port and the land around Portland? The year before Batman made his way into Port Phillip, a group of Portland-based whalers went to war with the Kilcarer gundidj clan of the Gunditjmara people. It will take years before the details emerge and how a dispute over a beached whale turned into a gruesome massacre. The Gunditjmara will say only two men of the Kilcarer gundidj survived. Several white historians will estimate the death toll at anywhere between 60 and 200 in what will become known as the Convincing Ground massacre. According to George Augustus Robinson, who becomes the Chief Protector of Aboriginals in the Port Phillip District at the start of the 1840s, ‘the circumstances are that a whale had come on shore and the natives who fed on the carcass claimed it was their own. The whalers said they would “convince them” and had recourse to firearms …’
Wedge fears that more incidents could see conflict escalate: ‘Unless some measures be adopted to protect the natives a spirit of hostility will be created against the whites, which in all probability will lead to a state of warfare between them and the Aborigines, which will only terminate when the black man will cease to exist.’
New South Wales Governor Richard Bourke issues a proclamation warning that anyone ‘guilty of any outrages’ against the Aboriginals will be brought to trial in the Supreme Court. He dispatches the police magistrate of Campbelltown, George Stewart, to Port Phillip to investigate and while Stewart does not venture down to Western Port, he reports back to Sydney that the whalers responsible for the attack have already left.
Stewart does not venture down to Western Port. What sort of investigator is this man? All this talk about justice and the man does not even visit the scene of the crime? Could you picture the same happening if we reverse the situation and it is whites who are attacked? Well, you won’t have to wait for very long.
Charles Franks is a man of ‘strict integrity’ and ‘gentlemanly deportment’ who has joined this flood of sheep farmers descending on Port Phillip. It is early July 1836 when Franks and his shepherd are found dead near Mt Cottrell, 20 miles west of Melbourne, the rear of their heads struck so violently with a tomahawk their skulls have been pushed into the earth.
Franks is the first free settler to die at the hand of Aborigines. News of his murder spreads quickly. A real gentleman, a figure who commanded enormous respect throughout the northern half of Van Diemen’s Land, dead at the hands of ruthless savages? A meeting is hastily convened at the settlement and a party of men, including several of John Batman’s Sydney Aborigines, mount their horses and head out to find the perpetrators and exact revenge.
In Launceston, William Lushington Goodwin cannot contain his outrage. On 30 July the Cornwall Chronicle unleashes a tirade strident even by its standards. ‘We learn that a party of settlers assisted by the Sydney natives … started in quest of the murderers, whom they were fortunate to fall in with at no great distance from where the bloody deeds were perpetrated.
‘Many of them were clothed in the articles of dress they had plundered from their victims. A quantity of provisions and other stores were, likewise, in their possession, which left no doubt as to their identity. The avenging party fell upon the guilty about daylight in the morning, having watched them the previous night and, putting into effect a preconceived plan of attack, succeeded in ANNIHILATING THEM.’
Is this not the sort of ruthless, strong-arm tactic of which Goodwin fully approves? He writes that the offending tribe are a particularly treacherous people, despised by the rest of Port Phillip’s Aboriginals and can now be presumed to have been ‘swept from the face of the earth’.
‘In the death of Mr Franks the colony has to deplore the loss of one of its brightest ornaments … his docile and compassionate disposition insured to him the respect and esteem of every one who enjoyed his acquaintance. The “ANNIHILATION” of the whole body of Port Phillip natives, in our opinion, would afford an insufficient revenge for the murder of such a man.’
Swept aside are any suspicions that Franks was antagonistic toward the Kulin people; that he hated sharing food with them and despised the way other settlers in the area put up with their thieving and begging. Another settler, Robert Von Stieglitz, will remember how Franks shared some lead with him to help devise a few little ‘blue pills’ (bullets) to keep the nuisances away.
Trifling details, are they not? The important thing to men like Goodwin is the swift action and retribution carried out to avenge the two men’s deaths. In the same issue as the Cornwall Chronicle’s breathless report on the murder of Franks, Goodwin also publishes a letter to the editor. It is worth examining this letter closely because it exposes a campaign that has already begun to undermine you.
The letter coincides, not surprisingly, with the return to Launceston of John Pascoe Fawkner, who is on his way to Hobart Town for that show-and-tell session with his Aboriginal friend Derrimut. The letter is unsigned but it reeks of little Johnny. All those nice words he had to say about you at the start of this year are now history. It only took a few weeks for him to start sowing seeds of distrust. In February he recorded a dispute about possum skins, writing that he believed Henry Batman had been using you to stop the Aboriginals from trading with Fawkner and his men. ‘I find him [Buckley] forbidding the natives to sell us any skins or birds,’ Fawkner had written. ‘He wants them all himself.’
This letter in the Chronicle announces that the author has ‘just arrived from Port Phillip’ and throws a quick punch at the Port Phillip Association: ‘Mr Franks had only a few days previous to the dreadful occurrence removed his sheep to the river Ax, being desirous not to encroach on the land claimed by what is called the “Company” who, by the bye, have no more claims to the land than you and I.’
Jab.
Who else but Fawkner could manage to find a way to link the unfortunate murder of a man to the massive amount of land holdings enjoyed by John Batman and his associates?
‘Mr Franks received one blow on the right temple with the back part of a tomahawk, the side back part of the skull presented two large cuts which must have caused instant death … The head of his shepherd was so dreadfully shattered that his brains had to be buried on the spot. Their tent was plundered of all provisions, blankets and firearms and their bodies conveyed to the settlement where coffins were prepared for them.’
Gasp.
But what follows is just as sinister.
‘I must take upon myself here to observe the disgraceful conduct of the monster Buckley: when the bodies of Mr Franks and his man were brought to the settlement he objected to them being placed in his hut; he did not attend the funeral and was observed, as it passed, laughing at the truly melancholic procession.’
William Buckley is at the heart of it all!
‘He did not assist the parties who immediately had gone out in search of the murderers and it is generally believed by his best friends, namely the “Company”, that he is at the bottom of all the mischief that has taken place in the new colony and, unless he is speedily removed, I very much dread the results, he having already threatened to join the natives. It is to be lamented that the progress of colonisation in so fine a country, one so well adapted for sheep and cattle grazing, should be checked in its growth by the conduct of one man who is more savage than the Aborigines with whom he has lived and associated for thirty years.’
What do you have to say for yourself? In your book with John Morgan you will only note that ‘an affray had taken place between the natives and some of the settlers, in which two of the latter were killed. I know nothing of the circumstances, as the affair occurred more than twenty miles from the settlement …’
It’s entirely possible you laughed – or at least smirked – when the coffins of Franks and his servant passed by your hut. There are others who will say they heard you chuckling, standing there next to John Batman’s smithy as the cortege passed you by. These people fear you, fear what you are capable of unleashing. An erroneous newspaper report is about to appear in Van Diemen’s Land saying you have already taken to the bush and are busy organising a resistance movement. This report will be quickly quashed but it does tell us about the concerns in Port Phillip about your allegiances. One of the old settlers will quote Gellibrand as saying you told him you would prefer to go back to the Wadawurrung: ‘He said it was the white people’s fault. This latter part I heard Mr Gellibrand say myself – they thought he might go back to them; then, what mischief he could do.’
Did you laugh as Franks’ body passed by, or were you being sarcastic as you contemplated all the hollow promises and talk about swift justice? It is now a year since you walked into Batman’s camp at Indented Head and all those early hopes you had are disappearing. Fawkner’s poison is clearly beginning to affect others. First impressions are always important and for any visitor or prospective settler arriving in Port Phillip, they are often gained by the first person who meets them off the boat. And who is often the first man waiting with open arms to welcome them? Indefatigable, tireless little Johnny, that’s who.
Henry Hawson must have stepped from his boat on the Yarra and had Fawkner’s arms lovingly wrapped around him – that is, unless little Johnny was checking the man’s waistcoat pockets for loose change. Hawson is yet another of these pioneering types who wants to see the land for himself. He has come all the way from Newfoundland, a large island off the Canadian east coast, and has heard the new colonies of New Holland offer a magnificent return on investment. But he quickly decides Port Phillip is not for him; the land is lush and a man could probably make a fortune with sheep and cattle. But there is great uncertainty over whether NSW Governor Richard Bourke will send police or even a military force to give it some decent law and order. And besides, the way the land is being seized from its traditional owners leaves him feeling almost … queasy.
Hawson will write a lengthy letter to a former colleague in Newfoundland as his ship sails out of Port Phillip Bay. The consequence of no law enforcement, he writes, is that ‘some of the stock keepers have committed offences against the blacks, who have retaliated by killing … settlers – a prelude, I fear, to constant war between the parties, until the blacks shall be exterminated, or driven far into the interior, a most horrible alternative.’
A hastily installed form of government might convince the natives that any outrages committed against them were actions by unauthorised individuals, suggests Hawson. Only then would they gain confidence that they could find some form of protection.
But alas, writes Hawson, there is the problem of this man Buckley. Hawson tells his colleague that Buckley was granted a free pardon on the basis that he would use his influence among the natives ‘to preserve a good understanding between them and the whites – this he agreed to; but the supreme authority refused to sanction the compact and he has consequently stirred them up to avenge the wrongs which he supposes himself to have sustained.
‘He is now their leader and possesses uncontrolled authority over the tribe; it is said that he has several wives of the native women and a great number of children by them.’
There it is again – more misinformation and outright lies. William Buckley angry and bitter over not receiving his pardon? You have it. You have seen it. Why, earlier this year the King made it official and God knows the number of men you have boasted to about finally being a free man.
Hawson’s letter is a sombre one and he raises issues few potential settlers at Port Phillip are even contemplating. ‘I fear that these occurrences will prevent my settling in this delightful country,’ he writes. ‘Can it be reconciled to the principles of the Christian religion, of common sense, or of any system of morals – that foreigners can take possession of the land of others … by murdering and exterminating the natives … I should feel like an accessory to murder and a receiver of stolen goods.’
It is highly possible you will never learn of Hawson’s views – or even hear about that anonymous letter in Goodwin’s Cornwall Chronicle. But you do know that there are forces moving against you. Still, even if half of what they say about you is true, why would the British government offer you a job?