In the churchyard of Eltham Parish Church, in Kent, Bennelong is standing by the grave of his young friend. He has come to bid him farewell before returning to New South Wales. His friend Yemmerrawanne, who will never go home, died of pneumonia at their lodging house in Eltham on 18 May 1794. He was just 19.
His doctor, the eminent physician Sir Gilbert Blane, tried everything from blistering and leeches to purgatives and poultices, but Yemmerrawanne did not respond to the white man’s medicine. Some say it was winter’s bitter chill that killed him. Others say it was homesickness; that he simply pined away.
For Bennelong, there are so many memories of the great adventure they shared: the tearful parting with families and friends; the terrible vastness of the open sea; coming under fire from a French privateer during the voyage to England; the first sight of the capital of the white man’s world; being fitted for knee breeches and double-breasted waistcoats at Knox & Wilson’s tailor shop; marvelling at the sights of London from coaches and carriages; nights at the theatre, including one occasion when legend has it they met King George III; learning how to play shuttlecock; cordial visits with Lord Sydney, who had given his name to the place they knew as Warranne; and at a recital at the Waterhouses’ home in Mayfair, performing an Eora love song – the first Indigenous Australian song heard in Europe, notated by the Waterhouses’ neighbour, the Welsh composer and folklorist Edward Jones, and published in his 1811 book Musical Curiosities.
Members of William and Susanna Waterhouse’s large family, frequent visitors to their parents’ home, included the eldest son Henry, a naval officer who had served on the First Fleet. One of Henry’s sisters, when she came to call, carried in her arms a white child barely a year old, the illegitimate son of Henry’s friend John White, a surgeon on the First Fleet.
The child was born in Sydney to White and his convict mistress, Rachel Turner. Leaving Rachel to her fate, White returned to England, placing the child in the care of his sister. The circumstances were not unusual for the times, but the Eora men must have been intrigued to learn the child’s name. Andrew Douglas White.
Back home, they were well acquainted with a boy named Nanbarree, a nephew of the warrior leader Colebee. In 1789, during a smallpox epidemic that killed his parents and many of his clan, Nanbarree – then aged about nine – was brought into the settlement on the point of death. Surgeon John White, who nursed him back to health, became fond of the boy. He took him into his home, schooled him in European ways and gave him an English name. Andrew Douglas White.
When John White returned to England, Henry Waterhouse, now a captain, enlisted Nanbarree alias Andrew as a sailor on his ship Reliance. Nanbarree later served under the explorer Matthew Flinders on the Investigator. The black Andrew Douglas White will leave the navy in 1802 and become a noted warrior, prevailing in many battles and duels with rival clans.
The white Andrew Douglas White will grow up to join the army of Wellington. As a young lieutenant, he will become the only Australian to fight at the Battle of Waterloo, which he survives unscathed to become Australia’s first decorated soldier and first returned serviceman.
His convict mother Rachel, transported for seven years for theft, and abandoned by the father of her only child, will marry a wealthy farmer. While she lives to become one of the richest women in the colony, her most treasured possession will be Andrew’s Waterloo medal.
Bennelong is due to sail home with the newly appointed governor of New South Wales, John Hunter, but when Hunter’s departure from England is delayed for more than a year, Bennelong falls into a deep depression. Concerned for Bennelong’s health, Hunter writes to the Secretary of the Admiralty, Philip Stephens, ‘The surviving native man, Bennelong, is with me, but I think in a precarious state of health. He has for the last 12 months been flattered with the hope of seeing again his native country – a happiness which he has fondly looked forward to, but so long a disappointment has much broken his spirit, and the coldness of the weather here has so frequently laid him up that I am apprehensive his lungs are affected – this was the cause of the other’s death. I do all I can to keep him up, but still am doubtful of his living.’1
When Bennelong – with John Hunter and Matthew Flinders – finally departs England in February 1795, it is Bennelong’s good fortune that the ship is his friend Henry Waterhouse’s Reliance, and that the ship’s surgeon is George Bass – the same George Bass who would later win fame as an explorer. Under Bass’s care, Bennelong survives and thrives, and in return provides Bass with local knowledge that will prove useful on his voyages of discovery.
Seven months later, Bennelong arrives in Port Jackson, healthy but conflicted. Regarded as an outsider by his own people and by the whites, he is uncertain as to which culture to embrace. He remains certain of one thing, however, and makes it plain in 1802, when the French ships of the Baudin expedition visit Port Jackson. One of the French officers, Lieutenant Pierre Milius, charmed by Bennelong’s mastery of English and his entertaining reminiscences of his years in England, invites him to return with them to France.
In his journal, Milius notes that Bennelong thanked him for invitation but replied that ‘there was no better country than his own and that he did not wish to leave it’.2