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In which Governor Arthur Phillip discovers he needs a Plan B
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It’s a safe bet virtually none of the convicts had ever been at sea before their forced eight-month voyage to Sydney. And it would have been an unpleasant experience as well. Even worse than boarding Fairstar the Funship and finding every other ticket has been bought by bogans or park footy players on an end of season trip.
While Phillip had been considerate enough to remove the convicts’ chains while at sea, they still must surely have looked forward to the day they arrived so they could get the hell off the damned ship. Maybe they even annoyed the marines with endless refrains of “are we there yet?”.
So they were no doubt cranky to finally arrive in Australia only to be told they had to stay on board for another week. There they were, the shoreline of this strange world, perhaps visible through small cracks in the wood in the side of the ship – certainly visible to those who were allowed on deck to go fishing – and yet they had to wait. Well, except for one convict who was good at giving piggyback rides.
Supply was the first ship in the fleet to arrive in Botany Bay on January 18 (at 2.15pm, if you need to know). Arthur and some of the marines wasted little time in getting ashore; they hoisted a few longboats into the water and rowed to the shore. Convict James Ruse was in one of those boats and, for the rest of his life, would insist he was the first person from the fleet to set foot in this world because he gave Lieutenant George Johnston a piggyback to land at Botany Bay. Presumably Lt Johnston thought he was first, because convicts didn’t count.
By January 20, all the ships had arrived at Botany Bay. By this time, Phillip had pretty much decided the bay was a completely crap place to set up the penal colony; there was no supply of fresh water, the ground was swampy, the harbour wasn’t big enough, or sheltered from the wind.
Phillip would have been pretty pissed off. “Jeez, they’ve sent me halfway around the world to this hole, where I’m supposed to set up a city that will one day have stupidly expensive property prices. Now I’ve got to go find some other place to put all these convicts. And maybe a place that also has a really cool spot where someone can build an opera house one day.”
He’d come to a totally foreign place, in charge of loads of people, found the chosen destination was useless and now he had to scout around for somewhere else. Talk about a massive pain in the arse.
Luckily for him, there was a great spot just a short spurt up the coast. On the morning of January 21, he took a few of those longboats up the coast to check out a few places, one of which Captain Cook had mapped as he was sailing up the coast in 1770 but hadn’t been buggered to hang a left and have a look.
Broken Bay was the first place they looked at and Phillip realized he’d hit the jackpot. And perhaps thought to himself Cook (well, actually it was the Endeavour’s botanist Joseph Banks who had been the place’s biggest fan) was an idiot for raving about the dump that was Botany Bay but ignoring this totes amazing place. For we know Broken Bay better as Sydney Harbour – a massive sheltered harbour with sections of coast deep enough that ships could park so close to the shore the sailors could tie them to trees on the shoreline. There was also a grand space for an opera house – and even a spiffy bridge not far at all from the spot Phillip chose to get this colony under way.
Meanwhile, soldiers and sailors were ashore back at Botany Bay. Some went exploring, others went fishing and others were hard at work digging holes for a sawpit. All the while they were watched and occasionally poked and prodded by the natives. One of their number scalded himself when, having never seen boiling water before, reached into some sailors’ pot full of it to pull out a fish. There was often a friendly sense of curiosity from the Aboriginal people to the newcomers, largely because they’d expected these white guys would soon be newgoers too, just like all the other whities who had stopped by. If they’d known these strangers were going to hang around for hundreds of years, they mightn’t have been so chilled.
On January 23, with James Squire and the other convicts still waiting to get the hell off those convict ships, Phillip returned from was is now called Port Jackson and told everyone they were moving to “the finest harbour in the world”; this place with a spring of water that he had chosen to call Sydney Cove.
The next day, with sailors and soldiers getting ready to leave, several French ships were spotted trying to enter Botany Bay. Bizarre, huh? The Brits went halfway around the world to a strange place and manage to bump into some Europeans after only a few days.
The English left the godforsaken piece of crap that was Botany Bay to the French and headed north on January 26. But as the First Fleet left, they gave the French a stunning display of British naval skill – the Friendship rammed the Prince of Wales, and then Squire’s ship the Charlotte rammed the Friendship and almost came a cropper on the rocks.
The last ship in the fleet eventually made it to Sydney Cove at 7pm, by which time they’d missed the first Australia Day. Having gotten there at 3pm on January 26, the Supply disgorged its contents, including Governor Phillip and then hoisted the Union Jack, fired a few shots in the air and drank a toast. Then they all got Southern Cross tattoos and someone took down the flag and tied it around their neck like a cape.
Okay, maybe not those last bits.