In Sydney it was possible to imagine that the natives were a temporary inconvenience, but those of us who lived away from the town could cherish no such illusions. Here the wild lands were not out of sight beyond hills and across water. Starting a few yards beyond the outhouse, immeasurable miles of what was strange dwarfed the speck of what was familiar.
The township of Parramatta was so heavily defended that no trouble was likely to come to it, nor to our house, within earshot of the barracks. But out in the new farmlands to the north there were attacks. Not every week, but like a headache, always returning. Crops were burned, stock killed, huts robbed. It was thought that many of the attacks were led by a man named Pemulwuy, but there were other leaders too, their names unknown to us. Whoever the warriors were, their talent for warfare was evident. They knew how to do the most damage to the settlers at the least risk to themselves, quickly raiding an isolated place, then disappearing back into the forest. They never made a direct massed charge and never attacked a township. They left a farm alone if there were soldiers stationed nearby, or if the farmer had a gun. Never struck twice in the same place.
Now and then a farmer was speared, but everyone knew that out on the isolated farms many more could have been killed. The warriors did not seem concerned so much with killing their enemies as with striking at the very foundation of their existence, and for this they had the perfect weapon: fire. In late summer, fields of corn ready to be harvested were burned out, the labour of the past year and the food for the next destroyed in half an hour. The power of the weapon lay in its simplicity and the way it worked hand-in-hand with nature. A fire sparked on a day of hot wind was unstoppable.
Thieving, with or without violence, was an activity the people here were uniquely qualified to understand. What was happening out beyond the settlements was something else. Corn burned rather than stolen, hogs slaughtered but uneaten, huts robbed of clothing when the natives had little use for it: in the eyes of the settlers this was proof that the natives were irrational, childish, spiteful. How else could their behaviour be read?
The general instructions from Whitehall remained as they had always been, that bloodshed should be avoided when possible. Natives should, when practicable, be taken prisoner and brought in to be dealt with like any other criminals. Buckshot should be loaded in the muskets rather than balls, to terrify and wound rather than kill. But the Dear Dunce was happy to leave the details to his commanders’ discretion, and the people on the farms made up their own minds about how to defend themselves.
My husband had arranged to be appointed commander of the Parramatta garrison only as part of a larger strategy, but it soon became clear that for once he had miscalculated. Until now his military duties had demanded very little of him. Now they threatened to take over his life.
As commander at Parramatta, it was Mr Macarthur who was responsible for dealing with the attacks and depredations on the outlying farms. After each attack he was obliged to send men out to track down the perpetrators, though no one had any illusions about the likely success of this, as the natives did not stand still to be caught. Detachments had to be organised to stand guard over the most vulnerable farms, even though the natives were not blind, and wherever the soldiers were, the natives attacked somewhere else.
Still, the motions had to be gone through, the appearance of control maintained. My husband was kept busy, moving men around from one place to another and trying to guess where the next attack might be made. A serious fear was that runaway convicts would join the natives and add muskets to spears. The situation smouldered on, neither bursting into frank flame nor being extinguished, but taking up more and more of Mr Macarthur’s time and energy when there were other, more profitable uses for them.
He refused to dignify what was happening with the word war. It was the erratic and malicious actions of savages, he maintained, essentially pointless and ultimately futile. It was true that this was not the kind of war that soldiers like him meant by that word. In their tradition, not to stand in formation and fight an orderly battle was called by another name: treachery. Men guilty of treachery deserved no mercy.
In any case, he assured me that he had no intention of losing sleep over depredations led by men he dismissed as naked savages. Parramatta was in no danger whatsoever, he said, and he brushed off the attacks on the farms.
– Oh, let them burn out a few crofters, he said. We cannot protect every hut and every cob of corn. But I take the long view, my dear. Make no mistake, Pemulwuy and his fellows will not occupy our time for much longer.
There was an edge to his tone that made me look at him, but he only gave me a tight bland smile.