When Phillip left Sydney to return to London in 1792, Bennelong went with him. He wasn’t the first Indigenous Australian to be abducted by the Governor (another man, Arabanoo, preceded him), but along with a young kinsman, Yemmerrawanne, Bennelong was the first Indigenous Australian to voyage out from their home country to make their own journey of discovery, to the alien country of Britain, at the other corner of the world. Here he lodged in Mayfair, was measured for and wore Georgian frock coat and breeches, went to the theatre, watched Opera from a private box, caused a minor sensation when he visited the Houses of Parliament at Westminster, pined badly when Yemmerrawanne died of a lung complaint, and sailed back to Australia on the HMS Reliance.
He returned to life as clan leader, described by one settler as ‘the chief, or king of his tribe’.
For more on relationships between local Aboriginal people and the new arrivals, see Indigenous Australia For Dummies, 2e, by Larissa Behrendt, Wiley Australia Publishing.
Then the rest of the world goes bung
While things had been going badly at Sydney, in the rest of the world the situation was changing rapidly and not for the better, especially for the new colony. In particular, the following events affected them:
The great hope of Norfolk Island — that it would provide vital supplies for Britain’s navy and maritime trade — fell through. The great tall pines that Cook had originally admired proved to be no good as masts. And the flax plant proved to be the wrong type for making cords and sails.
War broke out in Europe in the aftermath of the 1789 French Revolution. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars lasted from the early 1790s until Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. Britain’s energies and attention began to be drawn inexorably into this great conflict, with action seen across the most of the northern hemisphere. Exactly how a bunch of convicts on the other side of the planet were faring started slipping down the list of Things to Be Worried About. But things would change once that war was over — see Chapter 5 to read about what happened when the British started paying attention again (which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, either).
A new decision was finally made in 1793 on the trade monopoly of the British East India Company: Instead of being terminated, the monopoly was renewed for another 20 years, lasting until 1813. The hope of Sydney being parked on the side of a burgeoning new trade region seemed to be dashed.
Instead of being a source of vital strategic supplies, and on a new shipping route where trade was burgeoning, the colony was now marooned on the other side of the world, unable to grow its own food, in the middle of a no-go trade zone, and Britain was preoccupied. And Phillip was going home.
The convicts, intended to be a stopgap measure to be used to establish a key British strategic post, were now the whole purpose of the colony. Interesting times promised to ensue.
Chapter 4
Colony Going Places (With Some Teething Troubles)
IN THIS CHAPTER
Australia, originally planned to serve multiple purposes, ended up being solely a prison dump for convicts (refer to Chapter 3). At the same time as the new colony was settled, Britain became seriously distracted by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Britain, fighting off invasion threats and struggling for world domination, wasn’t massively concerned with what the penal dump on the other side of the world was doing.
Facing failing crops and a huge wait between resupply ships, life for arrivals on the First and Second Fleets — convict and soldier alike — was pretty grim. Yet, within 20 years of settlement, many of those who’d been sent out here in exile were making fortunes, and were making a life much freer and in most ways better than they could ever have hoped of getting in Britain.
In this chapter, I cover the way officers of the NSW Corps stepped into the vacuum left by Britain’s lack of real planning or ongoing involvement in the development of the economic life of NSW. From 1792, resourceful officers from this permanent regiment of soldiers started using government money — and rum, that other great motivator — to expand cultivation and settlement. They also established a cartel on incoming trade, and made themselves seriously wealthy in the process. I also look at how their monopoly was short-lived — convict men and women who the officers originally set up to handle the retail side of things pretty quickly cut in on their turf.
And I cover the governors sent to wrest power out of the hands of the NSW Corps and various ex-convict traders — governors Hunter, King and Bligh.
Rising to the Task: The NSW Corps Steps Up
Under Captain Phillip’s rule, little land was cleared and few crops grown. The convicts were practically impossible to extract labour from, and remained listless and idle on the government farms (refer to Chapter 3). After Phillip left the colony at the end of 1792 due to ill health, for the next three years the colony was administered by the head of the NSW Corps: Major Francis Grose and then Major William Paterson.
The NSW Corps was a permanent regiment of the British army and had been sent out to relieve the Marines sent with the First Fleet. The officers of this Corps, which became known as the Rum Corps, set up trading monopolies, increasing (at hugely inflated prices) the amount of goods available in the settlement. They also found a way to convince the convicts to do some work — through paying them in rum.
Under the administration of the Corps, Sydney thrived. The settlement became a shanty metropolis doing a roaring trade in imported goods, expanding trade in the Pacific — sandalwood and pork from Tahiti found a particularly ready market — and exploring newly opened sealing and whaling grounds. And convicts and ex-convicts by and large thrived too.