By Michaela Ann Cameron

Supported by a Create NSW Arts and Cultural Grant – Old Parramattans & Murder Tales

WARNING: This essay details a number of violent murders, which may be distressing for some readers. Members of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are further advised that this essay discusses frontier violence and includes artistic impressions of people who are deceased, accompanied by words and descriptive terms that may be offensive to First Peoples. Those sources are presented as part of the record of the past; contemporary users should interpret the work within that context. Reader discretion is advised.

Our story begins at the graves bearing the name ‘Tarlinton’ [sic] at St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta in Burramattagal Country.[1] John, the Tarlingtons’ pater familias, was an Englishman and a ‘cutler’ by trade, who arrived with the Third Fleet per Matilda (1791) with a sentence of seven years transportation for ‘breaking into the warehouse of John Bardwell’ in Sheffield, England, in 1787, with accomplice and fellow cutler Joshua Godbehere, ‘and stealing from thence divers [sic] articles.’[2] In another section of the cemetery, one of John’s infant children, John R. Tarlington, rests alongside the first two of his three convict wives: Catherine Jackson per Kitty (1792) and Margaret Duggan née Jones per Experiment I (1804).[3] But, this is not to be another story about a settler family, though a couple of them do figure highly in all that follows. For, this is really the tale of ‘Little Jemmy’ and ‘Little George,’ and what happened to them after they visited Tarlington Farm one Sunday morn in late February 1798.

Little Jemmy and Little George

In 1798, ‘Little Jemmy’ and ‘Little George’ were aged ‘about Fifteen or Sixteen’ and around ‘Eleven or Twelve’ respectively.[4] They had been only small children, then, when the newcomers arrived at Kamay (Botany Bay) a decade earlier, and while those newcomers did establish an inland settlement to the west in Burramattagal Country by the end of that year as well, they were largely concentrated in the ‘town’ they called ‘Rose Hill’ (Parramatta), with its convict-hut lined road, government house and farm, cultivated gardens, and fields of corn. It would be a couple more years before waves of emancipated convicts began to make their way to Rose Hill to take up land grants, and commenced altering the surrounding landscape beyond recognition in areas that came to be known as ‘the Northern Boundary,’ ‘Field of Mars’ and ‘Prospect.’ So, at around ten years old in the early 1790s, Jemmy, the older of the two boys, still would have had the opportunity to experience parts of Dharug Country as it had been for millennia.

Over the next couple of years, however, as those newcomers came in ever-increasing numbers, the boys also witnessed their Elders clinging to their tried and true lifeways while their world went mad around them: hunting grounds disappeared in the blink of an eye with the reduction of wooded areas to fields of stumps and, in their place, fields of crops planted by the newcomers sprang to life. Seeing these edible plants, Jemmy and George’s kin and other First Peoples no doubt breathed a sigh of relief: Nura (Country) had provided for them as Nura always had. They knew nothing of the newcomers’ sense of ownership over the land they had been ‘granted’ or this produce they had laboured over (which the settlers could ‘barter for salt provision’), let alone the fact that the majority of those newcomers had lived lives of severe poverty in their own land, had experienced the degradation and abuse of convictism, and were thus accustomed to receiving and inflicting violence to survive.[5] The First Peoples could not possibly have anticipated the ferocity with which many of those newcomers would therefore defend what they believed was finally theirs alone: the two lifeways clashed, and responses to that cultural collision served only to deepen the divide. For instance, Dharug People gathered corn from the settlements beyond Parramatta on a number of occasions, including 18 May 1793, when ‘a party of the tribe inhabiting the woods, to the number of fifteen or sixteen,’ took ‘a quantity of corn in nets’ and also helped themselves to some items of clothing from a nearby hut.[6] To the man who observed them, however, this was stealing: ‘he levelled his piece, which was loaded with small shot, and fired’ sending the whole party scrambling, leaving their corn-laden nets and blankets behind.[7] ‘It was supposed the native was wounded,’ wrote Judge Advocate David Collins, ‘for in a few days information was received from Parramatta, that a convict had been murdered, or rather butchered’ in retribution:

When the body was found, it was not quite cold, and had at least thirty spear wounds in it. The head was cut in several places, and most of the teeth were knocked out. They had taken his clothing and provisions, and the provisions of another man which he was carrying out to him. The natives with whom they had intercourse said, that this murder was committed by some of the people who inhabited the woods, and was done probably in revenge for the shot that was fired at the natives who some time before were stripping the hut.[8]

Jemmy, George, and the other First Peoples witnessed all these changes to Nura (Country): how the numerous newcomers depleted Nura’s resources, and the violence that ensued when the People tried to gather resources as they had always done. The likes of Burramattagal Elder Maugoran saw no alternative but to make a formal protest to Governor Phillip, objecting to the number of white settlers at Rose Hill and, when that failed, to relocate, knowing all the while that still more of the newcomers would come.[9] Others continued to raid the British huts, stores, and fields, and were fully prepared to respond to the all too prevalent military and settler violence in kind. For, as David Collins openly admitted: ‘The natives certainly behaved ill, and often provoked the death they met with; but it is much to be feared that they had been on many occasions wantonly destroyed.’[10]

Tarlington Farm, 25 February 1798

When violence broke out on Tarlington Farm ‘near Toon Gabbee [sic]’ in Dharug Country on the Sunday morning of 25 February 1798, it was sudden.[11] Still, all concerned would have recognised the event as being more akin to the shock of a thunderclap or a lightning bolt; something that caught them off guard in the moment, even though it was clearly part of a larger storm system that had been raging around them for some time, and just so happened to hit them that particular day. After all, three years had not yet passed since Mary Rowe’s husband, child and a number of others were killed in raids along the Deerubbin (Hawkesbury), and less than a year before the resistance leader Pemulwuy had led around one hundred Bidjigal warriors in an attack on the British soldiers at the Government Farm at nearby Toongabbie, Toogagal Country, which culminated in the ‘Battle of Parramatta.’[12] In the meantime, at ‘Kissing Point’ (Ryde) in Wallumedegal Country, a man named John Wood had died in a fatal encounter in which his wife was also badly wounded, while a convict named William Garland was fatally ‘speared by the Natives’ and buried at Parramatta.[13]

Nevertheless, on this Sunday, there seemed no cause for concern at the Tarlington Farm when only ‘two male Natives’ named ‘Little Charley’ and ‘Macnamarra’ approached John and Catherine’s house.[14] John ‘welcomed them’ in ‘and shook hands with [them],’ and his servant, a freed convict named Joseph Collins, ‘did the same.’[15] In a sure sign that they had come in peace, Charley and Macnamarra ‘left their Spears outside the House and asked for Bread.’[16] John Tarlington saw no reason to refuse them; a bit of bread was no great loss if it meant maintaining good relations with the locals. Charley and Macnamarra ‘then asked for meat’ as well, to which their host answered ‘“bye and by” as the meat was then dressing,’ although, as he would tell it later, this escalation in the requests for some reason led him to have a ‘suspicion of more Natives coming,’ and prompted him to go ‘out to look,’ at which point he spotted ‘four more coming towards the House walking two and two abreast.[17] The first pair, he knew to be called ‘Major White’ and ‘Little George’; ‘the other two’ were reputedly brothers, and he knew them to be called ‘Terribandy’ and ‘Little Jemmy.’[18] Even with four more guests to feed, John ‘welcomed’ them in. By then, ‘the meat and cabbage was taking up, which the [six] Natives…shared amongst them and had more than they could eat as they left part of what [he] had given them.’[19] While on the surface things were going well there must have been a sense of uneasiness, because John was vigilant; when Charley got up for some water and ‘slipped out at the Door,’ for instance, John was quick to follow him ‘to see what he was about.’[20] It was then that John saw ‘about Twelve or Fifteen approaching towards his House.’[21] His guests now numbered as many as twenty-one, yet these, too, he later claimed to have welcomed in, noting that ‘they left their spears at the Door the same as the others had done.’[22] John’s twenty-five-year-old wife Catherine and his free servant Collins divided ‘the remainder of the Victuals that had been left’ amongst them.[23]

Little Jemmy, Little George and Little Charley must have sufficiently rested their stomachs after their first meal, as they now turned their attentions to the Tarlingtons’ melon bed in the garden. John indulged them and accompanied them out to the garden, leaving Catherine and his servant Joseph Collins in the house with their other visitors. Jemmy, George and Charley sat on the melon bed eating melons for a while until Jemmy got up and ‘went some little distance,…shouting out something in the Native Dialect which [John Tarlington] did not understand.’[24] ‘[T]wenty or Thirty more Natives thereupon immediately came out of the Bush and saluted [John Tarlington]’ in a ‘friendly’ manner.[25] Hearing these voices, the guests inside ‘came out to join them’ and ‘dispersed themselves about the grounds some taking corn and others Melons.’[26] But if the Tarlingtons believed, as settler David Brown of the Hawkesbury did, that ‘after a man has given them all he has, they would not scruple to kill him,’ then John certainly never let on, either in the moment or later on under oath.[27] In fact, when describing these events in court, Tarlington did not indicate that he even felt bothered by as many as fifty unexpected guests taking such liberties with his produce after he must have already parted with a great deal of ‘victuals’ to feed almost half of that number. Perhaps he knew he had more than enough to go around and was only too happy to share. Aside from the general vigilance noted earlier, too, Tarlington did not express any reservations he might have had about the potential that the feast could turn violent.

While the numerous guests helped themselves to corn and melons, a ‘Strange White Man’ appeared and asked John if his name was John Tarlington.[28] The man may have been personally unknown to John but he was evidently expected, because John was able to reply, ‘Yes, and your name is Nicholas Redman if I am not mistaken. I suppose you want to see Joseph Molony,’ which Redman confirmed.[29] It is at this stage of John’s account that we gain a sense that some of the people of Tarlington Farm might have found the unfolding events somewhat eerie and unnerving or, at the very least, irregular, because when Molony came out to meet his acquaintance, he first went up close to John and asked, ‘John what brought all these Natives here?’[30] Based on John’s account, he either never attempted to provide an explanation or was interrupted by further requests from some of his Aboriginal visitors for ‘more Bread.’[31] Finding no more bread in the house, John’s wife Catherine obligingly ‘went out to get some accompanied by [Little] Charley.’[32]

A few minutes later, all hell broke loose. Terribandy’s spear went flying through the air and hit its target: John’s free servant, Joseph Collins.[33] A second later, an unspecified number of the dinner guests attacked John, ‘wound[ing] him in three places with spears and moreover beat[ing] him with waddies.’[34] Somehow, John was ‘fortunate enough to escape and saved his life by concealing himself in a loft,’ but the ‘strange white man,’ Molony’s acquaintance Nicholas Redman, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time: the Irish convict who had arrived in the colony two years earlier per Marquis Cornwallis (1796), was ‘barbarously murdered and mangled.’[35] Joseph Molony also suffered ‘severe…wound[s] in endeavouring to escape.’[36] The attackers ‘then plundered the house and premises of [John’s] stock and every kind of property he had.’[37]

Only when the noise of murder and plunder ceased did John Tarlington dare to emerge from his concealment and go ‘in quest of his wife.’[38] With every step he undoubtedly hoped that Catherine had somehow been spared from the attack. He found Catherine ‘severely beaten by [Little] Charley,’ though her injuries were not mortal.[39] John’s speared servant, Joseph Collins, however, would succumb to his wound a few days later, no doubt spending his final days and hours ruing the day his foolish younger self stole a looking glass worth twenty shillings, ten years earlier in London.[40]

‘Angry with the White Men’

The raids and other hostile and even fatal encounters continued in the following days and months, with at least two more men fatally ‘speared by the Natives’ in separate incidents in the three days after the Tarlington Farm incident.[41] Like Nicholas Redman, the other two were buried in the parish of St. John’s, Parramatta: the Third Fleeter Francis Bowerman on 27 February, and the First Fleeter Robert Jenkins on 28 February.[42] We know from John Tarlington and other settlers that a man was fatally speared on ‘the Race Ground’ ‘a place between Parramatta and Windsor,’ ‘a few days’ after the Tarlington Farm episode as well, so it seems likely that either Bowerman or Jenkins was the man concerned, unless another man had been killed in yet another cross-cultural encounter and was buried somewhere besides Parramatta.[43]

Little Jemmy, Little George, and Little Charley were reportedly regular, active participants in these raids and altercations.[44] Based on the deposition of Hawkesbury settler Jonas Archer, for example, it seems likely that Little Jemmy was in attendance at the fatal spearing of the settler at the Race Ground in late February 1798, because he informed Archer that it was ‘his brother,’ Terribandy, who threw that deadly spear and hit his mark, just as he had in the spearing of Tarlington’s servant Joseph Collins three days earlier.[45] As for Little George, he had stolen corn from Archer, and when caught doing the same on another raid he had been ‘shot at and wounded.’[46] Jemmy, Charley, Major White and Major Worgan were also positively identified as being among a party of seventeen who accosted expired Third Fleet convict William Blady per Britannia (1791) while he was out Duck Shooting.[47] During that encounter, Blady asked Major White ‘why the Natives were angry with the white Men,’ to which Major White responded by aggressively poising his spear at him and saying, ‘they were angry with white men and particularly with the soldiers.’[48] Yet when Blady posed the same question to Major Worgan, who arrived soon after, he said: ‘they were not angry with him for he was a very good fellow but the Soldiers were very bad.’[49] They left the ‘very good fellow’ Blady, who promptly returned to his wife at home to discover that the same party had already ‘robbed and plundered the House…and taken away with them everything they thought proper.’[50]

Despite being what was called ‘troublesome’ by running with the parties who committed ‘Depredations’ and even ‘Murders,’ and despite having good reasons of their own to be wary of the settlers who had already wounded Little George, both George and Little Jemmy reputedly maintained a ‘friendly intercourse’ with the settlers, who went on receiving them as guests in their homes.[51] The willingness of some of the settlers to do so indicates a level of familiarity with these boys and that, while the settlers knew they could probably not be trusted with their corn, they did not consider them hostile. The settlers did have good reason to be fearful in general, though, for they knew very well that if anything did happen to them it would be a ‘reprisal’ for what members of their own community, soldiers and settlers alike, were doing to Aboriginal communities.

The First Peoples were not the only ‘raiders,’ nor were edible resources the only things for which the two groups competed. In a penal colony with a severely imbalanced gender ratio, some single white men ‘took’ Aboriginal females as their wives. Judge Advocate David Collins tells us of one such individual; John Wilson, a First Fleet convict who ‘went bush,’ adopted the First Peoples’ lifeways as well as the Aboriginal name Bunboè, and took ‘liberties with their young females.’[52] ‘[H]aving appropriated against her inclinations’ one particular ‘female to his own exclusive accommodation,’ in August 1800, ‘her friends took an opportunity, when [Bunboè] was not in a condition to defend himself, to drive a spear through his body.’[53] In another especially pertinent example, Second Fleet convict John Winbow per Scarborough (1790) took the daughter of Terribandy and niece of Little Jemmy as his wife. While one settler would claim that he believed Winbow’s ‘wife’ had willingly cohabited with him, the fact that Winbow and his comrade Thomas Hodgkinson ended up murdered and ‘mangled’ by Major White and Terribandy in the bush in August 1799 may suggest that this unnamed female had likewise been ‘forcibly detained’ by Winbow; if not, then at the very least, Winbow might have failed to uphold the customary obligations he had to members of his Aboriginal wife’s family.[54]

Lieutenant Thomas Hobby, Commanding Officer at the Hawkesbury, sent out an armed party of soldiers and settlers along with the men who were to bury the bodies of Winbow and Hodgkinson, and ordered ‘that if they fell in with any Natives on the road, either going or returning,…fire…upon them.’[55] Just prior, Hobby had visited Governor Hunter to convey numerous reports he had received that ‘it was the intention of the Natives to come down in numbers from the Blue Mountains to the Hawkesbury and to murder some of the white people, and particularly some soldiers.’[56] As Hobby later admitted in court, when having to justify and clarify the order he had given and by whose authority, he had heard that First Peoples from the Blue Mountains region were so enraged and on the warpath because a soldier named Cooper had put to death two defenceless people, namely ‘a native woman and child.’[57] The trouble is that such murders were occurring on the very edges of the frontier, where only those involved in the atrocities witnessed them and, for obvious reasons, had no intention of lodging formal reports about what they had done.[58] Thus, Hobby still retained his official position that he did ‘not know of any Violence committed on the Natives at the Hawkesbury or elsewhere without provocation being given,’ no matter how absurd it was to imply that a woman and child had posed such an enormous threat to armed British soldiers that they had no choice but to eliminate them.[59] For Hobby, regardless of what instigated the fury of the First Peoples, it was his role ‘to handle the mounting threats to settler lives,’ and he told the governor he intended to do so ‘by sending out a party of the military to kill five or six of them wherever they may be found.’[60] Hobby stated under oath that Governor Hunter, who recoiled from having to put to death Aboriginal offenders ‘in cool blood’ himself and therefore preferred the likes of Hobby to dispense punishment immediately, had authorised Hobby to act ‘discretionally.’[61] 

The armed party found Winbow and Hodgkinson ‘naked’ and covered with wood. ‘[B]oth were speared in the Bodies and Mangled, [and] their Cloaths [sic] Provisions Arms and Blankets’ had been taken from them.[62] Thanks to intelligence the settler Jonas Archer received from an Aboriginal person named Yellowgowie, reports circulated throughout the settlers’ network about precisely which ‘Natives’ had been responsible for taking the lives of Hodgkinson and Winbow’: Major White and Terribandy.[63] The next day, in Archer’s presence, Little Jemmy also revealed to Yellowgowie that Major White still had Hodgkinson’s gun, prompting Archer to ask Jemmy to retrieve it so it could be returned to Hodgkinson’s widow, Sarah.[64] Archer informed Sarah that she would get the gun in a few days, not realising that she wanted more than her dead husband’s gun: she wanted vengeance.[65] Since a number of the settlers still erroneously believed Hobby’s orders extended beyond the ‘Excursion’ to recover the bodies of Winbow and Hodgkinson, (or at least later said so), the Widow Hodgkinson’s impassioned plea for bloodshed was enough to send them into destroy mode.[66]

Forrester Farm, 18 September 1799

‘About sunset,’ Little Jemmy, Little George, and a third unnamed lad arrived at the farm of emancipated First Fleet convict Robert Forrester to deliver the gun that had belonged to the murdered Thomas Hodgkinson, as per Jonas Archer’s request.[67] One James Metcalfe, who was then at work on the farm, ‘enquired of them concerning the murdered men’ and ‘the Natives gave him to understand in a broken tongue’ that they had actually slept alongside Hodgkinson and Winbow the night before their murders.[68] Each of the three Aboriginal boys carried a spear, ‘warmaraa’ [sic: woomera] and waddy at the time, but when Metcalfe questioned them again regarding the murder they emphasised: “Not angry with any more white men but very bad soldier very bad them.”[69] Metcalfe took Hodgkinson’s gun, returned it to Hodgkinson’s widow, and told her what was said before proceeding to several other neighbours’ properties to inform them ‘that he had every reason to believe that they were come with no good intent,’ even though the three boys had apparently made no resistance when Metcalfe took the gun from them.[70] Tensions were high in the wake of the recent events, and the sight of ‘great numbers’ of the ‘Natives’ ‘at the back of the Farms’ did nothing to alleviate the settlers’ fears.[71]

‘[M]any of the Neighbours,’ including William Timms, Simon Freebody, William Butler, Thomas Sambourne, John Pearson, and Bishop Thompson ‘followed and proceeded to the house of Robt. Foster [sic] where’ Little Jemmy and company were interrogated further.[72] Metcalfe sat down to supper whilst listening to the ‘horrid’ details the boys related ‘as far as could be understood.’[73] Despite communicating that they had not committed the murders themselves, Freebody left and returned with Constable Edward Powell who, upon seeing one of the three detainees rising for a drink of water, stated: “You shall have no water here. You have killed a good fellow and you shall not live long.”[74] ‘When the said Native got up a second time for a drink of water…Freebody gave him some and Powell’ again said: “They should be killed for they ha[ve] killed a worthy good fellow, and it would be a pity to see them go away alive.”[75] Powell was not the only one who was thinking along those lines, for a very agitated Butler re-entered bearing a ‘bright cutlass’ announcing, ‘‘What Sentence shall we pass upon these black Fellows—I will pass sentenced myself—they shall be hanged.”[76] Metcalfe, preferring that they make the murderers themselves pay, and seeing that their detainees could identify them best, suggested they merely ‘carry them out’ and have them point to the culprits instead.[77] The bloodthirsty Constable Powell still seemed intent on killing them himself, supposedly even referring back to what he believed to be the Governor and Lieutenant Hobby’s orders to ‘kill…the Natives…wherever they could be met.’[78] Powell asked for some ropes, but as none were on the Forrester property, he sent Butler to his own farm nearby where he told him he would find ‘two Ropes upon the Dogs.’[79] When Butler returned with the ropes, Jemmy, George and the third lad’s hands were ‘tied behind them and some rope’ was put ‘round their necks.’[80] A witness would later claim that the plan at this stage was to take them out and make them point at the killers of Hodgkinson and Winbow, as previously suggested.[81] The three boys had been detained and interrogated for hours, so it was already around nine or ten o’clock when Timms, Butler, Metcalfe, Freebody, Powell and Thompson led them out of the house.[82] The three captives therefore took the opportunity to make a desperate dash into the pitch-black night to escape their captors.[83]

When the settlers caught the three Aboriginal boys, they showed ‘no pity for the hunted.’[84] According to the account of an eyewitness who watched from behind a tree, Constable Powell ‘fired at’ one of the boys ‘whom Butler was holding by a Rope round his neck but let him escape.’[85] Simon Freebody, who had earlier offered a drink of water to one of the lads, now killed Little George ‘by thrusting a Cutlas [sic] into him,’ and Timms somehow held Little Jemmy so Metcalfe could shoot him ‘through the body.’[86]

John Pearson, who claimed to have remained at the Forrester Farm house, heard the report of these two guns in the distance, followed shortly thereafter by a voice that might have belonged to Timms, at the Forrester Farm house door: “Got a spade?”[87]

Powell Farm, 19 September 1799

Thomas Rickerby, the Chief Constable at the Hawkesbury, in company with Constables David Brown and John Soare, made his way to Constable Powell’s house at the ‘Green Hills’, that is Bulyayorang (Windsor) in Dharug and Darkinjung Country. He had received the alarming intelligence from Mary, the wife of Jonas Archer, that two natives had been murdered the previous night, and that one of his own constables, Powell, had not only been present but was one of those implicated in the murder itself.[88] While Powell was not then at home, the other named suspects, Metcalfe, Thompson, Timms and Sambourne were there. When questioned on the matter they, ‘one and all,’ denied any knowledge of ‘two Native Boys being murdered.’[89] Such was Sambourne’s hatred, however, that he could not contain himself for long: “They were as decently buried as any of the White People that had been killed by the Natives.”[90] Though he had already given them all away, when Rickerby asked to be shown where the bodies were buried, Sambourne flatly refused.

With no cooperation from these men, Rickerby and the other constables left the house and soon met Constable Powell who, of course, denied any knowledge of the crime let alone any part in the wrongdoing or knowing where the bodies were buried. Undeterred, Rickerby made a search of his own and ‘at length discovered’ the bodies there on Powell’s very own farm.[91] Rickerby ‘dug them up, having got assistance for that purpose,’ then left the bodies on the ground, presumably under guard, while he called on Lieutenant Hobby.[92]

Chief Constable Rickerby, Lieutenant Hobby, and a ‘Gentleman’ named Mr. Robert Braithwaite returned to the deposition site and examined the bodies of Little Jemmy and Little George. The two boys had been buried as they had been killed: with their hands still tied behind their backs.[93] On ‘the least of the boys,’ that is, ‘Little George,’ there were multiple wounds that appeared to have been the work of a cutlass: one wound was ‘near the left Breast, and another in or about the back’ as well as one ‘about the hip.’[94] Little Jemmy’s injuries were even more horrific: ‘there was…the appearance of a musket Ball wound about his right breast’ and ‘near the jaw, the head was nearly severed from the body.’[95] The testimony of eyewitness David White only mentions that Jemmy was held and shot through the body, so it seems the killers either realised Metcalfe’s gunshot had not killed Jemmy and delivered the mortal cutlass blow to the jaw, perhaps when David White was no longer there to see it, or one of them was still so enraged that he took to Jemmy’s dead body with the cutlass.[96] As the gentlemanly Mr. Braithwaite later observed to Powell, ‘it was a very cruel way of killing them even had they been detected on Committing any Act of Depredation,’ to which the guilty Constable Powell replied: “[H]ad [you] seen the Bodies of Hodgkinson and Wimbo [sic][,] how they had been murdered by the Natives…[you] would not have thought it inhuman.”[97]

‘Above All Restrictions…’

The ‘Trial for the Murder of Two Natives,’ Little Jemmy and Little George, which commenced 14 October 1799, was only the second time that settlers were brought before the criminal court to be held to account for the murder of Aboriginal People.[98] It is not that the colony had been murder-free but that, up until the murder of John Lewis in January 1794, all proven cases in which people had died at the hands of another had been the result of cross-cultural killings, and these were understood to occur ‘outside the law’ for the simple fact that there were limits to how far the newcomers’ laws could be enforced in the new environment and imposed on people who knew nothing of them.[99] For this very reason, since the earliest months of the colony, the authorities ordered their British subjects to remain within the settlement at Warrane (Sydney Cove) and to never straggle from armed soldiers if they did make any excursion farther afield. When Aboriginal People did kill newcomers in that early period, therefore, authorities were disposed to blame the British victims. In May 1788, for instance, when William Okey and Samuel Davis were killed ‘in a shocking manner,’ Surgeon John White noted that, in view of ‘the civility shewn on all occasions to the officers by the natives, whenever any of them were met,’ he was ‘strongly inclined to think that they must have been provoked and injured by the convicts.’[100]

In October the same year, Cooper Handley, a convict ‘who had been looked upon as a good man,’ as ‘no complaint ha[d] been made of him since his landing, either for dishonesty or idleness,’ accompanied ‘an armed party of marines to collect wild vegetables and sweet tea.’[101] ‘Notwithstanding’ the order to ‘never, upon any account,…straggle from the soldiers or go to Botany Bay without them,’ Handley did stray and was ‘met by the natives.’[102] ‘On the return of the soldiers from the bay, he was found lying dead in the path, his head beat to a jelly, a spear driven through it, another through his body, and one arm broken.’[103] As Collins plainly stated: ‘This poor wretch furnished another instance of the consequences that attended a disobedience of orders which had been purposely given to prevent these accidents; and as nothing of the kind was known to happen, but where a neglect and contempt of all order was first shewn [sic], every misfortune of the kind might be attributed, not to the manners and disposition of the natives, but to the obstinacy and ignorance of our people.’[104] Still, while it had proven impossible to bring Aboriginal killers to justice for taking the lives of British colonists in 1788, Governor Phillip showed early on that there was no excuse for British subjects to get away with wantonly killing any Aboriginal People.[105] When Governor Phillip received word that ‘one of the natives’ had stolen a jacket from a convict and had either been ‘killed or wounded’ in the convict’s attempt to recover the piece of clothing, he vowed to issue ‘a free pardon, with remission of the sentence of transportation, to such male or female convict as should give information of any such offender or offenders, so that he or they might be brought to trial, and prosecuted to conviction.’[106] The only reason a trial for that suspected murder of an Aboriginal person did not take place was because, in spite of giving the convicts an offer they could not refuse, apparently no one was prepared to give up one of their peers, so ‘no discovery was made.’[107]

As the newcomers began to establish settlements further inland, and more and more settlers were therefore building new lives on isolated grants on the very fringes of those settlements, they were still effectively living beyond where the British law could reach, either to protect or to punish them. British perpetrators were arrested and tried in a court of law, whilst Aboriginal People who committed ‘Depredations and Murder’ against settlers were faced with an armed military detachment, with the cost to human life on those missions generally acknowledged without any statistics being officially recorded.[108] Thus, in these conditions, it is not surprising that we find subtle clues that colonists continued to differentiate between cross-cultural killings and British ‘murders.’ The tendency to compartmentalise Aboriginal killing and British murder is even evident in the minimalistic language of the St. John’s, Parramatta burial register, with British subjects who died as a result of frontier violence being recorded as ‘killed by natives’ or ‘speared by natives,’ while British people killed by fellow British subjects were recorded as ‘Murdered.’[109] That is not to say the newcomers were consistent in this: both Judge Advocate David Collins and Governor Phillip still used the word ‘murder’ at times to describe some of those early fatal encounters between First Peoples and British newcomers, even as they insisted on differentiating cross-cultural killings from ‘legal’ homicides.[110] Regardless of any practical reasons for the existence of these distinctions in the earliest years of the penal colony, they probably inadvertently laid the foundation for settler attitudes that violence by and against Aboriginal People was ‘different’ and, accordingly, there were different rules when it came to what they could feasibly get away with, particularly on the outermost fringes of the settlements where many of them had their farms.

The year of 1794 marked something of a shift, albeit without any justice actually being served. In January that year, the colony at last saw what Judge Advocate Collins was prepared to acknowledge as its first ‘legal’ murder, in which an ‘elderly convict,’ John Lewis, was murdered by fellow convicts who were never identified or prosecuted.[111] By October, a number of Hawkesbury settlers were also tried for cruelly ‘murdering’ an unnamed ‘Native Boy’—and not just any random settlers: this 1794 case, which had eerie similarities to what befell Jemmy, George and the third boy five years later, also occurred on or near Forrester Farm.[112] Robert Forrester, an expired First Fleet convict per Scarborough (1788), had alerted his neighbours that ‘a large party of natives’ had ‘appeared at the back of his Farm.’[113] ‘[I]n the road to the natives [the neighbours] met a Native Boy who they supposed was coming in for the purpose of discovering what arms they had.’[114] The party ‘made him prisoner; tied his hands behind his back, and delivered him to Michael Doyle,’ but a cry soon came from Doyle’s ‘that the boy was escaped and had jumped into the River.’[115] The accounts Forrester gave to different people conflict: to Alexander Wilson, Forrester said he had shot the native boy and that he had been ‘induced to it from motives of humanity,’ as the boy had been ‘previously thrown in the River by the neighbouring settlers, with his hands so tied [behind his back], that it was impossible he could swim to the opposite side.’[116] We must bear in mind that at the time Forrester made that statement to Wilson there was no legal precedent for settlers being tried in court for the murder of an Aboriginal person. Once it was clear to Forrester that he and the other settlers were the subjects of criminal proceedings over the incident, therefore, Forrester endeavoured to get himself and his fellow settlers out of trouble by changing his story and asserting that Wilson’s version of what he had said was false. He now argued that he and an emancipated First Fleet convict named Roger Twyfield per Friendship (1788) ‘immediately ran to the river, where they saw the boy swimming’ at which point the neighbours all ‘prevailed on’ Forrester to ‘shoot the boy’ lest he ‘get back to the natives and induce them to an attack by discovering there was no more than one musket in the whole neighbourhood.’[117] He was also careful to add that ‘the boy was not ill treated with his knowledge in any other manner.’[118] With ‘[n]o person appearing to contradict this account,’ noted David Collins, ‘it was admitted as truth, but many still considered it as a tale invented to cover the true circumstance, that a boy had been cruelly and wantonly murdered by them.’[119] Forrester’s first version evidently was the truth; nevertheless, it was not the whole of it. As Collins later acknowledged, ‘it was now said, that some of [the settlers] had seized…[the] boy, and, after tying him hand and foot, had dragged him several times through a fire, or over a place covered with hot ashes, until his back was dreadfully scorched, and in that state threw him into the river, where they shot at and killed him.’[120]

So the first trial for the murder of an Aboriginal person ended in an acquittal, and left the Judge Advocate Collins certain that the Hawkesbury settlers ‘merited the attacks which were from time to time made upon them by the natives.’[121] Collins could plainly see ‘the presence of some person with authority’ was now ‘absolutely necessary among those settlers, who, finding themselves free from bondage, instantly conceived that they were above all restrictions; and, being without any internal regulations, irregularities of the worst kind might be expected to happen.’[122] While the 1794 case established that settlers could be tried for taking Aboriginal lives, getting away with this terrible murder unfortunately also set a precedent that proved particularly deadly when Little Jemmy and Little George found themselves on the same farm with their hands tied behind them, amid the same callous settlers in 1799.

At the trial for George and Jemmy’s murders, the verdict would be legally different from that of the 1794 case, even though the outcome was virtually identical. The settlers’ conduct in the criminal proceedings was also the same as it had been in 1794, with the settler community clearly making a concerted effort to get their stories straight.

Those more directly involved in the events were clever enough to work out that they needed to be unanimous in their belief that the governor and Lieutenant Hobby’s orders—that is, to kill any Aboriginal People they met—extended beyond the mission to recover the bodies of Hodgkinson and Winbow; in so doing, they established that they acted without any awareness that they were doing anything illegal. Since Lieutenant Hobby himself had to admit that it was possible his orders could have been misinterpreted that way, who could prove in court that the settlers knowingly acted as vigilantes?[123]

To justify murdering two boys they already knew were not responsible for taking the lives of Hodgkinson and Winbow, many of the settlers sought to establish in their testimonies that Little Jemmy and Little George specifically were a genuine threat, and cited (or more like created) a history of violence conveniently filled with only the most noteworthy, recent examples. They painted Little Jemmy as a fierce warrior, at the centre of all of the most recent fatal cross-cultural encounters, by attributing to him the violent and deadly actions carried out by his elder brother Terribandy. For example, whilst Terribandy had sparked the attack when he threw the spear at Joseph Collins at Tarlington Farm, and did so again at the Race Ground three days later, according to some settler accounts it was now his brother, ‘Little Jemmy,’ who threw the deadly spear at the Race Ground.[124] And from Tarlington’s account, we know there ended up being around fifty Aboriginal People on his farm by the time the first spear was thrown yet, in what was by all accounts a frenzied attack, he told the court he was able to identify ‘Little George’ specifically as the one who ‘thrust a spear wantonly through his arm’ and ‘Little Jemmy’ as having been responsible for ‘the Wound he received in his side,’ and that they had also put Nicholas Redman to death.[125] Those raids and fatal confrontations involved large groups of Aboriginal men, most of whom would have had years if not decades more experience than ‘Little Jemmy’ and ‘Little George’ when it came to hunting and warfare, but the court was expected to believe it was usually the fifteen or sixteen-year-old Jemmy who was responsible for injuring and killing multiple settlers. Maybe Jemmy, in spite of his diminutive moniker ‘Little,’ really was just a particularly gifted and lethal young warrior; however, from the court’s line of questioning throughout the trial, in which they extracted admissions from a number of the deponents that Little Jemmy and Little George had been regularly welcomed into their homes even after the Tarlington Farm raid and others like it, it is clear the court were unconvinced. What seemed far more likely was that the accused men just captured, maimed and murdered the Aboriginal People they could most easily catch—the youngest, smallest, most innocent and therefore least guarded ones of the group—and that the settlers subsequently conspired to build a case that the murder victims were especially belligerent and violent to ensure their fellow settlers would not hang for their despicable crime.

And where was Robert Forrester himself while all this was transpiring on his own farm for hours on a ‘very dark’ September evening? It seems everyone in the neighbourhood was there but him. He is very conspicuous by his absence. Was he deliberately excluded from the settlers’ accounts of the murders since he had been the main focus of the earlier trial involving a very similar murder of an Aboriginal boy in 1794? And why did Jemmy and George end up buried in Constable Powell’s garden when most of the events occurred at Forrester Farm? It may be that the Powell Farm was simply where the boys ran in their last desperate attempts to flee: then again, it could be an indication that the settlers were already thinking on their feet about their ‘defence’ if they should end up in court over it; that they moved the bodies to the nearby Powell Farm to distance the events from Forrester, because it would have been harder for the same man and the same neighbours to face the same court for an almost identical murder on the same farm, and still claim to be completely ignorant that they were doing anything wrong.

When the Prisoners, including Constable Edward Powell, Simon Freebody, James Metcalfe, William Timms and William Butler, were ‘put to the Bar,’ they were informed that they had been found ‘generally GUILTY of KILLING two Natives.’[126] Thus the trial for the murder of Little Jemmy and Little George was a landmark case, insofar as it was the first trial for the murder of Aboriginal People that resulted in a guilty verdict. While all members of the court were unanimous about the settlers’ guilt, however, their individual opinions varied regarding sentencing. Captain Waterhouse found ‘the Prisoners severally Guilty of murdering two Natives without Provocation on the Part of the Natives,’ yet, crucially, added ‘that by his opinion he means not to affect the lives of the Prisoners because it is the first Instance of such an Offence being brought before a Criminal Court and therefore the Prisoners were not aware of the consequences of the Law as applied to this Particular Case.’[127] Of course, as previously stated, not only was it not the first case, these particular settlers could not have been so ignorant of the legal ramifications of their actions since the first case brought before the court in 1794 happened on the same farm, and likely involved many of the very settlers who were on trial in 1799. Lieutenant John Shortland found the prisoners ‘Guilty of Killing two Natives in a deliberate manner without any provocation from the deceased Natives at the Moment’ and Lieutenant Matthew Flinders likewise described them as ‘inhumanly Killing two Natives unresisting and in no Act of Hostility or depredation.’[128]

Waterhouse, Shortland and Flinders were all in favour of ‘Corporal punishment,’ whilst Judge Advocate Richard Dore, Captain John Macarthur, Lieutenant Neil McKellar and Lieutenant Thomas Davis were in favour of the case ‘under all its peculiar circumstances’ being ‘reserve[d]…by special Verdict until the sense of His Majesty’s Ministers at home is known on the subject.’[129] The Prisoners were therefore ‘severally enlarged on producing two responsible sureties to be bound in One Hundred Pounds Each—and each of the Prisoners individually in Two Hundred Pounds for their personal appearance to abide by such decision as His Majesty’s Ministers may think fit to make on the case so specially reserved for that purpose.’[130] Constable Edward Powell was also ‘ordered…to be Suspended’ from his duties, ‘the Court highly disapproving of [his] Conduct…as a constable.’[131] ‘Highly disapproving’: feeble words for a person who would have been hanged, anatomised and dissected or even gibbetted for this crime if his victims had been British. Evidently, the colonists’ idea that taking the life of an Aboriginal person was somehow different to taking the life of a fellow white person was just too powerful to overcome, even when the facts were laid bare in a court of law.

A notably troubled Governor Hunter sent the trial papers to the Duke of Portland in early January 1800 for His Majesty’s Minister’s review, at the request of the criminal court. In his cover letter, the governor expressed his certainty that the settlers had ‘most barbarously murder’d’ Little Jemmy and Little George, ‘notwithstanding Orders have upon this subject been repeatedly given pointing out in what instances only they were warranted in punishing with such severity,’ and despite the fact that the ‘two youths…had been in the habit of being much with the settlers.’[132] He acknowledged that while the case shone light on the number of settler fatalities, the undoubtedly far higher statistics for the ‘wanton and barbarous’ destruction of ‘the natives’ were not to be furnished with ‘equal ease.’[133] He revealed his frustration that the court had been so lenient and stalled proper sentencing on the basis that further advice about His Majesty’s position was needed, when in fact ‘Every information within [the governor’s] power respecting the light in which the natives of this country were to be held as a people now under the protection of His Majesty’s Government was laid before the court. The Order given upon that subject, both before my time and since, was made known to it.’[134] The court had even been supplied with the following ‘strong and expressive’ instructions His Majesty had given to the governor:

You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections, enjoyning [sic] all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them; and if any of our subjects should wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, it is our will and pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment, according to the degree of the offence.[135]

Yet, the governor acknowledged, the men accused of the ‘horrid’ ‘wanton destruction’ of Jemmy and George were ‘at large and living upon their farms, as much at their ease as ever.’[136] Following the murders, Jemmy and George’s own People understandably considered making these settlers pay in another way: fully aware of the power they held in their hands to ‘ruin’ the newcomers’ ‘prospects of an abundant harvest,’ and so ‘spread desolation’ and ‘reduce’ the settlers ‘to extreme distress,’ they ‘threaten’d to burn [their] crops as soon as it cou’d be effected [sic].’ But for unknown reasons, ‘they did not…attempt it.’[137]

It would be another twenty-one years before a white man found guilty of murdering an Aboriginal person was actually hanged and anatomised and dissected for his crime.[138]

Remembrance

It would be so easy to dismiss St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta in Burramattagal Country, as a purely ‘settler’ site. It is the oldest surviving European burial ground and has even been logged with an alternate name in the State Heritage Register as a ‘First Fleet Cemetery.’ Its long list of interments including many names of the colonial élite, and the fact that the sole, unconfirmed Aboriginal burial registered in St. John’s has no stone marker or known location only reinforces the sense that this is a heritage site that, through its quantitative bias to the newcomers, will inevitably tell a one-sided history; that this heritage site is, therefore, doomed to perpetuate the very cultural division that precipitated the frontier violence outlined in this essay. But that is reductive, for it is only a superficial understanding of the cemetery’s rich, multilayered heritage and is, thus, a complete underestimation of the power of this place.

Buried deep within the life stories of those interred here are stories of cross-cultural encounters. Like the Tarlington graves, other headstones in the cemetery are bound to serve as entry points into those difficult yet necessary discussions about the theft of Nura (Country) and the atrocities of the frontier wars that were ‘basic to this nation’s birth.’[139] As such, rather than standing as a controversial, celebratory monument to colonialism and, thus, being a site that continues to trigger cultural conflict and trauma by failing to acknowledge these ugly and painful truths, the historic cemetery reveals its power to be a place of consciousness, remembrance and reconciliation. For the Tarlington graves can memorialise more than the individual members of the settler family who lie beneath them. As long as they remain, let them conjure for all the enduring image of three young Aboriginal boys, ‘Little Jemmy,’ ‘Little George’ and ‘Little Charley,’ at the end of summer, laughing, juice running down their chins and arms as they ate melons on John and Catherine Tarlington’s garden bed where they grew, and the knowledge that by spring the following year, two of those youths were slaughtered and buried in another settler’s garden bed at ‘Green Hills,’ Bulyayorang (Windsor) in stolen Dharug and Darkinjung Country.

CITE THIS

Michaela Ann Cameron, “No Pity for the Hunted,” St. John’s Online, (2020), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/the-hunted, accessed [insert current date]

References

• R. v Powell, [1799] NSWKR 7; [1799] NSWSupC 7, Court of Criminal Judicature, Dore J. A., 15–16 October 1799, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, (Division of Law, Macquarie University, 2011), https://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1799/r_v_powell/, accessed 27 October 2020.
• Parish Burial Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, New South Wales, Australia.
• David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1, (London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, in the Strand, 1798).
• David Collins and James Collier (ed.), An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, (Melbourne: Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, n. d.).
• Judith Dunn, The Parramatta Cemeteries: St. John’s, (Parramatta: Parramatta and District Historical Society, 1991).
• Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788–1836, (Harvard University Press, 2010).
• Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the Early Colony, 1788–1817, (Sydney: New South, 2017).
• Catie Gilchrist, “Mary Rowe: At What Price Theft?” St. John’s Online, (2020), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/mary-rowe, accessed 27 October 2020.
• “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914).
• Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, (Frankfurt: Books on Demand, 2018).
• John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales: with sixty-five plates of non descript animals, birds, lizards, serpents, curious cones of trees and other natural productions, (London: J. Debrett, 1790).

NOTES

[1] The title for this piece, ‘No Pity for the Hunted’ is a direct quotation from a poem by Dame Mary Gilmore, “The Hunter of the Black,” in Mary Gilmore, The Wild Swan: Poems, (Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens, 1930). The Tarlington graves are located at (L.15.K), (L.15.L), (L.15.M) and (R.25.B), St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta.

[2] A coutelier, or cutler, manufactured cutlery by hand, including knives, scissors, razors and other sharp instruments, usually for domestic use. Cutlers could also make sword blades, daggers, halberds for the military, as well as surgical instruments. The quoted material relating to his offence is sourced from Leeds Intelligencer, Tuesday 6 March 1787, p. 3, via The British Newspaper Archive (https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/, 2020). John Tarlington was born in Tutbury, Stafford, England, c. 1765.

[3] Tarlington’s first wife, Catherine Jackson per Kitty (1792), was an Irish convict who was tried and convicted in Dublin in March 1790. She passed away in early 1811 and her burial was registered in the parish of St. John’s, Parramatta on 20 March 1811 and she lies in a marked grave at St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta. Nine months later, Tarlington married his second wife, Margaret Duggan (née Jones) per Experiment I (1804) at St. John’s Church, Parramatta on 30 December 1811. Margaret passed away on 2 February 1834 and was buried next to Tarlington’s first wife, in a marked grave at St. John’s, Parramatta the next day. Tarlington’s third wife, Mary Ryan, an Irish Catholic convict, was instead buried at St. Patrick’s Cemetery, North Parramatta on 27 June 1841. At 27 years of age, she was significantly younger than John Tarlington when she, an inmate of the Parramatta Female Factory, was permitted to marry him in 1837. At that time, John was in his late seventies; nevertheless, he outlived her by more than a year. John Tarlington was buried on 27 November 1842 in a marked grave at St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta. We can only wonder why John Tarlington was not buried anywhere near his children and first two wives, even though they were interred in the same cemetery.

[4] John Tarlington supplied these estimated ages, noting as he did so “but I cannot speak to any one certainty, they are so deceiving in their age.” Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[5] Regarding the Parramatta settlers bartering corn for salt provision see David Collins and James Collier (ed.), An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, (Melbourne: Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, n. d.), p. 147.

[6] David Collins and James Collier (ed.), An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, (Melbourne: Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, n. d.), p. 147.

[7] David Collins and James Collier (ed.), An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, (Melbourne: Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, n. d.), p. 147.

[8] The murdered convict could have been Thomas Woodfield aka Thomas Whitfield whose burial was registered in St. John’s, Parramatta on 2 June 1793, see: St. John’s Online (stjohnsonline.org), “Burial of THOs WHITFIELD,” https://stjohnsonline.org/burials/year-1793/bur17930602/, accessed 27 October 2020. Collins said the convict was found murdered in retaliation for the initial altercation with the Aboriginal People ‘some time before,’ which occurred on 18 May. David Collins and James Collier (ed.), An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, (Melbourne: Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, n. d.), p. 147.

[9] Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, (Frankfurt: Books on Demand, 2018), p. 41.

[10] David Collins and James Collier (ed.), An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, (Melbourne: Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, n. d.), p. 358.

[11] At the time of publication, I have not been able to determine the precise location of the 30-acre farm the Tarlingtons occupied in 1798, which was the scene of the events described above, but it is most likely the same one Tarlington purchased ‘near Toon Gabbee [sic]’ on 28 May 1793, when he was still under sentence: see “Settlers’ Muster Book – List 1: Untitled [Land & Stock Muster 1800]”; PLNSW ref: Vol. Safe 1/104–5, published in Carol J. Baxter (ed.), Musters and Lists, New South Wales and Norfolk Island: 1800–1802, (Sydney: ABGR, 1988), accessed online via Biographical Database of Australia. For a specific reference to the location of the 1790s incarnation of ‘Tarlington Farm’ as being ‘near Toon Gabbee’ see also the Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419. By July 1800, John Tarlington had cultivated 13 acres wheat sown, 6 acres maize to be sown, and had 7 pigs. He and his wife were “off stores” and they had one child “on stores.” See “Settlers’ Muster Book – List 1: Untitled [Land & Stock Muster 1800]”; PLNSW ref: Vol. Safe 1/104–5 in Carol J. Baxter (ed.), Musters and Lists, New South Wales and Norfolk Island: 1800–1802, (Sydney: ABGR, 1988); Book Entry# AA093, accessed online via Biographical Database of Australia (bda-online.org.au), December 2021. On 10 April 1802, John Tarlington was recorded as being at Prospect and in possession of arms in a letter in New South Wales Government, “Particulars of arms in possession of…” Colonial Secretary’s Papers Index 1788–1825, Reel: 6041; Item: 4/1719; p. 88, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia). In March 1807, John Tarlington was already very closely associated with the people and properties that later neighboured the 95-acre grant he received years later in February 1810, because in March 1807, he stood accused of murdering James Core at George Stanbury’s Prospect farm [see: “Court of Criminal Jurisdiction,” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842), Sunday 7 June 1807, p. 2. In early 1810 when petitioning the governor for a grant for the very first time, Tarlington himself referred to the farm he then occupied as “rendered unproductive by long Cultivation. That Nevertheless Pet.r [petitioner], under the Blessings of Divine providence by his own Industry is possessed of one mare, one horse and Seven head of horned cattle.” In February 1810, Tarlington was granted 95 acres at Prospect Creek. See “John Tarlington’s Grant, No. 466,” New South Wales Government, Main Series of Letters Received, 1788–1825, Fiche 3001–3162, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia). This 95-acres was described as “Bounded on the South side by the Prospect Creek. On the West side by Hassall, Gardner and a Road of five Chains wide. On the North by Herberts farm, and an East line to Taylor’s farm, and on the East side by Taylor, Hume and Hammetts.” New South Wales Government, Register of Land Grants and Pardons, Series: 1215; Reel: 2505, April 1809–January 1810, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia). Parish of Prospect, County of Cumberland, [cartographic material], [18–?], Maps/0036 / FL8763244 / FL8763246, State Library of New South Wales. Perhaps this 95-acre ‘Prospect Creek’ grant was merely an extension of the acreage he had previously occupied ‘near Toon Gabbee’ in the 1790s, or a new farm in the region of Prospect entirely. Adding weight to this theory is the fact that the 95-acre grant of 1810 is in the vicinity of two other men (namely, John Herbert and Joseph Morley), who had received grants at the foot of Prospect Hill in the early 1790s before their sentences had expired on the basis that they could work these farms in their leisure time. It could be, then, that this specific area near Prospect Creek had been allocated for such convicts under sentence who nevertheless showed enthusiasm for agriculture so they could begin working the land in their leisure hours ahead of the expiration of their sentences in the 1790s; if so, we could tentatively theorise that the events of February 1798 may have occurred on land near Prospect Creek. See also “John Tarlington, Prospect Hill,” New South Wales Government, Registers of Land Grants and Leases, Series: NRS 13836; Item: 7/447; Reel: 2561, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia). Present-day “Tarlington Place, Smithfield,” Google Maps, https://goo.gl/maps/zZKqvE73uCQADEEo7, accessed 26 December 2022, is where the 95-acre grant was situated. However, there is also a “Tarlington Place, Prospect,” located off the Great Western Highway, as the present-day Google Map indicates: “Tarlington Place, Prospect,” Google Maps, https://goo.gl/maps/UpUH9ERzH8xZqziv7, accessed 27 October 2020. Tarlington Place, Prospect memorialises Tarlington’s ownership of 30 acres originally granted to First Fleet ex-convict Edward Miles per Scarborough (1788) off the Great Western Road at Prospect Hill in late 1797. Miles may have sold this grant to Tarlington soon after he received the grant, which could potentially make Miles’s former 30-acre grant the site of the February 1798 events, although there is no concrete evidence to corroborate this transaction occurred that early and we know Miles continued to reside at Prospect for some years, although that could conceivably have been on yet another parcel of land in the Prospect area as many grantees sold their grants. In fact, Miles was still at Prospect and received a large 70-acre grant there at the same time Tarlington received his 95 acres in February 1810. This historic sketch (also supplied in the main text above) at the very least proves that Tarlington had purchased Miles’s former 30-acre grant close to the Great Western Road at some ill-defined period, and that Tarlington sold two acres of it back to Government. New South Wales Government, “Prospect – Sketch showing the position of two acres of ground purchased by the Government by John Tarlington at Prospect,” Sketch Books [Surveyor General], [Sketch book 1 folio 39], NRS-13886-1-[X751]-Volume 1-194, (State Archives Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia), https://records-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1ebnd1l/ADLIB_RNSW113832562, accessed 27 October 2020. Note, John Tarlington sold his 95-acre grant at Prospect Creek to Matthew Hyland on 7 November 1836.

[12] For more on the murder of William Rowe and child see Catie Gilchrist, “Mary Rowe: At What Price Theft?” St. John’s Online, (2020), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/mary-rowe, accessed 27 October 2020. For more on Pemulwuy see Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the Early Colony, 1788–1817, (Sydney: New South, 2017).

[13] St. John’s Online (stjohnsonline.org), “Burial of WILLIAM GARLAND,” https://stjohnsonline.org/burials/year-1797/bur17970603/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[14] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[15] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[16] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[17] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[18] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419. Regarding Terribandy and Jemmy being brothers, see [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 407, 413.

[19] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[20] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[21] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[22] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[23] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[24] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[25] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[26] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[27] Deposition of David Brown, Monday 14 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 406.

[28] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[29] Also recorded as “Nicholas Redmond” in official documents, such as his convict indent and burial registration. Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 419.

[30] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[31] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[32] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[33] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[34] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[35] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[36] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[37] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[38] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[39] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October, 1799, in [Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[40] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0), 10 December 1788, trial of JOSEPH COLLINS and EDWARD FARREL (t17881210-68), https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t17881210-68, accessed 27 October 2020. Joseph Collins was transported with the Third Fleet per Admiral Barrington (1791). His sentence of seven years transportation had expired by the time of these events, which is why John Tarlington was particular about identifying him not merely as his servant but as a free man.

[41] The burial register notes that all three of the following men were ‘speared by the natives’: St. John’s Online (stjohnsonline.org), “Burial of NICK REDMAN,” https://stjohnsonline.org/burials/year-1798/bur17980225/; St. John’s Online (stjohnsonline.org), “Burial of FRANCIS BOWERMAN,” https://stjohnsonline.org/burials/year-1798/bur17980227/; St. John’s Online (stjohnsonline.org), “Burial of ROBERT JENKINS,” https://stjohnsonline.org/burials/year-1798/bur17980228/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[42] John Tarlington mentions the Race Ground spearing and that it happened only a few days after the raid at his own farm. Other deponents also mention the Race Ground spearing in the trial records, although they do contradict each other regarding who threw the spear at the Race Ground; some say it was Terribandy, one says it was Charley, and another source claims it was Jemmy. St. John’s Online (stjohnsonline.org), “Burial of NICK REDMAN,” https://stjohnsonline.org/burials/year-1798/bur17980225/; St. John’s Online (stjohnsonline.org), “Burial of FRANCIS BOWERMAN,” https://stjohnsonline.org/burials/year-1798/bur17980227/; St. John’s Online (stjohnsonline.org), “Burial of ROBERT JENKINS,” https://stjohnsonline.org/burials/year-1798/bur17980228/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[43] I have quoted George Salter’s description of the location of the ‘Race Ground’ from an unrelated court proceeding in 1812. Michael Flynn, “George Salter and his House 1796–1817,” (January, 1994), p. 9, https://nswaol.library.usyd.edu.au/data/pdfs/13088_ID_Flynn1994GeorgeSalterHouseHistoricalRpt.pdf, accessed 27 October 2020. Whether the total body count was four or five, there is no doubt that the late summer of 1798 had been an especially destructive period in the areas surrounding Parramatta and the Hawkesbury.

[44] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914).

[45] Deposition of Jonas Archer, Thursday 17 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 413.

[46] The shooting and wounding of Little George when caught in the act of stealing corn was revealed in Thomas Rickerby’s deposition. Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 405.

[47] Deposition of William Blady, Friday 18 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 420–1.

[48] Deposition of William Blady, Friday 18 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 421.

[49] Deposition of William Blady, Friday 18 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 421.

[50] Deposition of William Blady, Friday 18 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 421.

[51] Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 405.

[52] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Second Edition, (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), p. 529.

[53] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Second Edition, (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), p. 529.

[54] In Isabella Ramsay’s testimony, she stated that Jemmy and company told her that Hodgkinson and Winbow had been killed for their victuals. However, we must be cautious about accepting this at face value; it was within the settlers’ interest to establish that the First Peoples were murdering settlers for a meal alone, as this would have helped to justify their own fear of them being on their properties around supper time, and thus justified the actions of the men who took the lives of Jemmy and George. See Deposition of Isabella Ramsay, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 405. Jonas Archer believed either victuals or the marriage situation was Major White and Terribandy’s motive for killing Hodgkinson and Winbow in their sleep: Deposition of Jonas Archer, Thursday 17 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 412.

[55] Deposition of Lieutenant Hobby, Tuesday 19 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 408.

[56] Deposition of Lieutenant Hobby, Tuesday 19 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 408.

[57] Deposition of Lieutenant Hobby, Tuesday 19 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 409–10; See also the Deposition of William Blady, in the same source, p. 421.

[58] As Governor Hunter later noted, ‘Much of that hostile disposition which has occasionally appear’d in those people has been but too often provoked by the treatment which many of them have received from the white inhabitants, and which have scarsely [sic] been heard of by those who have the power of bestowing punishment…’ Cooper’s ‘most shamefull and wanton’ killing of the woman and child was ‘a circumstance which had not come to [the governor’s] knowledge untill long after the fact had been committed.’ John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 402–3.

[59] Deposition of Lieutenant Hobby, Tuesday 19 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 410.

[60] Deposition of Lieutenant Hobby, Tuesday 19 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 409.

[61] Deposition of Lieutenant Hobby, Tuesday 19 October 1799, and Deposition of Peter Farrell, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 409, 418.

[62] Deposition of Jonas Archer, Thursday 17 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 410.

[63] Deposition of Jonas Archer, Thursday 17 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 411–2.

[64] Deposition of Jonas Archer, Thursday 17 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 412.

[65] Deposition of Jonas Archer, Thursday 17 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 412.

[66] Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 404.

[67] Prisoners’ Defence, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 413.

[68] Prisoners’ Defence, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 413.

[69] Regarding the weapons the boys were armed with, see Deposition of Isabella Ramsay, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 406. For the other direct quotations see Prisoners’ Defence, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 413–4.

[70] Prisoners’ Defence, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 414.

[71] Prisoners’ Defence, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 414.

[72] Prisoners’ Defence, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 414.

[73] Prisoners’ Defence, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 414.

[74] Deposition of Isabella Ramsay, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 405; Prisoners’ Defence, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 414.

[75] Deposition of Isabella Ramsay, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 405.

[76] Deposition of Isabella Ramsay, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 405.

[77] Deposition of Isabella Ramsay, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 405–6.

[78] Deposition of Isabella Ramsay, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 406.

[79] Deposition of Isabella Ramsay, Monday 14 October 1799, and Deposition of John Pearson, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 406, 408.

[80] Deposition of Isabella Ramsay, Monday 14 October 1799, Deposition of John Pearson, Deposition of David White, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 405–6, 408, 411.

[81] Deposition of Isabella Ramsay, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 405–6.

[82] Thomas Sambourne provided the estimated time of the evening, see Deposition of Thomas Sambourne, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 407.

[83] Prisoners’ Defence, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 414.

[84] A direct quotation from a poem by Dame Mary Gilmore, “The Hunter of the Black,” in Mary Gilmore, The Wild Swan: Poems, (Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens, 1930).

[85] Deposition of David White, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 411.

[86] Deposition of David White, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 411.

[87] Deposition of John Pearson and Deposition of David White, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 408.

[88] Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 403–4.

[89] Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 404.

[90] Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 404.

[91] Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 404.

[92] Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 404.

[93] Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 404.

[94] Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 404.

[95] Descriptions of the wounds to the bodies of Jemmy and George are found in Deposition of Thomas Rickerby, Monday 14 October 1799, Deposition of Lieutenant Hobby, and Deposition of Robert Braithwaite, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), pp. 404, 408 and 410. Rickerby: ‘there was a wound through the body of the least of the boys [George], as if given by a Cutlash [sic], and another wound on or about the hip as if given also by a Cutlass, the other boy appeared to have been shot through the body by a ball from a musket and one side of his head and down his face appeared to have been much cut by a Cutlass.’ [p. 404] Hobby: ‘on the spot they viewed the bodies of two male Natives, on the younger of which [Little George] they discovered one wound near the left Breast, and another in or about the back, which appeared to the witness to have been made with a cutlass—on the other Native [Little Jemmy], near the jaw, the head was nearly severed from the body—that the hands of both said Natives were tied behind on the back of each of them.’[p.408] Braithwaite: ‘the wounds of the younger Native [Little George] were about the right loin and the left Breast and they appeared to the witness to have been given by a Cutlas—on the other native [Little Jemmy] a large wound appeared about the Chin and there was also the appearance of a musket Ball wound about his right breast.’ [p. 410].

[96] Deposition of David White, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 411.

[97] Deposition of Robert Braithwaite, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 411.

[98] The trial was heard ‘before the Judge-Advocate [Richard Dore], Captain Henry Waterhouse, Lieut[enant] John Shortland, Lieut[enant] Matthew Flinders, Royal Navy, Captain John McArthur [sic], Lieut[enant] Neil McKellar, and Lieut[enant] Thomas Davis, N.S.W. Corps.’ “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 403.

[99] For more on the ‘first’ murder, that of John Lewis in January 1794, see Michaela Ann Cameron, “John Lewis: The First Murder,” St. John’s Online, (2020), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/john-lewis, accessed 27 October 2020.

[100] John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales: with sixty-five plates of non descript animals, birds, lizards, serpents, curious cones of trees and other natural productions, (London: J. Debrett, 1790), pp. 160–2.

[101] John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales: with sixty-five plates of non descript animals, birds, lizards, serpents, curious cones of trees and other natural productions, (London: J. Debrett, 1790), p. 214.

[102] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Second Edition, (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), pp. 39–40.

[103] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Second Edition, (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), p. 30.

[104] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1, (London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, in the Strand, 1798), pp. 11, 43.

[105] Governor Phillip attempted to locate the ‘murderers’ and bring them to justice for their ‘sanguinary resentment.’ The governor’s efforts in company with ‘a strong party well armed’ came to nothing when all he found were fifty empty canoes close to the murder scene, and ‘an armed party of natives, in number between two and three hundred, men, women, and children’ with whom he had ‘a friendly intercourse.’ David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1, (London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, in the Strand, 1798), pp. 30–1.

[106] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1, (London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, in the Strand, 1798), p. 33.

[107] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1, (London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, in the Strand, 1798), p. 33.

[108] See for example the Deposition of William Goodall, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 417.

[109] Parish Burial Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[110] For an example of where Collins uses the word murder to describe cross-cultural killing but then goes on to identify a later murder of a British subject by a fellow British subject as the first confirmed murder case in the colony, see David Collins and James Collier (ed.), An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, (Melbourne: Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, n. d.), pp. 146 and 209.

[111] Michaela Ann Cameron, “John Lewis: The ‘First’ Murder,” St. John’s Online, (2020), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/john-lewis, accessed 27 October 2020.

[112] Murder of Native Boy case [1794] NSWKR 2; [1794] NSWSupC 2, Collins J. A., 17 October 1794, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, (Division of Law, Macquarie University, 2011), https://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1794/murder_of_a_native_boy_case/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[113] Murder of Native Boy case [1794] NSWKR 2; [1794] NSWSupC 2, Collins J. A., 17 October 1794, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, (Division of Law, Macquarie University, 2011), https://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1794/murder_of_a_native_boy_case/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[114] Murder of Native Boy case [1794] NSWKR 2; [1794] NSWSupC 2, Collins J. A., 17 October 1794, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, (Division of Law, Macquarie University, 2011), https://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1794/murder_of_a_native_boy_case/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[115] Murder of Native Boy case [1794] NSWKR 2; [1794] NSWSupC 2, Collins J. A., 17 October 1794, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, (Division of Law, Macquarie University, 2011), https://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1794/murder_of_a_native_boy_case/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[116] Murder of Native Boy case [1794] NSWKR 2; [1794] NSWSupC 2, Collins J. A., 17 October 1794, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, (Division of Law, Macquarie University, 2011), https://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1794/murder_of_a_native_boy_case/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[117] Murder of Native Boy case [1794] NSWKR 2; [1794] NSWSupC 2, Collins J. A., 17 October 1794, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, (Division of Law, Macquarie University, 2011), https://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1794/murder_of_a_native_boy_case/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[118] Murder of Native Boy case [1794] NSWKR 2; [1794] NSWSupC 2, Collins J. A., 17 October 1794, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, (Division of Law, Macquarie University, 2011), https://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1794/murder_of_a_native_boy_case/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[119] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1, (London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, in the Strand, 1798), p. 394.

[120] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1, (London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, in the Strand, 1798), p. 394.

[121] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1, (London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, in the Strand, 1798), p. 394.

[122] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1, (London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, in the Strand, 1798), p. 394.

[123] Deposition of Lieutenant Hobby, Tuesday 19 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 410.

[124] One other account threw out a third contender, saying it was Little Charley who threw the spear at the Race Ground. If the confusion was genuine, then it proves the settlers were in no position to be identifying culprits and dispensing justice themselves. “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914).

[125] Deposition of John Tarlington, Friday 18 October 1799, “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 420.

[126] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 422.

[127] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 422.

[128] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 422.

[129] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 422.

[130] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 422.

[131] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 422.

[132] The court, Hunter also noted, had also been incorrect to refer the case directly to His Majesty’s Minister, as they should have recommended it to himself as Commander in Chief. This put the governor in an awkward position of ‘shew[ing] [sic] the colony…any difference…between the judicial and executive authoritys [sic], particularly when in the smallest degree inconsistent with lenity.’ “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 401.

[133] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 402.

[134] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 402.

[135] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 402.

[136] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 402.

[137] “[Enclosure No. 1] Trial for Murder of Two Natives, 14 October 1799,” John Hunter, “Governor Hunter to The Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800,” in Frederick Watson (ed.), Historical Records of Australia: Series I, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Vol. II, 1797–1800, (Sydney: The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1914), p. 403.

[138] John Kirby was hanged, anatomised and dissected on Monday 18 December 1820 for murdering Burragong, alias ‘King Jack’ on 27 October 1820 at Muloobinba (Newcastle). As the Macquarie Law School’s Colonial Case Law database notes: “This is [the] earliest record we have found of a European being convicted and executed for the murder of an Aboriginal native. This trial took place more than 30 years after British colonisation began, but well before the Myall Creek executions in 1838. There were a number of similarities to R. v. Powell and others, 1799 above, but with a dramatically different legal result. Kirby was tried and executed not least because he was a convict and had killed an important indigenous chief and ally of the penal settlement. Ford argues that he was executed for his breaches of the protocols of diplomacy that existed outside the formal judicial framework, as much as for his breach of the law. The execution took place on 18 December 1820: Sydney Gazette, 23 December 1820. See also Court of Criminal Jurisdiction, Informations, Depositions and Related Papers, 1816–1824, State Records N.S.W., SZ792, p. 496 (no. 39); and see Lisa Ford, (Ph.D. Diss), “Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in Georgia and New South Wales 1788–1836,” (Columbia University 2007), and Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788–1836, (Harvard University Press, 2010).” R. v Kirby [1820], NSWKR 11; [1820] NSWSupC 11, Court of Criminal Jurisdiction, Wylde, J.A., 14 December 1820, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, (Division of Law, Macquarie University, 2011), https://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1820/r_v_kirby/, accessed 27 October 2020.

[139] Although the song this lyric comes from relates to the American context, the sentiment was transferable to the present discussion. See Buffy Sainte Marie, “My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying,” Little Wheel Spin and Spin, (New York: Vanguard, 1966).

© Copyright 2020 Michaela Ann Cameron