Incidents between Aboriginal people in NSW and the British colonisers 1770-1792
Stage 2: British Colonisation of Australia
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Incidents between Aboriginal people in NSW and the British colonisers 1770-92
This is a chronology of significant events in cross-cultural relations between Indigenous and colonial settler societies. The aim is to provide teachers with facts linked to source documents and contemporary images to enable more detailed research.
Before 1770
- In what is now the Sydney area a community of extended families or clans (gal) live as hunter-fisher-gatherers beside rich saltwater environments. These Indigenous inhabitants call themselves Eora (pronounced yura), meaning simply ‘the people’.
- Theirs is a canoe culture. The bays, coves, creeks and rivers are crowded with men and women, fishing and coming and going in their fragile bark canoes.
- In today’s terms, their territory spreads from the Georges River and Botany Bay in the south to Pittwater at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River in the north, and west to Parramatta.
1770
April
Two of the Natives of New Holland, Advancing to Combat
Thomas Chambers, after Sydney Parkinson (c. 1745–71)
Plate XXV11 in Sydney Parkinson, Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas,
London, 1773
- 29 April: Shouting Warra warra wai (‘go away’), two brave Gweagal (Fire Clan) warriors from the south shore of Botany Bay, oppose the landing of Lieutenant James Cook and two boats from the English ship HM Bark Endeavour at Kundul (Kurnell). Cook fires three times and, though wounded by small shot, the men throw two ‘darts’ or spears and run off.
- Cook and the wealthy amateur botanist Joseph Banks throw beads, ribbons and cloth into a bark hut where some small children are hiding and take away ‘forty or fifty’ spears. All except one are fishing spears with four prongs headed with sharp fish bones.
- Sources: (1) Entry for 28 April 1770 (civil time), in Joseph Banks Endeavour Journal, South Seas Voyaging Accounts, National Library of Australia. (2) Entry for 29 April 1770 (ship’s time), in James Cook’s Journal of Remarkable Occurrences aboard His Majesties Bark Endeavour, 1768–1771, South Seas Voyaging Accounts, National Library of Australia.
- On the north shore of Botany Bay at Kooriwall (La Perouse), Yadyer and other members of the Kameygal (Spear Clan) see a ‘big bird’ entering the bay, but realise it is ‘a large canoe with people on board’.
- Source: Samuel Bennett. 1865:83-4. The History of Australian Discovery and Colonisation, Sydney 1865:83-4. 0
May
- 1 May: Cook writes in his journal: ‘Last night Torby [Forby] Sutherland seaman departed this life and in the AM his body was buried a shore at the watering place which occasioned my calling the south point of this Bay after his name.’ Forby Sutherland from the Orkney Islands is the first known European buried in Eastern Australia.
- Source: Cook’s Journal.
- Many years later (about 1850), Sally Mettymong, aged about 80, points out Forby Sutherland’s grave at Kurnell. ‘White man buried there’, she tells Elias Laycock. Sally is the sister of Cooman, grandson of the man that Aborigines say threw the spear at James Cook.
- Source: Elias Laycock in Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 10, 1924: 5:275.
- 6 May: Endeavour leaves Botany Bay and sails northwards, passing an opening that Cook names Port Jackson, the present site of Sydney. Cook’s week in Botany Bay will lead to European settlement in Australia.
1788
January
Botany Bay; Sirius & Convoy going in: Supply & Agents Division in the Bay. 21 January 1788
William Bradley (c. 1757–1833)
Watercolour
Plate 9 in The Journal of Lieutenant William Bradley of HMS Sirius, A Voyage to New South Wales, December 1786 – May 1792
ML Safe 1/14, Mitchell Library, Sydney
- 18 January: After a voyage of eight months from Portsmouth in England, 11 sailing ships, carrying officers, sailors, male and female convicts and marines and their wives assemble at Botany Bay. To avoid a large group of Gweagal at Kundul, Captain Arthur Phillip, the first governor of a planned convict colony, lands at Kamay on the north shore. Aboriginal people show Phillip where to find water.
- 22 January: Phillip takes two cutters and a longboat to explore Port Jackson. Impressed by young warriors at Kayeemy, he renames it Manly Cove. While the English are eating, Phillip draws a circle around them in the sand. This ‘line in the sand’, secured by marines armed with muskets, sets up a physical and symbolic barrier between the Indigenous people and the English at their first meeting.
- 23 January: The English party spends two nights in tents on the beach at Cadi (Camp Cove, near Watsons Bay), heartland of the harbour-dwelling Cadigal (Grass Tree Clan). Phillip decides to abandon Botany Bay and establish the settlement at the spacious harbour of Port Jackson.
- At Botany Bay, the red-coated British marines, who carry long-barrelled Brown Bess muskets, awe the Gweagal and Kameygal.
- ‘I am well convinced that they know and dread the superiority of our arms,‘ writes Surgeon John White, adding, ‘from the first, they carefully avoided a soldier, or any person wearing a red coat, which they seem to have marked as a fighting venture’. White sees Botany Bay warriors painted with stripes across the chest and back ‘which at some little distance appears not unlike our soldiers’ cross belts’.
- Source: John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, London: Debrett, 1790:118. John White’s Journal is available online as a Project Gutenberg of Australia e-Book.
- 26 January: As the British convoy leaves, the French ships Boussole and Astrolabe, commanded by Comte Jean de La Pérouse, enter Botany Bay.
- That night all the British ships are at anchor in Warrane (Sydney Cove). ‘The natives on shore hollered Walla Walla Wha or something to that effect and brandished their spears as if vexed at the approach,’ writes Robert Brown, captain of the storeship Fishburn.
- Source: Robert Brown, Journal, 26 January 1788, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 11:407.
- 27 January: The settlement begins. Convicts are sent ashore to cut down trees, clear the ground and pitch tents. The Indigenous people melt into the bush. ‘None of them has appeared since we anchored,’ writes Arthur Bowes Smyth.
- Source: Arthur Bowes Smyth, The Journal of Arthur Bowes Smyth, Surgeon, Lady Penrhyn, 1787–1789, Sydney: Australian Document Library, 1979: 64.
Arthur Bowes Smyth’s Lady Penrhyn Journal, MSS 955, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney. Partial transcript.
February
- 4 February: Eora resistance against the British begins. It is centred in the territory of the Cameragal on the north shore at Kayeemy (Manly) near the Heads of Port Jackson. They throw stones at ships’ fishing boats, but seem to ‘threaten throwing their lances [spears]’.
- Source: Bowes Smyth 1979: 66.
- 7 February: The French explorers at Kooriwall build a timber stockade, fearing the ‘Indians of New Holland’ will burn their new longboats. ‘They even throw darts at us immediately after receiving our presents and our caresses’, writes La Pérouse in one of his last letters.
- Source: Jean F G De La Pérouse, A Voyage Round the World Performed in the Years 1785, 1786, 1787 and 1788 by the Boussole and Astrolabe, London: A Hamilton 1799:505.
- 9 February: The French ‘fire on the natives at Botany Bay to keep them quiet’ and ‘once or twice’ more for stealing, according to navy lieutenant William Bradley of HMS Sirius. Marine captain John Shea says the French fire on them ‘often’, but marine captain Watkin Tench claims none are killed.
- Sources: William Bradley 1969: 81, 84; John Shea to Ralph Clark, MS C219, Mitchell Library, Sydney, 1981:100; Watkin Tench, A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay, London: J. Debrett, 1789:99.
- 18 February: Convicts steal Aboriginal weapons, provoking further conflict. They make money by selling spears, shields and gum to sailors on the transport ships. There is a good market for these implements in London. Eora, writes David Collins, are ‘accustomed to leave [them] under the rocks or loose and scattered upon the beaches’.
- Source: David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, in The Strand, [1798] 1975:13. Available online as a Project Gutenberg in Australia e-Book:
http://freeread.com.au/ebooks/e00010.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12565
- The Eora also want to acquire the metal implements brought by the British. Men who land at Baringhoe (Garden Island) are ‘peppered with small shot’ when they take two iron shovels and a pickaxe.
- Source: William Bradley 1969: 84–5.
- 10 March: The French ships sail out of Botany Bay for the Pacific and are not heard of again for many years.
- April 22–8: Phillip follows the river running west from Yerroulbin (Long Nose Point, Balmain), to Burramatta (Parramatta), finding good farmland and many signs of Eora life, including burning trees, bark huts, campsites, a chewed root and trees with climbing notches.
May
- 18 May: A boat party meets Aboriginal men who ‘seemed to be badly off for food not having any fish’. At another cove, a family is seen chewing ‘a root much like a fern’. The British notice that fish are scarce in winter, and roasted fern roots are a normal part of the diet.
- Source: William Bradley 1969: 108; Ralph Clark, Letterbook, 3 April 1787 – 30 Setember 1791, MS ZIC 221, ML Safe 1/15, Mitchell Library, Sydney; The Journal and Letters of Ralph Clark, 1787–1792, Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1981: 267.
- 21 May: Convicts William Ayres and Peter Burn are attacked while collecting greens at Woolloomooloo. Ayres stumbles into the camp at Sydney Cove with a spear sticking from his back. Burn is not seen again.
– Aborigines attack a sailor collecting plants
‘Port Jackson Painter’
Port Jackson Drawing — no. 44
Natural History Museum, London
- 30 May: The bodies of convicts William Okey and Samuel Davis, killed while cutting rushes for thatching in the swamps, are found near Gomora (Darling Harbour). Okey has been speared and beaten to death and Davis killed by a blow to the forehead. This retribution followed the killing of an Eora man in a canoe near Cow-an (now Peacocks Point, Balmain), the farm of marine commander Major Robert Ross. William Bradley writes:
- I have no doubt but that this Native having been murdered occasioned their seeking revenge & which proved fatal to those who were not concerned. They have attacked our people where they met them unarmed, but that did not happen until they had been ill treated by us in the lower part of the Harbour & fired upon by the French.
- Source: William Bradley 1969: 111-112.
- 31 May: Phillip takes 11 men to Botany Bay to search for the killers of the rushcutters. Returning along the coast near Boora (Long Bay) he has a friendly meeting with 200 armed men (and many women and children). They show him where to find fresh water and indicate that a toadstool picked up by one of the British is bad to eat.
- 24 June: A convict reports seeing four Eora dying in the bush ‘who made signs for something to eat, as if they were perishing from hunger’. Phillip tells Sir Joseph Banks: ‘The Natives [are] very distressed for food, several have been seen dying in the Woods, & visibly for want of food’.
- Source: The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay London: Stockdale [1789] 1970:65; Phillip to Banks, 2 July 1788, Bonwick Papers, Box 26, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
July
- 3 July: Following this encounter, Phillip orders that no group of less than six armed men are to go into the bush, ‘on account of the natives being so numerous’. He says he has been determined, since landing, ‘not to fire on the natives but in a case of absolute necessity’.
- Source: Phillip to the Marquess of Landsdowne, 3 July 1788, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 11: 411.
- 14 July: At Camp Cove, Bradley finds a man and two children eating fern root. They ‘appeared to be starving … The Man had many sores about him [and] was really a miserable object … He eagerly ate some salt beef that was given to him’.
- These people, and the sick seen on 24 June, might be the first to suffer from the introduced smallpox virus, which was to sweep through the Eora population one year later.
- Source: William Bradley 1969: 117.
- 18 July: Phillip estimates there are about 1500 Eora living in the area from ten miles north to ten miles south of Sydney Cove. The ships of the First Fleet have brought 1487 European prisoners and gaolers to the settlement.
- Source: Phillip to Lord Sydney, 18 July 1788, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 11:133.
- Twice during July, Eora attack and beat the crew of the fishing boat from HMS Sirius. ‘The temptation was great, for the quantity caught was considerable, & fish is now very scarce,’ he writes. Attacks against unarmed convict stragglers in the bush are frequent.
- Source: Phillip to Lord Sydney, 10 July 1788, MS CO 201/3, Public Record office, London.
- Collins records frequent contact between the convicts and Eora during July 1788:
- In one of the adjoining coves [Woolloomooloo or Darling Harbour] resided a family of them, who were visited by large parties of the convicts of both sexes on those days in which they were not wanted for labour, where they danced and sung with apparent good humour, and received such presents as they could afford to make them; but none of them would venture back [to Sydney Cove] with their visitors.
- Source: David Collins 1975: 29.
August
- 17 August: Ships’ boats count the number of Aboriginal people in canoes around Port Jackson. The tally from this census is 67 canoes, with 94 men, 34 women and nine children. This is despite the fact that, as Phillip observes, ‘It was the Season in which they make their new Canoes, and large parties were known to be in the woods for that purpose’.
- Source: Phillip to Lord Sydney, 28 September 1788, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 11:191-2.
- 21 August: Some warriors land at Tarra (Dawes Point) and steal a goat near the hospital at The Rocks, taking it by canoe towards Long Cove (Darling Harbour).
September
- 25 September: Eora throw spears at a fishing boat crew when they only give them small fish and refuse to give them a large fish they had caught.
October
- 2 October: Cooper Handley, a convict, is killed near Botany Bay when he strays from a marine guard while in search of ‘greens’ – edible plants to ward off scurvy.
- Source: Memorandum of the Transactions of a Voyage from England to Botany Bay 1787–1793: A First Fleet Journal by John Easty, Sydney: Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales, 1965: 106.
- 24 October: When Eora throw spears at a convict near the camp, Phillip chases them and orders his troops to open fire – ‘it having become absolutely necessary to compel them to keep at a greater distance from the settlement’.
- Source: David Collins 1975: 35-6.
November
- 2 November: After crop failures at Sydney Cove, Phillip chooses the site for a new settlement. It is on fertile land at the head of the Parramatta River. An earthwork fort is built on the ridge and manned by a detachment of marines. Phillip does not seek permission from the Burramattagal (Eel Place Clan). He calls the land Rose Hill.
- 31 December: On the governor’s orders, an Aboriginal man is captured at Manly Cove, roped by the neck and taken to Sydney by boat. The other men throw spears, stones and firesticks, but the British open fire with muskets before escaping. At first he is called Manly and then by his real name Arabanoo. For three months he is locked up at night in a hut.
1789
March
- 3 March: A gang of convicts from the Brick Fields (present Chippendale) sets off on the Aboriginal path to Kamay (now Botany Road) to steal spears and fishing tackle. One man is killed and seven wounded when the Eora attack. Forced to witness the flogging of the survivors, Arabanoo reacts with ‘disgust and terror’.
- Source: Watkin Tench 1793:17.
April
- A deadly epidemic of smallpox breaks out among the Eora and spreads like wildfire, infecting hundreds of men, women and children. Sores erupt all over their bodies and death generally follows. Newton Fowell, a midshipman on HMS Sirius, writes to his father from Batavia (now Jakarta):
- … the Small Pox raged among them with great Fury and carried off a Great Number of them. Every boat that went down the Harbour found them laying Dead on the Beaches and in the Caverns of Rock forsaken by the rest as soon as the Disease is discovered on them.
- Two young children, Nanbarry, a Cadigal, and Boorong (at first called Abaroo), from the Burramattagal, are brought into the settlement suffering from smallpox and recover after treatment. There is no satisfactory explanation of how the smallpox was introduced.
- Source: Newton Fowell to his father, Batavia, 31 July 1790, in N. Irvine (ed.), Sirius Letters, Sydney: The Fairfax Library, 1988: 113.
Nanbree [Nanbarry]
Thomas Watling (b.c.1762)
Pencil
Watling Drawing — no. 31
Natural History Museum, London
- Horrified by the decaying bodies scattered around the harbour of Port Jackson, Arabanoo cries out ‘All dead! All dead!’ and hangs his head in silence. Arabanoo nurses Boorong and Nanbarry through their illness, but dies of smallpox on 18 May 1789.
- From a clan of perhaps fifty people, only three Cadigal survive: Colebee (Sea Eagle), the sole initiated man, his nephew Nanbree or Nanbarry, and their clansman Caruey (White Cockatoo).
- Source: David Collins 1975: 496.
June
- 6 June: Visiting Broken Bay, Phillip finds a woman suffering from smallpox. He finds the entrance to a river the Darug call the Deerubin (which he names the Hawkesbury) and rows up it for 30 kilometres.
- 26 June: Phillip again goes to Broken Bay and sails up the Deerubin for about 100 kilometres until stopped by a waterfall at the Grose, near Richmond Hill. Many of the people Phillip sees along the river banks are suffering from smallpox.
October
- 30 October: Phillip writes in an official dispatch:
The natives still refuse to come amongst us … I now doubt whether it will be possible to get any of these people to remain with us, in order to get their language, without using force. - Bradley writes:Latterly they have attacked almost every person who has met with them that has not had a Musquet and sometimes endeavoured to surprise some who had.
Governor Phillip’s Instructions from the Government of King George III You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an Intercourse with the |
Taking of Colbee & Benalon, 25 Novr. 1789
William Bradley (c.1757–1833)
Watercolour
From William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales, December 1786–May 1792,
ML Safe 1/14, Mitchell Library, Sydney
November
- Governor Phillip decides to capture more Aboriginal men. He has instructions from King George III to ‘endeavour, by every possible means, to open an Intercourse with the
Savages[sic] Natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all Our Subjects to live in amity and kindness with them’. No Aboriginal people have voluntarily visited the Sydney Cove settlement since February 1788.
- 25 November: After several attempts, Lieutenant Bradley goes to Manly Cove and abducts Wollarawarre Bennelong, a Wangal from the south shore of the Parramatta River, and Colebee of the Cadigal. They are taken to Sydney, where their legs are shackled.
December
- 12 December: Colebee escapes by chewing through the ropes that hold his leg irons.
Native named Ben-nel-Long.
As painted when angry after Botany Bay Colebee was wounded
‘Port Jackson Painter’
Watling — no 41,
Natural History Museum, London
- 25 December: Bennelong adapts to his captivity and on Christmas Day 1789 dines on turtle with Phillip and his officers at the governor’s house. He is about 26 years of age and is described as a ‘merry fellow’, always singing and joking. His skin is pitted by the marks of smallpox, from which he has recovered, as well as initiation and battle scars. ‘His powers of mind were certainly above mediocrity,’ observes Tench. He is taught to raise his glass and toast ‘The King’, which he afterwards associates with a glass of wine.
1790
April
- In April the shackle is taken off Bennelong’s leg and he walks about with Governor Phillip. Bennelong, who has recovered from the contagion, tells Phillip that ‘one-half of those who inhabit this part of the country’ died from smallpox.
- Source: Bennelong, quoted in Phillip to Lord Sydney, 13 February 1790, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 11: 308.
May
- 3 May: At two o’clock in the morning, Bennelong pretends he is sick, strips off his English clothes, and jumps the paling fence to freedom in the bush.
September
- 7 September: Bennelong asks Phillip to join him and others feasting on the blubber of a whale that has been washed ashore at Manly Cove. When Phillip arrives, he sees Bennelong place a long timber spear on the ground. Suddenly, an older man snatches up the weapon, fixes it in his woomera (spear-thrower) and hurls it with great force, striking the governor’s right shoulder and protruding through his back. Phillip is badly wounded, but Surgeon Balmain removes the spear shaft and he soon recovers.
- 14 September: The spearman is identified by Maugoran, a Burramattagal elder, as Willemering, a koradgee or clever-man from the Garigal at Pittwater, 30 kilometres north of Sydney.
- Through his daughter Boorong, Maugoran expresses his ‘great dissatisfaction’ at the number of Europeans who had settled ‘in their former territories’ at Rose Hill (Parramatta). Phillip writes:
- If this man’s information can be depended on, the natives were very angry at so many people being sent to Rose-hill, certain it is that wherever our colonists fix themselves, the natives are obliged to leave that part of the country.
- Source: Watkin Tench, 1793: 61; Phillip quoted in John Hunter 1793: 468–9.
October
- 8 October: One month after the spearing and a friendly meeting with Phillip, Bennelong and his people ‘come in’ to the settlement. These two men have established a tenuous peace.
December
- 9 December: Pemulwuy, leader of the Bidjigal (River Flat Clan), ambushes and spears Governor Phillip’s convict game shooter John McEntire, who has been hunting near the Cooks River. Colebee and Bennelong establish alibis by visiting Phillip at Rose Hill.
- ‘This man [McEntire] had been suspected of having wantonly killed or wounded several of the natives in the course of his excursions after gain,’ writes Collins.
- Source: David Collins 1975:122
Pimbloy [Pemulwuy] Native of New Holland in a canoe of that country, 1804
Samuel John Neele (1758–1824)
Engraving dated 10 January 1804
Q80/18, Mitchell Library, Sydney
- 14 December: In response to the attack on McEntire, Phillip orders a military expedition under Watkin Tench, armed with hatchets and head bags, to kill six Eora men at Botany Bay and to capture two for public execution. The expedition is a failure.
- 28 December: Soldiers are sent after a group of Aboriginal people at Tarra (Dawes Point) who stole potatoes and threw a fishing spear at the gardener. The troops fire at men and women around a fire, killing at least one man, Bangai. A day or two later, when Phillip accuses Bennelong of robbing unarmed fishermen, he demands, ‘Who killed Bangai?’ and threatens revenge, stealing an iron hatchet as he leaves.
1791
January
- After the shooting of Bangai, Judge Advocate David Collins regrets that the British had not ‘yet been able to reconcile the natives to the deprivation of those parts of this harbour which we occupied’. He is well aware of the reasons for retaliation by the Eora:
- While they entertained the idea of our having dispossessed them of their residences, they must always consider us as enemies; and upon that principle they made a point of attacking the white people whenever opportunity and safety concurred.
- 20 January: John McEntire dies of his wounds.
February
- 8 February: Yemmerrawanne and another Eora youth (probably Ballooderry), leave the governor’s house for an initiation ceremony in Cameragal territory. Their front teeth are knocked out and they return wearing crowns of rushes, proud of their new status as men.
- Source: John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, London: John Stockdale, 1793: 506–7. A transcription of John Hunter’s work, with chapters by Arthur Phillip and P G King, is available in pdf format from SETIS (Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service) at the University of Sydney, Sydney: http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/hunhist.pdf
March
- March 7: Mrs. Elizabeth Macarthur talks about helping Colebee’s wife Daringa, who visits her in her wattle and daub hut beside the Tank Stream at Sydney Cove.
- Mrs. Coleby, whose name is Daringa, brought in a new born female infant of hers, for me to see … it was wrapp’d up in the soft bark of a Tree, a Specimen of which I have preserved, it is a kind of Mantle not much known in England, I fancy. I order’d something for the poor Woman to Eat, and had her taken proper care of for some little while, when she first presented herself to me she appear'd feeble and faint, she has since been regular in her visits. The Child thrives remarkably well and I discover a softness and gentleness of Manners in Daringa truly interesting.
- Source: Elizabeth Macarthur to Bridget Kingdon, 7 March 1791, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 11: 504.
Da-ring-ha, Colebee’s wife
Thomas Watling
Watling Drawing – no 31, Natural History Museum, London
- March: Bennelong and Colebee organise a carabbara or carribberie (corroboree) at Tubowgulle (Bennelong Point) for the Europeans. From this time on the Eora begin to frequent Sydney Town.
June
- 4 June: On the king’s birthday, Phillip officially renames Rose Hill with its indigenous name, Burramatta. The placename is derived from burra ‘eel’, and matta ‘place with water’. Parramatta is its English spelling.
Portrait of Balloderree [Ballooderry]
‘Port Jackson Painter’
Ink and watercolour
Watling Drawing – no. 58, Natural History Museum, London
- Also in June, Ballooderry (Leatherjacket Fish), the son of Maugoran (Fisher) and his wife Gooroobera (Firestick), of the Burramattagal, begins to barter fish with officers at Parramatta. After convicts maliciously sink his new canoe, Ballooderry retaliates by spearing and wounding a convict and is outlawed.
- Source: David Collins, 1975:137–8.
December
- 13 December: Bennelong tells Phillip that Ballooderry is gravely ill. He is treated at the General Hospital at the Rocks, but dies while being taken across the harbour in a canoe.
- 17 December: Ballooderry is buried in Governor Phillip’s garden (present Circular Quay precinct) in a cross-cultural funeral organised by Bennelong. His body is wrapped in an English jacket and blanket (in place of paperbark sheets) and laid to rest in his canoe with his spear, throwing-stick, pronged fishing spear and initiation waistband. Red-jacketed marines beat a drum tattoo while European spectators help fill in the grave with earth.
- Source: David Collins 1975: 499–502.
1792
December
- December 10: Bennelong and his young Wangal kinsman Yemmerrawanne board the storeship HMS Atlantic to sail out of the Eora world to England.
Yuremany [Yemmerrawanne], one of the first natives brought from New South Wales by Govr. Hunter and Captn. Waterhouse, c.1793
Artist unknown
Australian Aborigines, pre 1806
DGB 10 f.14, Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney