Two of Australia's most prominent writers have tackled the convict years of Australia's founding; Robert Hughes with
A Fatal Shore
, which covered the entire transportation era, and Thomas Keneally with
A Commonwealth of Thieves
. Keneally's book is poorly named, probably due to an editor trying to troll a response from Australian commentators: it should be called, Arthur Phillip's Sydney or Arthur Phillip's NSW. The book starts with Phillip taking command of the first fleet and ends with his return to England.
I was watching
Terry Jones' documentary The Barbarians
last night. Central to his narrative was the Romans, and in particular Julius Caeser, wrote the modern history of the Celts. The Romans viewed the world as a permanent us and them: divided by civilised (ie Roman) and barbarian (Celts, Germanics, Dacians, essentially anyone not Roman).
Jones' argued that the Celts were the technological equals of the Romans, they had a calendar that was more accurate, they had roads for wheeled traffic and they traded across Europe including with Romans. The Celts were a wealthy decentralised iron age society that could not match the centralised authoritarian Roman military machine.
Caesar's destruction of the Celts at Alésia destroyed their ruling class and their druids, effectively stamping out their culture and history from modern knowledge. Jones' argues that our understanding of the Celts largely comes from Roman texts which were skewed by the Roman world-view.
The Aboriginal people have a similar issue, much of the modern understanding of the Aboriginal culture and history was written by late 19thC and early 20thC Australians who had rather repugnant views on race. Like the Celts found out, it is hard to get a fair or even truthful record in such an environment.
The irony is, it appears that the first fleeters didn't have the same issues with the Aboriginal people that the late 19thC Australians did. Phillip for instance was a man of the enlightenment. The other issue the initial settlements faced was permanent hunger and the worry of being overwhelmed by the numbers of Eora who were very effective in warfare despite not having gunpowder or sails.
There was plenty of pilfering from both sides, Europeans coveted the Aboriginal fizgigs which were specialised fishing spears. The Aboriginals in turn covered iron hatchets which were a massive leap in technology for them. Bennelong was actually given a shield of tin - which gave him military supremacy amongst the Eora.
The northern Eora seemed to have come to a kind of acceptance of the European presence despite the English having a policy of
terra nullus
. Sydney and Parramatta were established without any attempt to procure property rights from the Eora. From Kenneally's writing it appeared that this set up a blood debt between the Europeans and the northern Eora.
The Eora legal system was one of blood debt and differed slightly from the English system of punishments which included lashing and hanging. Fueds of a smaller nature were solved by non-lethal spearing or violence in order to extract the blood that would serve as payment for the transgression. Nearly each time Phillip saw Bennelong after he had been away Bennelong carried new scars that were part of the blood debt legal system.
Bennelong managed to lure Arthur Phillip to Manly where Phillip was speared by Willemering as part of the blood debt for the land, fish and animals taken. The spear went right through Phillip's shoulder and one of the marines had to snap it off to get Phillip into the boat and back to Sydney Cove.
Phillip, unlike the Romans, did not go on a rampage in return, he acted in an Enlightenment manner. Which is ironic as much later on after McEntyre's spearing he demanded the heads of the first two Eora seen and the capture of ten other Eora to be placed in chains. The Marines found this distasteful and were happy when circumstances got in the way of them carrying out this duty.
John McEntyre was the leading huntsman in the settlement and had a list of transgressions against the Eora, some real in European eyes, others a bit odd as they were transgressions against dreamtime ritual. A southern Eoran carradhy, Pemulwuy, decided that McEntyre should die.
Pemulwuy speared him in the lung. The Aboriginal technologies extended to covering their spears with ground up stone and shell that was held to the tip of the spear by eucalypt gum. This coupled with a spear design that made the tip hard to get out of the body generally meant death. McEntyre recovered so that he could walk around, before his lung collapsed from stone and shell pieces.
This points out a difference in the relations between the Europeans and the Eora. The southern Eora, led by Pemulwuy, and the Dharug who lived in what we call Sydney's western suburbs today, did not accept the presence of the Europeans.
The biggest issue facing the first fleeters was starvation. Even with the continuing arrival of other ships the government stores got smaller and smaller, and the rations shrunk and shrunk. It is hard to believe, but the first fleeters in Sydney and Parramatta suffered from scurvy.
Life was tenuous. The dehabilitating effects of the lack of food led to other issues as many of the convicts were too weak to work productively which hampered the ability to collect crops and to build permanent shelters. Another burden was that each new convict ship tended to offload sick convicts who had to have food spent on them before they could be productive - if they didn't die first.
Despite these issues by the time Phillip left Sydney the new colony of New South Wales was established as a permanent settlement - something which was in doubt for a period. There were private farms, land grants and merchants which would become the solid basis for the NSW economy during the transportation era.
Keneally's book is a well researched and well written book of Arthur Phillip's time as Governor of NSW. Keneally writes in a fast pace with a gripping narrative. It is well worth a read.
