Australia and the World Past and Present

Pemulwuy is not a household name here in Victoria.

Indigenous figures from Australia’s “frontier wars” are not widely known.

There has been a lot of historical research into these figures in the past few decades.

When their stories do emerge, their exploits may become known locally, or within one state. But crossing state borders and rising to national awareness seems to be much harder.

At the time of the arrival of the First Fleet, various clans were living in the Sydney basin. Today they are known as the Eora nations.

The larger language group is the Dharug. Pemulwuy was a Dharug man, of the Bidjigal clan. He spoke a Dharug dialect and he probably frequented the present-day locations of Campbelltown, the Georges River, Bankstown and Botany Bay. At times he would have had contact with the coastal Eora clans and at other times hew would have moved further in land, having contact with the inland Dharug.

Arthur Philip had been sent out to Botany Bay to establish a penal colony.

Phillip soon found that Botany Bay wasn’t going to be suitable for permanent settlement.

So his party explored further to the north and decided to settle in Port Jackson.

Relations between Aboriginals and the new arrivals were relatively peaceful early on.

It is likely that the indigenous people around Port Jackson had expected that these strange white fellows to depart after a time.

Phillip was under orders to maintain peaceful relations with the indigenous population.

Phillip and his fellow countrymen faced many challenges.

They set about trying to grow crops in this new land. They relied on knowledge and experience that had been successful on the other side of the world, in a very different environment.

There were early crop failures.

A ship that had been sent to resupply the settlement had been wrecked.

Phillip sent one of his ships to Cape Town in order to retrieve more supplies.

Settlers were put on rations. Convicts, marines and officials were all put on equal rations. This caused resentment among the marines and officials. They believed that as free men, they were entitled to be better treatment than convicts. Phillip was trying to ensure survival. In time, it would seen as one of the earliest examples of an emerging egalitarian ethos.

The whole situation was rather precarious. Phillip was in charge of soldiers and of convicts. Phillip had keep order. He had to maintain the motivation of the troops. Many of the convicts had been transported for petty offenses. Others were hardened criminals. All laboured under trying conditions. The rations issue was a particularly bad flashpoint. Phillip had to ensure that the marines didn’t rise up in mutiny.

But to an extent, they were all in the same boat. They were in a new land, trying to work out how to survive. They had to procure food and find permanent sources of water. They cut timber and established new dwellings.

Some Aboriginals (including Bennelong) were kidnapped by the new arrivals. Their captors wanted them to adopt the English language and English customs. In the first few years of the colony, the Aboriginals generally kept themselves apart from the settlement. There were instances of interactions and of trade, but generally they kept to themselves.

Phillip received a spear in his shoulder, apparently in response to the kidnapping issue.

When the settler’s crops failed, they fell more heavily upon kangaroo meat and fishing for their subsistence.

Scurvy had set in.

Pemulwuy would have been about 40 by this stage.

He was known partly for his physical attributes.

One of his eyes was discolored. He was also said to have had a damaged foot. Nevertheless, these didn’t hamper his mobility or his ability to hunt.

The settlers probably seemed like a very sorry bunch. They lumbered about in their heavy clothing. They obviously didn’t understand how the country around them worked. They didn’t know the subtleties of where and how to procure bush tucker. They appeared to be starving.

16 months after the arrival of the First Fleet, a smallpox epidemic broke out.

Governor Phillip thought that more than half the indigenous population died from the disease.

Settlers were fencing off land and encroaching on traditional hunting grounds.

Livestock was damaging yams.

The Europeans were taking huge hauls of fish, which outraged Aboriginals.

In 1790 the Second Fleet arrived. It became evident to the Aboriginals that rather than departing soon, more and more of the English were coming to claim the land.

In December 1790 John McIntyre (Governor Phillip’s game keeper) was out on a hunting party with a few other men when he was speared by Pemulwuy.

Phillip had had enough. He ordered the execution and beheading of 10 Aboriginals. He was persuaded to change his orders.

In 1792 Phillip returned to England for health reasons and never came back.

New towns were springing up some 30 kilometers from the original settlement. It was clear that far from being a temporary population confined to a cordoned area, these people were intent on spreading through ever more territories.

Pemulwuy and his men made raids on Parramatta and the Hawesbury River area in 1792, killing livestock.

In 1795 a convict was speared in what is now Chippendale.

In the same year workers were attacked at Botany Bay.

In 1797 attacks took place northeast of Parramatta, resulting in the death of some settlers.

Things culminated in March, during the so-called Battle of Parramatta.

Different clans had gathered to battle the English militia.

It was surely a strategic failure that the Aboriginals engaged the militia during the day in open combat. It was spears against bullets.

Pemulwuy was shot, but he did not die. He was taken to hospital and put into leg irons. He soon escaped. This further contributed to Pemulwuy’s reputation as a carradhy or “clever man”.

It seemed that Pemulway had some ability to unite various Aboriginal clans against the British.

The colony had a new leader – Governor King. He issued a dead or alive order for the capture of Pemulwuy.

In 1802, Pemulwuy was shot, killed and beheaded.

Pemulwuy’s head was sent to that early explorer of Australia, Joseph Banks, who died in 1820.

So whose story is Pemulwuy’s. Does his story belong to the Bidjigal clan? Or to all Dharug nations? Or to all of those early Aborignals active in resistance across the continent during the frontier wars. Or can his story be taken on by all Australians?

The story of Pemulwuy is a story of the Sydney area, a story of the New South Wales Colony, a story of English colonisation and a chapter in the ever-evolving story of modern Australia.