ABORIGINES, COMMANDANTS AND CONVICTS: THE NEWCASTLE PENAL SETTLEMENT
by David Andrew Roberts
For around twenty years from 1804, the penal
settlement on the Hunter River at Newcastle spearheaded the English
takeover of the Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and Hunter Valley districts.
State controlled settlements like that at Newcastle were frontlines
in the strategic and military invasion of Aboriginal land, opening
the doors for a rapacious imperial capitalism that would forcibly
dispossess and decimate Aboriginal society. The concentration
of large numbers of felons in settlements such as Newcastle placed
considerable strain on local Aboriginal populations, and posed
significant problems for those administrators charged with maintaining
law and order. The following notes summarise the complex and multifarious
relationships between Aborigines and Europeans on the Newcastle
penal settlement, using the settlement records that are listed
in the Bibliography under "Newcastle
Convict Settlement".
The character and tone of race relations around
Newcastle were informed by a number of key forces and circumstances.
As elsewhere on the early frontiers of settlement in colonial
NSW, the first contacts were prefaced by a demographic and cultural
catastrophe immediately proceeding the arrival of Europeans. A
devastating virgin soil outbreak of smallpox among Australian
Aborigines, witnessed by the First Fleet on the shores of Sydney
Harbour in 1789, probably killed up to one-third of the population
of the Newcastle-Lake Macquarie region. Though Aboriginal smallpox
did not originate with Europeans, there is no doubt the disaster
plunged Aboriginal society into a serious and decisive crisis.
Historians are only beginning to comprehend the social and cultural
aftermath of the epidemics, though it can be said with certainty
that smallpox weakened Aboriginal resistance to European conquest,
and was a key factor shaping Aboriginal responses to the arrival
of Europeans.
Another factor pertinent to the character of
race relations was the penal nature of the European establishment,
which in the case of Newcastle was particularly harsh. From its
beginnings, Newcastle was a "place for the reception of desperate
characters", originally thirty-four Irish convicts implicated
in the Castle Hill uprising of 1804, and thereafter a place of
secondary punishment for those exiled by the Sydney magistrates,
the Criminal Court or the Governor. Newcastle was infamous as
a place of deprivation and hardship, epitomised by the gruelling
routines of coal mining, lime-burning, timber-cutting and public
works programs endured by the convicts. The population of early
Newcastle was overworked, inadequately fed, poorly housed, barely
clothed and harshly punished (Turner
1973: 13-34). With the exception of a few officials, soldiers
and their families, the local population was almost exclusively
convict and predominantly male, all precariously isolated from
the safety, comforts, indulgences and opportunities of life around
Sydney. It was not an environment capable of engendering amity
and respect toward local Aboriginal society, nor was it a model
of civilised society likely to endear itself to Aboriginal observers.
The relationships between Aborigines and Europeans
at Newcastle were, on the whole, relatively harmonious. The first
Newcastle Commandant, Lt. Charles Menzies, forged a relationship
"on the most friendly terms" with Newcastle Aborigines,
assisted by Bungaree, who was victualled from the government stores
during the early months in the expectation that "should a
misunderstanding unfortunately take place he [Bungaree] will be
sure to reconcile them" (Menzies
to King, 1 July 1804). The later Commandants managed to maintain
the ordered relationship, still evident when Governor Macquarie
inspected the settlement in 1818 and 1821. As a rule, communication
between convicts and Aborigines on the settlement would have been
discouraged, but probably could not have been prevented without
giving some offence or provocation to Aboriginal people. Clearly,
Aborigines welcomed the opportunities for trade and material acquisition.
While convict labourers shovelled the ancient middens into lime
kilns on Stockton Beach, Aborigines traded meat and fish for blankets
and clothing (Harris
1961: 109-110.). The Newcastle settlement became a principal
site of cross-cultural trade that was quickly and firmly embedded
in the Aboriginal economy.
However, these mostly peaceful transactions were
fraught with tensions, arising from misunderstandings and misdealings
on both sides. Commandant Morisset reported in 1820 that Aborigines
were "sometimes both troublesome and formidable" (Morisset
to Bigge, 17 January 1820). Most disturbances and instances
of violence occurred outside the main settlement. In 1804, for
example, escaped convicts attempting to make their way to Sydney
murdered the father of Bungaree "in a most brutal manner"
(Menzies to
King, 30 April 1804). The small sawyer parties felling iron
bark and gum upriver from the settlement from 1804 frequently
clashed with local Aborigines, and had to be armed for their own
protection. As early as November 1804, a convict was "severely
beat" and a rifle stolen (Menzies
to King, 5 November 1804, 28
November 1804). Attacks on the timber-getting parties were
still occurring in Morisset's time (Morisset
to Bigge, 17 January 1820; Macquarie
Journal, 31 July 1818). Similarly, there were problems on
the small farms established at Paterson's and Wallis' Plains after
1812. Despite the presence of military detachments, the settlers
were "annoyed" by Aborigines during the corn season
"when they steal large quantities", though they also
assisted in bringing in the harvest (Harris to Bigge, 17 January
1820; Allen to Bigge,
21 January 1820).
Most of the conflict and violence arose from
the decision to allow Aborigines to act as trackers and apprehenders
of escaped convicts. Desertion was rampant throughout the life
of the Newcastle penal settlement, and the services of Aborigines
in tracking escapees and returning them to the settlement was
invaluable. Under Commandant James Wallis (June 1816 to December
1818) it was a common for gangs of around a dozen men to desert
during the night, surviving for up to three months in the bush
(Evans to Bigge, 18
January 1820). Wallis had learnt the value of Aboriginal guides
during his campaigns against the peoples on the Hawkesbury in
1816, and at Newcastle he actively encouraged Aborigines to act
as trackers and hunters of escapees. Working in groups, Aborigines
apprehended the convicts, stripped them naked and brought them
into the settlement, and were rewarded with tobacco, blankets
and similar items. Those convicts not brought in by Aborigines
were generally driven to return voluntarily on account of a hostile
reception. Others were presumed to have been killed by Aborigines,
probably in retaliation for some offence given at the settlement
(Evans to Bigge, 19
January 1820). "I consider all this fortunate for the
Settlement", Commandant Wallis wrote (Wallis
to Campbell, 24 August 1816).
The Newcastle Commandants used the terror of
Aboriginal attacks to prevent desertion, and were prepared to
accept the death of escaped convicts without consequence to the
Aborigines, for the sake of maintaining order on the settlement.
Commissioner John Thomas Bigge praised the use of Aborigines at
Newcastle in his landmark report into the state of the colony
of New South Wales, and made key recommendations relating to the
use of Aborigines in the administration of the convict system
that would thereafter be implemented on penal establishments at
Bathurst, Wellington Valley, Port Macquarie and Moreton Bay (Bigge
1822: 117, 186). There is little "history from below"
in the way of convict records, but it can be expected that the
role adopted by Aborigines as allies of the officials weighed
heavily on the convicts, breeding a hatred and resentment that
lingered long. That enmity was manifested and intensified by the
willingness of the Commandants to punish convicts for assaulting
Aborigines. In August 1819, Morisset had the convict Henry Langton
receive 75 lashes for "Cutting a black man with a knife".
The following year, three convicts shared 100 lashes for "Inhumanly
ill treating and cutting a black native and intimidating him against
bringing in bushrangers." In one remarkable incident of early
Newcastle history, King Burrigan was fatally wounded during an
attempt to arrest an escaped convict, John Kirby. Kirby was tried
and executed in Sydney in December 1820.
While the broader story of race relations in
the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie region must be seen in the context
of what was effectively a process of land theft, the tensions
and tragedies arising from that fundamental conflict were not
clearly evident during the years of the Newcastle convict settlement.
The penal establishment was a confined and reasonably well supervised
operation, posing little threat to the freedom and survival of
local Aboriginal peoples. Indeed, the penal function of the settlement,
requiring isolation and strict government/military control, stalled
a more intensive exploitation of the region by private capitalists
for almost two decades. It was after the closure of the settlement,
with the onset of an effusive, unregulated and extremely destructive
private pastoral frontier, that the violence and dispossession
ensued. This is discussed in the following contribution on Dispossession
and Violence by Greg Blyton.
David Andrew Roberts
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