The History of Australia and New Zealand from 1606 to 1890 Read online

  Shortly after they had set sail from Botany Bay they observed a small opening in the land; but Cook did not stay to examine it, merely marking it on his chart as “Port Jackson,” in honour of his friend Sir George Jackson. The vessel still continued her course northward along the coast, till they anchored in Moreton Bay. After a short stay, they again set out towards the north, making a rough chart of the shores they saw. In this way they had sailed along thirteen hundred miles without serious mishap, when one night, at about eleven o’clock, they found the sea grow very shallow; all hands were quickly on deck, but before the ship could be turned she struck heavily on a sunken rock. No land was to be seen, and they therefore concluded that it was upon a bank of coral they had struck. The vessel seemed to rest upon the ridge; but, as the swell of the ocean rolled past, she bumped very heavily. Most of the cannons and other heavy articles were thrown overboard, and, the ship being thus lightened, they tried to float her off at daybreak. This they were unable to do; but, by working hard all next day, they prepared everything for a great effort at the evening tide, and had the satisfaction of seeing the rising waters float the vessel off. But now the sea was found to be pouring in through the leaks so rapidly that, even with four pumps constantly going, they could scarcely keep her afloat. They worked hard day and night, but the ship was slowly sinking, when, by the ingenious device of passing a sail beneath her and pulling it tightly, it was found that the leakage was sufficiently decreased to keep her from foundering. Shortly after, they saw land, which Captain Cook called “Cape Tribulation”. He took the vessel into the mouth of a small river, which they called the Endeavour, and there careened her. On examining the bottom, it was found that a great sharp rock had pierced a hole in her timbers, such as must inevitably have sent her to the bottom in spite of pumps and sails, had it not been that the piece of coral had broken off and remained firmly fixed in the vessel’s side, thus itself filling up the greater part of the hole it had caused. The ship was fully repaired; and, after a delay of two months, they proceeded northward along the coast to Cape York. They then sailed through Torres Strait, and made it clear that New Guinea and Australia are not joined.

  9. Subsequent Visits.—Several ships visited Australia during the next few years, but their commanders contented themselves with merely viewing the coasts which had already been discovered, and returned without adding anything new. In 1772 Marion, a Frenchman, and next year Furneaux, an Englishman, sailed along the coasts of Van Diemen’s Land. In 1777 Captain Cook, shortly before his death, anchored for a few days in Adventure Bay, on the east coast of Van Diemen’s Land. La Perouse, Vancouver, and D’Entrecasteaux also visited Australia, and, though they added nothing of importance, they assisted in filling in the details. By this time nearly all the coasts had been roughly explored, and the only great point left unsettled was, whether Van Diemen’s Land was an island or not.

  CHAPTER II.

  THE CONVICT SETTLEMENT AT SYDNEY, 1788-1800.

  1. Botany Bay.—The reports brought home by Captain Cook completely changed the beliefs current in those days with regard to Australia. From the time of Dampier it had been supposed that the whole of this continent must be the same flat and miserable desert as the part he described. Cook’s account, on the other hand, represented the eastern coast as a country full of beauty and promise. Now, it so happened that, shortly after Cook’s return, the English nation had to deal with a great difficulty in regard to its criminal population. In 1776 the United States declared their independence, and the English then found they could no longer send their convicts over to Virginia, as they had formerly done. In a short time the gaols of England were crowded with felons. It became necessary to select a new place Sirius war-ship, its tender the Supply, together with six transports for the convicts, and three ships for carrying the stores. Of the convicts, five hundred and fifty were men and two hundred and twenty were women. To guard these, there were on board two hundred soldiers. Captain Phillip was appointed Governor of the colony, Captain Hunter was second in command, and Mr. Collins went out as judge-advocate, to preside in the military courts, which it was intended to establish for the administration of justice. On the 18th, 19th, and 20th of January, 1788, the vessels arrived, one after another, in Botany Bay, after a voyage of eight months, during which many of the convicts had died from diseases brought on by so long a confinement.

  2. Port Jackson.—As soon as the ships had anchored in Botany Bay, convicts were landed and commenced to clear the timber from a portion of the land; but a day or two was sufficient to show the unsuitability of Botany Bay for such a settlement. Its waters were so shallow that the ships could not enter it properly, and had to lie near the Heads, where the great waves of the Pacific rolled in on them by night and day. Governor Phillip, therefore, took three boats, and sailed out to search for some more convenient harbour. As he passed along the coast he turned to examine the opening which Captain Cook had called Port Jackson, and soon found himself in a winding channel of water, with great cliffs frowning overhead. All at once a magnificent prospect opened on his eyes. A harbour, which is, perhaps, the most beautiful and perfect in the world, stretched before him far to the west, till it was lost on the distant horizon. It seemed a vast maze of winding waters, dotted here and there with lovely islets; its shores thickly wooded down to the strips of golden sand which lined the most charming little bays; and its broad sheets of rippling waters bordered by lines of dusky foliage. The scene has always been one of surpassing loveliness; but to those who filled the first boats that ever threw the foam from its surface, who felt themselves the objects of breathless attention to groups of natives who stood gazing here and there from the projecting rocks, it must have had an enchanting effect. To Captain Phillip himself, whose mind had been filled with anxiety and despondency as to the future prospects of his charge, it opened out like the vision of a world of new hope and promise.

  Rocks, South Heads, Sydney.

  Three days were spent in examining portions of this spacious harbour, and in exploring a few of its innumerable bays. Captain Phillip selected, as the place most suitable for the settlement, a small inlet, which, in honour of the Minister of State, he called Sydney Cove. It was so deep as to allow vessels to approach to within a yard or two of the shore, thus avoiding the necessity of spending time and money in building wharves or piers. After a few days the fleet was brought round and lay at anchor in this little cove which is now the crowded Circular Quay. The convicts were landed, and commenced to clear away the trees on the banks of a small stream which stole silently through a very dense wood. When an open space had been obtained, a flagstaff was erected near the present battery on Dawe’s Point; the soldiers fired three volleys, and the Governor read his commission to the assembled company. Then began a scene of noise and bustle. From dawn to sunset, nothing could be heard but the sound of axes, hammers, and saws, with the crash of trees and the shouts of the convict overseers. They lost no time in preparing their habitations on shore; for the confinement of the overcrowded ships had become intolerably hateful.

  3. Early Sufferings.—More than a third of their number were ill with scurvy and other diseases—sixty-six lay in the little hospital which had been set up, and many of them never recovered. Those who were well enough to work began to clear the land for cultivation; but so soon as everything was ready for the ploughing to begin, the amazing fact was discovered that no one knew anything of agriculture; and had it not been that Governor Phillip had with him a servant who had been for a time on a farm, their labour would have been of little avail. As it was, the cultivation was of the rudest kind; one man, even if he had been a highly experienced person, could do very little to instruct so many. The officers and soldiers were smart enough on parade, but they were useless on a farm; the convicts, instead of trying to learn, expended all their ingenuity in picking each other’s pockets, or in robbing the stores. They would do no work unless an armed soldier was standing behind them, and if he turned away for a moment, they would
deliberately destroy the farm implements in their charge, hide them in the sand or throw them into the water. Thus, only a trifling amount of food was obtained from the soil; the provisions they had brought with them were nearly finished, and when the news came that the Guardian transport, on which they were depending for fresh supplies, had struck on an iceberg and had been lost, the little community was filled with the deepest dismay. Soon after, a ship arrived with a number of fresh convicts, but no provisions; in great haste the Sirius was sent to the Cape of Good Hope, and the Supply to Batavia; these vessels brought back as much as they could get, but it was all used in a month or two. Starvation now lay before the settlement; every one, including the officers and the Governor himself, was put on the lowest rations which could keep the life in a man’s body, and yet there was not enough of food, even at this miserable rate, to last for any length of time. Numbers died of starvation; the Governor stopped all the works, as the men were too weak to continue them. The sheep and cattle which they had brought with so much trouble to become the origin of flocks and herds were all killed for food, with the exception of two or three which had escaped to the woods and had been lost from sight.

  4. Norfolk Island.—Under these circumstances, Governor Phillip sent two hundred convicts, with about seventy soldiers, to Norfolk Island, where there was a moderate chance of their being able to support themselves; for, immediately after his arrival in New South Wales, he had sent Lieutenant King to take possession of that island, of whose beauty and fertility Captain Cook had spoken very highly. Twenty-seven convicts and soldiers had gone along with King, and had cleared away the timber from the rich brown soil. They had little trouble in raising ample crops, and were now in the midst of plenty, which their less fortunate companions came to share. But the Sirius, in which they had been carried over, was wrecked on a coral reef near the island before she could return, and with her was lost a considerable quantity of provisions.

  5. The Second Fleet.—The prospects of the colony at Sydney had grown very black, when a store-ship suddenly appeared off the Heads. Great was the rejoicing at first; but when a storm arose and drove the vessel northward among the reefs of Broken Bay, their exultation was changed to a painful suspense. For some hours her fate was doubtful; but, to the intense relief of the expectant people on shore, she managed to make the port and land her supplies. Shortly after, two other store-ships arrived, and the community was never again so badly in want of provisions. Matters were growing cheerful, when a fresh gloom was caused by the arrival of a fleet filled to overflowing with sick and dying convicts. Seventeen hundred had been embarked, but of these two hundred had died on the way, and their bodies had been thrown overboard. Several hundreds were in the last stages of emaciation and exhaustion; scarcely one of the whole fifteen hundred who landed was fit for a day’s work. This brought fresh misery and trouble, and the deaths were of appalling frequency.

  6. Escape of Prisoners.—Many of the convicts sought to escape from their sufferings by running away; some seized the boats in the harbour and tried to sail for the Dutch colony in Java; others hid themselves in the woods, and either perished or else returned, after weeks of starvation, to give themselves up to the authorities. In 1791 a band of between forty and fifty set out to walk to China, and penetrated a few miles into the bush, where their bleached and whitened skeletons some years after told their fate.

  7. Departure of Governor Phillip.—Amid these cares and trials the health of Governor Phillip fairly broke down, and, in 1792, forced him to resign. He was a man of energy and decision; prompt and skilful, yet humane and just in his character; his face, though pinched and pale with ill-health, had a sweet and benevolent expression; no better man could have been selected to fill the difficult position he held with so much credit to himself. He received a handsome pension from the British Government, and retired to spend his life in English society. Major Grose and Captain Patterson took charge of the colony for the next three years; but in 1795 Captain Hunter, who, after the loss of his ship, the Sirius, had returned to England, arrived in Sydney to occupy the position of Governor.

  8. Governor Hunter.—By this time affairs had passed their crisis, and were beginning to be favourable. About sixty convicts, whose sentences had expired, had received grants of land, and, now that they were working for themselves, had become successful farmers. Governor Hunter brought out a number of free settlers, to whom he gave land near the Hawkesbury; and, after a time, more than six thousand acres were covered with crops of wheat and maize. There was now no fear of famine, and the settlement grew to be comfortable in most respects. Unfortunately, the more recent attempts to import cattle with which to stock the farms had proved more or less unsuccessful; so that the discovery of a fine herd of sixty wandering through the meadows of the Hawkesbury was hailed with great delight. These were the descendants of the cattle which had been lost from Governor Phillip’s herd some years before.

  9. State of the Settlement.—Twelve years after the foundation of the colony, its population amounted to between six and seven thousand persons. These were all settled near Sydney, which was a straggling town with one main street 200 feet wide, running up the valley from Sydney Cove, while on the slopes at either side the huts of the convicts were stationed far apart and each in a fenced-in plot of ground. On the little hills overlooking the cove, a number of big, bare, stone buildings were the Government quarters and barracks for the soldiers.

  Town and Cove of Sydney in 1798.

  (Compare with page 169.)

  Attempts had been made to penetrate to the west, though without success. The rugged chain of the Blue Mountains was an impassable barrier. Seventy miles north of Sydney a fine river—the Hunter—had been discovered by Lieutenant Shortland while in pursuit of some runaway convicts who had stolen a boat. Signs of coal having been seen near its mouth, convicts were sent up to open mines, and, these proving successful, the town of Newcastle rapidly formed. In 1800 Governor Hunter returned to England on business, intending to come out again; but he was appointed to the command of a war-ship, and Lieutenant King was sent out to take his place.

  CHAPTER III.

  THE DISCOVERIES OF BASS AND FLINDERS.

  1. No community has ever been more completely isolated than the first inhabitants of Sydney. They were three thousand miles away from the nearest white men; before them lay a great ocean, visited only at rare intervals, and, for the greater part, unexplored; behind them was an unknown continent, a vast, untrodden waste, in which they formed but a speck. They were almost completely shut out from intercourse with the civilised world, and few of them could have any hope of returning to their native land. This made the colony all the more suitable as a place of punishment; for people shrank with horror at the idea of being banished to what seemed like a tomb for living men and women. But, for all that, it was not desirable that Australia should remain always as unknown and unexplored as it then was; and, seven years after the first settlement was made, two men arrived who were determined not to suffer it so to remain.

  When Governor Hunter came in 1795, he brought with him, on board his ship the Reliance, a young surgeon, George Bass, and a midshipman called Matthew Flinders. They were young men of the most admirable character, modest and amiable, filled with a generous and manly affection for one another, and fired by a lofty enthusiasm which rejoiced in the wide field for discovery and fame that spread all around them. Within a month after their arrival they purchased a small boat about eight feet in length, which they christened the Tom Thumb. Its crew consisted of themselves and a boy to assist—truly a poor equipment with which to face a great and stormy ocean like the Pacific. They sailed out, and after tossing for some time like a toy on the huge waves, they succeeded in entering Botany Bay, which they thoroughly explored, making a chart of its shores and rivers. On their return, Governor Hunter was so highly pleased with their work, that, shortly after, he gave them a holiday, which they spent in making a longer expedition to the south. It was said that a very lar
ge river fell into the sea south of Botany Bay, and they went out to search for its mouth.

  2. Boat Excursion.—In this trip they met with some adventures which will serve to illustrate the dangers of such a voyage. On one occasion, when their boat had been upset on the shore, and their powder was wetted by the sea-water, about fifty natives gathered round them, evidently with no friendly intention. Bass spread the powder out on the rocks to dry, and procured a supply of fresh water from a neighbouring pond. But they were in expectation every moment of being attacked and speared, and there was no hope of defending themselves till the powder was ready. Flinders, knowing the fondness of the natives for the luxury of a shave, persuaded them to sit down one after another on a rock, and amused them by clipping their beards with a pair of scissors. As soon as the powder was dry the explorers loaded their muskets and cautiously retreated to their boat, which they set right, and pushed off without mishap.