CHAPTER TEN

Roving Still

1830, Autumn

Southwest and Northeast

A Political Twist

On the first Tuesday in March 1830 the Aborigines Committee met in Government House.¹ The new Archdeacon, Reverend Brompton, was elected chair after being appointed to the committee by Arthur. The new member coincided with a shift in focus, turning the committee from a mainly advisory body into an investigative one.

The Lieutenant Governor was, the minutes detailed, ‘anxious to obtain a detailed account of the rise & progress of the hostility displayed by the Natives’. Particularly interested in the situation ‘previous to his assumption of the Government’, Arthur was clearly setting up a fact-finding mission largely designed to deflect blame into a deeper past. The committee obliged. A preliminary conclusion was recorded that, while generally treated well by colonists, the Aboriginal people of Van Diemen’s Land had ‘a lurking spirit of cruelty & mischievous craft in the native character’ that was evident well before Arthur arrived. This, the committee suggested, was the reason for their various ‘acts of mischief and barbarity’. But the committee also sought further proofs, so they developed a nine-point questionnaire to put to various settlers. Eight of the questions pertained to the cause and history of Aboriginal enmity and hostilities, only one to the prospects for peace or protective measures.

Over subsequent weeks, the committee quizzed various men in the colony, starting the following day with the former roving party leader Gilbert Robertson. Their ultimate conclusions strayed little from their preliminary thinking. The committee submitted a report of their findings to Arthur, which cast his government as humane and measured in its response to the situation.² The committee’s ostensibly impartial fact-finding mission became the first official history of the Vandemonian War. With politically charged arguments predicated on selectively recorded evidence, it established key parameters for subsequent versions of the conflict.

While the Aborigines Committee came to represent Arthur’s government as humane – just as he had probably hoped – it was in sharp contrast to his ongoing and active role in the war. In fact, on the same Tuesday that the Aborigines Committee met, the Lieutenant Governor personally instructed the Colonial Secretary about some war-related minutiae. Some of this was aimed at helping Sherwin, the man whose house fire was the catalyst for the introduction of cash bounties for Aboriginal captives.³ Arthur wanted ‘to afford him the assistance’ for three months of two sawyers, two stone masons, and a ‘Joiner or Carpenter’ to help rebuild his house. A blacksmith would also be useful, Arthur noted, before reminding the Colonial Secretary that Sherwin was owed two assigned servants. Like Howell before him, Sherwin was compensated for Aboriginal attacks. For these two settler families, the apparatus of the convict state worked to put right some of the damage done by Aboriginal people, as it had for many before them.

But any theoretical line between home front and frontier was thin. Take, for instance, John Sherwin Junior, who was preparing ‘to go out with a party’ in retribution for the attack on his family’s house.⁴ For some of that Tuesday the Lieutenant Governor helped arrange for three convicts to be attached to the expedition. The bounty system certainly ‘augmented’ military options and roving parties, but it did not replace them.

While the Aborigines Committee deliberated at Government House, out in the field, operations continued under the supervision of government. On 4 March 1830 news reached Hobart that ‘some of the native women who were under the charge of Mr Robinson, this morning made their escape into the Bush’.⁵ The Lieutenant Governor wanted parties to attempt to recapture them without violence. But he was also still active in orchestrating a larger war strategy.

The same day, the Colonial Secretary informed the police magistrates of Richmond and Oatlands to expect trouble. ‘Fires of the Aborigines, have been observed … and sticks stuck in the ground at regular intervals have been found’. As Danvers had learned, such sticks indicated directions of movement.⁶ They were heading east. The following week the police magistrate of Richmond was given another prompt to ‘pay every possible attention to the protection of your Station’, and the police magistrate of New Norfolk was told that ‘a strong roving party, in charge of Mr Sherwin’s son’, was operating near the Clyde River.⁷

Ranger Roving Continues

Jorgenson was also busy in the area around the Clyde River, although his parties left an unusually slim documentary trail during February and March. Having reported his Lake Fergus expedition, he detailed the dispositions of his forces, but some of this was contingent upon Tyrrell, who had still not returned.⁸ When he did, he was supposed to join Danvers, who was ‘sent over the Big River to rove on both sides’.

While the Aborigines Committee was established to deflect attention from conflict in the interior, the increasing politicisation of the war provided opportunities for some colonists, which in turn enhanced the public’s awareness of the roving parties. In response to the recent attacks in their district, 32 settlers of the Clyde area petitioned Arthur for more protection, asserted that ‘conciliatory measures will be ineffectual’, and requested reduced taxation.⁹ When the Colonial Secretary acknowledged receipt of the petition, the leader shared it with the press. Among the signatories were Sherwin, Howell and Brodie, revealing a complex interplay between government advisors and loyal critics of government policy.

Clearly hoping to further the cause of increased force in the Clyde, one anonymous writer parodied the roving parties and advocated that bloodhounds should be used instead.¹⁰ This elicited a response from ‘A Settler’, who called the anonymous writer ‘ignorant’, before detailing some of the activities of two of Jorgenson’s parties, which both ‘rendered the greatest services to the community’.¹¹ This ‘Settler’ described the parties ‘as the best disciplined regular troops of the line’, before giving more details about their recent operations:

Since the 17th February last, John Danvers and his party have pursued the Aborigines with the most indefatigable perseverance, he has not suffered them to rest any where; he has driven them from their places of rest and their food, prevented them from robbing the stock huts, and killing the whites. When the Aborigines made their appearance at Mr. Young’s on the Big River, and were repulsed by Mr. Young and his people, Danvers came up an hour after, having driven them down the side of the Big River. Without stopping at Mr. Young’s, he immediately went in pursuit, followed the blacks at death’s door, and in crossing the Derwent in hot pursuit, Mungo, the black guide, fell off the tree on which the party crossed, and would infallibly have drowned (as he had his knapsack over his shoulders), had not Danvers jumped into the river, and disengaged the knapsack from his shoulders, but in so doing Danvers had nearly shared a similar fate, for although he is an expert swimmer, his knapsack was very heavy.

While this description reveals Danvers broadly following the operations detailed by Jorgenson, it also captures a growing closeness between the men and Mungo-Jack. The image of a roving party leader diving into a river to save a guide was a long way from the soldiers shooting at Boomer in the same district just a year earlier.

‘Settler’ also noted that the expedition had a close encounter. Mungo-Jack guided the rangers ‘on the native fires’:

the party came within 200 yards of a tribe, then in the act of cooking kangaroo. The party proceeded along a gully through a scrub, but when approaching the tribe, two blacks watching on the hills on both sides of the gully, gave the alarm, and the tribe fled. Some of their blankets, arms, and other things were taken.

The other party that ‘Settler’ described had more luck. This was led by Peter Scott, a relatively new addition to Jorgenson’s rangers. It was the second encounter in as many days, at least according to the reports of newspaper correspondents. One account described Scott’s party arriving at Espie’s house on 8 March, just in time to meet some sawyers who had been accosted ‘and chased’:¹²

[Scott], immediately accompanying corporal Jackson of the 63d [sic], went in pursuit and came upon the Natives, whilst in the act of cooking kangaroo. The Party, in endeavouring to cross the bed of a creek which divided them from the Blacks, were discovered, and they immediately discharged their pieces at them, and followed so quickly, that the Natives left behind them a number of spears, 13 blankets and other things. The party killed one dog, and must have wounded several of the Natives as blood could be traced for a considerable distance.

Both Jackson and Scott attracted enthusiastic praise ‘for their perseverance on this occasion’. As ‘Settler’ mentioned, Scott had ‘several times come up with the Aborigines’, and one of these encounters occurred the following day when Scott’s men attacked another Aboriginal camp:

At sun-set he came on their fires, and managed to get through a scrub, on hands and feet, within forty yards of them. At that moment, when he thought himself certain of capturing some of them, his party was assailed by a number of ferocious dogs, and seeing that the tribe was about to decamp, he had no other recourse left than firing a volley among them. When disengaged from the dogs he set out in pursuit, but coming on dark he lost the tracts [sic] of the Aborigines, the traces however of blood were seen for a considerable distance, which left no doubt that numbers had been wounded.¹³

The takings from this tribe included ‘15 blankets, 63 waddies, a number of spears’ and various colonial implements like coffee-pots and a teapot. With ‘sufficient parties’, the writer claimed, ‘the Aborigines will not be able to reign many months’.

The exact movements of the rangers over these and coming weeks are a little unclear, perhaps because Jorgenson was distracted by the new politicisation of his missions. On a visit to Hobart in March, he penned a lengthy report that was likely in response to rumours that the roving parties were to be abandoned. A Commissariat Office notice of 25 March called the public to put in their receipts if they had furnished Robertson or Jorgenson’s parties with rations before 24 April, which likely gave Jorgenson the impression that his parties were going to be disbanded like Robertson’s had been.¹⁴ In his report, therefore, Jorgenson defended the conduct of the rangers and called for the full implementation of his earlier suggestions to coordinate the parties across the island.¹⁵ He advocated ‘sending into the Bush an adequate and imposing force as that none of the Tribes should dare to invade the settled districts’, pointed out that his roving parties were ‘becoming more perfect’ with each mission, and that Mungo-Jack could become ‘a negotiator’ in due time.

Internecine Tensions and Conciliatory Opportunities

Mungo-Jack was not the only prospective negotiator in the colony. While Jorgenson finished his report in Hobart, Robinson’s mission in the south was chasing after some Port Davey people. These were, Robinson diarised, ‘poor forlorn creatures, who were fleeing before my approach as clouds fly before the tempest’.¹⁶

But through the agency of his Aboriginal companions, Robinson eventually managed to meet two of the Port Davey tribe. After being introduced by ‘the young woman accompanying me who belonged to their tribe’, Robinson was well received, and later spent the evening in the tribe’s company. There was ‘great conviviality, singing and dancing until a late hour, making the woods to echo with their song’. In the far south, away from the Vandemonian War in the interior, the hoped-for conciliatory overtures were showing signs of success, at least as Robinson recorded it. He even named the place Friendly River.

Nonetheless, the continued enmity between tribal groups troubled Robinson.¹⁷ While he made overtures about coming ‘to do them good’, he also noticed the way that a woman had ‘pointed out the knapsack that contained three pistols’ among his baggage. The mission was effectively making contact, but the nature of the relationship was still being worked out. Far from the main theatres of conflict, ancient tensions and colonial armaments reveal the ways that the diplomatic expedition was also experienced as a threatening incursion. Woorrady, one of the Aboriginal men attached to the expedition, thought the Port Davey people ‘were no good and he wanted them sent to Hobart Town’.

Back in Hobart, Robinson was being involved in another attempted diplomatic mission. A week and a half earlier, on 16 March, the Lieutenant Governor approved a recommendation from the Aborigines Committee:

that the black Native women, now captive in Hobart Town, should be permitted to join their Tribe on the northern side of the Island with the view of endeavouring to conciliate, by pointing out the kind treatment they have experienced from the Whites.¹⁸

These women had ‘been living at Mr Robinson’s’, and were sent to Launceston in the custody of Charles Stirling, a convict servant who ‘resided with them’ at the Robinson residence.

While these diplomatic missions were represented as a change in direction, the prosecution of the war continued as before. On 16 March, Captain Vicary reported to Hobart that he was unable to provide ‘a Military Party’ to escort one of the government surveyors, because his forces were already fully deployed to deal with ‘the present disturbed state of the District’.¹⁹ Moreover, diplomatic endeavours tended to be directed through existing operational mechanisms. When these Aboriginal women arrived in Launceston on 26 March ‘to be set at liberty and allowed to return back to their former haunts’, as one report put it, ‘Mr Batman happened to be in Town to meet His Excellency, and prevailed upon the Commandant to keep them until the Lieutenant Governor arrives’.²⁰

The Roving Parties Are Nominally Decentralised

Arthur’s departure from Hobart was observed in the press. The Colonial Times mentioned that he left ‘at an early hour’ and was ‘attended by a considerable retinue’.²¹ The report mostly focused on the fact that Archdeacon Brompton also travelled with Arthur, and that they expected to dine with Anstey en route to Launceston. Before leaving Hobart, Arthur arranged for the smooth operation of government in his absence. The Colonial Secretary was authorised to deal with ‘business of the Government of ordinary occurrence’, while an itinerary ensured that more pressing business could be sent by the quickest route to the Lieutenant Governor if needed.²² The town adjutant was ‘directed to dispatch Troopers whenever necessary’ to ensure the smooth and safe movement of such important intelligence.

On schedule, the party reached Anstey’s homestead Anstey Barton on the evening of Monday 29 March, and stayed there for the night before continuing. ‘His Excellency and Mrs. Arthur were much pleased with the improvements that have taken place all along the road,’ the Hobart Town Courier subsequently noted.²³ While Arthur likely informed Anstey directly, part of his preparatory memorandum to the Colonial Secretary had concerned ‘the Roving Parties’. Arthur wanted Anstey to receive ‘my thanks for the trouble he has taken’ in overseeing the roving party operations, but also to know ‘that it is my intention to make some change in the present system’.²⁴ Arthur intended to decentralise the roving parties, making each police magistrate again ‘answerable for the Security of his respective District’. Later in the week, by which time Arthur was already in Launceston, the Colonial Secretary prepared a letter to Anstey detailing the new arrangements and requesting ‘a nominal return’ of Anstey’s current force and projected requirement.²⁵

Because Robertson’s forces had already been disbanded and redistributed, and therefore no longer required Anstey’s supervision, the new arrangements made little difference to the status quo. Jorgenson’s rangers worked across districts, but were presently operating out of Bothwell. Batman continued to operate relatively independently, simply reporting his movements to Campbell Town and Oatlands between missions to and from his farm. With the addition of more settler-led roving parties like Sherwin Junior’s, the prospect that police magistrates would soon be occupied dealing with bounties, and more parties proceeding past the lines of martial law, Arthur may just have felt that the war had outgrown the pretence of a police operation that could be administered from Oatlands alone.

Even the Aborigines Committee acknowledged that the interior was in a ‘state of warfare’. Their recommendations likely contributed to the decision to decentralise the roving parties,²⁶ but they had also suggested that a ‘system of mutual cooperation’ – where ‘each band should have a particular portion of the District assigned to it’, become familiar with the main Aboriginal tracks and places of resort, regularly patrol their area, and have access to ‘Magazines of provision’ – would obviate the need for supply runs to the towns.²⁷ With this the committee mildly criticised Anstey’s administration of the roving parties:

notwithstanding the exertions of that highly respected individual who has had the superintendence of these parties, an error has been committed by them in extending their march over too wide an extent of Country, whereby the Natives have been either chased before them, or they have passed the Natives unperceived, and have left them unmolested to ravage the Country in their rear.²⁸

The committee also criticised the conduct of the parties, ‘carelessly running backward and forward, talking, shouting, smoking’ and thereby generally giving warning of their movements. But these concerns reflected more the opinions of a few agitated settlers than any real engagement with the evidence.

In the end, the committee made the Oatlands-centred roving party system the political scapegoat for the government’s failure to end the war, and so Anstey was asked to step aside.

An Indigenous Roving Party

The Lieutenant Governor and his retinue reached Launceston in the late afternoon of 1 April, arriving with much military fanfare. ‘A salute in their honor was fired from the battery in the Barrack yard,’ the Launceston Advertiser noted, and ‘the troops were under arms at Government House to receive them.’²⁹

After this display of loyalty and force, Arthur focused on ‘surveying and planning various improvements’ to the civil infrastructure of the town – at least according to the Launceston Advertiser. But Arthur was not occupied solely with bridges and wharves. While in the northern part of the colony Arthur had a discussion with Batman ‘respecting the Black Women’.³⁰ After this discussion these women were sent to Batman’s property, which they reached on 5 April.

The evening following their arrival, an infant died. This baby accompanied one of the women, and was otherwise undocumented. Batman explained that he buried it ‘in my Garden’ in accordance with the wishes of the distraught mother. ‘At sun rise,’ Batman noted, ‘I found her crying over the Grave.’ This subsequently attracted the Colonial Secretary’s attention, who annotated ‘Grief!’ in the margin, seemingly to alert the Lieutenant Governor to this sign of humanity. Nonetheless, despite being visibly distraught, the woman went on her mission.

The women, accompanied by two of the ‘Sydney Natives’, left Batman’s farm with ‘as much as they could carry of Bread, Sugar, Tobacco, Blankets, &c’ – just like other colonial forces. Before they left Hobart, they were also supposed to have been given ‘some Trinkets’, presumably to offer Aboriginal people they met.³¹ Batman asserted that the women ‘promised most faithfully to return here with all their Tribe’. This was probably because he promised them he would try to get their ‘Boys’ back from Robinson’s custody. Return meant reunion.

After the indigenous roving party departed, Batman ‘despatched men in different directions to inform the settlers and stock-keepers’ of the mission. The women planned to ‘make signal fires’ to attract the attention of their tribes, so it was important that they were not mistakenly ambushed. Batman stressed this, requesting his neighbours were ‘not by any _means to fire upon any Natives they should see until this plan had been tried’. The warning was a testament to standard practice among the settlers of his region.

But Batman also hedged his bets. His kept his men ‘scouring round the Settlers Farms and runs’, while he waited to see if the women would return. Conciliation may have been a hope, but capture was still the main objective.

With his parties deployed, Batman dealt with his correspondence. Still communicating with Anstey about operations, especially those concerning Danvers, Batman stressed to Anstey that ‘in case He [Danvers] should fall in with the Natives, not to fire upon them, that is, until I hear further about the Black Women, and my Two Sydney Natives’.³²

Batman also wanted to ‘know where the Stoney Creek is He Names’, referring to advice from Danvers, because ‘Two or three bears [sic] that Name’. The confusion of names was continuing to trouble coordination between districts. Batman supposed that his indigenous roving party would head towards St Patricks Head on the east coast, and was worried that if Danvers’ party went in that direction ‘it would have a bad effect’. Batman hoped to communicate directly with Danvers, to ‘more fully explain to Him the different routes &c I intend to take from time to time’, but also to ‘give him a Pass Word in case we should meet at Night’.

Anstey received this correspondence from Batman on 14 April, two days after it was penned. He ‘Dispatched Danvers to Mr Batman’, and forwarded Batman’s correspondence to Hobart. Anstey noted that he thought Batman took ‘a very prudent view of the matter’. The plan for Danvers to coordinate with Batman was reviewed and approved by Arthur the same day. It was then forwarded to the Aborigines Committee, and returned to the Colonial Secretary a week later. All such correspondence was now, potentially at least, politically loaded.

As Batman’s letter was conveyed from Ben Lomond to Oatlands to Hobart, Batman’s indigenous roving party was disintegrating.³³ At ‘about 9 A.M’ the two men from New South Wales left the women, apparently ‘unwell’, and returned to Batman. The men told the women ‘they would get more flour, Tea, and Sugar and meet them again’, while the women promised the men ‘that if they fell in with their Tribe they would be down to my [Batman’s] Farm in five days’. The women also promised to ‘make smoke every day’ as a signal, which would guide the returning men to their position. The men reached Batman on 15 April, retrieved provisions, and headed out again.

Danvers also arrived at Batman’s farm on 15 April.³⁴ Batman thought Danvers would ‘be of mutual benefit to us, and to the Service’, and planned to meet him again soon. Now holding a ticket of leave – approved by the Colonial Secretary while the Lieutenant Governor was on his tour of the interior – Danvers could have found other employment, at least theoretically.³⁵ But clearly, he remained active on roving duties, agreeing to Batman’s request ‘to keep from St Patrick’s Head for a few days’, and again being warned ‘not by any means to fire’.

At that time, over a week into the mission, Batman was ‘anxiously looking’ for the return of his indigenous roving party. He promised to inform Anstey as soon as they arrived, especially because it was of interest to Arthur. ‘The Governor promised’, Batman wrote, that if the indigenous roving party was successful and ‘brought a Tribe’, then Arthur would ‘ride up immediately to see them’. By a remarkable coincidence, the two men from New South Wales returned to the farm only ‘10 minutes’ after Danvers left, prompting Batman to send word calling him back.³⁶ It was particularly important that Batman and Danvers had another discussion because the men reported that the Aboriginal women ‘threw away their brass Plates &c’ and ‘went off unknown to them’ one night.

Anstey received three of Batman’s letters on the same day, which detailed plans, anxieties and apparent failure. Numbering each to clarify the order in which they arrived, Anstey alluded in a comment to the failure of conciliatory measures. The information contained in one letter revealed ‘the defect of all these hopes’, he wrote, before forwarding them to the Colonial Secretary ‘for His Excellency’s information’.

Batman was incensed that the women had thrown away the metallic symbols of government protection and absconded. ‘I am now at a loss to know what to think of their wretched race of People,’ he wrote to Anstey. ‘I now think they are not to be reconciled by any means,’ he added, before asking Anstey ‘what you think had better be done’. Then he added a seemingly innocuous but clearly coded comment: ‘Danvers had better now take His own plan’.

Old Roving Grounds

Close to a week later Danvers left Oatlands on another of his missions, gradually heading to the northeast.³⁷ He made for Major Grey’s farm in St Paul’s Plains south of Ben Lomond. Moving into this area seems to have prompted some recognition from Mungo-Jack, who told Danvers ‘that when very young he had been last on the East side of Ben Lomond’.

When Danvers reached Grey’s property, there was a letter waiting for him from Batman. ‘[He] wished me not proceed any higher until he (Mr B) heard something respecting his 2 Sydney Natives’. Batman had sent these men out again in search of the women, and gave Danvers a time and place to meet a week later, in order for them to exchange information. In the interim, Danvers kept roving, noting how at ‘every part as we went Mungo pointed out a number of places where the Natives had stopt and said he had been the same way before’. The rangers started looking for a ‘Flint Quarry’, and even Mungo-Jack struggled to locate it. When he was ‘with the Tribe’, and they ‘stopt to build huts’, ‘the women went for the Flint’ so he did not know its exact location.

While they were tired by their continued marching, dry weather helped the rangers, at least in revealing signs of earlier habitation. They were able to follow ‘several old tracks of the Natives’ beside dry creeks and across the marshes, and as they scoured the valleys ‘Mungo pointed out many places where the Natives had been some time back’. But then the weather turned against them. As they camped on a high tier, it ‘snowed hard the whole night’, and kept up the following day as they ‘beat to’ a settler’s hut for provisions and shelter.

As the conditions eased, the rangers went out again, sleeping on hills and in valleys, as they scoured the country. They found ‘several old Native Huts’ at one location and Mungo-Jack identified another spot ‘where the Natives had slept’ which, ‘by the number of Huts’, he estimated ‘there had been upwards of 30’ Aboriginal people.

Danvers made his rendezvous with Batman, but neither had much to report to the other. Batman had still not heard anything ‘respecting the Sydney Natives’, and ‘strongly pressed’ Danvers to refrain from heading north just yet. Danvers certainly wanted to head that way, because there was a ‘place where Mungo wished to go’, but agreed to delay again until another pre-arranged meeting at Batman’s farm. So, after a night at Grey’s, Danvers took the rangers to the hills again and ‘scoured every likely part’.

By 4 May, ‘Mr B. not having yet heard any thing of the Sydney Natives’, both Batman and Danvers wrote to Anstey. Danvers ‘forwarded them down to Campbell Town by one of the party and ordered him to wait for an answer’.

Despite the nominal change in the system of roving parties, Anstey was still active in administering operations beyond his own district, possibly because they particularly interested the Lieutenant Governor. But Anstey may have tired of this.³⁸ Referring to ‘the many Letters lately addressed by Mr John Batman of Ben Lomond to me’, Anstey suggested on 4 May that Batman ‘should be directed to put himself in communication with Mr Simpson the Police Magistrate of the District in which Mr Batman resides’. Arthur readily approved this recommendation, and the Colonial Secretary informed the police magistrate of Campbell Town, James Simpson, that he was now in charge of giving orders to Batman.³⁹

But Simpson was also told that ‘from the proximity of your Situation to the scene of his [Batman’s] operations it is expected that you will be better able to detect and check any irregularity which may prevail than the greater distance will allow Mr Anstey to do’. Like Robertson before him, Batman’s failures were becoming political liabilities. Anstey informed the Colonial Secretary that Batman’s ‘whole Party have ceased to take any active measures against the hostile Aborigines’, and intimated that it was possible that a ‘trick is now playing by this Party’. That any such ‘imposture’ needed close surveillance became Anstey’s main argument for passing responsibility to Simpson, and quite a reasonable one, but it also reflected the way that senior figures were distancing themselves from Batman’s failed conciliatory overtures. Besides, Batman’s letter-writing had caused Anstey trouble before.

Danvers waited a few days for a response from Anstey, travelling to Campbell Town to consult with Simpson after hearing nothing. Simpson suggested a direction to scour, so Danvers returned to Batman’s farm to collect his team of rangers. Upon arrival at the property on 8 May, Danvers ‘found the Sydney Natives had returned’, but the women had not. Batman, still unaware that Simpson was now supposed to be directing Batman’s operations, wrote to Anstey with the details:

My Two Sydney Natives returned here Yesterday Afternoon after walking from George’s Bay, round the East Coast to George Town, during the whole of the time (21 days) did not see a single Native neither did they fall in again with the women that left this [sic] nothing has been heard in any quarter of the women. I now think they have no thought of returning back again and have entirely forgotten their promises.⁴⁰

Batman also explained that he was going ‘with the whole of my party in pursuit of the natives and will endeavour to capture more’. Anstey forwarded the letter to Hobart, for the information of the Lieutenant Governor, adding his own comment that Arthur ‘will receive with regret, the certain intelligence, that force is our only resource’. Arthur forwarded it to the Aborigines Committee.

Batman informed Anstey that Danvers’ rangers would ‘act in conjunction with me for some time’, and Danvers’ report bears this out. On 10 May the combined parties left Batman’s property to ‘scour round Ben Lomond’. By the evening of the following day they had reached the place where ‘Mr. B. first fell in with the Natives’. The parties, Danvers remarked, ‘found a number of the Bones of those who were there killed’. After his failed attempt at conciliation, Batman had gone to the place of his greatest victory.

Attitudes of Animosity

Danvers did not record how Mungo-Jack reacted to seeing the Aboriginal people’s bones, although over the following days he apparently began ‘to complain of being unwell’. But Mungo-Jack still took the lead, guiding the parties through ‘some very steep and rocky Hills’, and showing Danvers ‘a place where he had slept when with the Tribe’. The parties camped that night by a river which Batman was convinced was the South Esk, before Mungo-Jack led them the next day to a remarkable place. This was ‘a clear spot of ground where 6 Tribes met and fought’. There Mungo-Jack ‘picked up a Waddie which he said was his’.

The forces divided after reaching this former battleground. Batman crossed a river, and Danvers’ rangers took a different direction. But while theoretically freed from travelling at the speed of a larger force, the rangers slowed down. ‘Mungo complaining,’ Danvers noted a day before the party ‘Proceeded slowly Mungo being worse.’ By 15 May, Danvers was facing a real problem: ‘Mungo so very bad this day that we were obliged to carry him up almost every little rise and all the Hills.’

Yet even while the party was still ‘going very slow’ the next day, Mungo-Jack continued to illuminate Danvers, showing him ‘a place where the Natives cut waddies within the last fortnight’, and taking him ‘to a musket in very bad condition’. This weapon had been left in this spot ‘by Humarraa’.

After finding this artefact, the party spent the night nearby at Dr Henderson’s farm. Danvers then split his force. He took most of the party and ‘went to the Creek pointed out to me by Mungo called Stoney Creek and laid by there’. Danvers intended to camp out for four or five nights, hoping to make an ambush. Tactfully, he left Mungo-Jack ‘in charge of one of the party’ at Henderson’s.

When no Aboriginal people showed, Danvers returned to the farm, ‘in hopes that Mungo was better but found he was worse’.⁴¹ Moreover, Mungo-Jack had been at the centre of a minor dispute. ‘Mr Steele a New Settler’, temporarily occupying Henderson’s hut, would not have Mungo-Jack in the same building. Henry Thompson, the ranger left with Mungo-Jack, ‘was ordered to put a berth or bedstead in an old deserted Hut’ for Mungo-Jack’s use. Thompson examined the hut, but found it was so dilapidated that ‘if 2 men were employed for 3 days they then could scarcely make it fit for any person to stop in there not being a door, window, or one sherd of the roof to it.’

Thompson appealed to Steele, informing the settler ‘how very bad the lad was’, and pointing out ‘the service he was to the party in forwarding the views of Government’. Eventually, after much pushing, Steele relented and Mungo-Jack was brought into the hut, but Thompson had more trouble. Steele ‘had never afforded the lad the slightest nourishment and delayed upwards of 20 minutes giving an Onion to put in soup for Mungo’. It was, Thompson reported to Danvers later, the only bit of food Steele shared with him.

The rangers were not the only visitors to Henderson’s hut about this time. Thompson told Danvers of ‘a Man named Ford who had pretended illness’ and had arrived ‘under pretence of being assigned to Dr. H.’. The feigned illness and illusory service were revealed when Ford snuck away after ‘robbing’ the hut of many of its contents. He took the men’s ‘rations of Tea, Sugar’, ‘a shoulder of Mutton’, a spade, a pot, a kettle and the like. More ominously, he also stole off with ‘1 Butchers Knife’ and ‘a pouch belonging to a Soldier containing 10 rounds of Ammunition and 12 Balls’. A pursuit party forced him to abandon many of the stolen goods by a campfire, just like Aboriginal people. After Danvers returned, and for the remainder of the month, the party of rangers chased after him towards the east coast.

Failing to catch the runaway convict, Danvers’ rangers soon turned back to scouring for Aboriginal people. Although Mungo-Jack was ‘a little better’, his health did not greatly improve. Describing him as ‘reduced to a near skeleton and still unable to walk without assistance’, Danvers ‘left him in charge of one of the party to take to Oatlands by easy stages’. The remainder of the party continued roving in the east for another week before also heading back to Oatlands and reporting to Anstey, still clearly if discreetly taking some control over operations crossing over multiple districts. While disappointed that the ‘villain’ Ford escaped capture, Anstey nonetheless praised Danvers’ exertions to the Lieutenant Governor. He also drew Arthur’s attention to the way that Mungo-Jack ‘appears to have been treated with much unkindness by Mr Steele’, but could report that ‘The Lad is now at Oatlands and fast recovering from his late illness.’ Anstey also alerted Arthur to Mungo-Jack’s ‘exhibiting a new feature in the Aboriginal character’, referring to the cause of the boy’s illness. Mungo-Jack had told Danvers ‘that the cause of his illness was the sight of some bones of the men who were shot the first time Mr Batman fell in with the Natives’.

‘This is remarkable indeed!’ Arthur inscribed on this letter, before forwarding it to the Aborigines Committee for their information. Hidden in the folds of the letter were a few last-minute pieces of information from Anstey: ‘Danvers is on his way South,’ he stated, and ‘the Boy Mungo is very ill.’

Black Rangers

With Danvers’ return to the midlands, the press got vague reports of his close encounter with Ford, where his roving party attracted an incidental but telling mention:

Francis Ford, the bushranger … has been lurking a fortnight and upwards at Dr. Henderson’s farm, at St. Patrick’s Head, where he committed a felony. He fled from thence on the approach of Constable John Danver’s [sic] party of black rangers.⁴²

While the Hobart Town Courier detailed Ford’s escape, and mentioned that ‘notification of his being in this quarter may do great good by putting people on their guard’, on the same page was a police notice that Ford had been apprehended.⁴³

But this small reference to ‘black rangers’ was not the only one printed in Van Diemen’s Land during June 1830. The same paper had only the previous week contained a story about ‘Peter Scott’s party of black rangers’ leaving a settler’s hut ‘a short time before the natives appeared’.⁴⁴Aboriginal people ‘speared two men’, one of whom ‘ran away, with the spear sticking in his back’. He did this, the paper commented, ‘instead of running into the hut for guns’. It was meant to be read as an act of foolishness or cowardice. Normally men kept their guns handy, but this time they had placed them inside because of ‘a shower of rain’. But the particulars of the incident aside, the report captured the fact that multiple roving parties were still ranging the interior. It went on to describe the directions of roving of three separate parties, including Scott’s.

Peter Scott had been formally appointed to the field police in mid-April, with retrospective effect from late March.⁴⁵ Three days before this authorisation was gazetted, the Colonial Secretary wrote to Anstey naming five convicts ‘to be placed under the charge of Peter Scott’.⁴⁶ The formalities of colonial governance often ran behind the realities of wartime operations.

In a similar disjuncture between reality and formality, Arthur may have seemed to have acted upon the Aborigines Committee’s advice by decentralising the roving party system, but he in fact continued to give Anstey considerable responsibility and increasing resources. The notion that Anstey had administered the system was, after all, only ever half true. He delegated much of the operations to Jorgenson, and through the Colonial Secretary Arthur was often aware of missions and intimately involved. Highlighting this is a small annotation by Arthur on one of Anstey’s reports concerning the runaway Ford. Arthur instructed the town adjutant to ‘make some inquiry respecting the Soldier alluded to in the letter’, referring to the soldier whose pouch Ford had stolen. The chain of command during the Vandemonian War had always led to and from the one figure, at once both Lieutenant Governor and Colonel Commanding.

As the autumn turned to winter in 1830 there was limited talk of conciliation. Instead, the bulk of correspondence from the period points to a continued focus on capturing or repelling Aboriginal people from the settled districts. After meeting with Vicary in Bothwell on his inland tour, for instance, Arthur remained ‘quite convinced that the Settlers themselves make no effort of their own’, and advocated that Vicary take ‘active and energetic measures’.⁴⁷ But while maintaining pressure on settlers to defend themselves, and having parties continually scouring the colony, Arthur was also beginning to contemplate even more dramatic measures.