CHAPTER TWELVE
1830, Winter
Western Front and Midlands
A Pastoral Moment
All was relatively quiet on the western front in early winter 1830, at least as reported by Captain Vicary on 8 June. ‘I have the Honor to inform you,’ he told the Colonial Secretary, ‘that the Aboriginal Tribes have not been heard of in this District since my last Communication.’1
Vicary then went on to detail a report of ‘questionable a shape’ concerning an incident from late May, which he had ‘altogether discredited’ at the time and therefore not reported immediately. But, on closer investigation, this encounter proved worth sharing. ‘Mr Franks’ shepherd was out with his flock at a place called Stoney Hut Valley near Cross Marsh,’ Vicary stated, when ‘he found himself suddenly surrounded by Eight or Nine of the Blacks’.
Edward Franks wrote an account of his shepherd’s adventure for Vicary, and this too got passed to the Colonial Secretary.2 Franks detailed how George Bagshaw, the convict shepherd concerned, ‘was passing through Stoney-Hut Valley’ in the middle of a Saturday morning, chasing after strayed sheep, when he was ‘intercepted’ by an armed party of Aboriginal men. Alone and outnumbered, Bagshaw noticed that there were ‘10 or 11’ of them, ‘each armed with three spears and a waddy’. Bagshaw had ‘a fire-lock’ musket, which he immediately ‘pointed towards them’. He probably knew that he was safer with a loaded gun than a discharged one. Nonetheless, the men ‘approached sufficiently near to demand Tobacco’. In reply, Bagshaw threw some forward, and a pipe too, but when the men ‘asked for a knife’ Bagshaw told them that he did not have one.
According to Bagshaw’s information, ‘they then insisted upon having a sheep, and upon the obtaining of which they allowed him to depart’. Bagshaw herded the remaining sheep away, repeatedly and nervously turning to watch the Aboriginal people behind him, anxiously noticing that he was followed for some distance. When Bagshaw reported this to Franks, the settler ‘sent [word] to Flexmore and Ashton – who promptly raised a party of eight, which were joined by my Shepherd and another, making 10’. Francis Flexmore and George Ashton were district constables in the Cross Marsh, men holding the same position that Gilbert Robertson had held in the Richmond district.
The pursuit party met with little success. As Franks reported:
They were out all night but without overtaking any of the Savages – My man says they discovered indications of their having recently been in a part he described, and that it appeared they had gone towards the source of the Koyn Creek.
While thinking it would arrive too late to be of use, Franks nonetheless forwarded this account of these movements to Vicary. The police magistrate in turn forwarded it to the Colonial Secretary, and three days later Arthur had read it. ‘Is the Shepherd a man of good Character’ Arthur wondered, ‘if not, I should be indisposed to credit his statement & rather suppose that the Blacks never got his lost sheep.’ The Lieutenant Governor clearly suspected that Bagshaw had concocted a story, intimating that the convict might have pilfered and possibly eaten the lost sheep himself.
Arthur’s laconic response to the Bagshaw incident seemingly reaffirms Vicary’s assertion the fighting had calmed, especially when matched by Arthur’s willingness to quip about convict criminality. The war may indeed have seemed to be slowing as the days shortened. But the colony was about to be shocked.
Raiding Renews, Roving Continues, But the Documentation Diminishes
The Hobart Town Courier called it ‘one of the most appalling murders that has yet been committed by the misguided and benighted blacks’, and the Colonial Times related the tale as a ‘painful duty’.3 Slightly different versions of events reached Hobart, but they had the same context and the same end. The attack occurred at a place called ‘the Den’ in a hut owned by Captain Wood, occupied by Richard and Mary Daniels and their two infants. Situated north of Bothwell, this was a place that one account described as ‘perhaps one of the most remote and exposed situations in the island’. The couple had married in the area during the last spring, and had two young babies only ‘weeks’ or ‘months’ old.4
On the day of the raid, Richard was occupied some distance from the hut but still in sight of it, when he noticed something awry at the hut door. He went to investigate. Opening the door and peering inside, he ‘beheld the mangled corpse of his wife and infant children’. Mary was ‘sadly disfigured, being speared and beaten with waddies in a dreadful state’, while the children appeared to have been strangled because ‘their faces were discoloured and their mouths bloody’. A window frame was also broken, some geese were slaughtered, and ‘a few trifling things’ had been taken.
When informed of this raid, Arthur expressed ‘the deepest concern’5 and suggested that ‘the sagacity which the Natives have displayed … may prompt you to adopt some system of decoy, which may prove very beneficial.’ As the Colonial Secretary instructed Vicary: ‘His Excellency has no doubt that it will stimulate you to make still greater efforts to capture the bloodthirsty tribe, by whom it has been perpetuated.’
Nevertheless, by late June the Colonial Times referred to the killing of Mary Daniels and her children as an isolated tragedy that heralded a period of relative quietude:
Since the late murders committed at the Den, Regent’s Plain, on the family of Daniels, Captain Wood’s Overseer, the country seems to have enjoyed some respite from the natives. A man was chased two or three days since, at Jerusalem, by a small tribe, and Mr. Evans’s shepherd, on the river Ouse, was hard run last week, by another tribe, but both succeeded in escaping.6
Alert newspaper readers may have connected this ‘respite’ with another report, higher up the page, quoting from ‘a letter, from Oatlands’.7 In the absence of Jorgenson’s mission reports, it captures some of the only information about the rangers for these weeks:
The Oatland’s [sic] party, under the charge of Peter Scott, has been scouring the country about the Little Swan Port and Eastern Marsh Rivers, the Blue Hills, McGill’s Marsh, and Sam the Butcher’s Marshes, and all that neighbourhood, since the 15th May last. The party often fell in with recent native fires, and lately built huts. Notwithstanding the threatening appearances of the Natives in this direction some time since, the party under Scott, and one headed by James Hopkins, in the vicinity of Malony’s Sugar Loaf, with another under Benjamin Allinson about the Big Lagoon, have succeeded in checking the atrocities of the Natives, who much frequent those parts at this season of the year. The men attached to these parties are compelled to stay in the bush, and not allowed to go to the stock-huts, except absolutely in want of rations, or for the purpose of procuring intelligence. John Danver’s [sic] party is moving about the Quoin, Green Ponds, and is directed occasionally to have an eye to the Hunting Ground and the Black Marsh. The cold and frost have lately been very severe in this part of the island.
Few people were placed to have such a good knowledge of the movements of the rangers, so it is likely that the unnamed correspondent was Jorgenson, or at least an associate.
But Jorgenson was on the cusp of freedom. This, as much as any other factor, probably slowed the compilation of records and disrupted the regularity of correspondence to and from Hobart and the fronts. While there had been earlier times when rangers returned to base after short or inconsequential missions, at least in the Oatlands district there tended to be records stating as much. These were usually compiled as mission reports detailing daily movements, which Jorgenson then perused and forwarded. Because of this, a surprising proportion of the CSO1/1/320 (7578) file derives from Jorgenson’s diligently recorded administration of the roving parties. Other districts did not lack for fighting, but they did lack a committed record-keeper.
Jorgenson’s good service had earned him some powerful friends. In early June, following advice from London, Arthur ordered the preparation of Jorgenson’s conditional pardon.8 This was gazetted on 16 June.9 On 28 June Jorgenson, being ‘restored to the freedom of this country’, wrote to Anstey about his resignation from the field police.10 Jorgenson wanted to stay on until 1 August because, as he put it, ‘there are many little matters to arrange’. Anstey made the recommendation to Arthur, who approved an August resignation.
Jorgenson then offered to run combined roving operations between the Oatlands and Bothwell districts, ‘in occasionally leading out the bands, and looking after them in the bush, and perfecting their accounts’. Jorgenson also hoped, through this service, to ‘complete a proper, and I hope a most useful history for the reference of the Government’. In reply to this request Arthur simply advised that Anstey should inform Jorgenson ‘not to delay employing himself in any way that may be most advantageous for his own interests’. But the Lieutenant Governor also told Anstey that ‘Should the Government hereafter require his [Jorgenson’s] services, you will no doubt be able and kindly disposed to communicate with him.’11
Curiously, a few weeks before Jorgenson’s departure, the Aborigines Committee corresponded with Anstey about Robertson’s roving parties. Anstey informed them ‘that all the information which Mr Robertson thought fit to communicate to me, is in the hands of the Colonial Secretary’ and that Robertson’s reports were ‘on the whole, very meagre’.12 The same can be said for the committee’s own records. While there is evidence for the continued provision of some mission reports to the Colonial Secretary from police magistrates, not all survive in the CSO1/1/320 (7578) file, further highlighting the diminished documentation of this period. In late June, for example, Simpson forwarded a report from Batman to the Colonial Secretary. The cover letter survives, but the report itself was not archived in this file.13
Winter Fighting and Snowy Outposts
The winter lull in Aboriginal raids was a small respite but not a truce. In early July the Colonial Times expressed a general agitation at ‘attacks and depredations’, illustrating the war’s continuance.14 It asserted that attacks ‘within a few miles from the townships and Military stations, assume a regular and alarming consistency’. The newspaper detailed a five-hour battle at ‘Mr. Evans’ hut on the Big River’, followed by the dispatch of ‘a party of the military in search of the Aborigines, although the weather was wet, and the rivers swollen’.
In another incident ‘a man was dangerously speared by some of the Aborigines at Mr. Nicholl’s stock-run, on the River Ouse.’ A group of ‘men in the employ of Lieutenant Betts of the Big Lagoon’ were cut off from their guns and hut while chopping wood, and only escaped by using a cart as protective cover as they fled to a nearby neighbour. As they armed and set off to their own hut, they found it robbed and abandoned. While they surveyed this scene, the neighbouring hut they had just left was also robbed by Aboriginal people who also attempted to burn it down. In yet another raid ‘upon Captain Wood’s hut, in Poole’s Marsh’, a raid was beaten off with gunfire. ‘Six or seven shots were fired,’ it was reported, ‘but all missed.’ One of the Aboriginal men was ‘recognised as having twice before been at the hut’. A few days later another hut was robbed nearby. It was all evidence, the Colonial Times argued, of ‘a cunning and superiority of tactic which would not disgrace even some of the greatest military characters’.
These reports were followed by a lengthy ‘Extract from a Letter from Green Ponds, dated July 12’, which railed about ‘the apathy which exists so visibly amongst some of the settlers’.15 Like the earlier anonymous letter from Oatlands, this too has more than a whiff of Jorgenson about it. Pointing out how close each of these locations were to ‘roving and military parties’, the writer then went on to detail ‘the utmost exertions’ of several parties. This included Peter Scott, who ‘with a full party are incessantly roving in the Eastern Marshes, Rushy Lagoon, the Blue Hills, sometimes debouching towards little Swan Port, but within the District of Oatlands’. The letter also detailed Anstey’s dispatch of a party ‘into the Oyster Bay District’, composed of ‘five of the Police Constables’ under James Hopkins, George James and ‘a black guide’.
The Green Ponds correspondent also described an attempted ambush scheme being conducted by another party:
Benjamin Allinson with a small party, all but one or two concealed within a recently constructed hut, a few miles from the Big Lagoon, are erecting a small sheep-yard with a brush fence, so as to try if this scheme will not decoy some of the Aborigines into the hut, and thus make capture certain.
Within a week of the letter from Green Ponds being published, the Colonial Secretary relayed Arthur’s enthusiasm for such tactics to Smith in Norfolk Plains:
It having been represented to The Lieutenant Governor, that the Aborigines commit frequent depradations [sic] upon the house or dwelling of a person of the name of ‘Bonally’ who resides in the immediate neighbourhood of Mr P Minnitt on the Liffey, I am directed to suggest, that if some stratagem were used to surprise the Natives there, it is very probable that the capture of some of them would be effected.16
Just as he knew the Lieutenant Governor disliked settler apathy, Jorgenson also knew of Arthur’s inclination towards using huts for ambushes. The letter from Green Ponds therefore, like the one from Oatlands before it, was perhaps a sign that Jorgenson was attempting to win popular support for the roving parties in the last stages of his control over them.
But the information was not just political posturing, because a surviving report from Danvers – the last forwarded by Jorgenson that survives in the Danvers section of CSO1/1/320 (7578) – matches one assertion in the letter. As the correspondent from Green Ponds reported:
John Danvers with another full party are roving near the Quoin beyond the Cross Marsh, stretching sometimes across to the hunting ground, and ranging along the Jordan within the District of Oatlands.
Danvers’ report, dated 19 July, refers to a mission commenced in the middle of June ‘to scour the Bush between the Road to Green Ponds and the Road to Jerusalem for a fortnight’.17 Danvers initially obeyed these instructions, but soon moved the party’s patrolling area.
After that we somewhat diverted our roving positions, and chiefly confined our operations between the Quoin and the Black tier, taking care to send occasionally to the Cross marsh to learn if any instructions or orders were transmitted to us from headquarters.
On 12 June, the same day the letter from Green Ponds was written, Danvers ‘heard that some of the Aborigines had robbed two huts on the Big Lagoon, and had threatened and robbed two huts in and near Poole’s marsh in the district of the Clyde, closely bordering the Oatlands district.’ This timing further suggests the association with Jorgenson.
‘Knowing’ where Allinson’s party was stationed, ‘and that the Natives would not venture to remain in that neighbourhood’, Danvers planned an ambush:
being very certain from the situation of the numerous native huts that I had seen lately, and their general route, from the sticks placed in the ground, that they would not be long before they returned in this direction, we kept on the top of the mountains whence we could have a good sight of the country for many miles round, as well as tracing in the Snow the traces of their feet.
Danvers also established a more permanent forward operating base for these operations:
I have now formed a hut in a thick Scrubb at the source of the Quoin rivulet, in a Gulley, whence no smoke can be seen, and whence we cannot be observed unless coming within a few yards of the place. Two of the party alternatively ascend the hills to keep a strict look out.
The party had been isolated from other colonists, including stock huts, for eight days at the time of Danvers’ report. This isolation was made starker by ‘the unexampled Severity of the weather, the snow lying many feet deep on the ground, and the floods very high and the streams rapid’. A subsequent report described this snowstorm as ‘unprecedented since the establishment of the Colony’.18 Indicative of the extremely bad conditions, Danvers mentioned the fact of ‘upwards of sixty Kangaroos in the bush, which laid dead in the bush from cold, and probably also for want of food’.
A few days later, the Colonial Times reported on the dead kangaroos and described some of the extremity of regional flooding.19 Probably sourced from the same informant, the newspaper also reported that Allinson’s party closed in on an Aboriginal group, who ‘went into a scrub, and disappeared’.
With this report and its newspaper synopsis, Danvers’ mission drifted into documentary obscurity. One of the last things Danvers appended to his report, although not surviving with this letter, was a description of ‘the Quoin rivulet … which fixes the Boundaries between the Oatlands and Richmond Districts’. It shows him engaged in geographical reconnaissance as well as a combat mission, nominally well within the settled districts, but clearly still very disputed territory. After scribbling a report to Anstey from his hideaway hut, Danvers largely disappears from the historical record. He was ‘in hopes to come on the traces of the Aborigines in the Snow’.
Mercenaries on the Western Front
Although mainly occupied with the field police rangers operating out of Oatlands, the Green Ponds correspondent also had intelligence for the Colonial Times’s readers about the situation in the Bothwell district.20
In the District of the Clyde, independent of the numerous military parties so judiciously distributed by Captain Vicary, Mr. Sherwin, junior, an active and indefatigable young man, is roving with a party between the Rivers Ouse and Clyde, under the more immediate instructions of Captain Vicary. Doran with another party, is ranging in another direction, within the same district.
John Doran’s father had been speared some time back.21 Like John Sherwin Junior, his family had been attacked, and now he was leading a roving party sanctioned by the Lieutenant Governor, potentially mixing revenge with the promise of a reward of land.
Such mercenary operatives were useful for Vicary, whose district was one of the most hotly contested in the colony. Unable to provide Vicary with more soldiers, the Lieutenant Governor informed him in late July 1830 that ‘it will be necessary to supply the deficiency of numbers by superior address’.22 Moreover, the Colonial Secretary made it clear what such ‘active measures’ entailed, and typical of most of Arthur’s instructions, the word ‘conciliation’ did not appear:
The Lt Governor desires it to be repeated, that His Excellency’s only hope of putting an end to the warfare with the natives, is founded in the plans which may be put into operation by yourself and other Gentlemen holding similar situations, you mention that the Aborigines have been seen, now, as The Lieut Governor considers it to be well known that they always move very leisurely, the moment they were got sight of, some arrangement should have been made for pursuing them.
To further assist pursuit parties, Arthur mentioned a scheme which some of the settlers in Vicary’s district had advocated to the Aborigines Committee some weeks earlier. As the Colonial Secretary wrote:
I am further directed to enquire, whether it has occurred to you to train some small dogs to trace the Natives, so that when once seen, they might be followed, at least until they were dispersed.
Through this hypothetical musing Arthur tacitly encouraged the use of hunting dogs.
About a week after this missive was sent to him, Vicary reported an encounter.23 He mentioned that during the last two weeks of July Sherwin’s force was divided, apparently ready to ambush Aboriginal people. With two of his men, Sherwin was ‘stationed at Mr Espie’s Basham Plains’. The rest of the force were ‘concealed at Weasel Plains’. Then, on 29 July, Sherwin learned ‘that fires were seen about five miles higher up near the River Ouse’. Sherwin ‘proceeded immediately in the direction with one of his Party and John Tobin Ticket of Leave, in the Service of Mr Espie’. Tobin’s sparse convict conduct record has only one offence noted, which, although concerning misbehaviour in September, is nonetheless probably quite telling about this man’s usefulness to Sherwin’s party only a month prior. Tobin’s technical offence concerned having ‘a Dog unlicensed named “Wolf” on the premises of his master at Bashan Plains’.24
With Tobin’s aid, Sherwin soon got ‘within two hundred yards of the fire’ of Aboriginal people. But, as so often, the advancing colonial force was spotted, and the intended targets fled:
one of the Blacks gave an alarm and about ten others were seen running away, the Party did not succeed in taking any of them, they disappeared in an instant, and the nature of the ground afforded them ample concealment, they however destroyed Seventeen Dogs, burned Eighteen Spears and as many Waddies, and they brought away a Drawing Knife, parts of Sheep Shears, some bags of Ruddle [i.e. ochre] and a small quantity of lead ore[.]
After despoiling the camp, the men resumed their pursuit. While ‘ascending a steep hill, two Spears were thrown at them from above’. One of these ‘passed close to Mr Sherwin’. One of the assailants was spotted just as he ‘disappeared’. Vicary concluded his brief for the Lieutenant Governor by noting that ‘all their further search proved unavailing’. Arthur’s response was to ‘Express my great disappointment that none of these men were captured’, and to advocate for the ‘utmost possible precaution’ when in pursuit. Greater stealth was required by parties ‘engaged in this arduous warfare’.25
A Lucrative Capture Brings Good Publicity
Only minor elements of Sherwin’s operations were described by Vicary in his brief letter to the Lieutenant Governor. The failed pursuit – like so many across the colony – was not reported in the newspapers.
But the details of another mercenary operation in the field during late July are captured in much greater detail. One of the members of the party was Sam Robinson of the Oatlands field police, who was used to writing such reports for Jorgenson.26 There are also corroborating statements about the composition of this party, and the timing and effect of its mission, because Anstey wrote to the Colonial Secretary regarding ‘the reward of £17 for capturing on the 28th ultmo [last, July] 3 adults and one Child, of the Aboriginal Natives, according to the Government notice’.27Unlike Sherwin’s mission, this pursuit was a success.
The mission was also a victory for Anstey. The leader of the party was Anstey’s son, George Alexander Anstey, who ‘relinquished … his share of this pecuniary reward’ to the prisoners and employed men that constituted the party. Other than Sam Robinson – the only ranger on the mission – the men were all drawn from Anstey’s own pool of assigned convict servants and employees. Within two days of the capture Arthur presented this mission to the public as a model of good service. Government Notice 146, dated 30 July, conveyed some details of the capture as well as crafting a message of settler activity for the public:
The Lieutenant Governor having received information that, on the 28th instant, Mr. George Anstey, accompanied by a party of six men, with great perseverance traced out a Tribe of the Natives, and succeeded in capturing a Man, two Women and an Infant, unhurt. His Excellency has great pleasure in marking his high approbation of the conduct of respectable young Men, who thus step forward, and are the means of carrying into effect, with humanity and kindness, the Orders of the Local Government with regard to these benighted People, by conferring upon Mr. George Anstey, a Grant of Five Hundred Acres of Land.28
This notice also mentioned that the convicts on the party may receive tickets of leave ‘if their characters in the Books of the Police, shall not preclude the indulgence’.
But George Anstey’s ‘humanity and kindness’ in taking captives ‘unhurt’ was little more than propaganda, designed to encourage settlers to go out in pursuit in the hope of reward. None of the prisoners received their tickets of leave that year. Moreover, Sam Robinson’s report of the encounter, written the day it occurred, reveals elements of the story were left out of the government notice:
Yesterday afternoon (27th July) one of Mr Anstey’s Shepherds observed a fire in the direction of the Table Mountain, the Man lost no time in giving information to Mr Anstey, when a party was instantly sent off in that direction supposing the Natives to be there … The party left Anstey Barton about 4 o’Clock [sic] in the afternoon, and travelled until about 10 at night passing over some very bad ground, as we supposed we must be near to the place, where the fires had been seen, we agreed to halt for the night, and as we was upon high Ground to look out at Day Break next morning for smokes, we accordingly arose a little before Day Break examining the Ground very careful as we pass’d along, when we had proceeded about one Mile from our Nights [sic] encampment all of a sudden we observed smoke, and instantly a number of Dogs began to Bark when we perceived the Natives beginning to run away, the party then Discharged their pieces rushing towards the Natives at the same time the Ground being so bad gave the Natives a great advantage[.] However the party succeeded in capturing one male two females and an infant (in all four) and killed 14 Dogs, the party also took five spears upwards of Twenty waddies, thirteen Blankets, a great number of knives, and several other Articles, the Natives who escaped was [sic] left destitute of every thing of which a few minutes before they had been possessed of.
Sam Robinson’s report of this encounter was likely forwarded immediately to Hobart. A small annotation was pencilled on the last page, stating that ‘this was sent with Major Douglas’ letter’, meaning that the military authorities in Oatlands were probably also informed. Yet despite this probably being one of the key sources of Arthur’s understanding of the event – in part because Anstey only wrote about the reward after the government notice was published – Arthur’s public pronouncements made no mention of the captors having fired upon fleeing Aboriginal people. All documentation and correspondence studiously avoided the topic of casualties. But Sam Robinson’s letter did have one final detail he felt worth recording, which also failed to attract public notice. ‘One of the men belonging to the Tribe’, he said, ‘endeavoured to carry the infant child with him but being so closely pursued he left the child which was picked up by one of the party and given to its mother who was then captured.’
Systemic Harassment
While such stories point to individual trauma, the collective pressures of the Vandemonian War on Aboriginal people are impossible to accurately assess. Broader Aboriginal tactics, strategies, alliances and enmities can only be partially deducted though inference. Even with all the surviving mission reports, letters and replies, queries and answers, newspaper stories and country correspondents, the documentable history of the war is but a small fraction of it. Only one side in the war is comprehensively documented.
Sometimes, however, well-placed colonial informants record tantalising hints of intertribal war – or wars. One such case came from Jorgensen, when on 6 August he wrote to the Colonial Secretary about a range of mostly financial matters.29 In this letter he noted that ‘I have the honour to inform you that a most sanguinary [i.e. bloody] battle has been fought amongst the Native Tribes in which one whole Tribe has been killed except six’.
Within a week the Colonial Times also had a snippet of news about ‘a sanguinary battle’, which ‘has been fought between four of the Aboriginal tribes’.30 The paper gave no other particulars except to mention ‘that a number were killed’. It was perhaps another indicator that Jorgenson or someone in the Colonial Secretary’s Office shared bits of information with the press. It could have been a true report of a major realignment of tribal power structures; it could have been mere rumour.
Either way, the story of a ‘sanguinary battle’ was just one of many unverified and unverifiable reports conveyed from the battlefields of the interior to the administrative offices in Hobart – and sometimes also to the printing presses. With this intelligence also came news of the transfer of Aboriginal captives to Hobart. ‘The four blacks captured by Mr George Anstey’, Jorgenson informed the Colonial Secretary, ‘are now on their way to town in charge of Special Constable Richard Tyrrell and Police Constable Holmes’. Jorgenson was in Hobart at the time, so the letter was sent and received on the same day. But unbeknown to Jorgenson, one of the captives was planning to escape.