CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1830, October
Northern, Western and Reserve Divisions
The First Drive, 7–12 October
The day before the main advances commenced, the Colonel Commanding was at Campbell Town making final arrangements. He directed that certain deficiencies in the forces needed to be filled, and gave instructions about guides, fires, the occupation of key river crossings and so on.1Dressed in his military finery, he was admired by many of the young men who felt honoured to be serving under him, although others mocked what they saw as the Lieutenant Governor’s militaristic pretensions exceeding his civil responsibilities. One observer described Arthur as ‘cased in glittering steel’, wearing ‘a military coat’ and ‘claret coloured trowsers’, and sporting ‘a well-burnished and effective sword, secured by a gold embroidered belt’.2 This was not intended to be a flattering account: a sequence followed that had Arthur wielding his sword aloft like some caricature of an ancient hero. Unsurprisingly these anonymous observations were recorded in the Colonial Times, which continued to treat the campaign with greater and greater flippancy once it commenced.
Claiming ignorance of the campaign from official sources, the Colonial Times took to parodying the experience of the volunteers by publishing a series of letters from the interior, ostensibly written by a George Augustus Widlikens to his ‘Dear Mumma’.3 Widlikens ‘had not walked three miles before my feet were so sore that I wished myself at home again’. He ‘made Thomas take off my shoes and stockings and then putting on a bit of plaister’. This dynamic between the pampered and privileged Widlikens, who ‘missed our nice soft cushions very much’, and his long-suffering if sometimes ‘impudent’ servant Thomas, was played for mild comic effect. Similarly, Widlikens’ pretensions to military service were contrasted with an innate cowardice, as he worried about ‘nasty spears’ and carried a book ‘borrowed from Captain ______’s wife, about fortifications, assaults, &c.’ Moreover, the fictional youth became a means to poke fun at Arthur, ‘riding about, and looking after every thing’.4 The Colonel Commanding reminded the young leader ‘of Alexander the Great or Socrates’ on one occasion, and of ‘Pompey or King David’ on another’.5 Over subsequent editions, the letters and reports of other members of the Widlikens family furthered the running jokes.
Whether the Colonial Times was playing off genuine reports or not, the volunteers in the field did have a difficult start to their campaign. Camped on the top of the Blue Hills, Emmett faced a dramatic shift in the weather which threatened the success of the whole campaign. ‘Very soon after dark a fearful storm of thunder & lightening came on,’ he wrote, ‘quite as severe as any hitherto experienced in the colony’. While his perception of the ferocity of the storm was possibly influenced by his relative inexperience of the bush, there are corroborative reports of bad weather at the beginning of the campaign. The Colonial Times itself, in a column next to one of Widlikens’ letters, noted seriously that:
A Correspondent in the interior writes, that on Thursday, the 7th instant, the weather in many parts of the country was more severe than had been experienced at any time during the past winter. It was exceedingly cold, accompanied with squalls of wind, rain, and hail.6
Further north of Emmett, Lawrence similarly diarised the shift in weather. In fact Emmett’s description of the storm allows for some means of assessing the relative timing of his actions. While sometimes covering day-to-day action, Emmett’s narrative was hardly written with calendrical accuracy, but his remembrance of ‘that memorable night’ highlights it had a major impact on the campaign’s opening manoeuvres. Parties were exposed to extremely difficult conditions just as they were intending drives among the highlands and hills, and potentially quickly became exhausted and demoralised. As Emmett recalled:
torrents of rain, accompanied by a terrible gale, stripped the forest in all directions of large branches & small limbs, but fortunately we all escaped injury, though [we were] soon wet through to the skin.
Emmett ‘sat on a log throughout the storm with a rug over my shoulders’. During the wet and windy night he watched Champ laying motionless beside the fire ‘though a stream poured off him during his profound repose’. Emmett had given him a blanket, and this seemed sufficient to ensure a good night’s rest, irrespective of the tempest. While at first amused by the soldier’s lone wandering, he seemed to have developed some respect for the lieutenant’s ability to cope with the trying conditions. Having now lost his own party, the soldier decided to stay with Emmett until they returned to Bothwell, ‘where he found his men’.
The morning after the storm they looked for ‘signs of natives’ but found nothing. At some point they heard ‘that two dead blacks had been discovered in a tree’. Whether they had died naturally or were the victims of some misfortune, or perhaps simply rumour, the report highlights the difficulties of ascertaining exactly what took place in the hills, gullies and forests during Arthur’s campaign. It was hard to know the truth of things then, and remains far harder nearly two centuries later.
Because he was among those Hobart volunteers fulfilling support roles in the Clyde district, Emmett’s movements do not reflect the usual experience of the drive to form the first line between 7 and 12 October. The Blue Hills were a little northwest of Bothwell, and according to Arthur’s plans, some of the military detachments under Captain Wentworth should have been further westward, actually making towards Emmett’s position. This is partially borne out by Emmett’s following remarks. After taking the Blue Hills, Emmett’s party seems to have been given over to roving duties within the district, heading for other places associated with Aboriginal people, before then joining the line proper as it formed from the detachments of soldiers sweeping through the district:
We crossed the Country in a different direction, making for the Big river, another place where the natives had been committing depredations and a favourite resort; we reached a Station at Capt Young at noon, he was however absent making a bridge at the Big river to cross some soldiers.
This means the soldiers were in fact west of Emmett’s position, just as they should be, and moving eastwards as expected. Nevertheless, despite capturing one of the few firsthand reports of military manoeuvres, Emmett’s story turned to other things. Emmett received rations for his party at Young’s station, and ‘a nice dinner for the Leaders’. Not for the first or last time his narrative gave over to food at much greater length and detail than manoeuvres. ‘The Settlers were all extremely kind to the various parties, feeling that while close to them, they were safe from the attacks of the Blacks,’ he noted.
While at Young’s Emmett received orders to return to Bothwell. On their way, the party approached another farm, but were initially mistaken for bushrangers. This was, Emmett admitted, ‘a very natural impression from our general appearance’. But the misidentification was soon resolved, the embarrassment forgiven, and the party fed with ‘a second supper’. With full stomachs they moved on and reached Bothwell the following day. As Emmett put it:
we joined the Line which extended to the Sea coast from the Westward – All the Parties before we joined had been driving the natives towards the centre some 3500 men being placed along the Line, each 320 yards apart. It was astonishing to see the manner in which the Settlers had turned out with their own servants leaving their homes for an indefinite time.
It was, Emmett recalled, a magnificent display of force. But, writing 40 years or more after the war, Emmett also noted: ‘There are not many left now who can recollect the trying occasion. Mr Bonwick says there were 119 Parties but I imagine there were more.’
Explicitly responding to James Bonwick’s The Last of the Tasmanians; or, The Black War of Van Diemen’s Land, published in 1870, Emmett’s recollection was certainly influenced by versions of the campaign that had formed subsequently.7 His account is extremely valuable for the level of experiential detail, but on individual events and sequences he is much weaker. His understanding of the campaign’s progress was greatly influenced by the stories he had later heard and histories he consulted.
Further Drives, 12–20 October
Emmett’s sometimes vague memories contrast with the precision of Arthur’s centralised command. While the various parties throughout the colony were advancing towards their 12 October positions, in the midlands Arthur continued giving directions about a range of matters, tweaking forces and strategy. He was certainly micromanaging elements of the manoeuvres. Thinking it ‘extremely important that the Blackman Tier should be thoroughly examined’, Arthur ordered ‘two very smart parties’ to scour it.8 Arthur even gave instructions about the formation of one of these parties, which was to be led by a settler but supported by a non-commissioned officer ‘and eight men’ from Douglas and ‘two good guides’ from Anstey. Both parties were reminded to be in position on their part of ‘the Line on the Evening of the 12th October’. Arthur also gave explicit directions for the movements of ‘The Volunteers from Richmond under the charge of Chief District Constable Robertson’, lightly reprimanded Major Douglas for not having fully reconnoitred the proposed line positions, and gave instructions for guiding the whole force and its constituent parties.
In all this, Arthur was clearly focused on using the military for the most important missions, and using volunteers for back up and peripheral duties. ‘As all the best Guides are now selected for the Military’, the Colonel Commanding told Douglas, ‘it will not be necessary to mix any of the Civil Force with them unless you wish it.’ The soldiers that civil leaders like Lawrence and Emmett only mentioned in passing were the ones really doing most of the campaigning.
On 12 October, Arthur dealt with complaints about the lack of tobacco and arranged for 500 pairs of shoes to be sent to various depots.9 That same day Douglas forwarded petitions from some of the officers asking about a field allowance.10 That evening Douglas’s northern front was due to merge with Wentworth’s western front, forming a relatively continuous barrier from a sequence of parties of soldiers and civil militiamen connecting the hills beside the Derwent to the east coast.
But in the morning, it was clear that the mission had already partly failed. Referring to ‘Several Reports brought in by the Parties employed under Captain Wentworth’ on the western front, Arthur was convinced ‘that some of the Native Tribes have been left in the Rear’ in the southwestern part of the combined right flank near the Derwent.11 Arthur instructed Donaldson to ‘Detach some strong patrols’ from the reserve line towards the area while the remainder of the operation continued as planned. Then, on 14 October, the great line moved toward its 16 October second line position.
‘All being declared ready,’ Emmett later recalled, ‘orders were given to start and on we went, over plains, mountains & rivers … constantly keeping up a discharge of musketry which I assure you was well done.’ The idea of this massed shooting was to terrify Aboriginal people, thereby driving them before the colonial forces.
William Coventry, another volunteer party leader who was later interviewed about the operation, also remembered this part of the drive, saying that ‘all day long they fired Blank cartridges all down the line’.12 This musketry served the same function as beating the bush for a giant hunt. As they crossed the country, Coventry added, the parties shifted their composition:
The plan was that never less than three men were in a party – but in thick scrub they rose to 50 or 60. In open country they were at times 200 yards apart – but in the Bush not more than 50 yards.
All went well in the beginning. ‘For several days this march was carried on and the natives were known to be in front of us’, Emmett recalled. The newspapers were certainly optimistic about the early stage of the campaign:
On Wednesday [13 October], dispatches were received in town from His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor, stating that the parties about Oatlands were in pursuit of a large body of Natives, report says three different tribes amounting to above 200; the account goes on stating that the Natives were retreating exactly in the direction intended, and that the parties have most sanguine expectations that the termination of the measures will be most fortunate.13
But, despite the reportedly smooth start, both Emmett and Coventry focused on reports that the line was almost immediately broken. With the benefit of hindsight and an established narrative, Emmett thought the idea so impractical as to make failure inevitable. Aboriginal people could never have been contained, he argued, ‘in consequence of so many obstacles in the way of a given progress, Gullys [sic] and rocky hills, were continually met with, rendering the task an utter impossibility’.
Correspondence from Arthur to Donaldson in the rear line dated Sunday 17 October, the day of rest at the second line position, reveals that Arthur too believed the cordon had been breached:
Captain Wentworth’s line reached the Jordon [river] yesterday, and as there is reason to fear that the Tribe in question may have passed through it, I have pushed four parties back towards the Quoin hill which they are now roving. If you can dispatch an active party to search the Country between Table Mountain and the Quoin, and the Caverns about the former, it may be the means of capturing this most dangerous Tribe.14
He then gave more particular information about where he expected the tribe might be hiding.
Accompanying his instructions, Arthur also sent Donaldson a report of an encounter between a farm servant and an Aboriginal group. The report was subsequently gazetted in a lengthy government notice, narrating an encounter between a servant named Thomas Savage and a group of Aboriginal people who were accompanied by a shotgun-wielding ‘White Man’ named Brown.15 With a convoluted series of explanations, the gist of the story was that Savage was surrounded and threatened, but was saved by Brown, who was part of the tribe. ‘Brown told me he had been with the Natives about 3 years,’ Savage explained after the group departed, ‘and said he was surprised at so many parties being out.’ Savage saw some of this tribe bringing in a sheep for their dinner before hurrying away when they heard a gunshot. Once Savage got news of the encounter to the authorities, Arthur was swift to act:
By the time this information was given it was nearly dark, but the Lieutenant Governor descended the tier with all dispatch, and in the course of an hour and a half four parties were sent off, with orders to proceed during the night ten miles beyond the Lagoon, as far as the Quoin, and then to spread themselves out and scour the bush thoroughly; and supposing the natives to be tired with their long march the previous night, and especially so the woman with child, it may be hoped that they will be surrounded, or at least driven to the southward and eastward, if that has not been already effected by the parties which came over the tier at day light this morning [18 October].16
In response to this intelligence that ‘the Natives are headed by Europeans’, as Arthur put it, he ordered increased use of fires along the line during the night camps, and instructed that men had to camp in threes.17 He also instructed Douglas to initiate ‘a constant Patrol by Day as well as by night’ once the parties arrived at their third line positions on 20 October.
Emmett described the night-time arrangements in some detail. He noted that the line:
was generally made up to its proper state at the halting hour, and the Sentries fixed for the night, three men from each party the Leader being in the centre, who had himself to keep watch half the night, marching up and down the line to the adjoining party on his right and left and every half hour or so calling out the number … of his party No. 1 Alls Well. Six fires were kept up by each party all night, one in front of each Tent and three others fifty yards in front, which in some places where search of wood kept the men well employed. It was an exceedingly pretty sight to see the fires for miles, especially on the tops of hills, and hearing the Sentries Watchcry, coming down the line at intervals helped the effect.
Another participant similarly wrote of the line of campfires giving ‘rather a fine effect’, while also giving an illustration of how alerts were dealt with:
From one of our stations we could discern fifteen or sixteen of them, and they caused a blaze which illuminated a great extent of forest. In the event of the blacks attempting to force the line, or if, during its advance, they shewed any inclination to give battle, orders were given to fire, and drive them back, but unless absolutely necessary in self-defence, not to kill them.18
This linesman then described his section readying their arms for action on their second night out, until ‘hearing the cry of “All’s well,” denoting, of course, that we had put the enemy to the route’ [sic]. He also gave an anecdote about a convict who ‘was mistaken for a native and fired at’.
Contemporary commentators generally observed that Aboriginal people were frightened of travelling at night, and did so only in the most extreme circumstances. Their attempts to get through the line of men, fires and gunfire was therefore a telling illustration that the movement did in fact have some success. Emmett mentioned that ‘the natives on several occasions tried to get through at night’, and gave one instance of his party taking on guard duties:
We were camped on a saddle tolerably clear country with a gully below, in which the natives were heard moving about, though we did not see them. The night was lit up by a full moon & was frosty & exceedingly cold.
Emmett also gave an anecdote of when ‘the natives threw a spear at a Sentry, who was putting some wood on a fire, but missed him’.
While accounts of particular skirmishes along the line remain relatively rare, it is nonetheless clear that it was a common enough experience along the volunteer sections of the main line. Of the area where the soldiery formed the main front, the records remain almost eerily silent. But highlighting the extent of shooting during the operation is one of Arthur’s memoranda after the divisions reached their 20 October positions. On Saturday 23 October he wrote to the Colonial Secretary:
Be so good as to direct the Ordinance Storekeeper or Town Adjutant to send over to Kangaroo Point, without delay, Four Thousand ball Cartridges, and Two thousand blank Cartridges for the use of the Forces in pursuit of the Aborigines. I will send a pack horse to Kangaroo Point to convey this ammunition to the Bluff Ferry at Sorell. I bear in mind that tomorrow is the Sabbath, but necessity has no law.19
The Reserve Line
Lawrence’s movements formed part of the rear-guard division. As he moved into the mountains in readiness for the first drive, having ‘to crawl on our hands and knees, in some places’, Lawrence entered a snowy alpine environment with the appearance and ‘air of extreme barrenness and bleakness’.20 Nonetheless, they got immediately to work scouring country and keeping ‘look out for fires’. Hearing gunfire to the east, Lawrence may have assumed other parties were already at work too, and the fires he saw ‘appeared to me to be fires belonging to parties of the line’.
As Lawrence neared one of the highland lakes he saw smoke on the other side and identified the fire producing it as a potential target. He determined to ‘sneak upon them before morning’. In the early hours of the morning, ‘when the moon rose which it did about 3 O’Clock’, his party ‘started cautiously’. Lawrence sent the constable ahead to reconnoitre, who returned claiming there were two fires looking similar to Aboriginal ones. Lawrence divided his party to flank these campfires on three sides, using the lake as a fourth barrier, and waited for daylight. But his stratagem was wasted:
Upon closing upon them however, we found to our great disappointment, that our labour had been thrown away upon a party of the line, who were bye the bye, quite out of it, all fast asleep.
Lawrence was disgusted that they had not even posted a sentry, and had been firing their guns hunting the day beforehand.
Lawrence continued to send out small reconnaissance parties from his own, scouring for prospective targets, hearing shots, and encountering a lost party. A team of surveyors helped direct Lawrence towards the main camp at Sorell Lake. On his way there he found some Aboriginal huts and ‘picked up a piece of old blanket’. The party found the wrong lake, spent an ‘exceedingly rainy’ night in the field, and overshot their target considerably. ‘This day we ought to be stationed on the line,’ Lawrence wrote on 12 October, ‘but we are still at fault’. It took another two days before his party ‘arrived and took our station’ where they were supposed to be. While there were soon reports of a large gap in their line, there were also reports ‘that the parties to the westward have been successful’.
This rumour may have been a reference to parties on the far west of the reserve line. A letter to the Hobart Town Courier by ‘H.R.’ described the adventures of one such party chasing ‘a large Mob of the Blacks’ in the area around Lake Echo, albeit a week after Lawrence’s news.21
We counted forty two. They were proceeding in a direction for the Big Lake; they crossed the Shannon. We wrote upon a piece of bark, which we nailed upon a tree, that we had seen this mob, and intended to follow them, and requested Mr Collins, the leader of a party, to inform Captain Donaldson of our movements. We tracked the Blacks in a north-east direction. On the same day of our pursuit we saw 13 Native huts, and we found a tomahawk, a part of a woman’s chemise, and part of a child’s frock, and several other trifling articles, evidently part of the plunder of the Blacks. Their tracks led us round the north-east side of the Big Lake for 3 days, and then to the westward; and we continued upon their track until yesterday morning [24 October], when we were obliged to make for Mr. Leith’s, at the Retreat, for provisions.
The newspaper added that Aboriginal people committed an attack in this area about that time, killing a settler.
Lawrence’s adventures were less newsworthy. While the main western and northern fronts moved, he remained occupied with reserve duties. He divided his party into three smaller ones, received various minor orders, recorded occasional rumours, endured snow and dined with settlers and military officers. ‘Our principal occupation is still walking to and fro, between the stations, to prevent our passage of the Blacks’, he noted on 19 October, well into the main campaign. Lawrence’s journal certainly captures his feelings that reserve duty quickly became tedious, and that the adventure rapidly waned. Slight remarks of passing soldiers were the only comments of real significance about the campaign he recorded, seemingly too preoccupied with his own troubles to care much about the broader strategic situation. Lawrence’s war was not really all that far from his fictional equivalent, Widlikens.
But finally, on 22 October, the reserves began to move. Donaldson ordered Lawrence to march towards Bothwell. On his way he saw a pack of dogs, sketched some mountains, was rained upon and dissected an echidna. After going to bed on 27 October he was roused from sleep with new orders hurrying him to Bothwell. He added some commentary on his current situation and rumours of the wider campaign:
Report says that this movement is in consequence of several large tribes of natives having made their appearance in the neighbourhood of Richmond, to which place we are to march I believe, from Bothwell. Several murders have been committed during the week. I understood that one man has been killed in front of Major Douglas’s line.
The next day Lawrence reached Bothwell, which ‘consists of about 80 or 100 houses and can boast of a very comfortable inn.’
Major Douglas’s Northern Front Advances
While Lawrence patrolled the reserve line in the high country and Emmett and Coventry pushed eastwards with the western front, the northern front also contracted towards the southeast. Because Douglas wrote a series of brief letters to Arthur about his movements, these can be observed in some detail. On Sunday 17 October, when the line was resting in position after its first push, Douglas provided Arthur with a schematic drawing of how the line was constituted along the northern front.22 By this point the line was supposed to run west to east, basically sealing the valleys and floodplains of the Little Swan Port and Coal rivers. It ran through the farm of a settler named Hobbs, which Douglas included as a reference point on his illustration. With this visual aid Douglas could explain the movement to Arthur.
Douglas had staggered his parties along the line, creating a formation of alternating parties of volunteers and soldiers. Douglas told Arthur that ‘the left centre I know are just as described and are all present except those marked’, which referred to two parties of the 63rd Regiment on the far left wing of the centre. ‘The right centre I believe to be if any thing more correct than the left.’ He was satisfied that the first drive had gone according to plan, and unfazed by the two missing parties of soldiers, simply assuming they were delayed getting rations.
Douglas also told Arthur of a reported Aboriginal attack on a settler’s hut, which was being investigated. In passing, he mentioned that ‘The Coal river parties are exceedingly alert and willing’. As his schematic explained, while drawn from the Coal River these were charged with scouring the other flank of his line, the Little Swan Port River area closest to the coast. Here there were no named parties of 10 men or so, just a small explanation: ‘100 men reported all present by Gilbert Robertson’. The former rover was leading a large cohort of men charged with covering the scrubby eastern tiers.
Other old rovers were also out there, their special missions lost among the generalisations and the scarce documentation. One surviving letter from Douglas about the drive to the third line reveals at least one of the former rovers acting as a guide.23 Douglas requested a subordinate ‘to return with Peter Scott for the purpose of shewing the road through the Scrub to Prosser’s Plains’. While highlighting that the advance did not always maintain a line formation, it also reveals the special role that former rovers played in facilitating the series of manoeuvres.
The public knew little of the early stages of the campaign, but as the force approached closer to Hobart, more news reached the town and its press. While George Augustus Widlikens continued to write home – thanking his ‘Dear Mumma’ for ‘the rhubarb tart’, detailing ‘what the book calls a flank movement’, relating how he ‘just missed falling in with a large party of the nasty blacks’ and explaining ‘that Thomas has gone after them along with another party’ – his parodies were made richer for playing on actual news as well as experiential complaints.24 After the forces had reached their 20 October third-line positions, the Hobart Town Courier corrected the ‘wholly unfounded’ reports of Aboriginal people breaking through the line, before giving its readers some general information about the state of the campaign:
To give a full narrative of their proceedings at large would be impossible, suffice it to say that, the original plan of the campaign has been followed up almost to the letter. … The several Police Magistrates and commanding officers are continually on horseback visiting every part of the line of their respective forces, while His Excellency, regardless of all personal fatigue, and with unwearied perseverance takes in, in rapid succession the general sweep of the whole, at one time to be seen extending the lines and infusing a portion of his own ardour into the parties.25
Yet while going into detail about guard duties and praising the campaign leadership, the newspaper had little else to say. A week later the same newspaper reported ‘one general spirit of cheerful and determined perseverance pervades the whole’, despite the recent weather making the ground wet and boggy and many rivers difficult to cross.26 It also carried reports of ‘attacks made by the Blacks round Pittwater and the Carlton’, which seemed to indicate there were hostile Aboriginal people within the cordon. ‘The general opinion,’ the newspaper claimed, ‘is that, the bulk of both the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes is now hemmed in.’
Hold and Skirmish, 20 October
Arthur’s original plan was that when the line contracted to its 20 October position, the force would halt and wait for further orders. With Arthur approaching his endgame, the volume of surviving documentation increases. On 19 October Arthur reprimanded a lieutenant of the 63rd Regiment who ‘occupied with a party the Isthmus’, because this act of initiative threatened the whole scheme if it stopped Aboriginal people from fleeing into the Tasman Peninsula.27 He ordered the lieutenant ‘to withdraw the party immediately & by water’. Arthur’s scheme relied not only on pushing Aboriginal people before the line, but giving them room to flee.
To ensure the line was adequately provisioned, such that parties could remain in place, Arthur gave a series of instructions about rations, including ordering ‘a cart or pack horses’ to be used to transport supplies.28 But even as the line came to a halt, Arthur gave new orders for manoeuvres. On 20 October Arthur ordered both Douglas and Wentworth to made an advance the following day, carefully scouring their paths.29 On 22 October Arthur ordered ‘5 Skirmishing parties’ to detach from the main line to advance and ‘thoroughly scour the Country’.30
The next day, 23 October, Arthur dealt with reports that parts of the line were ‘insecure’, and followed up on information that one of the skirmishing parties under the settler Edward Atkyns Walpole ‘had not proceeded on the duty in question’.31 As Arthur noted:
the part of the Country appropriated to Mr Walpole is the most likely for the concealment of the Natives, & should be most thoroughly examined and if Mr Walpole has not proceeded on this duty, & is not prepared to do so, another party must be immediately selected. Mr Gilbert Robertson would be a proper person for this duty.
With the overall strategy in place, the line turned its focus to containment while the skirmishers went out front. Correspondence from Douglas dated 23 October reveals that he gave specific instructions to ‘five roving parties’ that had been personally approved by Arthur the day beforehand.32Walpole’s delayed departure turned out to be related to the rationing arrangements, and Douglas agreed that if he was not soon out then Robertson would be sent in his place. In reply to Arthur’s queries about the line being secured, Douglas affirmed his belief that most parties were in place, although ‘there is a party under a person called Fortosa that I believe has not yet crossed the river’.
Aware that these skirmish missions could encourage Aboriginal people to attempt to break the line rather than flee into the peninsula, Arthur issued a circular on 24 October encouraging the linesmen to maintain their vigilance, because ‘the slightest relaxation in any one party may have the deplorable effect of disappointing the hopes of the whole Community’.33Arthur now ordered the lines to maintain a relative silence, avoiding bugles or unnecessary gunshots. He wanted quiet sentries out front to listen for approaching Aboriginal people. Over the coming days he made several other orders regarding the improvement of the line, tinkering with certain parts or practices.34 He insisted that ‘every leader will exert his ingenuity in creating obstructions to the sudden passage of the Natives through the Line’:
It is impossible to point out any one mode of strengthening every post, as the means of fortifying them must vary with the variations of the ground, but it may be sufficient to explain that the object in view is to form a chain of obstructions immediately in rear of the Sentries, so that should the Natives rush past the post, they will be entangled in the artificial obstacles w[hic]h will have been prepared for them.
If any Aboriginal people managed to get past the forward sentries or ingenious obstacles, then Arthur also wanted an area of clear ground in front of the line to deprive Aboriginal people of cover. He also suggested the construction of a ‘palisade’ of forward-leaning sharpened sticks and logs, providing illustrations by way of explanation. Finally, the Colonel Commanding wanted a line of sharpened branches arranged behind the line just in case.
Some of these instructions were likely inspired by attempted breaches of the line. On 25 October Major Douglas informed Arthur of an encounter at about 2:00 am that morning:
One of Mr Batmans [sic] party states that a Native attempted to pass through the scrub close to his post … he ran up to him … the Native made his escape towards the Marshes and Mr Batmans man fired at him … further that more were seen with fire sticks and this man says he heard a rustling noise as if more were close to him. A good many unnecessary shots were fired along the line.35
When Douglas heard shots in the distance the following morning he laconically informed Arthur that ‘no doubt the ammunition has arrived at that place’.36
By this time Arthur was convinced that he had ‘enclosed within the Lines the Big River & the Oyster Bay Mobs’, and ordered Donaldson’s reserve line to now advance to reinforce the line.37 That would free up more parties for skirmishing duties out front. Moreover, with the timely arrival of two convict transports from England, Arthur also now had more troops to deploy. He relieved the Hobart volunteer town guardsmen of their duties and was still able to order 25 soldiers and a non-commissioned officer to join the main camp at Sorell.38 But as these arrangements were being made, the campaign was on the cusp of its most public success. Within the cordoned territory, the slow-starting Mr Walpole had spied a group of Aboriginal people.