CHAPTER TWO
1828, Autumn and Spring
The Midlands
Pursuits and Captives
Operational military records from colonial Australia are frustratingly rare, and so there is little documentary evidence of the soldiery holding the line against Aboriginal people or expelling them from the ‘settled districts’. But the military was not inactive. Even the public reports of self-interested gentlemen, glorifying their actions in the colonial press, reveal snippets of coordinated missions of deputised civilians and red-coated soldiers.
In early April 1828 the Hobart Town Courier reported that a local settler, two of his servants, two soldiers and three field policemen were in pursuit of an Aboriginal group.1 Traversing the northeastern midlands near Ben Lomond mountain, they spotted smoke trails, which guided them to the Aboriginal position. The settler ‘hastened, creeping on his hands and feet within 20 yards of the place’, but was spotted making his approach. It was later reported that ‘one of them was in the act of throwing a spear at him, when he fired at him in his own defence’. Like most settlers’ narratives, it was Aboriginal violence that prompted a stern colonial response. Violence begat violence in a righteous circle of blood and gunpowder.
With the blast of the musket the spearman ‘fell, but got up again and ran off’. The pursuit continued, and they eventually ‘overtook a boy about 16 years of age, whom [they] took prisoner’. The party then returned to the deserted camp, and ‘found 20 blankets, 24 knives, 2 muskets loaded, about 4 pounds of buckshot, a canister of gunpowder, a bayonet’ as well as spears and waddies (clubs). The discovery was the colonists’ worst fear: the arming of Aboriginal people and the disarming of the settlers. It was just one of numerous reports from the period of Aboriginal assailants taking guns from huts or stockmen.
One of the guns was recognisable. It had been taken a few days prior from a farm, where Aboriginal people also killed a servant. The young prisoner confirmed the story, giving details of the attack. The story matched what the settler knew of this incident, apparently confirming he was on the trail of the right people. The next day they made the prisoner guide the party in further pursuit, but during the night ‘the boy made his escape, by groping his way up the chimney of a room in which he was confined.’
The settler was John Batman, who later helped establish the settlement of Melbourne. Though his attempt at retribution had been thwarted, it highlights that the war was being fought by mixed paramilitary parties even before the Proclamation. Significantly, Batman commended ‘the soldiers and field police constables’ for their good service. Over subsequent days Batman met up with other nearby settlers, no doubt with the aid of other militiamen and soldiers, and attempted to regain the Aboriginal tracks. But they ‘did not find any traces of them whatever’. Someone wrote an account of the proceedings, and sent it to Hobart. It was published in the Hobart Town Courier a week before Arthur’s Proclamation.
In the months that followed, the Hobart Town Courier hinted at other actions being undertaken in Van Diemen’s Land. In May, ‘a native girl 16 or 17 years of age was taken, who spoke English, but who escaped in the night up the chimney’.2 The similarity of the escape suggests multiple interpretative possibilities, from standardised practices to misinformed rumour. But the reports of conflict that made it into print were just a proportion of a greater whole. For the most part, the press was generally ill-informed about military operations to maintain the partition. So instead of describing wartime actions, there was much editorialising on the cause of the conflict. There were even expressions of sympathy for the general position of Aboriginal people, despite the widespread angst about Aboriginal hostility and the economic cost of the war. The colonists knew that settlement caused the conditions for conflict, but continued to settle anyway. For many, the profits exceeded the risks.
Command Structures and Designation 7578
Preparing for spring incursions into the ‘settled districts’, Colonial Secretary John Burnett acted to support the war by making it easier to document. In August 1828 he created a correspondence code for addressing issues connected with Aboriginal people, designating it 7578. This administrative decision marks the moment from which the Vandemonian War became extraordinarily well documented, and by which such documentation was preserved.
The first outbound 7578 letter from the Colonial Secretary’s Office was in response to a query from James Simpson, the police magistrate of Campbell Town in the northern midlands. Simpson was concerned with the ‘course to be adopted against an aboriginal Native who attacked Mr Reynold’s Hut’.3 The Colonial Secretary responded that the offender ‘should be proceeded against in the same manner, that any other person would be, who was taken under similar circumstances’.
About a week later he wrote to Simpson again, pointing out the Lieutenant Governor’s advice to get the military to ‘adopt decided measures’ against Aboriginal people who were making a ‘hostile appearance’ in that district.4 Through the Colonial Secretary’s Office Arthur kept close tabs on operations throughout the island and provided more and more instructions to the police magistrates over the following months. In early September the Colonial Secretary again communicated to Simpson in reply to information about an attack on a hut, pointing out that the Lieutenant Governor ‘recommends that you should concert with the Officers commanding the Military Parties some decided measures for restraining the Aborigines from entering the settled Districts.’5
Later in September the relationship between the civil and military authorities in the midlands was further clarified. The Brigade Major wrote to Captain Walpole of the 39th Regiment, commander of the military station at Ross, just south of Campbell Town.6 Walpole was informed that ‘the object of stationing the party under your command at Ross is to protect that neighbourhood from the attacks and aggressions of the aboriginal Natives’, and told to ‘pay the most ready attention to the application of James Simpson, Esq., police magistrate at Campbell Town’. The Brigade Major also conveyed the wishes of ‘the Colonel Commanding’ that it was important to attach policemen to the military operations ‘who will represent the civil power’. This ensured the legality of the military operations when it would ‘be found necessary to remove the Aborigines from the settled districts by force’. Weekly reports ‘for his Excellency’s information’ also ensured Arthur was kept up to date with all military manoeuvres.
A Day of Infamy
In October the colony’s attention was drawn to the southern midlands where the police magistrate of Oatlands, Thomas Anstey, was facing a crisis. Aboriginal attacks on stockmen and settlers’ huts were hardly unusual by the spring of 1828, but on one day in early October a series of events shocked the readers of the Hobart Town Courier.7
A woman named Anne Geary ‘had seen the natives coming’, advancing towards the hut she occupied. She fled to her neighbours, the Goughs. Upon hearing the news, Mr Gough and two other men formed a party, and raced to the hut from which Anne Geary had just fled. They were concerned to retrieve a gun and ammunition stored there, which they wanted to prevent the Aboriginal people from acquiring. Unfortunately, the three only had one gun themselves, so the others carried dark sticks, hoping to fool any Aboriginal people they may have encountered. But, reaching the hut, they were too late. The door had been broken open, and the gun and ammunition were gone.
While Gough was out, an Aboriginal group attacked his home and family. Attempting to fend off the assault Mrs Gough pleaded with her assailants for mercy, ‘begging them to spare the lives of her Picanninies’. But it was to no avail. Even her 13-month-old infant ‘received several contusions’ during the assault. She was told, ‘in good English, that they should be all killed’, and she was beaten herself.
Returning home, Gough ‘was met by his eldest daughter Mary, covered with blood, calling upon her father to hasten home as the natives had killed her mother and sisters’. He saw his wife ‘sitting on the ground, resting her back against the fence, with her infant child in her lap’.
‘My dear Gough’, his wife managed to say. ‘[I]t is all over with me, I am killed by the natives’. Then she passed out. Gough bandaged her head as best he could, tearing strips from his own clothing. He then ran to the hut, where he found ‘his infant daughter Alicia lying breathless in front of the door with her arms extended’. Remarkably, she was still alive. Inside was Anne Geary, prone on the floor, with wounds to her head and torso. He helped her to a sofa, where she commenced vomiting blood. Within hours both Anne and the infant Alicia died of their injuries. Mrs Gough and her other infant daughter recovered over the following weeks.
The Hobart Town Courier’s report of the attack appears to have been derived directly from the coronial inquest, because the printed story drew directly – often verbatim – from Gough’s own testimony.8 Tenses and perspectives were tidied, and the original comment of the Aboriginal man to Mrs Gough’s pleas – ‘no you white Bitch we’ll kill you all’ – was toned down for readers.
But while the story was not exaggerated, its publication demonstrates how the press helped prepare the political ground for government action. Gough’s story seemed to provide confirmation ‘that the natives have formed a systematic organized plan for carrying on a war of extermination against the white inhabitants of the colony’. The attacking war party was thought to be a ‘horde’ consisting ‘of about 20 men, no women or children’, rather than simply a migrating tribal group. Only in passing was it mentioned that after the attack, a ‘party of constables and soldiers’ pursued the assailants for three days, creeping up on their campfires, even while other raids occurred around the district.
Midlands Recruits, the Case of John Danvers
Newspaper reports of attacks, especially those upon women and children, stimulated individuals within the district to mobilise against Aboriginal people. One such person was ‘an athletic young man, of a most courageous disposition’ named John Danvers, who ‘offered his Services to conduct a party of Soldiers or Constables to those parts where the natives resort’.9 Danvers was a convict who had a long association with the district. He had been transported for life for ‘Housebreaking’, arriving in Van Diemen’s Land in 1824 on the Asia.10 He had also previously been tried for horse stealing, but had been acquitted. When Danvers offered his services as a guide, he was serving as a ‘Watchman at the Commissariat Stores at Lemon Springs’.
Danvers possibly wanted the rewards associated with good service to the government. His convict conduct record shows that Anstey had twice before sentenced Danvers to punishment for ill behaviour. In 1825 Danvers received ‘25 lashes’ for ‘Neglect of Duty & insolence to his Master’ and in 1827 he lost his ticket of leave for ‘being frequently drunk’, disorderly and under suspicion for involvement in multiple felonies.
Tickets of leave were a reward for good behaviour, and allowed convicts to gain their own employment rather than serve their sentences as assigned servants or on public works chain gangs. The loss of a ticket was a significant punishment; its prospective reissue was a powerful incentive. Danvers’ offer to chase Aboriginal people was probably a hope for personal freedom and a more amenable way to serve his sentence, as well as a genuine desire to aid king and country. But the dangers were real, and Anstey was convinced that Danvers ‘seems anxious to distinguish himself in all that may be required of him’. Such men made excellent paramilitaries.
With Danvers expecting he could ‘fall in with them in two or three days’, Anstey informed the Colonial Secretary of the convict’s offer. But while he was focusing on pursuing the group connected with ‘outrages recently committed’, Anstey also alerted the government of another ‘two or three tribes’ that were ‘hovering about the hills’. He had ‘constables stationed in some huts in the Eastern marshes and Blue hills to have a watchful eye over their movements’.
Later in the month Anstey sent a circular to his subordinates, providing them with general operational instructions. Referring to the ‘late outrages’, he stated that it was ‘indispensably necessary that some prompt and efficient measures should be adopted’.11 He reminded the men of the Proclamation, summarised ‘the most prominent clauses’ and informed them that they were ‘empowered in cases of urgent necessity, to call upon all His Majesty’s civil subjects for assistance’. Moreover, Anstey instructed his men ‘not to wait till the Aborigines shall have shewn some actual demonstration of hostile intentions’, but to send word to ‘headquarters’ as soon as they were sighted. That way the district operations could be developed into a ‘combined plan’.
Anstey already knew he would soon have even more troops at his disposal. On 24 October, a detachment of the 40th Regiment was ordered from Hobart into the interior because ‘the Colonel Commanding deems it necessary to augment the military detachments for the purpose of strengthening the out-stations’. It comprised ‘5 sergeants, 5 corporals, and 58 privates’. As they marched out on 27 October, Anstey issued his circular. Three days later Arthur proclaimed martial law.
November 1828, Martial Law
Citing attacks on ‘unoffending and defenceless women and children’ and the ‘insufficient’ powers ‘afforded by the common law’ to his magistrates, Arthur formally declared on 1 November 1828 that ‘martial law is and shall continue to be in force against the black or aboriginal Natives, within the settled districts of this island’.12 He wanted ‘all soldiers’ to be ready to ‘obey and assist’ when called on ‘for the purpose of carrying on military operations against the Natives’. It contained an unambiguous command that the military were to take orders from the police magistrates. But soldiers were already in the field, and operations were already underway.
The declaration of martial law was as much a call to action as a legal instrument. In communicating it to his police magistrates, Arthur also provided some general instructions,13 which were similarly reiterated to ‘Officers in command at the out-stations’.14 Arthur clarified that he was not ‘seeking the destruction of the Aborigines’ but was rather concerned with ‘punishing the leaders in the atrocities’.
Arthur also hoped for the opportunity ‘to take by the hand, and give a certain predominance to, some one particular tribe, which may have been less guilty than others’. He was still hoping for a negotiated settlement, but knew this was only likely to occur with some tribes. The colonists were well aware of intertribal conflicts, and Arthur hoped to use this to his advantage by forming alliances with certain tribes – which was gradually happening with the Aboriginal people south of Hobart – and bringing them into the colonial fold. Both civil and military authorities were ordered to send weekly reports for Arthur’s information.
Over the following weeks the police magistrates sent reports of their operations to the Colonial Secretary for Arthur’s attention. In the westernmost of the main settled districts, the focus tended towards deploying forces, managing information and ensuring communication and cooperation between different parties. In New Norfolk one ‘military party is stationed at the Lower Clyde’, while other military forces were deployed at settlers’ farms, ready to respond when ‘the Natives may shew themselves’.15 In the Bothwell district, where Lieutenant Williams had taken over the police magistracy from Lieutenant Curtin earlier in the year, he instructed his constables to respond to Aboriginal groups by collecting ‘as many armed Persons as he can, divide them into small parties, placing an authorised person with Each, and to follow the Natives up for several days’ whenever they appeared.16
To help avoid ‘Bloodshed’, Arthur ordered ‘that the Chief and one or two men appearing to have most authority in the Tribe should be taken’. Regarding these plans, the Colonial Secretary responded to Williams that ‘His Excellency altogether approves thereof’, especially the additional use of ‘the Services of the Post Office Messenger’. Being so close to the highlands, Aboriginal people could relatively easily slip by colonial posts, so tactical and terrain intelligence was of central concern.
At Norfolk Plains in the northwestern midlands, the ex-soldier and police magistrate Malcolm Laing Smith was being given more explicit direction by Arthur.17 Laing was convinced ‘that conciliatory measures are not likely to succeed’, and focused on deploying the military in a chain of posts up ‘to Westbury Barracks’ and establishing ‘a cordon along the remote Stock Huts’.18
Arthur supported this scheme and authorised Smith to determine where best to station ‘Military Parties’ in his district. But because Smith was troubled by the small number of field police at his disposal, he asked for six more men so he could attach a field policeman to ‘each Military Party’. It is a pointed indicator of the number of military parties deployed in his district that Smith already had 12 field policemen at his disposal and wanted a further six, suggesting perhaps 18 military parties were operating throughout Norfolk Plains at the time.
But Arthur had other ideas. ‘I am further directed to acquaint you’, the Colonial Secretary informed Smith, ‘that it is hoped by swearing in a few steady Soldiers as Constables, any Augmentation of the Field Police will be unnecessary.’ Having already placed regimental officers in charge of key districts, Arthur had just advocated further militarisation of the police magistracy by giving soldiers civil powers.
The Roving Parties
The Oatlands district had experienced many ‘atrocities’ and so Anstey developed a plan for the ‘Capture of Aborigines’. His plan had Arthur’s full support because, as the Colonial Secretary put it, ‘very little differs from what His Excellency had already contemplated’:19
If sufficient force could be found, it appears to His Excellency desirable to occupy the Country by Posts, placed at considerable intervals from Campbell Town to St Paul’s Plains and from thence to the Tier above Oyster Bay; and another line of Posts from Oatlands towards Prosser’s Plains, and extending to little Swan Port. The first named Division it appeared might commence by surrounding the Tract which is called the ‘Native Hut Valley’, at the source of the Elizabeth River; and subsequently if unsuccessful in that attempt, they could act in separate Bodies by watching for the Native Fires at night, and endeavouring to trace out their haunts by day.
Arthur was advocating deploying two lines stretching from the midlands strongholds to the coast, one veering north and the other south. These posts could serve to support mobile forces, striking into territory occupied by Aboriginal people, starting with the ‘Native Hut Valley’ along the hills directly east of Campbell Town. Arthur directed Anstey to ‘try the effect of sending out two Parties … with Danvers and Hopkins as Guides’.
James Hopkins was another convict, who had been punished in Worcester Gaol for an assault, before being transported on the Arab in 1822 for ‘Highway robbery’.20 Like Danvers, it seems his prior conduct qualified him for arduous duties. But they would not be alone. As Arthur told Anstey, ‘an additional Military force will be immediately sent to you for the purpose; and you will be pleased to concert matters with Mr Lockyer, so as to insure that the Parties are well directed.’
Mr Lockyer was an ensign with the 57th Regiment, and had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land just a few months earlier on the Phoenix. It was an appropriate name for the ship, which brought a detachment to Hobart before embarking some of the 40th Regiment for India.21
It was a year of change in the composition of the redcoats in Van Diemen’s Land, with the long-serving 40th Regiment moving on and other regiments coming in. In November 1828, for instance, 30 privates of the 63rd arrived in Hobart in time to help enforce martial law.22 Even some of the police magistracies changed hands between regiments as part of the shifting deployments of 1828. But while regiments came and went, the British Army remained, and Ensign Lockyer was soon enough at the front.
Oatlands was increasingly the major operational centre for military action in the colony. It was close enough to Hobart for relatively effective communication with the Lieutenant Governor. On 8 December, Anstey reported to Arthur that ‘the Military Parties of this District have not yet fallen in with the Natives’.23 As he explained:
There has been no want of zeal exhibited by either the Soldiers or Constables employed in this service, but in consequence of the small number of Troops stationed at Oatlands, Ensign Lockyer was not able to detach more than one Party until Monday last the 1st instant when, by the arrival of Lieut Vicary with a Party of the 63rd Regt our means were increased.
‘We have now five Parties in the Bush in the Eastern Division of this District’, Anstey added, promising to forward the Lieutenant Governor ‘a report of the proceedings of each party’ as soon as feasible. Soon thereafter, the documentary trail of the Vandemonian War was greatly enriched.
Danvers’ Mission to Tooms Lake
Danvers’ party departed Oatlands on 26 November and spent that day travelling between various settlers’ huts.24 At one of these they were ‘joined by Constable Longworth, and three Soldiers’. The next day was similarly spent in transit, and the party acquired the services of ‘two others of the Military’. That night, in the hills of the southeastern midlands, they entered enemy territory and were ‘on the look out the whole of that night for their fires’.
After continuing eastwards the following morning, they ‘came to seven Native Huts’. From the remains of a butchered kangaroo, they surmised that the camp had been occupied within the last couple of days. They climbed a nearby hill for the night so they could again try to spot campfires. Crossing the ‘Eastern Tier’ on their fourth day out, the party failed to find any clear tracks, so they divided ‘into two parties each taking a Hill’ to increase their chances of spotting the telltale glows of fire. Again there were no sightings, so in the morning the parties separated again, this time to pass around Tooms Lake. Each group encountered abandoned Aboriginal huts near the shorelines. One party found eight, the other 10, pointing to a reasonable Aboriginal population in the area. That night they watched the lakeside, but still saw nothing but darkness.
Over the next four days they variously backtracked and traversed different hills. One settler reported that Aboriginal people had been seen in the area, but the party did not find them. On the ninth day they rested. Explaining this delay Danvers reported that ‘some of the party being Foot Sore could not travel any further’. They had marched an incredible distance over difficult terrain.
On 5 December, after dividing again and taking different hills for the night, ‘we saw a fire appearing about three miles distant’. Danvers tried to regroup with the rest of his force on the nearby hills. He could not find them in the dark, so he led his party toward the fires, climbing another hill to keep a watch. Unknown to Danvers, the other party had already moved off and soon regrouped with Anstey.
Early the next morning Danvers spotted another fire, situated about two miles from the first one. Following their general orders, the party ‘advanced towards them’, probably choosing the closer of the two fires. But the Aboriginal people were on alert and, perceiving the approach of the armed force, ‘got to the Top of a high hill’.
Controlling the high ground gave several advantages as it made observation, defence and escape easier. Recognising the situation, Danvers attempted a ploy. ‘Two of us went part of the way up without our fire arms thinking to decoy them down’. Meanwhile, ‘the others of our party were laying in ambush’. But these Aboriginal people were not deceived and did not come down. Instead they escaped in a different direction. Danvers’ party tracked them some ‘13 miles’ back towards Tooms Lake, and then ‘got as near as possible to them that night’. His party prepared to attack at the following dawn.
‘At Daybreak we formed ourselves to surround them’, Danvers later reported, but his party was spotted by a man getting up to tend the campfires. He ‘gave the alarm to the rest, and the whole of them jumpt up immediately and attempted to take up their spears in defence’. The small military party was only six men strong, and thus outnumbered by more than 20 people. But the colonial force still had the relative advantages of surprise and training. They ‘immediately fired and repeated it’, pouring volleys of shot into the frantic camp.
In the aftermath of the attack, the party cleared the site. ‘We destroyed 11 Dogs’, Danvers noted, ‘and brought one alive’. Keeping dogs for hunting, and their services as canine alarm systems and additional protection, was one of the major Aboriginal adaptations to British colonisation. But there were other signs of adaptation in the camp. As well as 52 spears and 29 waddies, there were 14 blankets, 28 knives, 6 partial sheep shears, 2 razor blades, ‘1 Fowling piece’, some gunpowder, and ‘A quantity of ball and shot’.
Of the Aboriginal people, Danvers reported that ‘two only were, unfortunately, taken alive’. These were conveyed back to Oatlands under guard, where the party arrived the following day. There were other casualties – ‘several of whom were killed’, Danvers simply but matter-of-factly reported to Anstey. He did not report what the soldiers did with the bodies, but he did note that the blankets were ‘destroyed by Fire’. They also ‘burned all the Native Huts’.
Upon successful completion of this operation Danvers signed a mission report, titled ‘Statement of Proceedings of an armed party of 9 Soldiers, two Constables, and John Danvers guide, sent out in Pursuit of the Aborigines by the Police Magistrate of Oatlands’. William Holmes, one of the field police constables attached to the expedition, also signed the report on 9 December 1828. This was forwarded to the Colonial Secretary’s Office for Arthur’s information.
On the same day, someone in Oatlands wrote to the Hobart Town Courier with a glowing commendation of ‘their indefatigable exertions on this most harassing service’.25 While offering a terse description of the mission, the writer clearly had exact information, listing the same numbers of trophies taken in the raid. But the letter also gave extra specifics not detailed in Danvers’ account. ‘Ten of the Natives were killed on the spot,’ the writer asserted, ‘and the rest fled.’ Of the two ‘prisoners’ that the party brought back to Oatlands, they were apparently ‘a black woman and her boy’.
Other Soldiers, More Scouring
Danvers’ mission was just one part of Anstey’s plan to scour his district with roving parties of armed men. On the same day that Danvers first spotted the Aboriginal fires, another mission departed Oatlands ‘under the Command of Ensign Lockyer and led by James Hopkins Special Constable and Guide’.26 They followed a similar path to Danvers, and spotted fires on their second evening out. The next morning, while Danvers’ party was attacking the camp, Lockyer’s party headed ‘towards the fires’, and soon ‘saw about Thirty natives marching in Indian File about 150 yards’ away. ‘They were well armed, and well loaded with Plunder’.
‘Lockyer thought it best to watch them till night’, Hopkins reported, so as ‘to surprise them by their fires.’ The party ‘lay in the scrub’ and was not spotted. They watched the Aboriginal group head into some nearby hills, where they ‘threw their firesticks on every side of them and thus the Bush began to burn for miles’. The soldiers lost the trail in the smoky conflagration. They tried for a few more days, but returned to Oatlands, seeking fresh shoes and supplies. Anstey thought the thing was ‘very badly managed’, annotating Hopkin’s report with the suggestion that the party ‘should have marched towards the Fires under cover of the night’ as soon as they first spotted them. That way they could have approached the camp ‘at day break’ and ‘seized and bound the Natives between sleeping and waking’.
While Lockyer’s party was laying in the scrub on 7 December, yet another ‘party of military’ from Oatlands was ‘scouring the Country in every direction during the day and night’.27 This was a detachment of the 63rd Regiment under the command of a sergeant, attended by one of Anstey’s field police constables, and guided by an assigned convict servant. The next day this party got word from Lockyer that he had intercepted an Aboriginal group, and he instructed them to proceed to a particular marsh to try to ‘fall in with them’. That evening the sergeant saw fires, and identified one in particular attended by ‘two natives’. In the morning they advanced on this camp, but were spotted. ‘One shot was fired’ at the fleeing figures as ‘they attempted to make their escape’. The field policemen thought it ‘took effect’, but noted that ‘we could not wait to look for the body’ because they went in pursuit. After three more days they too returned to Oatlands ‘for want of provisions’. As he did with most reports, Anstey annotated it before forwarding the detailed account of the mission to the Colonial Secretary. They ‘will do better with the next Party’, he noted.
On 8 December a fourth party from Oatlands spotted where Aboriginal people had ‘set the bush a fire’. The next day they ‘saw another fire’ raging in the bush, which seemed to have been ignited by ‘the Tribe which had been attacked by John Danvers’ party’. This was a combined party of seven soldiers from the 63rd and 40th Regiments, similarly under the command of a sergeant in company with a field police constable. Temporarily occupying a stockman’s hut, a soldier was left behind to guard it while the stockman guided the remainder of the party towards this Aboriginal group. They first headed towards Tooms Lake, but veered off along a road into the hills. The guide proved a bit unfamiliar with the landscape, and so they missed the lake completely, but did get to see the Schoutens – now known as the Freycinet Peninsula – ‘on the Sea Coast’ to the east.
By then, however, the party was ‘totally exhausted’ and short of provisions. They headed back towards the farms and stockmen’s huts, and stumbled across a ‘brush hut’ occupied by ‘some white person’ who had fled upon their approach. It was probably built by ‘bushrangers or sheep stealers’, they surmised, ‘as a great number of mutton bones were strewed about’.
Even once back at occupied settlers’ huts, they tried to draw rations so they could stay in the field, but due to a shortage of flour they decided to return to Oatlands. The party’s 17 December report suggested that future parties should be issued ‘with biscuit’ because it lasted longer and could be consumed without the aid of a campfire. Stealth and a secure food supply were going to be crucial in the weeks and months ahead.