CHAPTER THREE
1828–29, Summer
East, South, North, West
Roving Towards the Coast
Hoping that each mission could improve on the last, Anstey continued to send out roving parties. Other districts most likely followed suit, though no other left such a rich documentary trail. The valleys, hills and forests of Van Diemen’s Land were being swept clear in an effort to make tribal habitation of the ‘settled districts’ unviable. In explaining his decision to enact martial law to his London superiors, Arthur implied that the ends would justify the means: ‘Terror may have the effect which no proferred measures of conciliation have been capable of inducing.’1 Arthur’s superiors sanctioned his measures, and so terror became British policy in Van Diemen’s Land.2
Only a few days after returning to Oatlands, Danvers and Holmes and six others were again sent out ‘in pursuit of the Natives’.3 They tracked south and east ‘to the source of Prosser’s River’. It seems that Danvers had learned from the encounter at Tooms Lake, which sat at the upper tributaries of the Macquarie River, that the upper waterways were likely places to find Aboriginal people. They found nothing of interest on this occasion, so they moved on in the morning.
Continuing eastwards, they found ‘a very high hill, the name of which is unknown to us’. Despite declaring this territory part of the ‘settled districts’, the eastern tiers that separated the midlands plains from the coast was poorly known. Failing to spot any campfires or smoke trails, the party continued east ‘as far as where Prosser’s river empties itself into the Sea’. They had no luck securing ‘intelligence’ or provisions from settlers and stockmen they visited, so some of the party crossed over to Maria Island to get provisions from the military station there. The remainder ‘scoured the bush in every direction’, but found no Aboriginal traces in the area. Once the parties had reunited, they all headed to a settler’s farm, ‘and stayed there the remainder of the day to take bread, and repairing our knapsacks, shoes, and clothes’. The expedition took a heavy toll on the soldiers’ equipment, as well as their bodies.
With repairs done, the party headed towards Little Swan Port, hoping again for information. But despite having ‘been in great strength thereabouts’ a few weeks ago, these Aboriginal people had since moved on. The party continued up the ‘little Swan port River at the distance of eight or nine miles’, and on ‘towards Oyster Bay’ the next morning. Here they finally found something:
We came to several places where the natives had lately been, and where we saw several Native huts. In these places they seem to have made warlike preparations, which we judged from the fresh scrapings of spears which we saw there.
Now on the alert, the party headed to a nearby creek, thinking the Aboriginal people ‘might have made for that place’. Instead, they ‘found two Soldiers and a constable stationed there in a government hut’, waiting and hoping to ambush Aboriginal hut-raiders. These would-be ambushers said that they had ‘been two or three days before in Mr Meredith’s hut’ (the settler who had housed the east coast military station in his barn and asked to be reimbursed). It was another small example of the mutual assistance between the colonial forces and the settlers. Van Diemen’s Land was a military colony in a multiplicity of ways.
The party then headed to Waterloo Point. The small coastal settlement was named for the battle where Napoleon was finally defeated, and reminds us that many of the soldiers and ex-soldiers of the Vandemonian War had other recent experiences of war. The party reached Waterloo Point on 23 December, and ‘saw Captain Dalrymple in the Evening’. Dalrymple belonged to the 40th Regiment, and had replaced Captain Hibbert as police magistrate of the Great Swan Port district. On Christmas Eve, Danvers and Holmes’ party ‘remained this day at Waterloo point to refresh ourselves, by order of Capt Dalrymple’.
Dalrymple spent part of Christmas Day 1828 making plans and preparations with Danvers and Holmes. He ‘added four Soldiers’ to the party, and then ‘ordered this party to be divided into two parties’. Dalrymple thought the Aboriginal people may have gone either to the Schoutens or to St Patricks Head further north along the coast. Danvers was to guide one party, Holmes the other, but they all set off together continuing their northwards journey up the east coast. They learned little from the stockmen and settlers they encountered, but they did hear ‘that the Natives had speared two of Mr Meredith’s horses’. Following Dalrymple’s orders, the party then split up in their continued searching.
A Casualty, and the Veneer of Civility
On 27 December, Anstey and Lockyer had to deal with an annoyed Lieutenant Governor. The day before, the Colonial Secretary had written to Anstey to express Arthur’s ‘extreme regret’ about certain events concerning another military party ‘sent in pursuit of the Natives by Ensign Lockyer’.4This itself was possibly a bit of administrative sleight of hand. The original mission report had recorded that the mission was sent out by Anstey, as such missions nominally were, but Anstey had crossed out this line and written in Lockyer as the directing authority for this particular mission.5 In all probability Lockyer had authorised the mission, but Anstey was obviously keen to distance himself from its outcome.
This small party commenced their expedition on 10 December – the same day that Danvers and Holmes had set off – although they left from one of the marshes in the district rather than Oatlands itself. The group comprised four men of the 57th Regiment, guided by Constable Thomas Benison of the field police. By coincidence, they headed in a similar direction to Danvers towards the coast. Benison’s party, however, saw smoke and found ‘fires by which the Natives had been roasting Opossums’. Soon Benison’s party was in sight of the coast, ‘and crossed some of the Native hunting grounds, where the blood of kangaroos indicated that the natives had been there recently’. Then, again shadowing Danvers’ group, they entered Prosser’s Plains. After that things went awry.
The party stopped ‘on the banks of a considerable river’. Benison ordered privates Wood, Price and Splint to prepare a camp for the night and stay put while he and Private Monaghan climbed a nearby rise ‘to make what observation we could’. On the hill, Benison and Monaghan ‘saw no fires nor any thing else which could guide us in the dark’, so they descended back down the hill towards their companions. On the way, Monaghan went a little ahead, declaring that he ‘would shoot a kangaroo’ to supplement their diminished provisions. As Benison neared the camp he heard a shot in the darkness.
Reading the account later, Anstey expressed his frustration and noted for the Colonial Secretary’s benefit that he ‘told every Party that a shot must never be fired, nor a word spoken, except in whispers’. Anstey did not want the Aboriginal people on alert for the roving parties. But in the darkness of that night Benison had more immediate concerns. ‘I was apprehensive’, he later recalled, and ‘went down in the direction where the shot had been fired, but could see nothing on account of the darkness’. His apprehensions increased when he and Monaghan returned to camp to discover that Private Price was missing.
In the morning the party ‘went in search of the missing man, and found poor Price lying weltering in his blood dead, a ball having passed through his head’. His musket was nearby and still loaded, so it was not suicide. It seemed Monaghan may have mistaken him for a kangaroo.
By now the party was very short of provisions and the soldiers’ shoes had worn out so completely that they travelled barefoot. They took Price’s ‘firelock’ but left ‘the body behind’ and continued with their mission, heading towards fires they had spotted, although without success. They visited a few huts, and then made for home, returning to Oatlands on the evening of 17 December. Benison gave his report the next day, and Anstey forwarded it to Hobart.
A week later the Colonial Secretary wrote to Anstey:
I am directed to express to you His Excellency’s extreme regret that a cart was not immediately despatched for the Body that an Inquest might with as little delay as possible have been held upon it, and as the Lieutenant Governor considers it very important that the most minute investigation of this mysterious affair should still take place, His Excellency is desirous that a Jury should be summoned and an Inquest held as soon as it is possible reporting to me fully thereon for His information.
By contrast, Arthur showed no concern for the people killed near Tooms Lake. The peculiar application of martial law during the Vandemonian War made inquests about Aboriginal deaths unnecessary, while the charade that it was a civil operation meant ‘friendly fire’ casualties were given coronial rather than military investigation.
The Northern Line
Danvers’ and Holmes’ parties also had little luck in late December. While Holmes headed east then south down the peninsula, Danvers struck further north towards St Patricks Head. He started by following what he called the ‘Big River’ (probably what is now the Apsley), which fed into a large lagoon at the north of Oyster Bay. After following the water for ‘about six miles’ the party ‘ascended the Tiers’ and then continued towards the coast. Here they found a midden of shellfish and abandoned camp fires, but nothing else. On 30 December, ‘within one or two miles of St Patrick’s head’, Danvers turned his party back:
having been given to understand that Martial Law did not extend beyond these boundaries, and being likely to be short of provisions, and seeing no signs of natives, we retraced our steps, at the same time pursuing a different route going homewards.
Holmes’ party also decided to turn back on 30 December. They had traversed the difficult terrain of the peninsula – eventually being reduced to clambering ‘from rock to rock’ – but had found no ‘traces of the natives’.
In the new year Danvers’ and Holmes’ parties reunited at Waterloo Point. Captain Dalrymple’s extra soldiers detached and stayed at Oyster Bay while the rest returned to Oatlands, ‘examining the country very minutely’ as they travelled via Tooms Lake. Upon their return Danvers and Holmes told Anstey that they ‘entertain no doubt that most of the Native Tribes have crossed the Country, and proceeded to the Westward’.
The Western Line
Anstey had instructed several roving parties to scour the southern midlands towards the west. On 12 December, two days after Danvers’ and Benison’s parties had departed, Anstey sent another ‘armed party’ south from Oatlands.6 They tracked towards the small town of Jerusalem (now Colebrook), crossed the Coal River in its valley northeast of Hobart, and to their surprise discovered ‘a whole line of trees marked’. These were, they realised, the secret markings for a cattle-rustling highway through the bush. This was the party’s only useful discovery, and they returned to Oatlands on Christmas Eve without making contact with any Aboriginal people.
Another party operating to the east of Oatlands from 15 December did spot Aboriginal fires, but lost sight of them ‘when it began to rain excessively and the Fire disappeared’.7 Later they found old campfires, where Aboriginal people ‘had been making Spears’, but little else of note. They ‘heard a shot’ one day in the distance, ‘crossed a range of Hills or Mountains of which they did not know the name’, and returned to Oatlands via ‘Toom’s Lagoon’.
The mid-December rain also impacted another ‘party of military’ roving to the west and northwest of Oatlands, guided by field police constable John Tattersall.8 They had departed on 15 December, and quickly ‘found a small uninhabited hut on fire’ in a marsh west of the town. They could see ‘one or two more fires’ a little further on. These fires were probably evidence of deliberate Aboriginal targeting of isolated stockmen and farms and the destruction of buildings and haystacks. On 15 December a correspondent at Bothwell wrote to Hobart, describing the incursion:
A horde of Aborigines entered this district yesterday, after killing James Jones, a freeman, servant to Michael and Henry Jones the lime burners at the Black marsh. The body of the unfortunate man was found this morning covered with spear wounds in a water hole in the Jordan, near his master’s house. Intelligence has reached this township that a soldier of the 40th stationed on the Shannon was this morning wounded severely in the shoulder by a spear. The man was unconscious of a foe lurking so near him until he received the wound.9
Tattersall’s party, however, failed to meet with any of these assailants. ‘The whole of this day’, he reported on 20 December, ‘the rain came pouring down incessantly’. While the party pushed on towards the hills, ‘the rain and wet rendered all further exertion impracticable’. They tried twice more, but were thwarted by ‘heavy fog and wet’. At the end of the month they were sent northwest towards Lake Sorell.10
While operations west of Oatlands met with little initial success, the incursions reported at Bothwell were being addressed. The same correspondent who reported the death of James Jones praised ‘[t]he incessant activity and vigilance displayed by Lieutenant Williams of the 40th for the protection of this district.’11
Like Anstey, Williams sent regular missives ‘for the information of the Lieut Governor’, giving the key points of his operations ‘to effect the expulsion of the Aboriginal Natives’.12 Although Williams’ surviving correspondence is not as detailed or voluminous as Anstey’s, it is clear that the deployment of military parties dominated his strategy. His brief summaries include reports of civilians and constables accompanying military parties on excursions as well as limited information on the movements and pursuits throughout his district. Williams also conveyed his various attempts to warn settlers and to ‘collect a party of settlers & their servants to proceed against the Natives’ – effectively calling upon settlers to form militia in areas not adequately covered by the military.
But not all settlers and servants shared Williams’ notions of public service. There were clearly some recruitment difficulties in Bothwell in the summer of 1828–29. Arthur responded to one report of a man who ‘refused to assist the Parties employed against the Aborigines’ by regretting that ‘nothing can be done against this man in a legal way’, but suggesting ‘the only means therefore to punish him will be to deprive him of any indulgence which he may be receiving from the Government’.13 Arthur was happy to informally punish such shirkers. He also approved Williams’ dismissal of ineffective guides.14
Although Williams’ report states that roving parties in the Bothwell district were unsuccessful ‘in capturing any of the Natives’ in December 1828, they were not without success. One of the missions sent out from the Shannon River on 15 December ‘fell in with the Natives’ two days later ‘and took about 200 spears, some sheep shears &c’.15 Apparently ‘the Natives Escaped’, but they had clearly been disarmed and dispersed.
When some Aboriginal people were spotted again about a fortnight later, one of Williams’ constables ‘formed a party and cooperated with the Military Parties’ in that area.16 When ‘a Tribe of Natives made their appearance at the hut of Mr Clarke on the River Ouse late in the afternoon, twelve Rounds were fired at them ineffectually.’ They ‘retired without doing any mischief’. Two parties were formed to go after them.
Division Constable Young led one of the parties, and ‘fell in with the Natives early on Wednesday morning’. Unfortunately, ‘he was unable to get within shot of them but succeeded in Capturing between 2 & 300 Spears’. Combined with the shooting at the hut, Williams’ report implies that military in the Bothwell district tended to shoot first and attempt captures later, if at all. This probably reflects longstanding military practice in the area, and probably the wider colony too – shooing Aboriginal people away by shooting at them.
In fact, later the same day, a roving party was ‘proceeding down the Eastern Bank of the Derwent, and saw the Natives on the opposite side making spears’. It was likely the same group attempting to re-arm. ‘[B]eing unable to cross the River, [they] fired at the Natives to disturb them.’
In Williams’ report to the Colonial Secretary, he also mentioned that Aboriginal people approaching a hut were met with ‘twelve Rounds’. Arthur wrote ‘Very Cunning’ in the letter’s margin, and signed it ‘GA’. But Williams felt their efforts were in vain:
I fear that the exertions of the Civil and Military Power will be attended with little success in capturing the Natives, except if guides can be procured capable of tracking them. By keeping the Soldiers & Constables actively employed, the District may be protected, but I do not think the Natives can be captured.
Arthur’s Excursion and Strategic Oversight
A few days after Williams posted his letter, the Lieutenant Governor left Hobart for the north of the island. Arthur planned to travel towards Launceston then head west towards Westbury ‘to examine the Lands in the occupation of the Van Diemen’s Land Company’.17 He ordered the Surveyor General to explore some of the nearby hills, and conscript a few soldiers to help build temporary huts by convenient riverbanks to facilitate his travels. He also requested an additional four packhorses to carry his baggage, and ‘that the Horses are in good condition’ because he intended ‘to return across the Country from the Mersey to the Great Lakes’, traversing what was still relatively unknown territory to the colonists. It meant that he was likely going to return to Hobart by either the western midlands or Bothwell.
While the main operational details of the Vandemonian War were recorded through the colonial secretariat, the records of the Lieutenant Governor’s Office also preserve much often-overlooked information, like the evidence for this planned excursion as well as Arthur’s concerns that Williams ‘has occasion for the services of a Clerk to keep the Commissariat accounts’ at Bothwell.18 In a more telling memorandum from December, Arthur approved a horse being purchased ‘for the use of Lieut Williams in his Police Duties at the Clyde’.19 Arthur was making an exception, because he usually wanted ‘to see every horse myself before the purchase is complete’.
Other government department records also detail elements of the Vandemonian War, further highlighting Arthur’s general oversight. We know that there was a small mounted military police force operating in the interior in December 1828 because Arthur again provided consent for the Brigade Major to get ‘the usual dress for the soldier, and purchase a horse for his use’.20 While the role of the mounted police remains unclear, the records indicate they could be ‘permanently attached’ to various stations throughout the colony.21 They were likely used to provide mobile support to parties in the field.
Police magistrates also kept their own accounts and records, but these have hardly survived, and do relatively little to illuminate the war. Even centralised Commissariat and Ordinance accounts, detailing macro-governmental expenditure, only survive in small exemplars from the period. One such volume, however, itemises and enumerates the issuing of goods for government service from July 1827 into early 1828.22 Through this, it is possible to reconstruct the main components of a mounted policeman’s gear, which included bits, bridles and saddles for the horses, as well as spurs, coats, pistols and swords for the riders.23 The same volume also notes that ‘Alexander an Aborigine’ received a blanket and a coverlet on 1 November 1827, but this was a rare example of official government philanthropy.24
All these records suggest the government was more inclined to militarisation than humanitarianism. Over the course of roughly half a year the Commissariat issued 89 bayonets and 2366 cartridge rounds.25 The colonial police received 57 muskets with ramrods and 84 gun flints, although even this was dwarfed by the 908 gun flints given to the military in the same period.26 Twelve of the flints went to police forces stationed on the Lower Clyde in the Bothwell district, and were probably among those used to ‘disturb’ the group manufacturing spears on the far bank of the Derwent River. With hundreds of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition distributed, as well as the demonstrably deliberate disarmament of Aboriginal people, the Vandemonian War was far more industrial than has previously been recognised.
Aboriginal Auxiliaries, the Deployment of ‘Boomer’
Intelligence was a critical resource in the war, although it was recorded with less clarity than bayonet numbers. In early 1829, likely in response to Williams’ requests for better guides, an Aboriginal man known as ‘Boomer’ or ‘Bruné island Jack’ was ‘sent up to Bothwell by the government’.27This indicates that an establishment for feeding, housing and training Aboriginal people was being actively administered by the government in ways that also supported combat operations.
Details about the Bruny Island Establishment are relatively scant. But during the previous winter Arthur explored the possibility of getting ‘any inferior or half-worn blankets at the Prisoners’ Barracks’ to send to Bruny Island ‘for the purpose of being distributed among the Natives’.28 By November 1828 there were apparently ‘about fourteen’ Aboriginal people living there.29
Although Arthur was mostly concerned with operations in the interior and other matters concerning the administration of the colony, he did give some attention to the Bruny Island Establishment and the project of pacifying the tribes south of Hobart. He wanted ‘three steady well conducted convicts who are expecting indulgence in 12 months’ to be sent there to oversee the distribution of ‘blankets and rations’, and to busy themselves ‘cultivating a few acres of Potatoes’, most likely for the instruction of the Aboriginal residents. It seems likely that Boomer was recruited from this scene of government paternalism to assist the campaigns against the tribes of the interior.
Although there are few records from the campaigns in the Bothwell district, Boomer’s operations are broadly discernible through a range of reports published in the press. When he arrived in Bothwell it was in company with a woman, variously described as his ‘Jin’ or ‘wife’. They were both attached to ‘a party of 5 soldiers and a constable’, along with another man named Nelson. The party joined a broader campaign including ‘14 parties out in all directions’ drawn from ‘about 80 rank and file’ stationed in the district, who were scouring the district for Aboriginal people.30They were all on alert because of a series of hut raids where the assailants had taken muskets.
After a few days out, Boomer was reportedly sick of the ‘pork and biscuit’ rations on which the party subsisted, and ‘was permitted to go with Nelson’ to hunt game in the bush. In the evening Nelson returned to the party, but Boomer remained away until morning. The soldiers reported that he had been exhibiting a ‘sullen’ disposition. Whether from being on foreign country, traversing the territory of traditional enemies, or simply disagreeing with the premise of the whole exercise, his thoughts and attitudes are unclear and rendered only in fleeting characterisations based on the perceptions of witnesses. But his actions do reflect a general concern with the mission. After seeing a ‘soldier’s hut’ later that morning, Boomer and his companion ‘both ran away’.
The military party separated to search for them, and Private Malony soon found Boomer apparently hiding ‘in the hollow of a tree’. Responding to his rediscovery, Boomer reportedly ‘shook hands with Malony saying that soldiers were very good & would not hurt him’, before trying to deflect the conversation by explaining that ‘he had lost the woman’. Then, while going ‘looking for her, Boomer suddenly put his leg behind the soldier, and pushed him down, biting him severely in the arm’. As they scuffled, Boomer and Malony rolled down the hill. When they thumped to a halt, Boomer kicked Malony down, grabbed his gun, pointed it at Malony, and fired.
But there was no spark from the flint. To save the powder from the damp, Malony had a handkerchief tied over the mechanism, keeping it dry. Seeing his chance, Malony grabbed the gun, and the two again started rolling down the slope, until falling over a precipice. Striking the ground, Malony’s arm was injured and he was unable to maintain a grip on Boomer, who ‘eventually ran away’.
In the evening Boomer was spotted by another military party. The corporal in charge, ‘not knowing he was tame’, called out to Boomer ‘to induce him to come quietly’. Boomer ‘steadily refused’, and tried to flee the situation. The soldiers went after him. Boomer ‘made for the Clyde and dived many times’, it was reported, ‘but each time he put his head up the soldier fired, and at last killed him’.
Word of this incident was forwarded to Hobart. In its ‘Chit Chat’ section, the Colonial Times rather snidely reported that Boomer ‘endeavoured to escape, and received the merited reward of his treachery and presumption, by being shot dead’.31 The Launceston Advertiser ran the same story.32In the meantime, Arthur returned to Hobart without exploring the lakes, and Boomer’s wife was recaptured. The soldiers continued to go out into the bush. Reports came in from the interior, some of which were reproduced in the newspapers. The history of the war was being written just as it was being fought.
Press, Propaganda and History-making
The press’s coverage of the Vandemonian War both reflected and informed public opinion, but it also made for an unusual evidentiary mix. While there was broad consensus that something had to be done to resolve aggressions by Aboriginal people, public sympathies ranged from dovish to hawkish. While the Hobart Town Courier sarcastically awaited ‘the result of the coroner’s inquiry’ following Boomer’s death, and advocated that colonial forces ‘beware then of wantonly firing upon them’,33 the Colonial Times proclaimed that,
A profound peace now ranges throughout the country. The bushrangers are thoroughly extirpated, and if the operations against the Aborigines are as vigorously carried on as they have been for some time back, these marauders will shortly share the same fate.34
These editorials were often printed next to reports of settlers or servants who had been attacked – and the reprisals that followed – or discourses about the social and economic opportunity for the landholding settlers in a future peace. While the Hobart Town Courier hoped ‘that a subsidiary colony of these Aborigines, will shortly be formed in some convenient place or island’, the Colonial Times rather bluntly looked forward to the successful ‘extirpation’ of the Aboriginal population of the interior. But despite their differences in language, they both amounted to the same thing: a landscape cleared of the tribes.
The key conceptual differences expressed in editorial commentary lay mainly in the method by which this could be achieved, and the effects upon the displaced people. The doves hoped that Aboriginal people’s ‘offspring at least may acquire civilized habits … and at last become useful and industrious members of the community’, fostering the view that Aboriginal people could be gradually if forcibly integrated into colonial society. The hawks tended to focus more on the needs of the moneyed classes, asserting that Van Diemen’s Land ‘requires only an honest and industrious Peasantry to render it one of the most desirable countries in the universe’, carrying the implicit principle that Aboriginal ways of living on the land would not be permitted.
And so the British Army and the Vandemonian field police continued their pursuit of Aboriginal people across the hills of the interior. In December 1828 Garrison Orders were issued to the military stations in Van Diemen’s Land:
the Colonel Commanding is desirous of impressing upon the minds of officers on duty in the interior of the importance and necessity of exerting every energy to repel from or capture the aboriginal Natives in their respective districts during the summer months. All the small parties from the detachments should be instructed to be constantly on search, and by forming themselves into parties of eight or ten each, with provisions for 14 or 16 days each at a time, with properly organized plans and arrangements, little doubt can exist of the beneficial results which would arise from such a combined system of operations.35
It was all part of the general principle of projecting ‘Terror’ upon Aboriginal people. One correspondent from Great Swan Port commented in January that the ‘parties are continually out in quest’, adding that he personally ‘saw but one black during the whole of our journey, and he escaped among the scrub’.36 He also mentioned that one settler ‘shot a black man’ recently, before offering a brief list of reported encounters in the wider area: ‘Nine were killed and three taken, near St. Paul’s River, ten days back, and about the same time ten were shot and two taken near the Eastern Marshes.’
Whether read as confused rumours or reasonably reliable reports – the ‘ten’ and ‘two’ could refer to Danvers’ mission near Tooms Lake, for instance – such messages spoke to a wider colonial agenda and revealed a determined campaign of ethnic cleansing. This plan was conducted by British regulars and authorised paramilitary forces at the Lieutenant Governor’s behest. A few months later, Arthur echoed sentiments he had expressed to other magistrates when he ordered Lieutenant Lane of the 63rd Regiment (another new police magistrate for Great Swan Port) to ‘take the most active and decisive measures to drive the Natives out of the settled parts of your district’.37 The tribes had to make way for settlers.
By this time, the military and paramilitary operations were increasingly aided by Aboriginal guides, although they rarely attracted the press’s attention. This disjuncture between reality and reportage spoke less to events and more to emphasis, highlighting how the press version of the conflict was often skewed for the reading public of the day – subtly misleading historians and posterity alike. For instance, when a group of ‘5 Soldiers’ traversed the territory between Oatlands and the east coast during late December 1828 and early January 1829, the party found no Aboriginal people but did encounter an abandoned settler’s hut with a human skull inside.38 Ensign Lockyer, who personally commanded this mission, ‘took the skull with him’. This part of the story proved newsworthy, especially as it seemed to offer a lonely and pathos-riven proof of the isolated hardship of frontier lives.39 That the party also had ‘a black Native Boy’ with them did not merit public attention. That fact remained quite separate from a developing public narrative of the conflict, which principally structured the war in terms of distant frontier murders and inveterate racial animosity. Literally, the war was fought far away from urbane Hobart and preening Launceston – close enough to titillate and worry, but sufficiently distant to be discretely obscure.