CHAPTER FOUR
1829, Summer–Autumn
Eastern Front
Kickerterpoller and Gilbert Robertson Capture Eumarrah
In early 1829 the Lieutenant Governor arranged ‘a Salary at the rate of £150 per annum’ for a settler named Gilbert Robertson ‘to take charge of a Roving Party of 10 or 12 men to be employed against the Aborigines’.1 Robertson was already involved in the war, holding the post of chief district constable of Richmond, although he effectively took leave of that position to be employed as a sort of colonial mercenary. Capturing Aboriginal people was a far more lucrative occupation. But, while placed outside the parameters and restrictions of policing duties, he was not entirely autonomous of all the colonial chains of command. Robertson was ‘placed under the Orders of the Brigade Major, and supplied in the same manner as the Military Parties’.
Robertson was contracted by the government in part because he had some prior success capturing Aboriginal people. During November 1828, just a few weeks after the proclamation of martial law, a party led by Robertson and guided by Kickerterpoller crept up on an Aboriginal camp and captured five people, although at least five others escaped the raid. Robertson conveyed his ‘satisfaction’ to the Colonial Secretary that he had ‘succeeded in Capturing two chiefs “Yumârra and Jemmie”, one young warrior, a Lance Man and Chiefs wife (five persons in all) of the Stoney Creek Tribe’.2 He reported that,
‘Black Tom’ [Kickerterpoller] (of whom I cannot speak with too much praise) told me of their habits for he states that they seldom take up their abode near the coast in any case and that after having committed a Murder or other outrage they invariably retreat to some remote situation in the interior.3
Kickerterpoller also advised Robertson of a regular spear-making place, which illustrates how Aboriginal allies helped the colonists take the war into tribal geographies. This knowledge, however, had its limits; when Robertson’s party travelled through an area where ‘Tom was a stranger’ they soon got lost. Nonetheless, they were eventually able to track and intercept their target, and seize a good proportion of them.
The captives were taken to Richmond and then to Hobart, where they were placed in the gaol. Unsurprisingly, considering the war had been brought into town so visibly, Robertson’s exploit attracted the interest of the press. As the Hobart Town Courier reported:
On Tuesday Mr. Gilbert Robertson arrived in town with 5 native blacks, whom he apprehended near the Eastern marshes. The whole tribe consisted of 10, but five made their escape in some thick scrub, which bordered their encampment. Among the captives is their King, named Eumarrah, whose indignation at being deprived of his liberty is very great.4
This success seemed an early proof of concept for Arthur’s hopes to use intermediaries like Kickerterpoller to help capture Aboriginal people, so Arthur and his Executive Council met with the newly captured members ‘of the Stoney Creek Mob of Natives’.5 Kickerterpoller acted as translator, although at least some of the captives ‘understood sufficient of the English language’ to be quizzed by the Lieutenant Governor on ‘the cause of their grievances and aggressions’.6 Their replies were minuted by the council’s secretary:
The five Natives denied having speared the White People or that any of their Tribe had been concerned in any of the Murders; but they admitted that the White People had been murdered by the Port Dalrymple Tribe, because they had been driven from their Kangaroo Hunting Ground.7
This was all that was officially recorded of the ‘considerable communication with the five Natives’.
Captivity and Conscription
While the Bruny Island Establishment had developed organically as a site for feeding and clothing Aboriginal people, the government had not yet provided any formal or centralised mechanism for dealing with captives. When the woman and child captured by Danvers were conveyed to Oatlands, Anstey advised the Colonial Secretary that they were going to be ‘forwarded to Hobarton in a day or two’.8 Government injunctions simply advised captors to treat their prisoners well.
Many Aboriginal captives were absorbed into colonial gaols, though their legal status remained ambiguous. In April 1829, for instance, the police magistrate of George Town on the north coast, Captain D’Arcy, wrote to the town adjutant regarding a captive ‘Black Native Girl’.9 Despite contacting the military officer, he placed her ‘in the Factory’ – the nearby female convict establishment. The Lieutenant Governor approved this arrangement ‘for the present’, but reprimanded D’Arcy for corresponding about her through military channels. He was advised that ‘the subject would have been more properly communicated to the Civil Department’.
In the south of the island, where more captures were being recorded, Richmond Gaol served as a major place of Aboriginal confinement, at least following Robertson’s first success. After examining the Stony Creek captives in his Executive Council in November 1828, Arthur ordered them removed to Richmond Gaol and kept secure ‘so as entirely to prevent their return to the settled Districts of the Island’. As the police magistrate of Richmond, Thomas Lascelles, was informed:
His Excellency has therefore directed these Natives to be removed to the Gaol in your district, there to be confined, with the exception of the younger lad, who may be rationed by the Crown and permitted to reside with the Chief District Constable, in the expectation that his services may be made useful in furtherance of measures for the apprehension and future disposal of the Aborigines; until further instructions shall be given you.10
Arthur’s broader plans were beginning to take shape. On the same day the Colonial Secretary wrote to Lascelles, detailed plans for dividing the midlands with military posts were approved, as well as coordinated operations with Lockyer and Danvers from the Oatlands district. Arthur also approved two experimental missions in the relatively under-documented northern midlands district of Campbell Town.11 In the first, a man named ‘Low’ was proposing to ‘endeavour to conciliate some Tribe’, although there was some confusion about whether he planned to go out alone or with a party. The second proposal was an ‘experiment of taking some of the women’, which suggests that captures had probably been taking place in that district in tandem with military operations. Through the centralised information systems of the colonial secretariat, district practices cross-fertilised under a centralised command structure. Arthur was overseeing both military and paramilitary movements as well as the confinement of captives and the deployment of Aboriginal guides.
While making plans for the use of Richmond Gaol, Arthur also approved of the provision of victuals at the gaol to ‘Black Tom, and the two prisoners named Arthur and Lee’ while possible arrangements with Robertson were worked out. Thomas Arthur and Robert Lee, like Kickerterpoller, had served on Robertson’s previous expedition, and it was expected they would support his next one.12 Like Danvers, they were convicts who likely hoped for reduced sentences. In January 1829, reminding the government of his good service, Danvers applied to have his ticket of leave reinstated.13 Instead, he was offered the opportunity to gain the rewards of further good service by being appointed to the field police in the Oatlands district in a more formal capacity. Without many options, he accepted the position.
Other convicts who had already performed good service similarly found rewards were not immediate. Lee had been transported for life in the 1810s, and in late 1828 the Colonial Secretary annotated his conduct sheet with the comment that ‘A worse character cannot well be conceived’.14Since arriving in Van Diemen’s Land, Lee had been punished many times. He officially earned a total of 275 lashes for a range of offences from drunkenness to various absences, as well as periods of confinement in barracks or gaols, extra labour and time in penal stations. While getting a ticket of leave, he lost it after being found ‘on board the Ship Kent whaler without a pass with intent to escape from the Colony’. Moreover, several of his offences exhibited violence, including ‘striking a superior officer’.15 In 1822 he was flogged for ‘Assaulting & beating’ a constable, and the following year he earned three years at Macquarie Harbour penal station for ‘Cutting & maiming Mary Lee his wife’. After reading it, Arthur annotated the back, stating that ‘This man must positively be sent back to Maria Island’. But he was soon enough again in Robertson’s service.
Guiding Robertson into Tribal Country
While the midlands were swept by soldiers and field police during the summer campaigns of late 1828 and early 1829, the captive segment of the Stony Creek tribe presumably remained confined at Richmond Gaol, and Robertson remained relatively inactive. Only on 2 January 1829 was Robertson allowed ‘to select 10 or 12 Convicts who are likely to be useful’.16
Details of Robertson’s missions can be reconstructed from a variety of sources, but most importantly from his own writings. He produced two journals for 1829, seemingly drawing on a mix of personal reminiscence, various papers and perhaps mission reports and diaries.17 While less clear than some of the midlands evidence, they nonetheless record his movements and actions with relative reliability.
Things moved slowly at first. Robertson started the year in Hobart, and visited the Hobart town adjutant arranging military rations before leaving for Richmond. He spent several days at Richmond waiting for ‘some of the party’ to arrive as well as ‘the Arms and Accoutrements’, and occupied himself with various preparations such as negotiating for rations and ‘making ammunition pouches and other articles’.
During this time Robertson noted that there was much thunder, lightning and rain, but there were other excitements as well. One night the party sprang from their beds ‘by a false alarm that the prisoners were breaking out of Gaol’. The ruckus had been caused by one of the officers ‘attempting improper freedoms with a Girl’.
Eventually the mission left Richmond, and spent the first few days traversing the Brushy Plains to the northeast of the town, but without success. On 13 January they stopped at ‘Hunters Valley, between prossers plains and the Blue Hills’, after again having seen nothing of Aboriginal people or their tracks. That night, a morepork owl visited their camp, much to the delight of the ‘guides’ attached to the party. This bird ‘perch’d upon a Tree near to our Break wind began to hoot his evening Note’, which gave Robertson a chance, as he put it, ‘of observing one of the superstitions of the Aboriginal Natives’:
The two Blacks attached to the party started up and began an earnest conversation principally addressed to the Bird who occasionally hooted his responses on hearing which they shouted with the most extravagant demonstrations of Joy[.] when this whimsical Conversation ceased Tom explained to us that the Bird (which he called Cocolo diana) was capable of giving any information he required concerning his wandering Countrymen.
Kickerterpoller explained the substance of the conversation, but Robertson’s only note was that ‘we did not put much faith in Mr Cocolos information’. The next day they moved on, heading in a northwesterly direction, further into the interior.
Traversing valleys and lagoons, Robertson was struck by the interspersed forests of ‘stringy Bark’ eucalypts and ‘a great extent of pastoral Ground’. The land was variously inhabited and empty, the abode of native animals or introduced species. It was, his journal captures, in a state of transition.
Occasional stock huts provided shelter and intelligence. At one overnight visit to a settler’s hut, Robertson was told that Aboriginal fires had been spotted nearby within the last week. Directed to the location, Robertson’s party found an abandoned campsite, discovered some tracks, and followed the trail to what seemed ‘a very great resort of the Natives’. This was a ‘Barren’ area, Robertson noted, ‘but abounds with Wallaby’. They soon re-joined a familiar trail, used on that earlier mission that captured Eumarrah and other members of the Stoney Creek tribe. To the roving party’s surprise, they spotted ‘a Herd of Wild Horses’ – further proof of a changing ecology.
As the expedition passed the spot where they had captured the Stony Creek tribe, Robertson allowed the party to be guided by ‘Jack’, a young Aboriginal man who had been taken during that mission and had since joined the roving party. Jack directed the party eastwards. As Robertson recorded:
[He] took us over a steep Hill and pointed out to us a large Hollow Tree in which his Tribe had concealed a Number of Spears to be kept in reserve in case of their losing their Arms in the plundering expeditions on which they were engaged at the time Eumarra and the rest were taken.
The tree was in the direction of Tooms Lake, and so Robertson suspected that Danvers’ encounter a month or so later in that area concerned ‘the remains of Eumarras Tribe’. If he was right, more people had escaped than he had thought. Or he had little idea of what actually occurred on Danvers’ mission. Either way, the tree got nicknamed ‘Jacks Armoury’, and it illustrates how combatants regularly focused on disarming each other.
As the party continued further north, they crossed the Macquarie River, and soon ‘fell in with several Native Huts’. Such obviously Aboriginal features within the landscape highlighted the limited extent of colonial control over these so-called ‘settled districts’. Although still failing to make any direct contact, Robertson inferred from ‘the Number of Old fires and Huts’ that he was on the Aboriginal people’s ‘usual Route’. Furthering this sense of being in Aboriginal territory, Jack noticed the dwindling flour supplies, and suggested careful rationing. He ‘cautioned us to be sparing of it’, Robertson said, ‘as we should not see a white Mans Hut for many nights’.
Eventually, hunger drove the party to carelessness. Seeing a kangaroo, the men disregarded their usual restraint:
Three or Four muskets were instantly levelled without waiting for any word of Command, one Boomer was brought to the Ground and in a very few Minutes was stewing in our Camp.
If the guns alerted any nearby Aboriginal people, the party no longer cared. About the same time, far to the west, a different Boomer was being shot by soldiers while attempting to escape.
‘The Hill on which we killed the kangaroo’, Robertson noted, ‘is called in the Native Tongue Drially Lualinga lea which I believe literally signifies a Hill abounding with Kangaroo’. He was musing on the fact that kangaroos were usually seen near grasslands, and therefore assumed that there was probably good pastoral land nearby. Notably, a great proportion of Robertson’s attention was directed to the quality of the land over which he journeyed. When negotiating with the government about the terms of his mission, he had hoped for a grant of land in return for ‘a great Public duty’.18 Land, he reasoned, ‘Costs Government nothing’.
But Robertson’s party was travelling under Jack’s direction on what he called ‘the Black Mans Road’. While writing glowingly about the potential of the land, Robertson was uniquely placed to know that land grants and continued colonial expansion did have a considerable effect on tribal life. After all, he was in daily communication with Kickerterpoller and Jack. In fact, only a few months previously in November 1828 Robertson had, through Kickerterpoller, recorded one of the most detailed accounts of intertribal politics from the period. Commenting on the small numbers in Eumarrah’s tribe, Robertson asserted that ‘they have either been shot by the stockeepers or destroyed in the wars which are incessantly carried on by one tribe against the other’.19
I learned from the prisoners by means of Tom that three tribes besides the ‘Stoney Creek’ were assembled in the neighbourhood of Molonys Sugar Loaf[,] Kitby’s corners and Black Johnny’s Marsh[.] The cause of this gathering appears to be a combination amongst the Oyster Bay tribe, the Swan Port and Stoney Creek Tribes to make war on the Port Dalrymple Tribe – This war originated in two causes – First – To capture wives for the Oyster Bay and Stoney Creek Tribes who had lost nearly all their women and – Secondly – to repel an invasion which the Port Dalrymple Tribe had made on the hunting ground of the Swan Port Tribe which extends from Prossers River to Saint Pauls River – It appears that for some cause they have met without committing any Acts of Hostility and the four tribes I think have made some sort of treaty by which the Swan Port Tribe have given the others permission to hunt on their grounds – From whence each Tribe sends small parties to rob and Murder the inhabitants of the remote huts – I am informed that they are now on their way to Fight the big river tribe for the purpose of compelling them to give up their hunting ground for the common good and make common cause with them in carrying on their warfare against the white inhabitants.20
While this reveals some of the ways that traditional animosities continued into the period of active colonisation – and highlights that the Vandemonian War was fought between multiple polities, albeit much of it undocumented – it also illustrates something of Aboriginal desperation and strategy. Many of the tribes of the east coast had made alliances for mutual protection and support. These also turned their animosity against the tribes of the north and west, and targeted the colonial perimeters, probably to attempt to contain colonial expansion. This was no mere piecemeal response to resource competition, but a coordinated strategy for addressing the wider colonial incursion.
Only gradually did some of the leaders of roving parties begin to realise that their Aboriginal ‘guides’ could be selective about which tribes they tracked more or less effectively. But in January 1829, stuck deep in territory unsettled by colonists, Robertson had become more concerned with rations than either captures or potential land grants. Anxious to find a stock hut so they could replenish their supplies, they made ‘a good deal of enquiry’ of Jack, who told them of ‘a white Mans House on the opposite side of the Hill before us to which he and his Mob had often gone to steal potatoes’. This short piece of oral history again described not just a habit of subsistence opportunism, but also hinted at that wider strategic imperative of economic sabotage and the harrying of a border. And, as it turned out, these hills did form a distinct borderland. From Jack’s information, William Grant, one of the convicts attached to the mission, was able to surmise their position in relation to the settlement of Great Swan Port on the east coast. That night they climbed the tiers and spent a hard night with little food but a magnificent view of the sea. Before them lay the fields and paddocks of the truly ‘settled districts’ of the east coast. The next day they descended towards a rising sun, found farms, and resupplied. Then they again turned north.
Going North and Splitting Up
Like Danvers roughly a month before him, Robertson made towards St Patricks Head. Having fed and washed, Robertson again turned his attention to the quality of the land, quipping on 23 January that they ‘saw nothing this Day worthy of remark except a vast extent of Land capable of better occupation’.21 Robertson’s main complaint was that the land was all ‘locked up’ by Meredith, who just used it ‘as Grazing Ground for very numerous but most worthless and badly managed flocks and Herds’.
From this fertile grazing country, the party entered ‘a very Barren and Hilly Country’, and soon saw ‘several very decided traces of the Natives’. But for the most part Robertson turned his attention to the local geology. The hills they crossed caught the sun, and he noted that their light surfaces ‘glittered like Chrystal’. As they reached the shoreline, Robertson ‘found the Sand on the Beach corresponding with the glittering gravel we had seen on the Hills’. He was building a picture of the whole landscape, acting a bit as a surveyor might. The coast had ‘Tremendous Surf’, he noted, but in one ‘very rocky’ spot there was ‘an indifferent Harbour’. These mercenaries were advance parties for further settlement.
A nearby supply of ‘tolerable fresh water’ proved useful, because Jack advised the party they ‘should not find a supply of Water for many miles’. Clearly Jack was familiar with the area. The party soon encountered ‘a regular beaten Track’, which they presumably followed, as it led past ‘many places where the Natives had been feasting on Mutton fish and Oysters’. Despite the sand dunes and coastal scrub, Robertson was convinced that ‘with judicious management it may be cultivated to advantage by Men of Capital’.
As the party approached the nominal extent of the ‘settled districts’, where martial law ended at St Patricks Head, they ‘fell in with a number of Wild Cattle’. When they saw the ‘remarkable Conical Hill about 2 Miles from the Coast’, they again met cattle, this time ‘belonging to Reynolds and Stanfields’. They ‘shot one’, and recorded the kill for rationing purposes. Robertson assumed the government would cover the cost. Then, ‘opposite St Patrick’s Head we saw with much joy what we supposed to be the Native Fires distant about 25 Miles’. Having found their target, the party pushed on ‘for some Hours after Dark and slept about 5 Miles North from St Patricks Head’. Robertson had just broached the line of martial law, leaving legality behind him.
The party chased the daytime smoke and night fires for three days, struggling to make any ground on their prey, tracking north towards ‘the Settlement at Break o Day plains’, a colonial outpost established on the northern part of the east coast. On the last day of January they ‘travelled all Day over burning Hills, but could see no recent Places where the Natives had stopt or slept’. But it seemed they may have been led astray deliberately.
Jack informed us that there was a solitary Native who lived about those Hills and seldom joined any of the Tribes[.] Jack supposed that this Man must have kindled the fires which had drawn us from our Original Route.
Disappointed, the party found the nearest settler’s hut to replenish their supplies. But they had great difficulty getting what they needed due to a lack of ready provisions and the large size of the party. To make matters worse, local reports were unclear about which direction the Aboriginal people were headed, so Robertson decided to split his party in two. One group under William Grant would stay in the Break o’ Day Plains, and ‘watch the motions of the Natives’. Jack would remain with them, while Kickerterpoller would continue inland with Robertson’s party. Robertson also took advantage of an offer from one of the settlers:
Mr Talbot having stated that one of his men was particularly well acquainted with the haunts of the Natives, I agreed to leave James Crawn with Mr Talbot and to take his Man with Grants party for a few Days in hopes that he would lead the party on the Blacks.
Talbot’s offer came with a frank opinion:
Mr Talbot having expressed great suspicion of the fidelity of the Natives who are with us – And in the presence of Jack and Tom – Disapproved of shewing any mercy to those who should fall into our powers even recommending that Jack and Tom should be Shot.
Robertson ‘observed with regret that his words were marked by the two natives and excited much apparent uneasiness in their minds’.
The next morning Jack absconded. Getting up a little ‘earlier than the rest of the Party’, he seemed to feign going to the toilet, and simply did not return to the group. Despite commencing a wide search within minutes of his disappearance, they could not find him. Probably realising they were wasting their time, the parties split up as intended. Robertson took the bulk of the rations with him and told Grant to try to get more fresh supplies from nearby settlers. When they found a party of ‘Constables and Soldiers’ stationed by one of the rivers, Grant asked them ‘not to hurt Jackif they should meet him’.22
During the next few days Jack’s absence was keenly felt. In a thick fog, they ‘could not see 20 yards’ while moving ‘over Rocky Barren Hills and Scrub’ and were reduced to navigating ‘by Compass’. They crossed a river by walking over a sandbar ‘in about 3 feet water’, and then another ‘in five feet water carrying our Muskets etc on our Heads’. When they saw fires, they kept a keen watch but could not see who lit them. The Party ‘suffered much for want of Water’, Grant noted, and recorded that ‘we missed Jack very much’.
Grant’s Mission Makes Contact
Grant was another convict serving a life sentence.23 He was convicted for burglary at Aberdeen, and transported to Van Diemen’s Land on the Claudine in 1821. Grant was absorbed into the field police at Oatlands as part of Arthur’s expansion of that paramilitary cohort, but attracted the ire of colonial authorities for various reasons. In 1827 he had allegedly failed to convey two prisoners to Hobart Gaol, but had instead taken them ‘to an House of ill Fame in Hobart Town’. While Anstey acquitted Grant, a few months later he was charged ‘with indecently exposing his person & using disgustingly indecent expressions’. Anstey dismissed this charge as well, but reprimanded him. A year later Grant was in trouble again, this time for drinking and gambling, and Anstey sought to have him dismissed from the field police. Just a few months after that, Robertson picked Grant to lead an armed roving party through the bush.
Grant’s group travelled north towards George’s River, well up the east coast. Reaching the bay into which this river flowed, they spent a few days scouting the area, looking for fires and smoke but finding none. Some barking dogs in the darkness provided the only hint of Aboriginal people, although they suspected it was a wild pack, many of which now roamed the island. Depleting their flour, they turned inland, and headed towards one of the tributaries of the South Esk River. ‘We saw a great number of Old Native Huts’, Grant wrote of this journey, ‘but no recent Traces of the Natives’. The next day they again spotted ‘many Native Huts’ near various marshes, but were soon stalled in their operations by another combination of ‘Dense Fog’ and ‘Thick Scrub’.
The difficult bushwalking took a great toll on the men and their morale was low. ‘They were so exhausted that they were inclined to lie down and Perish’, Grant wrote, describing how ‘Harry Gunn who is young and of a weakly Constitution was hardly able to move’. Gunn was certainly no stranger to hardship. Since being transported from Edinburgh for life in 1825, he had served time as a shepherd in the midlands and one month in a chain gang.24 So hard was the tramping, Grant explained in his journal, that even a dog they brought was so weak it was unable to chase a kangaroo they spotted one evening. But, after climbing a hill to see if he could spot any landmarks, Grant saw St Patricks Head in the distance. He could also see ‘a Native fire about Half a Mile from where I left the party’. They ‘kept watch all night’.
In the morning the party advanced on the location of the fire, but the terrain was so difficult that only John Lightfoot and Ralph Gracie could keep up with Grant. Gracie was another Scotsman, transported for life from Glasgow for forgery.25 Lightfoot was a farmhand turned poacher from Cheshire, who had been transported for seven years.26 But the stealth required for poaching had formerly failed Gracie, and did so again. A dog gave the alarm.
Fortunately, the party was close enough to see ‘a Black Man start off into the Scrub’ away from his fire. The three convicts ‘instantly gave chase and enclosed him between us in the Bed of the Creek’, Grant reported. ‘Dodging under dead Trees and thick scrub with which the place was covered’, the man was able to evade capture for some time, but was taken in the end. They led him back to his camp, looking for signs of potential companions, but it was clear that he was and had been alone.
Recovering from the chase, the convicts turned to more closely examine their prisoner, who was ‘an old Man he had no spears and only one old Dog’.27 More curiously, ‘he had the under Jaw of a Woman with the Teeth entire worked all over with Cord of Native Manufacture tied round his neck’. Intrigued by this item, Grant described another:
He had a Bag formed of a thick elastic substance which appeared to be the Skin of a Human head prepared in some peculiar manner – This was full of Grease which appeared to be for the purpose of smearing his Body with.
Beyond these items, the man was naked and destitute of possessions other than a half-eaten possum. Despite his ‘Horrid smell and look of his Grease bag’ the convicts took him to their own camp, and gave him some hot tea ‘as a Token of friendship’. But the effect of this was perhaps unequal to the fact that they shot his dog.
This proved to be a mistake, as hunger and thirst gripped the exhausted party. When they spotted another kangaroo, their own exhausted dog was useless, and Grant regretted having ‘shot the Blackmans Dog’. Grant struggled to keep the party together and moving, and failed to elicit any help from their captive to locate water. They managed to make their way back to Talbot’s hut. As Grant later noted, Talbot’s borrowed servant George Giles returned from the mission cured of any desire ‘to try a second excursion with the Native Catchers’.
Upon arriving at Talbot’s, ‘to our great Joy we found Jack our runaway Guide’, Grant recorded, ‘who was equally glad to see us’. For three days in the bush alone, Jack claimed to have ‘suffered enough to prevent him ever running to the woods again’. He had returned to the point of his departure, and received ‘great kindness’ from Talbot, despite the settler’s earlier suggestion about shooting him. Moreover, Jack was now back on the mission and capable of acting as intermediary:
Jack told us that the name of the Native whom we caught was Liangla Truighilly – That he had lived by himself for a long time but could give us no information about the Tribes – Jack from some Cause which we could not ascertain appeared to view his Countryman with great dislike.28
Unable to extract anything further of interest, Grant sent the Aboriginal hermit to the nearest district constable to be forwarded ‘as Mr Robertson had ordered’, presumably to Richmond Gaol.
Once more the party headed inland, travelling between settlers’ huts each day and visiting familiar sites in the eastern midlands. They spotted smoke and fires on Ben Lomond, ‘Black Boys plains’ and other spots, but found no meaningful tracks to follow. They also got word that other parties were operating in the area. At one of their regular provisioning farms, Grant received a letter from Robertson ordering their return to Richmond ‘for Shoes and Slops’. On their way south they detoured via a known ‘great resort of the Natives’ at Kearney’s Bog. They found many ‘Old Native Huts – but no fresh traces’, and continued towards Richmond by way of Ross and Oatlands. Through days and nights of rain the party trudged on, ‘mostly naked and Barefooted’. On 13 March 1829 they ‘Arrived at Richmond’, Grant wrote, concluding his report, ‘Ragged and Shoeless after a fatiguing & fruitless Journey of Sixty five Days’.
Robertson was already there, his own meanderings completed without capturing any more people. In fact, when he was still in the midlands, Robertson had unwittingly facilitated Jemmie’s escape. Robertson had ordered this member of the Stoney Creek tribe conveyed from Richmond Gaol to join his party, but Jemmie absconded while going to the toilet. The constable in change may also have fallen asleep on the job.29 The success of Robertson’s mission could be measured as one Aboriginal man taken, one lost – a zero net gain to the captive population.
Arthur Reviews the Missions
The Lieutenant Governor was likely unimpressed with Robertson’s expedition, especially considering the large salary and promises of success. In response to Grant’s account of the capture of the Aboriginal hermit, the Colonial Secretary made just one substantial comment in the margin: ‘Why shoot the Black Man’s dog?’
In early 1829 the colonial government was quite focused on Richmond. On 27 February – the same day that he learnt of Jemmie’s escape, and the same day that Robertson returned to Richmond – the Colonial Secretary wrote to Thomas Lascelles, the Richmond police magistrate, following up on reports of the ‘insecure and dilapidated condition of the Jail at Richmond’.30 While the gaol’s condition was central to the fabric of a penal colony, the timing of the Colonial Secretary’s letter is a pointed reminder that Richmond Gaol was a place of Aboriginal incarceration.
Arthur was also concerned to maintain and expand transportation infrastructure, essential to economic and military needs. A few days later the Colonial Secretary required Lascelles to ‘make immediate preparations for removing the Military and Constables from the Stable and Court House’ to make room for an engineer and working party who were going to fix the bridge over the Coal River.31 This request reveals that soldiers were being accommodated within civic buildings, and they would have to leave for pragmatic reasons, not philosophical ones.
Coincidentally, the machinations of the civil jurisdiction kept Robertson in Richmond, apparently to some local annoyance. By his own account Robertson was ‘required as an Evidence before the Criminal Court in three different cases’, which ‘detained’ him in Richmond until late April.32Robertson reportedly ‘interfered’ with ‘the interior management of the Gaol’,33 and made a nuisance of himself ‘by ordering the Prisoners into the yard, and insisting upon his right as Chief District Constable to communicate with those who are confined for Felony’. After an investigation, Arthur conveyed his disapproval through the Colonial Secretary, who wrote to Lascelles stating ‘that it is quite evident that Mr Gilbert Robertson has acted very imprudently, and very improperly’, adding that Lascelles ‘will express to him His Excellency’s dis-satisfaction at this conduct’.
Whatever good opinion Arthur may have had towards Robertson was clearly starting to wane. It was probably made worse by his remaining in Richmond until late April, and then exacerbated by further unsuccessful expeditions through the settled districts in the following months. Robertson ‘Sent Grant with a Party towards the Clyde, and the Ouse, with directions to scour about that part of the Country’ in late March, and met up with this detachment himself in April.34 In the Bothwell district, where Grant and then Robertson headed, Arthur had just recently approved the employment of Thomas Standing – a convict with a ticket of leave – ‘to go out with a strong Military Party to capture some of the Aborigines’, authorising ‘a sufficient reward should he succeed in taking many, or in opening a Communication with them’.35
Grant followed up reports of Aboriginal people seen crossing the Derwent River during Robertson’s absence, and even caught ‘one runnaway’ convict. But they had no luck with Aboriginal people in that area, and turned again to the eastern midlands in May. Half of Robertson’s force was stationed under Grant’s command ‘at a flint quarry which Jack the native, had described to me as a constant resort of the natives at Stated periods’.36 Robertson meanwhile headed off in a different direction, undertaking various ill-documented excursions.