CHAPTER FIVE
1829, Winter
The Western Front
Arthur’s Priorities
By the late autumn and early winter of 1829 Arthur’s overall strategy involved layers of defensive, offensive and diplomatic operations. All were geared towards clearing the tribes from the settled districts. The island had lines of military posts and constables, mobile parties of military and field police, contracted teams of ‘Native Catchers’, and an increasingly institutional apparatus of Aboriginal detention centred on places like the Bruny Island Establishment and Richmond Gaol.
In response to one reported ‘Murder’ committed by Aboriginal people, Arthur authorised the formation of ‘a Party of four steady Men, to be employed under the direction and superintendence of some respectable Person in pursuit of these Savages’.1 Despite the continued failure of Robertson’s mission, Arthur was willing to offer ‘200 Acres of Land’ to the leader of another 12-month mission, and either tickets of leave or conditional pardons were held out as potential rewards for convicts attached to this expedition. ‘The aid of such a Party actively employed,’ the Colonial Secretary wrote, ‘His Excellency hopes would keep the Carlton district quite clear of the sanguinary Tribe which has been infesting it for some time past.’ When one man who was ‘not a very trusty Character’ was proposed, Arthur thought it would be better to offer ‘some pecuniary reward’ rather than ‘remuneration in land’.2 Although he was deemed untrustworthy, he was nevertheless ‘supplied with Ammunition, and every requisite’.
Less than a week later Arthur received news from Richmond that ‘a Tribe of the Aborigines were surprised and routed on Friday last, and that forty Blankets fell into the possession of the Military Party’. He responded through the Colonial Secretary that he ‘very much regrets in this instance that the Natives were not captured’.3 But Arthur’s main administrative reaction to the news that the military had ‘routed’ a tribe was to instruct the police magistrate that ‘three or four Men’ may be sent to ‘strengthen your force’, adding that they ‘may probably soon have the aid of a Party from Mr Anstey’.
Conciliation and Confinement, Richmond Gaol and Bruny Island
While military actions and locally organised pursuit parties continued throughout the winter of 1829, operational control was increasingly centralised at Oatlands. Arthur, meanwhile, was also concerned with acts of conciliation. As he instructed:
‘Eumarra’ the Aboriginal Chief, who is now in Richmond Gaol may be treated with the greatest kindness, and may be furnished with good Clothing, and all his wants and desires may be liberally supplied.4
This overture represents Arthur’s hope for a diplomatic engagement between the government and various tribes. By this time, he had received reports that an intertribal confederation was forming. While such a confederation posed a possible military threat, it was also an opportunity to negotiate. But diplomatic overtures were not just about ending conflict or forming alliances with potential intermediaries. They were also about preparing to deal with surviving Aboriginal people once they had been removed from the ‘settled districts’.
Conciliation and confrontation were not opposing objectives. They were two sides of the same coin, where captives would become captors in a rolling cycle. Neither approach, however, was unilaterally successful. While ‘guides’ were being deployed in the field with mixed success, the dilapidated state of Richmond Gaol and the escape of captives like Jemmie highlighted the limitations of conciliatory confinement.
South of the main war zones, the Bruny Island Establishment sought to project a sense of colonial friendliness, while effecting the detention of non-combatants. It took an important administrative step forward in early March 1829 when the government advertised for ‘a steady person of good character’:
who will take an interest in effecting an intercourse with this unfortunate race, and reside upon Bruné Island, taking charge of the provisions supplied for the use of the Natives of that place.5
The advertisement also announced ‘the Lieutenant Governor’s anxious desire to ameliorate the condition of the Aboriginal inhabitants of this territory’, thereby making the call for applicants a subtle exercise in propaganda. After several men applied, Arthur felt that George Augustus Robinson ‘appeared to me, upon the whole, to be the most desirable’.6 This appointment heralded the transition from ration station to mission centre. When Robinson represented that the salary was inadequate to support his family, Arthur agreed to double it to £100 and provide rations and accommodation if Robinson would expand his duties beyond storekeeping to ‘also undertake the instruction of the natives & especially the care of their little children, if they will allow them to be educated’. Arthur also wanted Robinson to focus on ‘cultivating a little land for potatoes &c’, indicating that the establishment was intended to be a Aboriginal model village.
A cohort of convicts was assigned to assist Robinson in his duties, but Arthur ordered them ‘withdrawn’ by mid-April because ‘Mr Robinson represents that an improper communication has existed between them and the natives’.7 Despite this ‘improper communication’, Robinson settled into his role as provider and teacher. Describing his ‘General Plan’ for the Establishment in April 1829, he asserted it had two main prongs: ‘Civilisation’ and ‘Instruction in the principles of Christianity’.8 He hoped to develop the ration station into ‘a general establishment or native village’, geared towards helping Aboriginal people ‘acquiring habits of industry’.
After several months of communicating with Aboriginal people, moving the site of the Establishment, complaining of unwelcome visits from various colonial men, learning bits of Aboriginal languages and traditions, and communicating with the government over various subjects like the adequacy of rations or alternative sites, Robinson revised his proposals to Arthur for ‘conciliating the natives’. He suggested the Establishment ‘be forthwith enclosed with a substantial fence, in order to secure such natives as may be captured’. It was looking more and more like an internment camp.9 He also wanted all Aboriginal captives sent to Bruny Island, including the prisoners of war taken in the main theatres of conflict, and ‘two steady Field Police men be stationed at the Establishment, to prevent the Natives from escaping’.
But these ideas would have to wait. In the long nights of winter, Arthur’s attention was mostly directed towards either expelling or capturing Aboriginal people, and he was throwing much more money, men and munitions towards winning the war than administering a future peace.
Centralising and Expanding the Roving Parties
The original salary for the Bruny Island storekeeper was only a third of that paid to the leader of the ‘Native Catchers’. Even Robinson’s renegotiated rate was still only half as big as Robertson’s, but by mid-1829 Arthur’s patience with Robertson was wearing out. While Arthur continued to hold out rewards and approve new potential captors, the disappointing results of Robertson’s summer and autumn expeditions seemed to inspire an administrative reorganisation.
The Colonial Secretary informed Anstey on 27 May 1829 that it was ‘very clear to the Lieutenant Governor’ that Robertson’s mission ‘will not answer, and that a change of measures is essentially necessary’.10 In part it was probably because Robertson seemed more inclined to follow his own whims than military orders. Anstey was told to take control of the campaign:
Mr Robertson has now 14 Men, this number will be encreased [sic] to 30, so as to form with the addition of 6 Field Police Constables, 6 Parties of 6 Men each, all of whom are to receive directions from you. Three of the Parties may be placed under Mr Robertson’s immediate superintendence, and the other three under some intelligent Man whom you may select.
This expansion of the field police was dedicated to capturing and removing Aboriginal people from the settled districts, with the whole operation centralised in Oatlands. ‘One Field Police Man will be in charge of each Party, so that they may act separately,’ Anstey was instructed, ‘and you can regulate the movements of the whole’. There was no suggestion that military operations would diminish within the various districts.
Moreover, Arthur had clearly already discussed the plans with Anstey, who ‘will cheerfully undertake the part’.11 Significantly, the wording of the Colonial Secretary’s instructions to Anstey were mostly verbatim from Arthur’s own note on the matter. Both private conversations and written chains of information thereby reveal Arthur’s micromanagement of the war – even when delegating authority.
Aware of and concerned with the ‘character’ of Robertson’s men, Arthur was also wary of them being promised indulgences, and wanted close examination of prospective recruits. The Lieutenant Governor even went so far as to propose four convicts for the expanded service whose applications for tickets of leave he was then examining – William Little, John Reynolds, John Boswood and Patrick McGuire. He also ordered clothing and ‘30 pairs of strong serviceable boots to the storekeeper at Oatlands’, having learned from Robertson’s experiences, among others, of the need for durable footwear. As some of these new men arrived in Oatlands in June, the town adjutant was ordered to supply them with those ‘Arms and Ammunition which may be required’ for their duties.12
This new phase of convict paramilitary operations expanded from the established methods of the previous few months, but it took time for the new convicts to reach Oatlands, and for Anstey to take complete control of their manoeuvres. In mid-June Anstey reported to Hobart that ‘only four men’ had arrived, and that based on current projections from Robertson’s force and the convict department he anticipated being ‘six short of the full number’ of the expected 30 men.13 Moreover, a chunk of Robertson’s ‘original party’ were ‘with William Grant, at George’s River, or in some other remote part’. Anstey proposed keeping Grant as a party leader, with which Arthur ‘concurs’, still engaged in managing operations.14 Anstey also hoped to get ‘Charts’ to facilitate his orchestration of the missions, and their effective execution, but no suitable maps could ‘be procured’.15
By the end of June Anstey was still short of his promised complement of rovers, but he had commenced centralised operations, informing the Colonial Secretary ‘that all the men comprising the Roving Parties, now under my orders, are scouring the Bush in search of the Natives’.16 Anstey had Robertson directing two six-men parties ‘ranging the Country between the Launceston Road and the Coast’. Anstey thought it was ‘to the Eastward that the Natives are most likely to be found during the Winter’, and he was prepared to add another party ‘to be under Robertson’s orders’ when he was ‘furnished with the means’. But despite giving Robertson some seniority within his centralised system of roving parties, Anstey forwarded some letters from Robertson, one of which provided an early hint that Robertson was struggling to adjust to a subordinate position after his former independence. It was, Anstey characterised it, ‘a sort of Protest of Robertson, against the new arrangements’. Anstey also noted that ‘Robertson desires that the Captive Chief, Eumarraé, may be sent to him’, but felt he ‘could offer no opinion upon it’. After the escape of Jemmie, Anstey may have been wary of Robertson’s schemes.
Arthur shared Anstey’s concerns. In reply to Anstey’s letter, Arthur made suggestions for administering the rations because ‘Gilbert Robertson, at his first onset, occasioned much perplexity in the accounts’. He also reminded Anstey that Robertson was supposed to make monthly statements to the town adjutant, adding that Robertson was personally responsible for ‘every excess over the authorized allowance’.17 Even though he had centralised operational control with Anstey in Oatlands, Arthur maintained a close watch on how the colonial forces were deployed in the interior, and provided detailed suggestions about how they could cover key territory throughout the settled districts.
Anstey was also preparing to absorb another would-be settler-captor into his operations. ‘I have not yet heard from Mr Batman,’ he noted in his letter to Arthur, but he expected word soon. John Batman of Kingston farm near Ben Lomond in the northeast midlands had prior experience pursuing Aboriginal people with parties of soldiers and field police. During the winter of 1829 Batman made representations to the government about a ‘proposition for the capture and ultimate subduction of the Aborigines’, the timing of which meant his scheme received a welcome if slightly conditional response.18 Batman anticipated ‘bringing in alive some of those most injured and unfortunate race of beings’, as he called Aboriginal people, by ‘[taking] to the Bush for a longer period’.19 After reading the proposal, Arthur ‘rejoiced to give effect to the arrangement’ if it could ‘be conducted as part of the general system’ being implemented by Anstey. ‘One or two Thousand Acres of Land to such a person as Mr Batman, for such an undertaking’, the Colonial Secretary replied to the initial proposal, ‘would be cheerfully ordered by the Lieutenant Governor’.
Head Rover Jorgenson and the Potential of Geography
Anstey also had another party in the field. ‘Jorgenson, with six men, is gone to the Big River.’ Jorgen Jorgenson was one of the colony’s best-known figures.20 This Scandinavian adventurer first visited Van Diemen’s Land in 1803 as a sailor aboard the Lady Nelson, which brought the first colonists to the Derwent settlement, and he returned again on the Woodman as a convict in 1826.21 According to his conduct record Jorgenson was technically transported for ‘Returning from Transportation’, part of a rich backstory. Danish by birth, Jorgenson was a friend of luminaries like Joseph Banks, had led an uprising against the Danish Government in Iceland, had been a spy for the British, but was also in trouble in England with debts and political enemies. ‘He is a very intelligent man,’ the Hobart Town Gazette reported when Jorgenson arrived in Hobart, ‘and speaks several languages’.22 That his arrival was even noticed highlights that he was not quite a typically anonymous convict. Jorgenson found early and fruitful employment with the Van Diemen’s Land Company, and by June 1827 he had a ticket of leave. Later that year he sought employment with the government.
Jorgenson was certainly known to Arthur. In November 1827 Arthur instructed Anstey to place men under Jorgenson’s command, and let him ‘apprehend the Robbers infesting the High Road’ per a plan that Jorgenson proposed.23 Within a few months, Jorgenson’s role in Oatlands was being put on firmer official footing, with Arthur approving his appointment to the field police in May 1828.24 A few months after that Jorgenson became Anstey’s clerk, gaining an additional allowance of £10 per year to cover the advanced duties expected of him.25 In this role Jorgenson oversaw the creation of a phenomenal documentary archive. He collated mission reports by parties under the Oatlands field police, documenting the prosecution of the war by convicts like Danvers and Holmes, and soldiers like Ensign Lockyer. From winter 1829 Jorgenson assumed an even greater role administering the midlands roving parties – and with it the amount of documentation dramatically increased.
Among the Lieutenant Governor’s suggestions to Anstey for positioning the roving parties, Arthur ‘apprehended that Jorgenson would be employed to the Westward and Northward’, presumably because Jorgenson had worked for the Van Diemen’s Land Company and knew the area. It was the same rationale of regional familiarity that made Arthur and Anstey situate Robertson to the east and eventually Batman to the northeast. But Jorgenson had bigger ideas. On 18 June 1829 he penned a ‘plan of operations’ to Anstey, articulating that he saw his role as twofold: to protect the settled districts from ‘the fury and misguided notions of the Aborigines’, and ‘to place the Native Tribes in a situation that they may be captured without the parties in pursuit being compelled to shed more human blood’.26 In phrasing the second of these notions, Jorgenson tacitly acknowledged how operations had mainly worked up to this point: with bloodshed.
Jorgenson’s main suggestion concerned operating with ‘a steady Eye on the geographical Situation of the Island’, pointing out that ‘the enemy must be driven from the wide and extended parts of the country into the more narrow parts’ if captures were to be effected. The roving parties had to be coordinated and constant to drive Aboriginal people and prevent them from regaining lost ground after the parties moved through. He proposed rationing the parties for multi-week excursions, staggering their returns to base such that only one party was replenishing at any given time, leaving two parties operating in tandem.
He then outlined a series of manoeuvres for his three parties in the western midlands, converging and intersecting among the tiers from north and south, and discussing potential tactics. ‘If we find it necessary we will light fires in various places as we pass along,’ he indicated, ‘so to baffle and confound the calculations of the Natives, and make them believe that they are nearly surrounded and hotly pursued in those parts’.
Jorgenson believed this tactic would drive the tribes south. If the eastern parties under Robertson coordinated with this scheme too, then Jorgenson predicted that Aboriginal people could be ‘hemmed in the Southern parts of the Island’ where the mountainous country would ‘stay their career’ because the harsh landscape ‘afford[s] no food for any one, and the wandering Tribes could not subsist there’.
In addition to potential starvation, confusion would also work to the colonists’ advantage because, as Jorgenson pointed out from direct experience across the island, some of the more disparate tribes ‘cannot understand the language spoken by each other’. Denied freedom of movement or opportunities to subsist, they would be captured more easily. Anstey agreed, endorsing Jorgenson’s plan. ‘To get the Natives into his Decoy,’ Anstey enthused, ‘and to keep them there “hemmed in” seems a visionary scheme’.
Arthur shared Anstey’s sense of Jorgenson’s usefulness, allowing Jorgenson an extra shilling a day ‘while he shall be employed against the Aborigines’.27 Meanwhile, Anstey clarified Jorgenson’s authority within a chain of command, issuing a set of ‘General Orders’ on 27 June for Jorgenson’s three parties, which Anstey signed but was otherwise in Jorgenson’s handwriting.28 It clarified that Jorgenson was directing the parties’ movements, and dealt with matters of rationing, intelligence sharing, obedience and record keeping. With these regulations in place, the parties set off from Oatlands. One party headed west towards Bothwell, followed the next day by Jorgenson.29
Jorgenson was accompanied by William Little, one of the convicts that Arthur had personally selected for Anstey’s general operations. Unfortunately, Little’s ‘great toe was very painful on account of a splinter having got into it’, which slowed them down on their journey. ‘The weather was very cold’, Jorgenson added, ‘and the frost severe’, which probably did not help much either. After overnighting in a settler’s hut they ascended into the hills where they admired the snow, which made the slopes appear to be ‘perfect Glaciers’. This made travelling difficult, and they ‘often slipped down’. Nevertheless, by nightfall they had reached Bothwell and joined the remainder of the party. This included another two of Arthur’s picks – Patrick Macguire and John Reynolds – as well as Robert Lee, formerly a member of Robertson’s party, and field police constable George James. But Little had to be left at Bothwell, ‘his toe being in a very bad State’.
For the next few days Jorgenson and his men visited stock huts, where they sought information on the movements of any Aboriginal people and identified which huts would be suitable for future provisioning. After these investigations, Jorgenson wrote glowingly of Lieutenant Williams’ control of the Bothwell police district:
Provisions are to be obtained in plenty. A party of Soldiers were stationed at Thomson’s hut, who were all out scouring the Country. It seems that Mr Williams keeps all the military under his orders in a State of Activity and very usefully employed in protecting the settlements against the attacks of the Natives.30
The ongoing military presence around the Clyde and Ouse rivers reminds us that Anstey’s general operations supplemented the military’s effort rather than replacing it. Moreover, the field police roving parties learned from the military ones. Having surveyed the strategic situation around Bothwell, Jorgenson took his party up the Quoin, one of the nearby peaks, at dawn on 3 July, gaining ‘an extensive view of the circumjacent country’. ‘We then fell down on the Soldiers’ hut just under the Quoin’, Jorgenson added, ‘on the road to the Lakes’. There Jorgenson ‘found a party of Soldiers’, although ‘two of them had been sent patrolling to a considerable distance’. This patrol clearly prompted a conversation about the local geography and extent of military coverage, because Jorgenson learned that the soldiers stationed there ‘frequently proceed as far as the Lakes’ to the north and west, and the officer in charge ‘has examined the Country as far as Oatlands’ to the east.
Moving towards various stock huts, Jorgenson was pleased that one settler had ‘left orders to afford the Government parties every facility, and to pilot them through passes and other places in the neighbourhood’, which would aid in the wider project of capturing Aboriginal people. This area had seen much conflict, and Jorgenson wrote obliquely of ‘severe and bloody engagements with the Natives which have never been known’ conducted by local stockmen. He noted in passing that it ‘would indeed be a matter of curious knowledge and useful to mark down’ all information connected with the area’s recent history. Local knowledge could be used to strategic advantage.
This was especially so because of the limitations of the colonists’ geographical knowledge. The next day Jorgenson’s party ascended another summit, which he called ‘Mount Direction’. Jorgenson’s later account frustrated Anstey, who noted in the margin of the report, ‘A third Mount Direction!’ It was an irritation felt elsewhere in the colony, too: ‘Big River’ was often used to refer to one of the Derwent’s upper tributaries (usually the present Ouse River) as well as what is now known as the Apsley River on the east coast.
After passing this mountain, the party scoured gullies and hills, ‘and in the Evening constructed a Breakwind on the Side of a stony Hill’. They spent the night taking turns on watch, no doubt tending a small fire to keep warm, pulling their great coats and blankets close about them. ‘The night was stormy’, Jorgenson added, ‘with much snow’.
It was mid-morning the next day before they could see where to go. The landscape was covered in snow, and a thick fog obscured their view. But when the sun finally broke through the clouds sufficiently to illuminate a potential path, they headed downhill and ‘descended on better ground’. Walking round Laycock’s Lake, they ‘saw numerous native huts, but none of them appeared to have been recently occupied’. That night the party again constructed a shelter, this time augmented with ‘Stringy Bark taken from the Native huts’, protecting them from another night of snow.
Through Snow and Mist, Highlands Campaigning
They were in thick fog again the following day, and navigated by keeping Mount Penny on one side and Laycock’s Lake on the other. After a few hours walking, Jorgenson climbed Mount Penny by himself through ‘snow falling down in dense masses’, but between the snow and the alpine mist he could not see anything of use. He re-joined his party none the wiser at the foot of the mountain, and they ‘passed on over the ridges and rocky ground toward Lake Arthur’, skirting one of the inter-lake rivers, and then veering ‘in a NW by W direction’. As evening fell they ‘descended into some long and large marshes, divided by a small river’. They tried climbing a hill a little to get above the damp, but could find insufficient wood for shelter, and had great trouble lighting a fire in the bitter wind. Their fingers were ‘benumbed’, but they could ignite some of the tinder and rags that they carried with them.
Jorgenson congratulated himself and the party the next day, when they successfully navigated to the government hut at Patrick’s Plains after a two-hour walk. It was an achievement, he noted, because ‘none of us had been over the ground before’. When they located the government hut, they found it ‘was still in a very good condition, but the stable was tumbling to pieces’. Other huts in the area were in various states of maintenance, one in a ‘miserable condition’. Most were ‘abandoned’, presumably for the winter.
Pushing on, the party now crossed the ‘fierce and rapid’ Shannon River. One of them was defeated by the river and fell over, ‘but got on his legs again’ and kept going. The wet men tramped onwards.
As they approached another settler’s hut, Jorgenson ‘again had a proof of Mr Williams’ vigilance; two of his Soldiers had called there in the morning, and speedily went away again.’ The roving party was coincidentally shadowing and overlapping with the military patrols operating out of Bothwell.
The men at this hut were able to furnish the party with rations, although the occupants ‘had very little’ to spare. But Jorgenson did ‘obtain much useful information’:
Last Summer and some months since, the natives were seen in all places in this direction. They were frequently seen by the Stockkeepers going down to the River for water. They had been seen in the opening about three weeks since, and last year by this time of the year they robbed the hut.
With fresh intelligence Jorgenson seems to have decided on a rapid strike. Leaving much of their heavier gear behind, including their great coats, the party headed off ‘before dawn’ the next morning ‘for the Big Lake’. They made ‘rapid march’ through the snow-filled landscape. When they reached the lake after a long walk, they found a stock yard that ‘was completely fenced in by a long log fence’. There were two stock huts – the burnt remains of one torched ‘by the Natives’, and another ‘very small one built near to it’ as a replacement. They went further, before returning to this spot for the night, and ‘could see no native huts, nor tracks, nor any other signs that the Natives had been there recently’.
By morning the lake’s surface had frozen. Climbing a hill to observe the terrain and plan their travel, the men spotted ‘a native hut constructed of sticks, as there were no stringy bark in the Vicinity’. This was one of the few signs of Aboriginal people. After Lee ‘precipitated down a rock, which severely hurt him’, they limped back to the hut where they left their coats, ‘where we again found another party of Mr Williams’ soldiers’, which Jorgenson noted with obvious admiration.
But Jorgenson was also disappointed. With the various roving parties still being formed, he did not have any other parties under his direct control, which he wanted to place in the strategic passes in the rear of their positions. That way, Jorgenson explained, he could have pushed on further into the highlands, even into ‘the Platform bluff’. As he explained:
This is one of the strong holds of the Aborigines where they have never been attacked nor disturbed, and a single party pursuing them through one opening might kill some, but could capture but a few, as they would escape through the other openings.
Jorgenson therefore thought that pushing further into this territory would be relatively pointless without more parties to ensure coordinated movements. He hoped to do so on a future mission, having learned from local stockmen that ‘for many miles farther to the NW there are innumerable native huts’, but beyond the main line of the western tiers ‘there is a large extent of country entirely unknown’. They had reached the effective limits of the colony. It was time to turn back.
Due to his injury Lee was left behind at the stock hut to return to Oatlands later, while the party started off again following a cart track towards a safe river ford. Unfortunately, the snow was so thick they lost the trail, although they soon enough found the river. ‘Reynolds plunged into the river in a place which was very deep, and where the rapids ran uncommonly strong’, Jorgenson noted, leading the party in a hurried but tiresome crossing. As they emerged from the water, their clothing froze ‘stiff with Ice’, and they had to start running to ‘set the blood in circulation’ and warm up.
Instead of trying to follow the cart track further, Jorgenson directed the party in a sweeping manoeuvre through ‘strong and steep hills’ because, he explained to his superiors, ‘it is only in such out of the way places that we can expect to find the native huts’. They found ‘numerous [structures] of large dimensions where there were nothing but stones’, which Jorgenson surmised could not belong to cattlemen, although he did note that a stock hut was only about ‘2 miles’ from this spot. As they wound back into the main settled areas they passed an abandoned stock hut, and ‘arrived at the Soldiers hut on Patterson’s farm’ at sunset, although they pushed on through a snowy and stormy night to reach the Clyde. Clearly exhausted, two more members of the party had to be left at a settler’s hut on the way to Bothwell. While they rested, Jorgenson pushed on to Oatlands.
Although no encounters had taken place or captures been made, Jorgenson characterised the mission as a success, at least for proving the concept. ‘We have now ascertained that there is one party which can be relied upon,’ he wrote, ‘and contend against all sorts of difficulties, and by the rapidity of their movements confound the calculations of the Aborigines.’ The men held up well, he added, suggesting that ‘the natives cannot long escape us’. Jorgenson advanced the idea that Lee would make a good party leader, his injury notwithstanding, because he was ‘active, zealous, and indefatigable’. With more parties and coordinated operations, Jorgenson was confident of future victories.
But Jorgenson did have recommendations for Anstey. He complained of the ‘inferior quality’ of his party’s boots, which wore out too easily, and ‘wretched knapsacks’ that were too small to carry many provisions. He suggested that some boot makers should be brought to Oatlands, and more suitable knapsacks procured. He also commented on the varied distribution of blankets and great coats, which he felt needed standardisation. This was all part of a final mission summary, designed to inform Anstey and ultimately the Colonial Secretary and Arthur of the lessons of the expedition, and benefit the future conduct and management of what Jorgenson characterised as ‘a species of flying warfare’.
After Jorgenson signed off this report on 14 July 1829, Anstey read it, made annotations, and forwarded it to the Colonial Secretary, who passed it to the Lieutenant Governor. Within a week Arthur was acting on at least one of Jorgenson’s suggestions. ‘I should approve of 2 shoe makers with a quantity of leather &c &c being sent to Oatlands’, Arthur wrote on the report on 20 July, before handing the document back to the Colonial Secretary.31
Meanwhile, having authoritatively designated his party as ‘No 1 party of the Western Division’, Jorgenson was sent east. ‘Jorgenson’s men proceeded towards Little Swan Port this morning’, Anstey noted on the report as he forwarded it to Hobart, adding that ‘Jorgenson follows them tomorrow.’ The plan to trap Aboriginal people in the mountain passes in the western tiers was temporarily abandoned and the forces redeployed. ‘The Natives have certainly left the Lakes’, Anstey affirmed, ‘and are now on the Eastern Coast’. The colonial forces were not the only ones fighting a war. The eastern settled districts were under attack.