CHAPTER SIX

Offensive Defence in Reality and Record

1829, Winter

Eastern Front

The Newspapers’ War

While the colonists prosecuted their war with soldiers, paramilitary field police and mercenaries, Aboriginal groups raided farms and harassed farm servants. These attacks on civilian targets provided regular stories about fights between stockmen and Aboriginal assailants for the colonial newspapers and subsequent histories, skewing the public perception of the conflict, making it appear something remote and unofficial.

But as Jorgenson found in the highlands, these skirmishes occurred with even greater regularity than the newspapers recorded. Like the operations of the soldiery, distant engagements were so common that they often went unreported in newspapers. A colonist killed or wounded near a town, however, represented an imminent threat to urban readers. As the Launceston Advertiser opined after a woman was speared by Aboriginal assailants, ‘[T]his is indeed a bad state of affairs, when the Aborigines can murder people within six miles of the town’.¹ Distant contestations of hunting grounds and pasture runs were one thing, but the prospect of war in the towns may have seemed increasingly real in the winter of 1829. Attacks on towns would directly affect investors in Hobart and threaten immigration from Europe.

Roving Towards Mr Cotton’s

From experience the settlers and government alike knew where to expect trouble, generally where concentrations of settlers crossed Aboriginal pathways and destinations. In Little Swan Port on 22 July, Jorgenson learned that Aboriginal people had raided ‘two huts in Great Swan port’ in the past few days, ‘and in all probability killed one of Mr Meredith’s shepherds’.² In response to this news Jorgenson immediately manoeuvred to an inland position where he thought he might intercept the attackers. He sent two of the team to Lieutenant Lane, the police magistrate at Waterloo Point, to request ‘intelligence as to the route taken by the Aborigines’. He also described his own position, and advised that ‘Mr Batman in the Campbell Town district has taken charge of a party in search of the Aborigines’ to the north, which was ‘the seventh party under the immediate orders of Mr Anstey’. Unfortunately, the two messengers got lost, and had to re-join the party that night before delivering their message.

Lane had sent word of the ‘aggressions by the Natives’ to the Colonial Secretary the day before Jorgenson even reached Little Swan Port, thereby keeping Arthur abreast of the situation in the area. In reply, Lane was told ‘that the Lieutenant Governor trusts you will make every possible effort for the protection of the Settlers’.³ In another letter replying to Lane, the Colonial Secretary referred to ‘the active measures now in operation for the capture of the Aborigines’:

I am directed to express to you in the strongest manner His Excellency’s confident hope, that you are calling forth every energy in your power, for the apprehension; in order that the bloody massacres on both sides which are daily occurring, revolting to humanity, may if possible be put a speedy stop to.⁴

Arthur was certainly aware of the intense fighting in this area, and keen for it to be contained.

In the field, Jorgenson was determined to send his letter. He took ‘the whole party to Waterloo point’, capturing a runaway convict on the way, but had trouble finding any real figures of authority. This left him ‘rather at a loss what to do’. So he collected rations and headed off again, leaving town at about 2:00 am, causing much grumbling among the party. But Jorgenson ‘shewed them the necessity of the Aborigines in this quarter not being made acquainted that a roving force was about which could be done only by travelling in the night’.

After the sun rose Jorgenson managed to finally meet with Lane, but there was little intelligence to be had other than some vague sightings of ‘the native fires’, which suggested Aboriginal people were moving ‘in a southerly direction’. Tired from their night march, the party slept much of the day, creeping off ‘cautiously through the Bush’ after 3:30 pm towards Allen’s hut. Jorgenson was still unsure what direction to take because ‘the natives were in the habit of lighting fires in various places to deceive the white inhabitants’.

With imminent contact and conflict possible, Jorgenson ‘examined the firearms’, finding that ‘Little’s musket missed fire, it was filthy and dirty, the Ramrod crooked, and I found that this man had only four cartridges left out of ten.’ While the objective was capture, the use of force was clearly part of the operational procedure. After reaching Allen’s hut, the party learned of ‘a Kangaroo which had been speared by the Natives’ some 3 miles away. Being ‘no longer uncertain as to what course to pursue’, the party crept out of the hut about an hour after midnight.

At dawn on 25 July Jorgenson split his party. He sent three men ‘along the Tier to Mr Cotton’s hut’, while Jorgenson and another man travelled ‘by the Seashore’ to the same hut. Jorgenson instructed the first party to use the hut for a potential ambush:

the party should keep close within the hut under cover of a large tarpauline there hanging up, and one to go out now and then without arms and pick up a little wood which might induce the Natives to pursue him into the hut when the party would rush between them and the door and receive them with fixed bayonets, and capture all within.

Unfortunately the men had ‘through mere Laziness left their bayonets behind’, and arrived too late. As Jorgenson wrote to Anstey:

You may guess my vexation when Hyatt and I arrived at the point, to learn, that one hour before, the Natives had speared three men at Mr Cotton’s, wounded one of them mortally in the lungs, seized their three muskets standing up against a tree within three yards of them, taken away the Dogs, drove the three men into the Saltwater Lagoon, which the unfortunate wretches had to swim across three times.

One of them named Rogers was unable to swim, having been ‘cruelly beaten about the head’ as well as ‘speared in the lungs’. The injured man was helped by the others, ‘themselves speared’ too, but Rogers’ severe impairment slowed the escape. Eventually the others ‘were obliged to seek safety in flight and leave Rogers to his fate. Yet he succeeded in running away,’ Jorgenson added, ‘and flew along the Sea coast, when he happily met with Mr Cotton who stayed the career of the Natives’.

Upon getting news of this affray, Jorgenson ‘speedily arrived at Cotton’s, and about an hour after in came Holmes and the rest of the party’. Holmes reported that ‘Lieut. Lane and Mr Cotton were in the Hut and one of the speared men lay in the Hut very badly wounded’.⁵ His party were asked to hold the hut ‘until some soldiers should arrive’. While noting the extraordinarily fortuitous coincidence that he had planned to use this hut as an ambush, Jorgenson ‘could not help feeling very great regret that we had not come a couple hours sooner to the hut than we did, or the natives a couple of hours later’.

But Jorgenson had even more ominous news for Anstey, reporting that after the attack on Cotton’s men, ‘the Natives from about 150 to 180 strong moved down on the settlement, and robbed within 1 ¾ mile of it’. This was just the beginning of a series of raids by Aboriginal people now well in advance of the colonial positions. ‘Parties of military were sent out in search of the Natives,’ Jorgenson added, ‘but as none of them proceeded to a great distance, none of them fell in with the Natives’.

Field Plans Amid Disorder, The Peninsula Trap

Believing that a large and hostile group of Aboriginal people armed with guns and ammunition were in the area, Jorgenson wanted to determine whether there were more forces at his disposal. He set off for Oatlands leaving most of his rovers to make a series of ambushes. A team under Holmes was sent ‘to proceed along a gully toward the bend of the River (Little Swan port) about 9 miles distant from Buxton’s where the Natives can only cross this time of the year for the Blue Hills’. Here Holmes was ‘to lay in ambush on the opposite Hill’. ‘Another party is in ambush at the Branches,’ Jorgenson noted, ‘which is the other opening for Prosser’s plains’.

En route to Oatlands, Jorgenson met with the disappointing news that no other party had yet ‘been formed’. Moreover, while he wanted to give dispositions for some of Robertson’s parties to close off the passes in and out of the Great Swan Port district, ‘and hem them in’, he learned that ‘Mr Robertson had left in the morning and Grant could not be heard of’. Full coordination of the various units was being hampered by delays and difficulties in communication. Attempting to remedy this, Jorgenson left Robertson a note at one of the major stock huts. ‘The Natives are carrying every thing before them,’ he wrote, but concluded that if Robertson followed Jorgenson’s instructions, then ‘by a proper co-operation the great Tribe of Oyster Bay will be captured’.

When he reached Oatlands, Jorgenson made requisitions for his men, wrote a preliminary report for Anstey, and sent word throughout the settled districts to put the authorities on alert. He also penned a letter to Anstey that was highly critical of Lane’s administration of his district,⁶ noting poor communication, inadequate deployment of field police, and missed opportunities for capturing Aboriginal people. Jorgenson was also concerned about the administration of the roving parties and conduct of some of its members. This included ‘Black Tom and the other Blacks’, who Jorgenson and others suspected were ‘not willing to bring the parties to where the natives would be very likely to be’ on all occasions. While Anstey did not approve of or endorse all these sentiments, he nonetheless forwarded the document to the Colonial Secretary because Jorgenson had made several suggestions that deserved ‘worthy attention’.

Of much interest to his superiors, Jorgenson continued to develop his ideas of using the Vandemonian geography for effecting captures, applying them now to the east coast. Coordinated deployments and manoeuvres between Robertson, Batman and his own forces would work particularly well in that area, Jorgenson argued, especially when Aboriginal people moved into the Schoutens. Jorgenson saw a distinct opportunity to close off the ‘neck’ that connected the Schoutens with the mainland, by placing a line of armed men across it when Aboriginal people were observed within the trap. But this required more men, especially the coordination of the soldiery with the Oatlands roving parties, and perhaps even the arming of some servants. ‘I know it is not six nor a dozen of men that will terminate a war against a whole nation,’ Jorgenson wrote, recognising that many more men were required for his schemes. But he was convinced it would bring victory for the colony:

A grand co-operation deduced from a well disported and matured plan alone can produce that effect, and time and expense will be saved by doing that speedily, which otherwise might occupy years.

Jorgenson had even attempted to execute a version of this scheme, without consulting with Anstey or Arthur. When he set off for Oatlands from Cotton’s hut, he told Holmes of his plan ‘to get as he said, some more men to hem in the Natives upon the Schoutens’. Moreover, the letter Jorgenson left at a stock hut for Robertson actually detailed just such an operation, and effectively ordered Robertson to get military assistance from Lane to close off the Schoutens when feasible.⁷ Jorgenson technically lacked the authority to give such direct instructions to Robertson, and to the Colonial Secretary Anstey justified the anomaly of a convict commanding a settler by noting that the ‘liberty taken by Jorgen Jorgenson in thus giving orders to Mr Gilbert Robertson’ was because they ‘have long been familiar and intimate friends’.

But Anstey was misinformed or dissimulating. The pair actually had a growing antipathy that began to affect the operations.

In the Hills above the Coast

The precise origins and nature of the falling out between Jorgenson and Robertson is unclear, but Robertson certainly felt slighted by a letter he received from Jorgenson as well as negative newspaper coverage of his missions.⁸ When Anstey investigated their feud, he also heard accusations that Jorgenson drank too much too often, and ‘was much deceived by Norah Corbett’, a convict woman. Anstey ultimately concluded these accusations were largely unfounded, commenting that ‘Mr Robertson is unfortunate in his selection of witnesses’.⁹ They certainly seemed suspiciously geared towards the kinds of moral failings that a settler may have levelled against a convict. Lee described Robertson seeming ‘very jealous of Jorgenson, and much vexed when his name was mentioned in the Newspapers’, adding that Robertson ‘did not like his name to be coupled with that of a Prisoner of the Crown’.¹⁰ There were undoubted class tensions at work here, possibly also heightened by rumours about Robertson’s mixed Scottish-Caribbean parentage.

In addition to clashing personalities, there were more fundamental issues with communication, and some roving parties were also acting on their own tactical impulses. Robertson, for instance, obliquely recorded that he was ‘scouring between the head of the Macquarie and McGill’s Marshes’ during the second half of July, while his other party was moving relatively independently – and better accounted for their actions, at least in surviving documentation.¹¹

William Grant and Jack had been sent by Robertson towards the ‘flint quarry’ at the end of June. Their mission had a series of dashed hopes. Early in their journey they encountered some of a survey team hunting ‘for Kangaroo skins’ in ‘a place of great resort for the Natives’.¹² Having heard their dogs, Grant first thought he had stumbled into a tribe. He stayed on high alert, despite the early disappointment with the survey team, and found ‘evident signs that the Natives had been thereabouts in considerable numbers’.

When a mob of kangaroo started rapidly bounding one evening, clearly evading a predator, the rovers ‘immediately started up with our arms’. Stalking about in the dark, they spotted ‘one black native almost crawling’ but the party lost him in the night. They picked up the trail again in the morning, with Jack taking the lead, but soon again ‘lost it’. Grant thought ‘that Black Jack on this occasion wished to evade bringing us into the right track’, and ‘seemed unwilling to proceed farther, and this is not the first time that he has shewn this reluctance’. The party scoured the bush a bit more, and then returned to Oatlands by mid-July, their shoes having disintegrated off their feet.

‘During the whole of our journey’, Grant reported to Anstey, ‘we heard nothing of the other party confided to the Charge of Mr Robertson.’ Noting that Jack’s behaviour corresponded with reports about ‘Black Tom’, Anstey forwarded the report to Hobart, complained of Mount Direction being another case of ‘duplicate and triplicate names’, and sent Grant’s party out again ‘towards Oyster Bay’.

Grant took his party to Tooms Lake, the same general area where Robertson was reportedly operating.¹³ Jack gave local intelligence, revealing ‘the different places where the Aborigines used to encamp when he was with them’. They found ‘a number of native huts, but none recently constructed’. On 25 July, the day Cotton’s men were attacked, Grant’s party were ‘principally occupied in baking and washing for the party’, having just restocked at a settler’s hut near the upper tributaries of the Macquarie River.

Despite recent snow, which meant they ‘should easily have observed the Native tracks’, they found no Aboriginal trails. But while the snow gave some advantage, it also slowed their progress. The party spent 29 July ‘behind the windfalls in one of the Old Native huts on account of the excessive severity of the weather’.

The next day they again ‘encamped in another old Native hut near a considerable lagoon’. Quite remarkably, Jack ‘had assisted in making this hut when he was with the Natives’. Jack also told the party ‘where a musket and a double barrelled Pistol had been concealed by his tribe on some former occasion when they had robbed some hut’. As the mission continued, they ‘found the musket’, but not the pistol. They again visited the flint quarry, ‘a large hole dug in the ground by the natives to which they resort in great numbers for the purpose of obtaining the flintstone wherewith to shape and make their spears’, which Jack said was used ‘frequently’ by ‘two or three mobs’. For much of late August the party loitered nearby in the hope of ambushing Aboriginal people, while Grant occasionally visited Ross for provisions.

While these expeditions continued, Arthur appraised himself of the overall operational situation. He met with Jorgenson, although the discussion seemed to mostly focus on Jorgenson’s salary, which Arthur directed Anstey to resolve.¹⁴ Arthur was also unimpressed with Jorgenson’s liberties in speaking ill of Lieutenant Lane. Nonetheless, the Lieutenant Governor generally agreed with Jorgenson’s strategic suggestions. ‘With regard to the Capture of the Oyster Bay Tribe,’ Arthur noted on 4 August ‘there can be no question that the Parties must act upon some combined Plan which Mr Anstey will lay down for them.’ Probably alluding to Jorgenson and Robertson’s feud, Arthur expressed his hope that ‘inconvenient interference’ between the parties could be avoided.

But mostly he was focused on tactics. Likely reflecting on the missed opportunity at Cotton’s hut, Arthur suggested that ‘Mr Anstey would also do well to instruct the Parties occasionally to occupy for days together any Huts or Houses which the Natives are likely to attack.’ This was an old strategy that soldiers had used throughout the island, and Arthur clearly felt it was still efficacious, thinking that ‘if this plan were acted upon the chances are very great that the Natives might be surprised & taken’. But there was more to Arthur’s strategy than patience:

much must depend upon the intelligence of the Leaders of the Parties in tracing out the tracks most frequented by the Natives, and watching them, taking such a position as may secure them from being seen by the Aborigines.

He was writing in general terms, but also responding to specific circumstances that went beyond Jorgenson. The day before, Arthur had met with the division constable of Prosser’s Plains about complaints made against the constable by ‘one of Mr Gilbert Robertson’s party’.¹⁵ Arthur reckoned ‘that the charge is entirely groundless’, so it probably served to cast further suspicion on Robertson’s men and missions. Moreover, Arthur was possibly starting to give serious thought to the other main expedition leader, John Batman, whose parties were preparing to be deployed into the bush during that August.

Mr Batman’s Proposition

Although the Lieutenant Governor had ‘cheerfully’ responded to Batman’s June ‘proposition’, it was still being organised by 14 August when Arthur had ‘just seen Mr Batman’.¹⁶ The delay was partly Batman’s fault – he had ‘not addressed himself to Mr Anstey’ after the government welcomed his June proposal – but things gradually got worked out during the latter part of the winter.¹⁷ When Arthur and Batman met, they discussed the composition of the party and prospective rewards for the nine convicts that Batman wanted to employ. Batman had written in advance, seeking to employ men who were ‘strong, healthy’, ‘patient, quiet’, and so on.¹⁸ Arthur agreed on a scheme of service and reward, ordered some convicts sent to Launceston, and instructed they be ‘armed and clothed’ in readiness for duty under Batman. Arthur also gave detailed instructions about the fitting out of this expedition, including the numbers of camp kettles, tomahawks, blankets and the daily ration of soap to each man. He was, it reveals, particularly focused on the minutiae of Batman’s mission. Later in the month, when Batman found that the Launceston stores had only ‘yellow’ jackets – ‘too conspicuous in the Bush’ for stealthy operations – less conspicuous blue ones were specifically ordered for him, better suited to blend into fog, rock and mist.¹⁹

Batman relied on his ‘personal experience during the many excursions I have made in pursuit of Aborigines’ to argue for his own employment.²⁰ He tried using this to leverage relative independence of operation, remarking pointedly on ‘my own knowledge of the Country and of the haunts and manners of these people’.²¹ This was, he avowed, ‘such to render me a tolerable judge of the best mode of meeting with and capturing them’. His exploits prior to forming a contract for land with the Lieutenant Governor – like that time in 1828 when he shot dead a man in the act of throwing a spear – are slight but telling. Batman was used to operating in the field, and had been fighting the war for some time before the government made his mission official.

Batman’s homestead of Kingston at Ben Lomond fell within the purview of the police magistrate of Campbell Town, James Simpson. Unfortunately, he left far fewer operational records than Anstey. But Batman is one of those cases that highlights that the northern midlands campaigning was similar to that in the better-documented south. Shortly before making his proposal to the government, Batman had been attached to a 14-man military expedition of the 57th Regiment chasing Aboriginal fires under the command of Lieutenant Shadforth.²²

While they reportedly saw ‘two men’ flee further into the bush upon the party’s approach, the expedition was more newsworthy for its geological discoveries than its military operations. Batman had been part of a small detachment that summited a mountain, finding ‘a regular track of the natives’, but also an interesting lithic landscape that was described in the newspaper in some detail. The war was normal and under-reported, the rocks new and newsworthy. A subsequent report obliquely but revealingly said that Batman ‘has done much for the protection of his neighbourhood from the attacks of the natives’.²³

While Batman’s deployment was administered by Anstey, his operations differed from those of Jorgenson and Robertson in one crucial respect: Batman’s guides were not even remotely local. While described in the colonial press as ‘a settler, near Launceston’, Batman was born in Sydney, and probably took advantage of various connections to augment his roving party with Indigenous men from New South Wales.²⁴ The same article mentioned that he had taken ‘two of the Aborigines of the Sister Colony’ with him. They were frequently referred to as the ‘Sydney Natives’ or ‘Sydney Blacks’, although they were not strictly from Sydney itself.

There had been much discussion within Van Diemen’s Land about the potential uses of trackers and warriors from the mainland to help win the war. While this did not feature in Batman’s main documented correspondence with the government, by August it was clearly relatively common knowledge that this was what he had in mind, suggesting the Lieutenant Governor was likely aware of this part of the plan. The Launceston Advertiser reported that ‘five or six’ indigenous men from New South Wales, along with their wives, were being ‘invited from Sydney’ to assist Batman.²⁵ The paper wrote glowingly of these ‘most desirable auxiliaries’, shortly before mentioning Batman’s departure with two who were already in Van Diemen’s Land. One of these two, known to the colonists as Pigeon, had apparently learned some of a local language while dwelling in the islands of Bass Strait with a sealing gang.²⁶

Armed with fresh convicts and foreign auxiliaries, on 1 September 1829 Batman went ‘in pursuit of the Aborigines who have been committing so many outrages in this district’, reporting his progress in letters to Anstey.²⁷ He soon ‘fell in with their tracks’. Guided by ‘the assistance of the Sydney Native Blacks’, Batman’s party found a group of 10 huts, which appeared to have been constructed a few days previously, and surmised he was on the trail of a tribe that was ‘upwards of 100’ people strong. After this, on the eastern side of Ben Lomond, the party found another five huts, even more recently occupied. Going further, they spotted smoke.

Batman ‘immediately ordered the men to lay down’, reducing their profile. They hid and listened and ‘could hear the Natives conversing distinctly’. The party ‘then crept into a thick scrub and remained there until after sun set’. In the darkness Batman’s quiet and patient men unburdened themselves of their heavier gear, laying their knapsacks and blankets in the bush. As midnight approached, they advanced on the Aboriginal camp. Fanning out as they neared the embers, Batman’s party prepared to rush the sleeping figures. Then dogs started barking.

Two of Batman’s men had bumped muskets in the dark, which was enough to alarm some dogs. The awakened people commenced a hurried escape, ‘running into a thick scrub’. Batman ‘ordered the men to fire’, after which the party rushed the camp.

One of the expedition team managed to get hold of a woman and child. ‘The woman bit his hand in several places severely, but he still held her until another man came to his assistance.’²⁸ The party did not catch any others that night. Batman recorded that they ‘only captured that Night One Woman and a Male child about Two years old’, despite searching the area as best as possible in the dark.

With daylight, the impact of the raid became clearer. The party found two more men and took them captive. One was ‘very badly wounded in the ancle [sic], and knee’, and the other had also been hit. Batman reported that ‘10 Buck shot had entered his Body, he was alive but very bad’. Moreover, Batman and his party could see that others had also been wounded in their escape, probably mortally.

There were a great number of traces of Blood in various directions and [we] learnt from those we took that 10 Men were wounded in the Body which they gave us to understand were dead or would die, and Two Women in the same state had crawled away, besides a number that were shot in the legs.²⁹

The party also ‘shot 21 large Dogs’ and took a quantity of blankets and weapons from the abandoned camp. For a few more days Batman pursued the trails of fleeing Aboriginal people, but the guides lost the last clear tracks among rocky ground. The expedition turned back towards their base at Batman’s farm with only four captives.

The going was difficult for the two wounded Aboriginal men, who ‘found it quite impossible’ to walk. One of them was ‘a well known character’, distinctly lacking two front teeth, who Batman asserted ‘has been present at almost every Murder or robbery that has been committed in this district’. Batman tried to push them on, but he could not keep them moving. ‘I was obliged therefore’, Batman concluded bluntly, ‘to shoot them.’

Recordkeeping and the Delicate Politics of Genocide

When the party returned to Kingston farm, Batman wrote a brief account of the mission for Anstey, which he dated 7 September. Tallying their ammunition, Batman could confidently assert that ‘the volley we fired at them contained 328 Buck Shot’. He also confirmed that he ‘forwarded the Woman to Campbell Town Gaol and have kept the child if His Excellency has no objections I intend to rear it.’ Batman congratulated his men and outlined his next series of movements towards the east coast. A few days later he headed off again.

By early morning on 9 September Anstey had Batman’s letter in his hands. He hurriedly posted it on to Hobart to the Colonial Secretary, scribbling a short explanatory note on the front page: ‘I forward this to Mr Burnett instantly not having suff[icien]t time to read it through myself with attention.’ Within another two days the Colonial Secretary had read it and made comments. Beside Batman’s account of shooting the captives, the Colonial Secretary pencilled in a brief margin note: ‘shoots wounded natives because they could not keep up’. He then wrote a reply to Anstey:

With respect to Mr Batman’s letter of the 7th instant, addressed to you which I duly received by this post, in which you inform me that from the immediate departure of the Messenger after it reached you, that you had not time to read it through with attention, I beg to state that from the very important nature of it’s [sic] contents it does not appear to me proper to submit the letter to The Lieutenant Governor for instructions, till such time as you have personally seen Mr Batman, and are able to forward to me a full Report and explanation of the extraordinary circumstances to which I have alluded and which probably escaped your observation in your former cursory perusal of the Document which is herewith returned.³⁰

But the letter was not so much a rebuke as a political sleight of hand. The Colonial Secretary was drawing Anstey’s attention to Batman’s execution of a prisoner, while also stating that the Lieutenant Governor had not received the correspondence and was therefore unaware of the incident.

Yet the very next letter in the Colonial Secretary’s copybook, also sent on 11 September, suggests that Arthur had seen the letter or been informed of its contents. In a circular sent to officers throughout the colony, the Colonial Secretary reiterated the terms of martial law:

The obligation of protecting the Colonists, having impelled the Government to adopt more energetic measures for checking the continued atrocities of the Aborigines; I am directed by the Lieutenant Governor earnestly to impress upon you the necessity of acting up to the spirit of the injunctions contained in the Proclamation of Martial Law, promulgated on the 1st of November 1828;- that bloodshed be checked, that any Natives who may surrender or be captured, be treated with humanity and tenderness, and that defenceless Women and Children be invariably spared. It will be your duty, to enjoin the strictest attention to be paid by the parties under your orders, or employed in your District, to these commands, as from the number now employed, it must happen that there will be frequent exercise for their forbearance.³¹

But Arthur had not just vaguely ‘directed’ the Colonial Secretary to issue such a circular with serendipitous coincidence. Earlier that day Arthur had in fact drafted it. Arthur’s written instructions to the Colonial Secretary, and his draft of the circular, survive in a Lieutenant Governor’s Office letter copybook dated 11 September.³² While clearly a response to the specific timing and content of Batman’s letter, Arthur turned his government’s passive complicity in attacks and executions into an adroit act of propaganda.

While Arthur remained officially unaware of the executions, the colony rejoiced in the encounter. The Launceston Advertiser printed the story on 7 September, the same day that Batman wrote to Anstey, believing that ‘15 or 16 fell’ and that ‘this will cool their ardour for marauding’.³³ The Hobart Town Courier printed the story on 12 September, the day after the Colonial Secretary had read Batman’s letter, but this too came from a report in the interior dated 7 September.³⁴

Although not entirely identical to the letter sent to Anstey, the overall structure of this report and much identical phrasing and language strongly indicates that it came from Batman himself. Despite describing the capture of the two men, the report was silent on their demise. This all suggests that Batman was actively promoting his success, beyond merely informing the government, although he was a bit selective about who got to know what. Only a week later did the rival Hobart-based Colonial Times carry Batman’s story, by which time the Aboriginal people had become the aggressors, making ‘the first attack with their spears’, morphing the story such that Batman’s party ‘were obliged in their own defence to fire and rush forward’.³⁵

This all reflected a wider pattern of newspaper reportage where the war’s progress often got distorted by conflicting reports, rumour, partisan politicking and even by the obfuscations of government. Yet the haphazard newspaper reports, and the sense of confused and localised violence historians have generally taken from them, contrast sharply with the generally clear intelligence and lines of communication to and from Hobart and the various parties. A fair degree of autonomy was delegated from Arthur to Anstey to the party leaders to allow tactical flexibility, but also because of unavoidable communication delays. Yet these same delays were nonetheless measurable in days at most, meaning Arthur could keep a relatively close watch over the war’s strategic progress.

Following his ostensibly general reminder to the police magistrates about the good care of captives, Arthur also repeated the same injunctions to the military forces in his capacity as Colonel Commanding. But this was not the main sentiment of the Garrison Order of 15 September. Instead, the bulk of this document formally alerted the military authorities of ‘more energetic steps’ being implemented under Anstey’s direction, which were for ‘pursuing the native Tribes and of driving them, from the settled Districts, if it be not possible to surround and capture them’.³⁶ But while the timing and the comment about captives reveals a connection with Batman’s mission and report, so too does it hint that Arthur was adapting some of Jorgenson’s advice about coordinating forces, insisting that the interior military forces offer ‘prompt assistance to the Civil Power’ with ‘the most zealous cooperation’. It was a reminder of the essential thrust of Arthur’s long-term objective that the military was to help effect ‘the removal of the Aborigines from the Settled Districts’.

As the fighting near Great Swan Port intensified, and the winter turned to spring, the campaigning continued. The military received their orders, Anstey and Jorgenson directed their field police units, Robertson captured more spears, and Batman crossed the hills from the midlands to the east coast, closing in on more Aboriginal people.