When
you walk in Sydney, you always encounter with the clue from founders of Australia,
so I’d like to talk something about them in brief.
On 26 February 1606, Dutch navigator
Willem Janszoon made landfall near the town of Weipa. This is the first recorded European
landfall on the Australian continent. The
Dutch appropriated some of the aboriginal women and forced the men to hunt for
them. Eventually a fight broke out leading the locals to kill some of the Dutch
and burn some of their boats. As ten of his men were killed on various shore
expeditions at Cape Keerweer (Dutch “Turnabout”), Willem Janszoon decided to return.
In ancient times, the
Greeks use the word australis to
mean south or the southern part of the world. After the using of many explorers, navigators and publishers, finally
the name of Australia and its territory was settled. From: http://whitehat.com.au/Australia/History/NamingAustralia.asp
James Cook 1770-1788
In 1770, Lieutenant James
Cook charted the east coast of Australia for
Great Britain and returned with accounts favouring colonisation at Botany
Bay.
1783 after lost the war of Independence in America, Britain needed a place to send its convicts. Then they think about the Botanic
Bay of New South Wales.
The
modern sandwich is named
after John Montagu, the 4th earl of Sandwich. He was a great supporter of
Captain James Cook. As First Lord
of the Admiralty, Sandwich approved Admiralty funds for the purchase and
fit-out of the Resolution, Adventure and Discovery for Cook’s second and
third expeditions of exploration in the Pacific
Ocean. In honour of Sandwich, Captain Cook named some islands after him.
Arthur
Phillip 1788-1793
The
First Fleet left England on 13 May 1787 and arrived at Botany Bay on 18 January
1788. The original site proved unsuited to settlement. Three days later Phillip
discovered an appropriate spot at Port Jackson and on 26 January landing
operations began there (this is the Australia day). All told 1030 persons went
ashore, of whom 736 were convicts, including 188 women, the rest marines and
civil officers, 27 with wives, and 37 children. From: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/phillip-arthur-2549
Because Lord Sydney, as Secretary of State for
the Home Office, was the minister in charge of this undertaking, and in
September 1786 he appointed Phillip commodore of the fleet, Phillip named the land after Lord
Sydney.
Learning the lesson of history, Phillip ordered
that Aboriginal people must be well-treated, and that anyone killing them would
be hanged. On the beach at Manly,
a misunderstanding arose with aboriginal
people and Phillip was speared in the shoulder: but he ordered his men not to
retaliate. Phillip said, “Their confidence and manly behaviour made me give the
name of Manly Cove to this place”.
In aboriginal web, it said some conflicts
with European people:
November 1789: Governor Phillip captures two Aboriginal men - Bennelong and Colebee. Colebee escapes but Bennelong is
kept at Government House for five months.
In 1790,
the Hawkesbury and Nepean
Wars between
Aboriginal people and white invaders start in NSW. The guerrilla-like wars
continue until 1816.
Philip found that the cultivation of food was
imperative, but the soils around Sydney were poor. On Sunday 2 November 1788, he
took a detachment of marines along with a surveyor, in boats, made his way
upriver. At Parramatta, he found the river turned to be fresh water, he know it
was a good place for agriculture. In an attempt to deal with the food crisis,
Phillip in 1789 granted a convict named James
Ruse the land of Experiment Farm at Parramatta on the condition that he
develop a viable agriculture. There, Ruse became the first person to
successfully grow grain in Australia.
John Hunter 1793-1800
Arthur Phillip’s resignation from the
governorship of New South Wales in July 1793, Hunter had applied for the
position in October and was appointed governor in January 1794.
Hunter's difficulties began before he arrived back in
Sydney. Phillip left the colony in 1793, at the end of his term as governor,
and for the following two years the military were in complete control. During
the lieutenant-governorship of Francis Grose,
who unmercifully exploited the convicts, a great traffic in alcoholic spirits
sprang up, on which there was an enormous profit for the officers, concerned.
They had obtained the control of the courts and the management of the lands,
public stores, and convict labour. Hunter realised that these powers had to be
restored to the civil administration, a difficult task. And in John
Macarthur he had an opponent who would ruthlessly defend his
commercial interests. Hunter found himself practically helpless. A stronger man
might have sent the officers home under arrest, but had Hunter attempted to do
so he likely would have precipitated the rebellion which
took place in William Bligh’s
time. Anonymous letters were even sent to the home authorities charging Hunter
with participation in the very abuses he was striving to prevent. In spite of
Hunter's vehement defence of the charges made against him, he was recalled in a
dispatch dated 5 November 1799 from the Duke
of Portland, one of the three secretaries of state.
Philip Gidley King 1800-1806
Hunter acknowledged this dispatch on 20 April 1800, and
left for England on 28 September 1800, handing over the government to
Lieutenant-Governor Philip Gidley
King.
As his successor Philip
Gidley King said, his conduct was
“guided by the most upright intentions”, and he was “most shamefully deceived
by those on whom he had every reason to depend for assistance, information, and
advice.” King became Governor on 28 September 1800. His first task was to
attack the misconduct of officers of the New
South Wales Corps in their illicit trading in liquor, notably rum. He tried to discourage
the importation of liquor, and began to construct a brewery. However, he found
the refusal of convicts to work in their own time for other forms of payment,
and the continued illicit local distillation, increasingly difficult to
control. He continued to face military arrogance and disobedience from the New South Wales Corps. He failed to
receive support in England when he sent an accused officer John
Macarthur back to face
a court-martial.
King had some successes. His regulations for prices,
wages, hours of work, financial deals, and the employment of convicts brought
some relief to smallholders, and reduced the numbers ‘on the stores’. He
encouraged construction of barracks, wharves, bridges, houses, etc. Government
flocks and herds greatly increased, and he encouraged experiments with vines,
tobacco, cotton, hemp, and indigo. Whaling and sealing became important sources
of oil and skins, and coal mining began. He took an interest in education,
establishing schools to teach convict boys to become skilled tradesmen. He
encouraged smallpox vaccinations, was sympathetic to missionaries, strove to keep
peace with the indigenous inhabitants, ordered the printing of Australia's
first book, New
South Wales General Standing Orders, and encouraged the first
newspaper, the Sydney Gazette. Exploration led to the survey of many
lands ports etc.
Considering that ex-convicts should not remain in disgrace
forever. He appointed emancipists laid the foundation of the 'ticket of leave'
system for deserving prisoners. The increased animosity between King and the
New South Wales Corps led to his resignation and replacement by William Bligh in 1806. Of all the
members of the First Fleet, Philip Gidley King perhaps made the greatest
contribution to the early years of the colony.
William Bligh 1806-1808
Bounty had been acquired to transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti , organised by its president Sir Joseph Banks. With Banks’s agreement, command of the expedition was given
to Lieutenant William Bligh. Bounty came to anchor in Matavai Bay, Tahiti on 26
October 1788.
The relationship that Cook built 15 years ago,
made the local accepted them warmly. But they had to wait five month for the nurturing
of the fruit. During this period, the crew members promiscuous lived among the
native women and neglected their duty. Bligh punished them hard
and it cause a mutiny on the way back. The story have been screenplays adopted by Hollywood
Mutiny on the Bounty
Bligh went on to serve
under Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen on 2 April
1801, in command of Glatton, a 56-gun ship of the line,
which was experimentally fitted exclusively with carronades.
After the battle, Nelson personally praised Bligh for Bligh's contribution to
the victory.
Bligh was appointed in
March 1805, at £2,000 per annum, twice the pay of the retiring Governor Philip Gidley King. He arrived in Sydney on 6
August 1806, to become the fourth governor. As his wife Elizabeth had been
unwilling to undertake a long sea voyage, Bligh was accompanied by his
daughter Mary Putland who would be the Lady of Government House;
Mary's husband John Putland was appointed as William Bligh's aide-de-camp.
During his time in Sydney, his confrontational administrative style provoked
the wrath of a number of influential settlers and officials. They included the
wealthy landowner and businessman John Macarthur and prominent Crown
representatives such as the colony's principal surgeon, Thomas Jamison,
and senior officers of the New South Wales Corps. Jamison and his military
associates were defying government regulations by engaging in private trading
ventures for profit: Bligh was determined to put a stop to this practice.
The conflict between
Bligh and the entrenched colonists culminated in another mutiny, the Rum
Rebellion, when, on 26 January 1808, 400 soldiers of the New South Wales
Corps under the command of Major George Johnston marched
on Government House in Sydney to arrest
Bligh. A petition written by John Macarthur and addressed to George Johnston
was written the day of the arrest but most of the 151 signatures were gathered
in the days after Bligh's overthrow. A rebel government was subsequently
installed and Bligh, now deposed, made for Hobart in
Tasmania aboard HMS Porpoise.
Bligh failed to gain support from the authorities in Hobart to retake control
of New South Wales, and remained effectively imprisoned on the Porpoise from 1808 until January
1810.
Lachlan Macquarie 1810-1821
Macquarie was promoted to Colonel in 1810, Brigadier in
1811 and Major-General in 1813, while serving as governor.
Macquarie departed from England in May 1809 aboard the HMS Dromedary, accompanied by the HMS Hindostan. They reached Sydney on 28 December 1809. He
started as a governor on 1 January 1810 and he appointed John Campbell as his secretary.
The
main task Macquarie had to tackle was to restore orderly, lawful government and
discipline in the colony following the Rum Rebellion of 1808 against Governor William Bligh. It included breaking
the power of the Army officers; economic
development;
legal system construction etc.
He treated emancipist kindly, as he appointed emancipists to government positions: Francis Greenway as
colonial architect and Dr William Redfern as
colonial surgeon.
legal system construction etc.
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