The last of the Sovereigns of the Sydney Tribe “King Bungaree”—His son.
My acquaintance with His Majesty was very short. As was his usual
habit, he visited the ship “Thames” in which I arrived in the Colony.
His sable Majesty, in his native barge, a bark canoe, presented himself
to make the usual inquiries as to the name of the captain, and to
inspect the steward’s pantry, receiving tribute of various articles of
food and raiment; and although he was adorned with a cocked hat and
brass plate, I could not help contrasting, to his disadvantage, His
Majesty’s appearance with that of the North-American chieftains with
whom I had been in the habit of mixing; however, years of drunkenness
and some starvation no doubt had had their effect in emaciating
his frame—the blessings which civilization has bestowed upon the
unfortunate aboriginal population.
The following spirited sketch is copied from the _S. M. Herald_, being
an extract from Dickens’ _All the Year Round_, evidently the production
of an Australian:—
There are few old Australian colonists to whom the name of Bungaree
is not familiar, but I conceive it right that the whole world should
know something of this departed monarch, and of his habits and
peculiarities. Honored as I was by his favour, politely greeted as
I always was whenever I met His Majesty in the streets of Sydney,
flattered as I was when he invited me occasionally to accompany him in
his boat to “go kedge fiss,” I consider myself as well qualified to
become his biographer, as was Mr. Boswell to write the life of Doctor
Johnson, or Lord John Russell that of Thomas Moore.
King Bungaree and myself were contemporaries; but there was a vast
difference between our ages. When I first knew him he was an old man,
over sixty, and I a boy of twelve. It would be false to say that I
cannot account for the great liking the king always had for me, for the
truth is I was in the habit of lending him small sums of money, bread
and meat, and not unfrequently a glass of rum. Many a time have I slyly
visited the larder and the decanters on the sideboard, to minister to
the wants of the monarch. I used the word “lend,” because the king
never said “give.” It was invariably “len’ it half a dump” (7½d.),
“len’ it glass o’ grog,” “len’ it loaf o’ bread,” “len’ it ole shirt.”
It is needless, perhaps, to state that, although in some respects
the memory of King Bungaree was as extraordinary as that of the late
King George the Third, he was utterly oblivious of the extent of his
obligations, so far as repayment was concerned.
In person, King Bungaree was about 5 feet 8 inches high, not very stout
and not very thin, except as to his legs, which were mere spindles.
His countenance was benignant to the last degree, and there was a kind
and humorous sparkle in his eye (especially when it was lighted up by
liquor) which was, to say the least of it, very cheerful to behold.
King Bungaree’s dress consisted of the cocked hat and full-dress coat
of a general officer or colonel, an old shirt, and—that was all. I
never saw him in pantaloons, or shoes, or stockings. Once, I remember,
he wore a worsted sock on his left foot, but that was in consequence of
having wounded himself by treading on a broken bottle.
As the king was a person of irregular habits, he generally slept, as
well as fished, in his clothes, and his tailor’s bill would not have
been enormous, even if he had had a tailor; but, as he “borrowed”
his uniform, as well as his money, bread, and rum, his finances were
in no way embarrassed. Every new Governor, from Governor Macquarie
down to Governor Gipps (during whose administration Bungaree died),
supplied him with an old cocked-hat and full-dress coat; and almost
every colonel commanding a regiment instantly complied when his Majesty
pronounced these words, “Len’ it cock-’at—len’ it coat—len’ it ole
shirt.” Around his neck was suspended, by a brass chain, a brass plate.
On this plate, which was shaped like a half-moon, were engraven in
large letters the words, “Bungaree, King of the Blacks.” On the plate
there was also engraven the arms of the Colony of New South Wales—an
emu and a kangaroo.
In point of intelligence and natural ability, King Bungaree was far
from deficient. He was, in truth, a clever man, and not only did
he understand all that was said to him in English, but he spoke
the language so as to be completely understood, except when his
articulation was impaired by the too copious use of ardent spirits, or
other fermented liquors.
His Majesty changed his manners every five years; or rather, they
were changed with every Administration. Bungaree, like many of the
aborigines of New South Wales, was an amazing mimic. The action, the
voice, the bearing, the attitude, the walk of _any_ man, he could
personate with astonishing minuteness. It mattered not whether it
was the Attorney-General stating a case to a Jury, the Chief Justice
sentencing a culprit to be hanged, a colonel drilling a regiment in
the barrack-square, a Jew bargaining for old clothes, a drunken sailor
resisting the efforts of the police to quiet him—King Bungaree could,
in mere dumb show, act the scene in such a way as to give you a perfect
idea of it. Now, as the Governor, for the time-being, was the first
and most important person in the Colony, it was from that functionary
that King Bungaree took his cue, and, after having seen the Governor
several times and talked to him, Bungaree would adopt His Excellency’s
manner of speech and bearing to the full extent of his wonderful power.
When I first knew Bungaree, General Darling was Governor of New South
Wales. Bungaree then walked the streets with his arms folded across
his breast, his body erect, his pace slow and measured, with something
of a military swagger in it, and the only salute he vouchsafed was
a dignified, but very slight, inclination of his head. Even when
His Majesty was so intoxicated that he could not walk straight, it
was impossible not to recognize the faithfulness of the copy to the
original. His mode of speech, too, was curt, and somewhat abrupt. Even
the words “Len it glass o’ grog” came forth rather in the tone of a
command than of a request. But when General Darling left, and General
Bourke became his successor, how very different was the demeanour and
the deportment of King Bungaree! He walked briskly up George-street,
with his left hand on his hip and his right arm moving to and fro, took
off his cocked-hat periodically in recognition of salutes (most of
them imaginary), and when he neared the guard-house at the bottom of
Church Hill, he would raise his right hand in the air and shake it, as
a signal to the sentry not to turn out the guard to present arms to him.
The reader will have gleaned that King Bungaree was not temperate
in his habits. Candour compels me to say that he was by no means
particular as to the nature of his beverage. The only liquid to which
he had seemingly any aversion was pure water. Rum, gin, brandy, wine,
beer, chili vinegar, mushroom catsup, or “bull,” he would take in any
quantity from any person who could be prevailed upon to “lend” it
to him; and, unfortunately, in order to get rid of His Majesty, the
supply, in many instances, immediately followed the demand, and the
king was too often to be seen stretched at full length on a dust-heap
near the wharves, fast asleep and covered by myriads of flies, his
cocked-hat doing the duty of a pillow, except when some little boy
tore out the crown, and then pulled it over the king’s ankles, putting
him, in fact, in felt stocks. So strong was this monarch’s passion for
drink, that I am perfectly satisfied that he would, at any moment,
have abdicated his sovereignty for an old sugar-mat, wherewith to make
“bull,” although he would never have renounced his right to the title
of “King of the Blacks,” or that brass plate, which he regarded as his
“patent.”
With the cares of State, Bungaree never troubled himself. His
sovereignty, to all intents and purposes, was a matter of sound and of
mere form. His subjects never treated him with respect or obedience.
His tyranny, in the strictly classical acceptation of the term, was
confined simply to his queens, five in number. These ladies were all
much younger than the king, and were named, respectively, “Onion,”
“Boatman,” “Broomstick,” “Ask-about,” and “Pincher.” These names, of
course, were not given to them in their baptism (whatever may have
been the aboriginal character of that rite), but were dictated, most
probably, by the caprice of some of King Bungaree’s European advisers,
on the various occasions of his consulting them on the point, and
“borrowing” something of which he fancied he stood in need. Whether
the queens were much attached to the monarch or the monarch to them,
I cannot venture to say, nor can I form an opinion whether they
bore the king company in his inebriation out of courtesy, or from a
natural desire to drink; but this I can state, with the positiveness
of a biographer who derives his sources of information from personal
knowledge, that I never saw their Majesties (the queens) sober, when
His Majesty King Bungaree was drunk. The dress of these royal ladies
was exceedingly grotesque. With the exception of a faded satin slip, an
old bedgown, or a flannel petticoat, whatever beauty King Bungaree’s
queens possessed was, in every sense of the word, in its unadornment
“adorned the most.” The only “foreign aid of ornament” that even Onion,
the most fastidious of them, as regarded personal appearance, ever
resorted to, was a short clay pipe intertwined with her hair, which, in
point of colour and fineness, bore a strong resemblance to the tail or
mane of an unbroken, unhandled, bay colt.
I have mentioned that I sometimes, when a boy, accepted the invitations
of King Bungaree to go out with him in his boat to “kedge fiss.” His
was a very old boat, a “loan” from Governor Macquarie, who cultivated
Bungaree’s acquaintance, if not Bungaree himself; and upon all these
occasions the queens used to pull the rickety craft, while the king sat
in the stern-sheets, and steered. The queens, by turns, not only pulled
the oars (only two) of the boat, but when the anchor—a large piece of
stone tied to an old rope—was let go, they baited the hooks, threw over
the lines, and caught the bream and yellowtails, with which the harbour
abounded in those days. Bungaree, meanwhile, sat still, smoked his
pipe, and occasionally gave an approving nod or a kind word to the wife
who hooked the fish fastest. When out in his boat, during Sir Richard
Bourke’s administration, King Bungaree bore a stronger resemblance
to Charles the Second than to any other monarch of whom I have read
in history. He was cheerful, merry, facetious, gallant (except as to
pulling and fishing), and amorous, without anything like coarseness,
in his outbreaks of affection. Fish constituted King Bungaree’s coin.
The harbour of Port Jackson was his treasure-chest. When a sufficient
quantity had been caught to purchase a loaf or two, and enough brown
sugar to make a bucketful of “bull,” the anchor was weighed, and the
boat rowed to shore. Fresh fish for tea was always marketable, and the
queens had never any difficulty in disposing of them at the public or
private houses, receiving in return whatever articles they required to
supply their own and the king’s immediate wants.
I must here record a little anecdote of King Bungaree. When His
Majesty’s ships, the “Warspite,” the “Success,” frigate, and some
smaller craft anchored in Sydney, Bungaree went on board all these
vessels, to welcome to his dominions the various commanders. The
Commodore, Sir James Brisbane, having heard of King Bungaree, and being
informed of his approach, gave the order that he should be received
with all the honors and formality accorded to persons of royal blood,
save the firing a salute and manning the yards. The officers, who
entered into the joke, were all assembled on the quarter-deck; the
First Lieutenant stood at the gangway, the Commodore, in his full-dress
coat and cocked-hat, took his place at the capstan, the boatswain
piped the side in the shrillest ear-piercing tones, and the drums and
fifes made music to the air of “God save the King!” The moment King
Bungaree placed his foot on the “Warspite’s” well-holystoned planks,
the Commodore uncovered his venerable head, and placing his cocked-hat
beneath his left arm, with admirably acted humility, advanced, and
offered King Bungaree his right hand. The king, who was then wearing
his coat buttoned up to the neck, _à la_ Sir Ralph Darling, received
the homage which was paid him by the Commodore, with just the amount of
formal _empressement_ that the Governor himself would have exhibited,
under the circumstance of being similarly greeted. Having bowed, rather
stiffly, to each of the officers on the quarter-deck, and having cast
an approving though cold glance at the guns, the hammock-nettings, and
the rigging, King Bungaree condescended to inquire the Commodore’s
name. “My name is Brisbane,” said the Commodore, meekly. Bungaree, for
at least two minutes, surveyed the Commodore from head to foot, with a
contemptuous expression of countenance. He had known one Brisbane (Sir
Thomas), who had only lately left the Colony, which he had governed
for five years. That there could be two Brisbanes—that the world was
big enough to hold two—King Bungaree could not believe. At length
His Majesty spoke as follows, “What you mean, sa? You Brisbane, sa?
What for you, capping of big ship like this, sa, tell King Bungaree
one big lie, sa? I know Brisbane, sa. He great frien’-o’-mine, sa.
He len’ me this cock-hat, sa, this coat, sa, this shirt, sa. No,
sa; not this shirt, sa. King Bungaree never tell a lie, sa. Capping
Crotty, of 3rd Buffs, sa, len’ me this shirt, sa.” Captain Crotty was
not a very tall man, and the garment to which Bungaree last alluded
scarcely reached the monarch’s knees. “No, sa; you are not Governor
Brisbane, sa. I show these gennelmen Governor Brisbane, sa.” Divesting
himself, for the nonce, of the airs and manners of Sir Ralph Darling,
Bungaree put on those of Sir Thomas Brisbane, walked the deck, spoke
to several of the officers, and, taking a telescope from the hand of
the signal-midshipman of the day, looked through it into the heavens,
and exclaimed, “Ah!” Sir Thomas Brisbane was a great astronomer, and
while in New South Wales had been constantly star-gazing. The Commodore
was so struck with King Bungaree’s imitation of his own first cousin,
that he stood aghast; while the officers, unable any longer to preserve
their gravity, indulged in a hearty peal of laughter.
“No, sa,” resumed Bungaree, addressing the Commodore, and acting
General Darling, “you _not_ Brisbane. But you very good man, I dessay.
Never mind, I forgive you. I now feel very thirsty. Len’ it glass o’
grog.” Several glasses of the ship’s rum, well diluted with water, were
“lent” to His Majesty, and several pipes of tobacco. After remaining
about an hour on board the “Warspite,” Bungaree was piped over the
side, taking with him “loans” to the extent of five old shirts, a
handkerchief full of biscuit, and a cold leg of mutton. A marine
officer offered to “lend” him an old coat; but, after examining the
loan, and discovering that it did not belong to an officer entitled to
two epaulettes, Bungaree shook his head, and remarked that it “would
not do.” But, going to the gangway, he threw the garment down into his
boat, in which his queens were sitting. Onion picked up the old red
coat, and, as the day was rather cold, put it on, and wore it in the
streets of Sydney habitually.
[The writer having been sent to England to be _civilized_ and
_educated_, proceeds to give a humorous description of his translation
from the wilds of Australia to the wonders of the Old Country; and as
his expatriation lasted for seven years, to perfect his education at
Oxford, or Cambridge, he lost sight of Bungaree for some considerable
time.]
However, before the expiration of our sentence of seven years, we
all became not only reconciled to Old England, its sports, its
institutions, and sensible of its manifold advantages over those of
any other portion of the earth; but when we had taken our degrees, and
had been (in consideration, seemingly, of abjuring the Pope) invested
with black gowns and white horsehair wigs, we left her shores and our
friends with something like regret. After a passage of one hundred and
nine days, I again placed my foot on the land of my birth. But, oh!
what a change was everywhere observable! A change, according to my
idea, very much for the worse. The ships in the harbour, instead of
numbering only ten or eleven, numbered upwards of forty or fifty. The
streets were crowded with emigrants of both sexes, and of the lowest
order of the people, who, under the “bounty system,” had been swept out
of the streets of London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and minor cities
or towns. Old buildings, many of them weather-boarded houses, which had
been familiar to my sight from childhood, had been pulled down, and on
their sites were erected rows of shops or merchants’ warehouses. So
vast had been the tide of emigration to Australia, so busy had been the
population during the term of my exile, that I scarcely recognized my
native land.
I had not been in Sydney more than three days when, to my great joy,
I espied at a distance the cocked-hat and old red coat of poor old
King Bungaree. He was coming up George-street. His gait was very
shaky, but it was still Bungaree’s gait. When I met him, I took off my
hat and saluted him. He peered into my face a few seconds, and then,
recollecting me, offered me his hand, shook mine rather coldly, and
said rapidly, “Oh! well, what can I do for you? I very busy now; no
time to spare; talk to you some other day; yes, yes, good morning.”
This change in Bungaree, which I could not at the moment account for,
pained me. I thought that, amidst all the changes, observable in every
direction, Bungaree at least would have remained himself. However,
notwithstanding His Majesty’s remark that he wished to get rid of me,
he entered into conversation, and presently, in his old confidential
way, said, “Len’ it a sisspence.” I complied, and requesting him to
call upon me soon, at my mother’s house, bade him “good-day.” He was
then alone. None of his queens were with him. But I had no time to ask
him many questions, for I was on my way to Government House, to pay
my respects to Sir George Gipps, and deliver a packet which had been
entrusted to my care. Whether His Excellency had not looked at my card,
or whether he had mistaken me for some one else, I don’t know; but I
had scarcely made my bow, when I was greeted with, “Oh! well, what
can I do for you? I am very busy just now, have not a single moment
to spare; talk to you some other day. Yes, yes, I am now off to the
Council. Good morning.”
I had never seen Sir George before, but I instantly recognized my
altered King Bungaree. This anecdote, a few weeks afterwards, reached
Sir George’s ears through a lady, and he was not a little amused by it.
On the following day, at 10 a.m., His Majesty, King Bungaree, was
announced. I received him in the back yard, for my mother would
never allow him to come into the house. He was, on this occasion,
accompanied by two of his queens, “Broomstick” and “Pincher.” Having
“lent” the king and each of the queens a “glass o’ rum,” I proceeded to
interrogate him.
“Well, King Bungaree,” I said, “where’s ‘Onion,’ and the other queens,
‘Boatman’ and ‘Ask-about?’” “Onion’s dead,” he replied. “Two emigrant
mans get drunk, and kill her with brickbat on top o’ rocks. Boatman’s
got leg broke and can’t walk, and Ask-about stop along with her on
North Shore, to len’ it bread and drink o’ water.”
“Who lent you that coat?” “One colonel up in Barrack-square.”
“Has not the Governor lent you a coat?” “Not yet; but he len’ it
by-and-by. At present he only len’ it, ‘Very busy now; yes, yes; good
morning.’”
“What do you think of Sir George Gipps?” “When that my frien’ Doctor
Lang write a book about all the gubbernors, he one day met it in
Domain, and len’ it half a dump. He then laugh and say, ‘King
Bungaree, what you think of Gubbernor Bourke?’ and I say to him,
‘Stop a bit. He no yet leave the colney. When he go, then I tell you,
master.’ Gubbernor Gipps only just come. Stop till he go, then I speak.”
Doctor Lang, in his admirable work, the History of New South Wales,
relates this in his preface or concluding chapter, observing that
he took King Bungaree’s hint, and reserved Sir Richard Bourke’s
Administration for some future edition.
King Bungaree (after swallowing another “loan”), in reply to my
questions, said that when the tribe to which he belonged first beheld
the big ships, some thought they were sea monsters; others that they
were gigantic birds, and the sails were their wings; while many
declared that they were a mixture of gigantic fish and gigantic bird,
and that the boats which were towed astern were their young ones. He
heightened his description by _acting_ the consternation of the tribe
on that occasion. He told me they were too much terrified to offer any
hostile demonstrations, and that when they first heard the report of
a musket, and of a ship’s gun, they fancied those weapons were living
agents of the white man; that where the town of Sydney was situated,
kangaroos formerly abounded, and that these animals were seldom speared
or interfered with; that fish and oysters and the native fruits were
their chief articles of food, and that animals—the kangaroo and
opossum—were killed only to supply the little amount of clothing then
required amongst them; that the use of the hook and line was unknown
until the establishment of the Colony; and that a spear, constructed
for the especial purpose, was the only means they had of taking fish in
the shallow waters of the bays. The deep-sea fish—the “schnapper,” the
“king-fish,” the “grounder,” and the rock cod—were beyond their reach.
Mullet, whiting, and mackerel, which came in large shoals within range
of the spear, were the only species they had tasted. Sometimes a shark,
which had followed the smaller fish into the shallow water, and swam
with his fins above the surface, would fall a victim to the spear.
Each tribe rarely numbered more than fifty or sixty, and the chief was,
by right, the oldest man in it. When they increased and multiplied
beyond that number, fifty or sixty, there was a new tribe formed, and
they occupied a distinct tract of land, to which they were required
to confine themselves. This tract of land rarely exceeded an area of
40 miles in extent. Strange to say, the tribes beyond Parramatta did
not understand the language of the Sydney (Woolloomooloo) tribe. The
tribes on the north shore had no communication with the tribes on the
south shore, except when they invaded each other—which was seldom—and
did battle. On these occasions they swam the harbour, carrying their
spears, waddies (clubs), boomerangs, and shields on their heads. The
object of these invasions was to plunder each other of women. King
Bungaree denied that they were cannibals; but admitted that they
roasted and _tasted_ the enemies whom they slew in battle. The waddies
and spears of the different tribes were not exactly alike in make,
but the boomerang was of uniform construction; and I know, of my
own personal experience subsequently acquired, that amongst all the
savage tribes of New Holland, the use of the boomerang is universal.
Sir Thomas Mitchell, late Surveyor-General of Australia, and a very
able mathematician, when he first saw the flight of a boomerang,
and examined the weapon, exclaimed, “The savage who invented this,
in whatever time, was gifted by the Creator with a knowledge which
He has withheld from civilized man.” And, writing of the boomerang
propeller, Sir Thomas says, “That rotary motion can be communicated
to an instrument, acting as a screw, so as to be sustained in air,
without causing that fluid to recede, is suggested by the flight of
the boomerang, a missile which few in this country can have seen used,
or seen at all. This is a thin flat weapon, shaped somewhat like a
new moon, but not so pointed at the cusps, and more resembling in the
middle an elbow than an arc, being about two feet long, two inches
broad, seldom so much as a quarter of an inch thick, and made of hard,
heavy wood. The natives of Australia throw this to great distances,
and to great heights in the air, imparting to it two sorts of motion,
one of which is direct, the other rotary, by which last the missile
revolves round its own centre of gravity, having a twist into the plane
of a very fine screw. The effect of this almost imperceptible screw on
air, all who have been witnesses to a boomerang’s flight will remember.
To those who have not, we can only say that the rotary motion survives
the direct impetus with which the weapon is made to ascend, so as to
make it screw its way back to the very spot from whence it was thrown,
thus enabling mere gravitation to undo all the effect of the thrower’s
arm in sending it upwards.”
When I was a boy, Bungaree had been a matter of mere amusement to
me. Now I was a man, he was an object of interest; able as he was to
remember the first big ships that entered Sydney harbour, when the
penal settlement was founded; the sensations of the tribe to which
he, then a boy, belonged when they beheld them; and the terror which
prevailed when the savage, for the first time, saw the face and
clothed form of the white man. He had often talked to me of these and
other such matters; but I was then too young to take any interest in
his discourse, further than what related to the best bays to fish
in, or the localities in which “five-corners,” “ground berries,” and
“gollions” (native fruits) were most plentiful. As for fish, even if I
had had now any desire to catch them, I could not have done it in any
of the bays of Sydney harbour. Like the kangaroo and the emu, they had
retreated beyond the bounds of civilized and busy life. They were now
only to be caught in the bays _outside_ “the Heads.” As to the native
fruits I have mentioned, I doubt whether I could have obtained a quart
within five miles of Sydney, had I offered five guineas for it.
The children, male and female, of the aborigines were taught, or rather
made, to swim by being put into deep water soon after they were born.
As swimmers and divers, I do not think the blacks of New South Wales
were superior to the Arabs at Aden, or the Cingalese at Ceylon, but
they were certainly equal to them. A captain of a ship in the harbour
of Port Jackson once lost a case of claret overboard—a six-dozen case.
The ship was anchored in eight fathoms of water. Four blacks dived
down and brought it up, each man holding a corner of the chest on the
palm of his left hand. Incredible as it may seem, they were under the
surface of the stream for more than three minutes. I can remember one
day, when out with King Bungaree in his boat, losing a penknife with
which I was cutting bait on the gunwale. Queen Onion cried out, “I
get it!” and, dropping from the boat’s bow in her bedgown, she lifted
her hands and went down like a stone or a shot. After being lost to
sight for at least a minute and a half, up she came, like a bundle of
old clothes, with the penknife in her mouth. We were then fishing off
Garden Island, where the water is very deep. I doubt if there were less
than fifteen fathoms under our keel.
The power of “tracking” was still left to old King Bungaree and his
tribe, but they rarely or never exercised it. Their savage and simple
natures had been contaminated and corrupted by their more civilized
fellow-creatures, and their whole thoughts seemed to be centered in
how they could most speedily become intoxicated and sleep off its
effects. Bread and rum, Bungaree said, were at first distasteful to
his palate; but after a while “he liked ’em berry much, and did not
care for nothing else.” King Bungaree was the only _old_ aboriginal I
ever saw in the vicinity of Sydney. Drink and its effects destroyed the
majority of both sexes long before they attained the prime of life. How
the race continued to be propagated within 50 miles of Sydney, even
when I last left the Colony, in 1843, was more than I could understand.
It was otherwise, however, in the far distant interior. Some of the
wild tribes in the squatting districts (where rum and tobacco were too
precious to be given to the blacks, either out of freak or a misplaced
generosity) were as fine specimens of the human shape as any sculptor
could desire as models. In addition to the elegance of their forms,
their eyes were brilliant and piercing, their teeth white as snow,
their agility superhuman, and their love of innocent mirth perfectly
childlike.
Of King Bungaree’s principles and opinions I scarcely know what to
say; nor even, as his biographer, am I particularly anxious to dilate
on the subject. But I may mention that he one day confessed to me
that, of all the Governors who ever swayed the destinies of New South
Wales, General Macquarie was the greatest man. On probing him for his
reasons, I discovered that the kind-hearted old officer, whom he held
in such respect and veneration, was his greatest creditor. The General,
according to His Majesty’s account (and I believe him implicitly), had
“lent” him more cocked-hats, more coats, more shirts, more loaves of
bread, and more glasses of grog, than any other ruler in Australia;
and, further, he told me it was General Macquarie who “lent” him that
brass plate which he wore for so many, many years, and which was no
doubt found on His Majesty’s breast when he breathed his last.
The writer does not give any account of the king’s death and burial.
It seems that he died on Garden Island, that a coffin was made for his
remains at the dock-yard, and that the interment took place with his
wife Gooseberry in an orchard at Ryde. Whether any memorial remains I
am not aware, but a stone was placed over his place of sepulture.
We have Bungaree, not as king, but as the humble attendant of Flinders.
Flinders represents the scarcity of provisions. The price of fresh
meat was so exorbitant that he could not purchase it for his crew. He
paid £3 for a sheep, 30 or 40 lbs. weight; pork, 9d. per lb.; 9d. for
pollard; Indian corn, 5s. a bushel. What a change has taken place. Now
we are exporting meat to England, and at one time boiling down much
cattle and sheep, merely for their fat.
Flinders observes, in preparing for his voyage:—“Bungaree, the
intelligent native who had accompanied me three years before in my
voyage to the north, was selected again, together with a youth named
Nambare. I had before experienced much advantage from the presence of
a native from Port Jackson, in bringing about a friendly intercourse
with the natives on the other parts of the coast. Bungaree the worthy,
a brave fellow who sailed with me in the ‘Norfolk,’ volunteered again;
and the other was Nambare, a good-natured lad, of whom Colonel Collins
has made mention in his account of New South Wales.” I presume this
youth must have been the well-known Bungaree, of immortal memory.
The following memoir will supply further particulars of this
chieftain’s son:—A Mr. Coxen, who had been very kind to Bungaree,
adopted his son, whom he called after his father, and sent him to
school with his own sons to the Normal Institution, one of the leading
schools of the Colony, in Sydney, of which Mr. Gordon was head-master,
thereby giving him the same chance as any European, mixing as he did
on an equality with other boys, and receiving the same attention to
his studies and habits. He was a boarder with some ninety others, and
was, in fact, treated as any young gentleman ought to be. He was not
clever mentally, for after six years he only reached the rule of three;
could not understand Euclid or foreign languages, but was clever at
any manipulations with the pen or pencil. He wrote a beautiful hand,
but his spelling was defective. He was clever at all games requiring
physical activity, but strange withal, he was exceedingly lazy. He was
quick to learn by rote, but did not quite understand all he learned by
it. As a specimen of his race he was rather small, and not so quick
as many others would have been, had they had the same advantages. He
was sent to England to college, but the cold weather and his laziness
caused ill health. He returned to the Colonies, and like all his race
who have no tribe (having been brought up among white children), he
took to stock-riding, occasionally surprising some newly-arrived
squatter by exhibiting his writing and knowledge of cyphering. The last
heard of him is that he is like any other bushman, making a cheque and
knocking it down at the grog shops. It will be easy to guess what will
be his end.