Sit quietly and you can hear Bennelong’s blackfella chuckling

Bennelong’s voice has trickled through the narrative of First Fleet onlookers. It chats to us from over two centuries ago to current time and naturally has been translated and misconstrued in turn by native mobs, anthropologists, historians, story tellers, and linguists along the way.

Bennelong is an unfading elder and his spirit does speak to us from behind the veil. Bennelong is reflective about the modern man-made aboriginal mob and their never-ending revenge and payback routine.  

Storytellers tell stories and sometimes the truth about a popular historical character is hard to establish. There are many stories of Bennelong also known as Wolarawàree which have been plagued by myths and have no direct relationship with primary sources and firsthand accounts.

Governor Phillip and his officers were genuinely committed to establishing and maintaining friendly and peaceful relations with the local natives of Bennelong’s day. The British after all were establishing a British way of life.

The local natives did not drop dead, vanish, or lose their hunter gatherer ethos the moment they saw this group of whitefellas. In all probability they thought that these pale skinned people who arrived in floating islands would pack up, sail away, and leave them in peace, just as earlier callers stopping by had done in the past.

Early connections at Sydney Cove between the blackfella and whitefella educed curiosity, sociability, gift giving, and dancing together on the beaches. The superior power of the gun as a weapon over accurately thrown deadly spears and wooden shields in musket demonstrations was meant to induce fear of the fire sticks and the red jacket wearing whitefella that used them. It must have and at the same time stifled trust in the offer of friendship.

Governor Phillip personally approached the local natives unarmed and open handed. The governor wanted a local native who could be taught to speak English and to act as a go-between and interpreter. He invited local natives to share meals at his own table and built a house for them to come and live in Sydney town. However, no volunteers came. Kidnapping did not work either. Of the three local natives kidnapped Arabanoo, died of smallpox after six months. Five months later Colebee, and Bennelong, were abducted at Manly Cove. Within a month Colebee absconded back to his mob. Bennelong stayed a few extra months before taking flight back to his mob.

Social knowledge about Bennelong’s story has replaced the factual history of the unsophisticated relationship between the British settlers and the local natives in the rough-and-ready birth of Australia. A rough-and-tumble, down to earth mateship society.

Aussies are proudly a weird mob.

The modern story telling of Bennelong portrays tragic painful devastation. This man’s contribution in the establishment of an imperfect, robust, compassionate Australian society deserves more honest reflexion.

If Bennelong’s life was tragic then it is the history storytellers who have made it so. The tragic painful invasion story work is designed to be a trigger to signal a reader how they should feel about the poor local native who had no liberty in how he lived his life then. And in how every modern First Nations claimant, generation by generation, since British settlement have inherited his bad fortune.

The intent of the ‘story work’ is for a few today to obtain compensation and payback for what they say happened to their related whitefella prey 235 years ago.

Traditional blackfella culture. Bennelong. Poor helpless blackfella. Shed a tear and cry you guilty invaders! Revengers save the day! Demand another never-ending payback cycle.

Listen to Bennelong chuckling!

There is much unconfirmed fantasy. Tumultuous and partial testimony left behind by the past enjoying the literary modes of romance, comedy, tragedy and satire. Each new Bennelong story embraces the mutually affirmed relationship with dominant narrative of fateful aborigine decline, death, extinction, and failure. 

In 1798, three years after Bennelong’s return from England, judge advocate David Collins, wrote describing Goat island as Bennelong’s inheritance and a place where he and his wife ‘Ba-rang-a-roo often feasted and relaxed. To this little spot he appeared much attached’. Ba-rang-a-roo was Bennelong’s second of three theorised wives. Three other islands were closer to where Bennelong’s mob lived.

Bennelong lived the term of his natural life chiefly in the manner he wished to. A liberated human being weaving his fabric within the shackles of an emerging society. At war and peace with both his fellow local native mobs and the British new arrivals.

Bennelong’s birth date and birthplace are unknown as he was born long before British settlement in 1788. There were no local native birth, marriage, and death registers or history books on rock shelves or left lying about in caves. It is suggested that he was born around 1764 on the banks of the Parramatta River.

Bennelong was a shrewd and cheeky representative. A good looking stoutly made man with a bright twinkle in his dark brown eyes. Mood swings animated him quick to laughter or to anger. He was intelligent, a joker and a clever mimic who had a great sense of humour. An all-round typical human being displaying his unique personality.

It is fact that in November 1789 Bennelong was captured and brought to Sydney Cove by order of Governor Arthur Phillips in order to learn more about the local natives’ customs and language. Bennelong as quick as a flash settled into living with the whitefella, he adapted to European manners, he savoured British culinary, acquired a taste for liquor, and quickly learned to speak simple English. He lived in the first Governor’s home and became emotionally attached to him. An enduring mateship developed between the two men.

In May 1790 Bennelong took flight back to his mob. In October 1790 he voluntarily returned to the British settlement and was the first local native to reside amongst the British settlers where he learnt to write English.

At Bennelong’s request and Governor Philip’s orders in 1791 a brick hut 3.5 metres sq. in size with a tiled roof and an external fireplace, was built for him on the eastern point of Sydney Cove. Today a place known as Bennelong Point and is the current site of the Sydney Opera House. The hut was never Bennelong’s home, rather it was a meeting place he would visit to socialise with other local natives.

With a blackfella youth, Yemmerawanne, Bennelong travelled to England in December 1792 on the HMS Atlantic. Four lively and healthy kangaroos, a couple of freed convicts, and several dingoes accompanied the two local natives on this trip to England. During the journey the blackfellas were voluntary and cheerful companions of Bennelong’s whitefella friend, Governor Arthur Phillip. The British Crown picked up the tab for all their travelling and living expenses during their overseas jaunt.

While in England the two local native travellers were supplied with significant amounts of clothing. They wore individually tailored fashionable Georgian jackets, shirts, cravats, blue and buff striped waistcoats, slate coloured ribbed breeches, silk stockings hats and gloves. They enjoyed the finest food. For the first five months they lodged in Mayfair with a servant to wait upon them. Attended Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, visited the museum and the Houses of Parliament, mixed socially with and learnt about the way the British aristocracy lived. They did not have a private audience with King George III during their time in London.

In October 1793 they moved to Eltham near Greenwich, a district of southeast London, among Lord Sydney’s associates. After a year of living in England Yemmerawanne, age 19, became sick and after some months died of a serious lung infection on 18 May 1794. The British Crown paid for his funeral at the Eltham Parish Church and his modest tombstone.

After Yemmerawanne died Bennelong lost interest in his overseas adventure. He became anxious and wanted to go home. His health suffered. He secured berth on the HMS Reliance in July 1794. After six months of living on a berthed ship the voyage home began in March 1795 and dropped anchor in Sydney Cove in September 1795.

On the HMS Reliance, Bennelong travelled with the next Governor of the colony John Hunter. The new governor had been the captain of the HMS Sirius in the First Fleet and did not have much time for Bennelong. Earlier in Sydney he admonished Bennelong’s ‘savage insolence’.

After living in Britain like a well to do tourist Bennelong returned home to Sydney town. After leaving his two friends behind in London, the long sea voyage home allowed his physical health to improve. However, he arrived home in a state of grief, feeling broken in spirit. His 1795 return accommodation was at Government House. He dressed and lived as the British did. At first he showed no desire to relinquish the habits and comforts the British way of life bestowed upon him. He appeared to adopt the lifestyle readily and successfully. He frequently visited his local native family and friends, sometimes spending two weeks or more with them on walkabout in the bush.

Bennelong was a British subject. A free man with no chains or obligations to live a particular way. He was one of the first to face the predicament of knowing, through living both a blackfella and a whitefella way of life in an emerging society. The decisions he made about where he lived and who he associated with were his free choice and free will.

Governor John Hunter had a job to do to restore the colony after it had been under military control since Governor Philip had left. The man left in charge Francis Grose unmercifully exploited the convicts and other military officers made an enormous profit from a great traffic in alcoholic spirits, mainly rum. Governor Hunter realised that the control of the courts and the management of the lands, public stores, and convict labour had to be restored to civil administration. The trade in alcohol had begun to cause social problems, economic problems, and discipline within the New South Wales Corps and wider community.

This Bennelong era alcohol theme has a familiar and modern-day reflection. Seen time and time again in remote and modern first nations communities.

The demon drink ‘alcohol’ has been said to eventually bring Bennelong undone. He became ‘so fond of drinking that he lost no opportunity of being intoxicated, and in that state was so savage and violent as to be capable of any mischief’. Fact or fantasy? No one today knows for sure as they were not there. Where did the consistent supply flow the Bennelong ‘demon drink’ come from and who paid for it?   

After some time Bennelong left the Sydney settlement and returned to the local native way of life. On visits to town Governor Philip King frequently provided Bennelong with clothing, and he dined and drank wine and coffee at the servant’s table in the kitchen at the governor’s home.

In traditional warfare Bennelong was a warrior of great repute. In 1798 he was twice critically wounded in tribal clan battles. As an elder and esteemed leader he stood at the front of the warriors actively engaged in frequent ritual revenge battles with other local native clans. Some battles were staged in the streets of Sydney town. Bennelong was often physically marred. His body held a life history of local native warring scars. At one battle he was wounded in the side with the spear coming through to his belly. In a 1806 battle the inflicted wounds were almost fatal.  

In 1809 he took to the woodlands and lived in the same manner as local natives who had never mixed with the civilized world.  A free will choice to return to a brutal culture, where it was kill or be killed over resources such as water, women and food for survival or doing a forbidden thing like marrying the wrong skin group or sharing secrets that were not his to share.

Bennelong spent his last years of life living by the Parramatta River in the orchard of the friendly ex-convict brewer James Squire at Kissing Point. Soon after Bennelong’s death in 1813 a ritual clan revenge battle, with thick and fast spear throwing, was fought out in Sydney town.

Bennelong is said to have taken a wife at three different times. His first wife’s name is lost to history. His second wife Barangaroo died from after birth complications in 1791 and was the mother of his daughter Dilboong, who died in infancy. He then took up with Kurubarabüla after kidnapping her. They lived together for a year until his departure for England. During his absence in England she found another mate, and she spurned Bennelong when he returned. His third wife Boorong died around 1813 and was buried with him. She is the mother of their son.

Bennelong’s son, Digidigi or Dicky, was born around 1803. After being orphaned Dicky moved into the Native Institute in 1816 where local native elders expressed gratitude that the infant and child offspring of some local natives were happily sheltered and protected by British benevolence. He was adopted and baptised Thomas Walter Coke, by a whitefella reverend William Walker and his wife Anne. In 1822 Thomas married Bolongaia (Maria Lock), the daughter of local native elder, Yellomundee, of the Boorooberongal clan, but Dicky died around the age of 20 years before the couple had any children. 

Bennelong has no direct line descendants.

If you can’t be a rich man then be a rich man’s son because then you inherit what your father owned. Within the British way of life Bennelong was a kept man. He was housed. He was fed. He was clothed. He was educated. He had freedom of movement. He had freedom of association. But all this was not enough. Something was missing.

Bennelong was not a rich man, nor was he a rich man’s son. He was a local native that according to their collective tradition had nothing to inherit like the wealthy aristocrats sons in England did. Bennelong had become a celebrity reliant on the good will of his whitefella benefactors. In Sydney town and Parramatta the British benefactors were his ‘fruitful hunter’ but that did not satisfy his human spirit as he could see his daily life was leading him to a monotonous nowhere.

He came to a point where he realised that his position in living with the whitefella was not sustainable for him and he made a deliberate unchallenged choice to return to his old local native hunter gather way of life.

However, Bennelong could not go back to a pre settlement life as that place no longer existed.

At a crossroad he turned and moved to a new normal and tried to reclaim remnants of stability and discard the lingering shreds of chaos in a lifestyle that was rationally and socially extinct.

Goat island belongs to all Australians and that is the way it should stay.