Pathfinders: A history of Aboriginal trackers in NSW

By Michael Bennett

There are few Aboriginal icons in White Australia history.From the explorer to the pioneer, the swagman to the drover's wife, with a few bushrangers for good measure, Europeans play all the leading roles. A rare exception is the redoubtable tracker. With skills passed down over millennia, trackers could trace the movements of people across vast swathes of country. Celebrated as saviours of lost children and disoriented adults, and finders of missing livestock, they were also cursed by robbers on the run.Trackers live in the collective memory as one of the few examples of Aboriginal people's skills being sought after in colonial society. In New South Wales alone, more than a thousand Aboriginal men and a smaller number of women toiled for authorities across the state after 1862. This book tells the often unlikely stories of trackers including Billy Bogan, Jimmy Governor, Tommy Gordon, Frank Williams and Alec Riley.Through his work on native title claims, historian Michael Bennett realised that the role of trackers and how they moved between two worlds has been largely unacknowledged. His important book reveals that their work grew out of traditional society and was sustained by the vast family networks that endure to this day. Pathfinders brings the skilled and diverse work of trackers not only to the forefront of law enforcement history but to the general shared histories of black and white Australia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth
• Release date: Jun 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781742244747

Michael Bennett

Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) is an award-winning screenwriter, director and author. His first book, a non-fiction work telling the true story of New Zealand’s worst miscarriage of justice, In Dark Places, won Best Non-Fiction Book at the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards. Michael's second book, Helen and the Go-Go Ninjas, is a time-travel graphic novel co-authored with Ant Sang. Better the Blood, the first Hana Westerman thriller, was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction/Ockham New Zealand Book Award, as well as being shortlisted for the Audio Book of the Year at the Capital Crime Fingerprint Awards. It was also longlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Debut Dagger and was a finalist for both Best First Novel and Best Novel at the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards.   Michael's short and feature films have won awards internationally and have screened at numerous festivals, including Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, Locarno, New York, London and Melbourne. Michael is the 2020 recipient of the Te Aupounamu Māori Screen Excellence Award, in recognition of members of the Māori filmmaking community who have made high-level contributions to screen storytelling.     He lives in Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand), with his partner Jane, and children Tīhema, Māhina and Matariki.

Book preview

MICHAEL BENNETT worked as an historian in native title from 2002 until 2017, preparing evidence and writing reports for claims throughout NSW. It was through conducting research for native title claims that he first realised the extent to which the NSW Police relied on trackers for their expert skill. He grew up in Dubbo, where he first learned of the exploits of Tracker Alec Riley.

A UNSW Press book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

© Michael Bennett 2020

First published 2020

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

ISBN: 9781742236568 (paperback)

9781742244747 (ebook)

9781742249247 (ePDF)

Design Josephine Pajor-Markus

Cover design Dreamtime Creative

Cover images Mudgee tracker and policeman (Mudgee Historical Society); Tracker Tommy of Broken Hill, 1909 (University of Wollongong Archives, collection D82/7); background image of Brummagen Creek, where Tracker Riley worked (courtesy of Helmut Eder).

Maps Josephine Pajor-Markus

Every effort has been made to find descendants of the Mudgee tracker and Tracker Tommy pictured on the cover. The author and publisher welcome information in this regard.

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this book contains images and names of deceased people.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Bernadette Riley

Prologue

Introduction

Billy Dargin: A life cut short

Sir Watkin Wynne and the Clarke brothers pursuit

Billy Bogan: On both sides of the law

On the trail of Jimmy Governor

Whyman Warrigal McLean: Navigating two worlds

‘Quite the smartest I ever had’: Mayella and female Aboriginal trackers

Tommy Gordon: A new tracker for a new century

Frank Williams: Legendary tracker

Alec Riley: A most outstanding tracker

The end of an age

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

To Mum and Dad

FOREWORD

This book’s focus is Aboriginal trackers and the tribute it pays will be legendary for anyone who reads it. It is a testament to Michael Bennett’s lifelong commitment to working with Aboriginal nations across Australia, assisting us in setting the records straight, giving truthful voice to those who had none and lifting the veils on ‘Terra Incognita’.

The pages you are about to turn will be hard to believe, let alone put down. My grandmother’s renditions of the cheeky handsomeness of Ben Hall didn’t include the sinister circumstances surrounding his execution-style slaying by police or the subsequent deaths of Trackers Dargin and Edwards, who bore witness to that.

Sadly, having worked at the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC), each page turned for me had a familiar resonance, one that was hard to believe. It was during my time at RCIADIC that I came across the most powerful graffiti quote:

‘we understand your ignorance,

please understand our grief ’

But Michael captures the positive stories, too. My great grandfather, Tracker Alec Riley, who is featured within, passed away in 1970. I was seven years old and that’s in my memory’s reach; it’s not that long ago. The descendants of the many other Trackers featured in this book are part of my broader family and our relationships continue.

I met Michael in Dubbo, almost 20 years ago, in relation to native title. Michael was the native title historian and a local boy back home assisting many members of my extensive Aboriginal family, documenting our continued connection to country and kin. Many of those connections for Aboriginal families throughout NSW are evident in the book.

In late 1995 I returned to Dubbo determined to write about Trackers’ life. My cousin Michael Riley also returned in early 1996 to make a documentary – we had both been researching various records over six years and applied for an opportunity with the ABC, who commissioned six 30-minute films by Aboriginal directors for the opening of the Sydney 2000 Olympics Dreaming festival. He was successful in being selected and the documentary Blacktracker was made.

Pathfinders extends the story even further, highlighting not just the phenomenal contribution of Alec Riley to tracking, but the many other Aboriginal men and women who used their traditional skills to save lives and solve crime.

Bernadette Riley

PROLOGUE

Broken Hill was not your usual town for an officer of the NSW Police. Certainly, there were common crimes to investigate, run-of-the-mill burglaries and assaults, but the mining economy exerted a strong influence on the nature of police work. Frequent industrial disputes (there were four major strikes between 1892 and 1920) thrust the police into the front line separating union members from the non-unionised labour brought in to keep the mines open. Vigilance and a thick skin was needed when standing between the warring sides and violence could quickly escalate.

An Aboriginal tracker known only as Tommy was a familiar Broken Hill character in the late 1800s and 1900s. From January 1892 to December 1910, Tommy worked for the Broken Hill Police. Much of his work was standard tracker fare, as we will see, but within six months of starting the job he was in the middle of a strike prompted by a bitter contract dispute between the unions and mine owners. As historian Geoffrey Blainey notes, the police were barely able to prevent violence from breaking out. An extra 50 police were called in July 1892, and Tommy’s job was to take the horse and cart and deliver bedding to the police camp. Striking miners thought the bedding was for their replacements brought in from Victoria (instead of ‘scabs’ they were called ‘black-legs’) and directed abuse at Tommy until they realised that the police were the intended recipients. Tommy drove on, seemingly unperturbed but no doubt keeping close watch on the picket line, and the uneasy peace continued.¹

Almost two decades later, it was the opinion of another Aboriginal man that prompted Tommy to consider leaving the security of his police employment and join the ranks of the workers. The early months of 1909 in Broken Hill were fraught. Mine owners cut wages by 12 per cent after the price of lead plummeted. Riots flared during the 20 weeks in which miners were locked out of their jobs. In a tense climate, officers were sometimes assaulted. In late January, two constables were bashed after attempting to arrest a man suspected of attacking a ‘coloured’ man with an iron bar. The following month Tommy ended up exchanging blows with another Aboriginal man, who accused him of being a ‘black police’ – perhaps a traitor. Tommy asked his colleagues to bring charges against his assailant but they refused his request. He resigned in protest, stating that he would never again drive the police cart to the mines, and attempted to join the Amalgamated Miners’ Association instead. Tired of standing against the miners, perhaps he thought he would be safer on their side of the fence, particularly after the police failed to support him. However, after reappraising his situation overnight, Tommy returned to police ranks in the morning.²

A talented tracker, Tommy had the observational powers and reasoning to perform key duties for the police including pursuing criminals and searching for lost people. Newspapers documented 14 cases he’d worked on during his two-decade career and many others were probably unreported. In April 1895 he investigated a case of sheep-stealing, following the tracks from a slaughter yard in West Broken Hill to Mount Gipps over 13 kilometres away. William Athorn was arrested on suspicion of having stolen the sheep and although Tommy testified in court that the tracks led to a yard associated with the suspect, multiple juries failed to convict.³

Tommy had greater success in finding a lost child four years later in August 1898. The child, who was living with her family near Stephens Creek to the north of Broken Hill, had been sent out as a dust storm approached to round up several stray goats. Not surprisingly, she became disoriented as the dust descended. Tommy was called out the following morning and quickly picked up her tracks. They led him to the hills on the other side of the creek, where Tommy noticed the tracks of a man intersecting with those of the child. These led him to a nearby house where he found the child sitting on the veranda, and she was soon returned to the care of her parents. Tommy was back in town before sunset.⁴

Despite stellar work for the police, Tommy was not immune from the occasional misdemeanour that put him on the wrong side of the law. In July 1902, he was fined £2 plus costs for breaking a window in Wyman Street while intoxicated. The judge took a ‘lenient view’ of the case, as Tommy had been supplied with alcohol contrary to the regulations of the time. The judge was probably also aware of Tommy’s value to the police as a tracker.⁵

Just over two years later, in December 1904, Tommy was charged with a more serious crime when he was accused of breaking into a house and assaulting a 70-year-old woman. The perpetrator left a boot behind and a constable noticed ‘tracks of one booted foot and one bare foot’ in the vicinity of the house. The boot bore some resemblance to Tommy’s footwear and when questioned, Tommy replied that he had recently given his boots to an old man. When the victim could only provide a ‘feeble’ description of a black man entering her residence, the judge dismissed the case.⁶

The police remained loyal to Tommy despite these incidents, at a time when they frequently incarcerated Aboriginal people for similar offences. Looking at the photograph of Tommy, partially reproduced on the cover of this book and shown in full in the picture section, it seems that they were willing to physically restrain Tommy to stop him from leaving. The precise circumstances of the photograph are unknown, although it was taken around the same time that Tommy was threatening to leave the police and join the union. Tommy looks amiable enough in the photograph, but there is a clear power imbalance. The officers are holding Tommy in place and don’t want to let him go. They had good reason to want him to stay; without his expertise, the police would not be able to do their jobs.

Little is known about Tommy. In all the press coverage a surname was never mentioned, nor any details about his origins. Almost like a ghost, he appears in the record in 1892 and disappears 18 years later, never to be heard from again. To this day, Tommy is a mystery even to the Barkandji elders whose country he worked on. Fortunately, much more is known about many other trackers. And it is time that their stories of courage and dedication are given fair recognition.

INTRODUCTION

Colonial Australian history acknowledges few black icons. From the explorer to the pioneer, the swagmen to the drover’s wife, white people predominate. There’s little room for an Aboriginal man or woman. Perhaps the only exception is the redoubtable tracker who, blessed with inherent talents, read the signs and traced the movement of people across the land. The saviour of many and cursed by the wayward, trackers live in the collective memory as one of the few examples where colonial society made use of Aboriginal people. The reality, of course, is much more colourful and complicated. In New South Wales (NSW) alone, thousands of Aboriginal men and a smaller number of women toiled for the authorities post-1862, tracking the lost and confused, seeking out thieves and their ill-gotten booty, and bringing criminals to justice. More often than not the role of tracker went unacknowledged. White historians in NSW know little about the complexity and diversity of their work, and how it grew out of traditional society and was sustained by the vast family networks of Aboriginal families which endure to this day. ¹ This book is an attempt to redress the balance, to bring the work of trackers to the forefront of NSW law enforcement history and ensure their contribution is properly acknowledged.

The skills of trackers are embedded in traditional culture. Scouring the scrub for signs of robbers and cattle thieves, rescuing lost souls from ravines, forests and featureless plains, trackers used the bush skills they had grown up with in new ways that solved crime, protected the economy, astounded the public and saved countless lives. Through dedicated historical research and the determination of trackers’ descendants themselves, unheralded stories of immense bravery, expertise, good fortune and intelligence are coming to light. A dark side to the story and the complications of a tracker’s life are also evident. Trackers had feet in both the Aboriginal and European worlds and required the patience and proficiency of diplomats to navigate a path between the two, not always successfully. Many lived fulfilling family lives as well, using the money they earned from the police to support their wives, children and other relatives from the expansive kinship networks most were part of. Others struggled, like many Aboriginal people, to find a place in the colonial world. But the skills of the tracker, entrenched as they were in Aboriginal society, helped keep culture alive as knowledge was passed from one generation to the next.

In this book, the history of Aboriginal trackers in NSW is told through the lives of eight men, several women, and their families and kin. There are stories of persistence and courage from the bushranging era in the 1860s, a yarn about a female tracker from Brewarrina regarded as the best of her generation, tales of misfortune and tragedy from the turn of the century and accounts of two legendary trackers from the 1900s who built upon the experience of their predecessors to forge successful careers lasting almost one hundred years. Each story is unique, but certain commonalities emerge, particularly about the deep degree of skill that many trackers possessed, including their incredible powers of observation, reasoning and insight that made them vital assets for the police in NSW. The extent and distribution of trackers’ employment has not been realised before, with over 1000 Aboriginal men working in almost 200 stations spread throughout the state. I also explore the broader impact of colonial society on Aboriginal people. Trackers lived in a world not long after the frontier wars, where Aboriginal people were regarded as inferior and paternalistic government policies of various forms were subsequently thought necessary, either to protect them from negative European influence, alleviate their imminent demise or assimilate them into broader society. Trackers were able to adapt and survive by modifying traditional skills in a colonial setting.

Before embarking on their stories, it is important to explain the perspective I bring to the history of Aboriginal trackers from my work in native title. I also give an account of the nature of the skills trackers used, the early history of tracking in colonial NSW and the historical forces that shaped their lives.

Native title

For over sixteen years, I worked as an historian in native title conducting documentary research and writing reports for claims as they progressed through the Federal Court. Stemming from the Mabo High Court decision in 1992 and subsequent legislation, native title gives recognition in Australian law to the rights and interests of Aboriginal people in their traditional lands and waters. The considerable hurdle claimants have to overcome is that they must demonstrate that their connection is governed by traditional laws and customs that have remained largely unchanged since colonisation. The burden of proof falls on them, a substantial task in the south-east of Australia where the shock of colonisation has been felt the longest.

Federally funded organisations exist in each state except Tasmania to assist claimants with the process. I was employed by one such organisation, Native Title Services Corporation (NTSCORP), from 2002 to 2018, working with Aboriginal community facilitators, solicitors, barristers and claimants to build each case. A phenomenal amount of evidence is required, from anthropological reports to affidavits from claimants, even when the claims are not litigated as has been the case in NSW. Historical reports provide context to the survival of Aboriginal traditions, assessing the impact of colonisation on their continued existence. Genealogical research was another important aspect of my work: claimants must be able to demonstrate that they are descended from ancestors who were occupying the claim area when white people first arrived.

In the course of research, I sometimes found examples of trackers working on their traditional country and using their traditional knowledge of the land to work for the police. I believed that such stories strengthened the argument that Aboriginal culture was not obliterated by colonisation and that Aboriginal people were able to cleverly adapt their culture to a different and often hostile world. The genealogical evidence that I and my colleagues assembled sometimes showed that trackers were a part of vast networks of interconnected families that survived the past 250 years, often continuing to live in the same lands that their ancestors occupied. The survival of the families provided a framework for traditions to be passed from one generation to the next. In the case of tracking, the skills were handed down continuously in NSW until the last tracker retired in 1973 and beyond to the present day.

Traditional skills

For much of the past 250 years, Europeans have analysed and interpreted Aboriginal people in racial terms. Many white people regarded Aboriginal people as belonging to the lowest rung of civilisation and development; the meagre skills they were believed to have were thought to be passed genetically from one generation to the next. Europeans assumed that Aboriginal people lacked the intelligence to learn from their circumstances and teach the next generation. Our understanding of Aboriginal cultures is now more nuanced and comprehensive, thanks in no small part to the work of Aboriginal historians such as James Miller and John Maynard. The incredible range and depth of Aboriginal people’s environmental knowledge, to provide just one example, is becoming increasingly understood. There was barely a plant, animal or insect that they did not know, name and use. Aboriginal mastery of the landscape enabled them to manage the productivity of natural resources, particularly through fire and agricultural techniques, to ensure more than enough food was available. And part of this mastery of the landscape was knowing how humans and animals modified the land as they moved across it, creating pathways perceptible only to the trained eye as they went.²

Hunting and tracking skills were taught from an early age. Children sat on the ground and watched their parents, aunts and uncles drawing the prints of animals in the soil or sand, knowledge that would be vital to the food quest when they became adults. As children grew, they learned not only to recognise the tracks of animals but those of people as well. Each person in the group could be recognised individually by the unique impressions they left on the ground. A stranger’s footprints might mean an imminent raid from a hostile group. The education they received was broadly based, linking plants, animals, people and land to religious belief and rightful behaviour. The Dreaming stories, gradually revealed, worked like mental maps, recording features of the terrain and the resources within, how their world was created and the best way of moving across it. Knowing the stories meant knowing the land.

The foundation of tracking in education was acknowledged by practitioners into the 20th century. Cassidy Samuels, a tracker who was born at Singleton, directly linked tracking to the hunting skills he learned from the ‘old folks’ when growing up. They taught not only practical skills, but logical ways of thinking that helped trackers interpret the condition of the people or animals they were pursuing. Samuels spent three years working for the police at Brewarrina and when he was not on duty he spent his time hunting echidnas and pigs. Echidnas, or porcupines as he called them, were particularly difficult to track because their prints looked the same when viewed from opposite directions. He tracked them ‘by looking at how the bush has been disturbed’, more or less picking up subtle changes imperceptible to the untrained eye. He applied the same technique when tracking people:

Sometimes you lose the track and then you look around till you pick it up again. If you can’t see the footprints you look for sticks that have been moved and tell which way he’s going by the direction they have rolled … A man’s tracks will tell you the condition he’s in. If he’s carrying something he’s got a strong walk. If he’s weak or leg-weary he drags his feet.

He adapted the same principles to tracking motor cars, noting that you could tell the direction in which a vehicle was travelling by examining the direction of the settled dust.³

Cassidy’s story shows the tenacity of traditional culture. With ancestral ties to Dalby in Queensland, south coast NSW, Moree and Mudgee, he grew up on the St Clair mission near Singleton under the control of religious authorities and the Aborigines Protection Board. Like many of his generation, he was removed from his parents and sent to the Kinchela Boys Home on the north coast of NSW near Kempsey. Here he endured a punitive regime of forced labour and inadequate schooling. Nevertheless, as an adult he was able to return to his family, a broad network of over 320 people, who welcomed him back and continued his training in the art of tracking. His story is not an isolated one. Despite the trauma of colonisation, the resilience of Aboriginal people is evident in the fact that families stayed together in the face of overwhelming odds. It is through this resilience that tracking skills were kept alive and passed on to the next generation.

Early history

Convict escapes were so frequent after the First Fleet arrived in January 1788, trackers could have been engaged almost from day one. In reality, the job of guarding and pursuing escaped convicts fell to the First Fleet soldiers and their later replacements. Unsurprisingly, their unfamiliarity with the environment meant that pursuits were not always successful. There are several reasons for this. One was that many of the early escapees were convicts who stowed away on visiting ships or commandeering vessels and took to the seas. Land-based trackers were of limited assistance. Mostly, however, the colonists simply had little knowledge of the Sydney People⁴ and the skills they possessed. They knew from early on that many of the inhabitants of Sydney Harbour were excellent canoeists and keen fishers, but witnessed few examples of groups further inland pursuing and capturing animals. Combined with the language barrier, this lack of knowledge meant that it probably did not occur to the officers to ask local people to assist with recapturing convicts. Further, as historian Stephen Gapps has recently shown, following tentative early interactions after the First Fleet arrived in January 1788, Aboriginal people with-drew from the colony as they realised that the colonisers were not leaving. Governor Phillip attempted to re-establish relations by kidnapping several Sydney men, including Bennelong, but it was not until the devastating outbreak of smallpox that regular contact was re-established as some of the sufferers sought treatment from colonial surgeons. At the same time, the expanding colony began to spark further conflict with local clans that escalated in the coming decades into regular bouts of warfare, where Aboriginal warriors employed guerilla tactics to resist the usurpation of their country. Sydney People occasionally acted as guides in the early 1790s and once helped a lost soldier to return to his barracks, but generally they used tracking skills and deep knowledge of the intricacies of the landscape for their own benefit as part of a military strategy to try and drive the colonists out. They sometimes teamed up with escaped convicts to launch raids on farms and houses. It was not until 1817 that warfare in Sydney subsided. In these circumstances, it was difficult for the necessary relationships to form for colonists to employ Aboriginal people regularly as trackers.⁵

Nevertheless, early accounts of Aboriginal trackers in Sydney appear in the first decade of the 19th century during lulls in frontier conflict. George Calley, a collector of biological specimens for Sir Joseph Banks, noted in February 1802 following the escape of about 20 convicts from the government farm at Castle Hill that a party of ‘natives’ sent in pursuit ‘soon traced them out’. The convicts were recaptured and taken back to Castle Hill. Calley, impressed by the tracking abilities of Sydney Aboriginal people, had previously relied on an Aboriginal guide to assist in obtaining specimens to send back to Banks in England. He became perturbed when prominent Anglican chaplain Samuel Marsden, who viewed Aboriginal people as inferior and irredeemable, suggested that his guide assist a military expedition to capture and kill Pemulwuy, the resistance warrior responsible for numerous attacks on settlers since the early 1790s. The expedition was unsuccessful and Pemulwuy continued to lead the attacks on Sydney until his death over two years later.⁶

Episodes of warfare were uncommon in the vicinity of Sydney Harbour in the first decade of the 19th century; most clashes occurred to the west of Parramatta, along the Nepean and Hawkesbury Rivers, by this time. Aboriginal people around Sydney Harbour were more frequently seen within the settlement and sometimes helped out by using their tracking knowledge. In April 1809, as reported in the Sydney Gazette, authorities thought that the proceeds of a robbery from a haberdashery store were hidden in cavities within The Rocks overlooking Sydney Cove. It occurred to those concerned with the burglary that ‘natives might be usefully employed in exploring’ The Rocks to retrieve the stolen property. Two Aboriginal men walking in the area were convinced to engage in the search with a ‘promise of reward’. An initial reconnoitre found ‘several pieces of handkerchief ’. But this was only a fraction of the total amount stolen and the two searchers were convinced, somewhat reluctantly, to continue their investigations. A further examination of the nooks and crannies of The Rocks located a cavity lined with feathers, thought to be the hiding place of an absconded convict and the likely thief. Nearby was another cavity containing all the remaining stolen goods.⁷ The reporter indicated that this was not the first time that the bush skills of Sydney people had been used in this manner.

As the frequency of violence on the Hawkesbury ebbed and flowed, Aboriginal men were occasionally employed in tracking roles in this western part of Sydney. In March 1814, the co-owner of a boat moored on the Hawkesbury found the body of a man on board. His throat had been cut and there were axe cuts on his body. The co-owner also knew that a woman known to the deceased was missing. He organised a group of ‘natives’ to search for her and they found her remains slumped on the riverbank. She had been beaten on the back of her head with a blunt object. Suspicion fell upon an escaped convict named Dennis Doneran who was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.⁸

Colonial authorities sometimes exploited traditional divisions between neighbouring groups in the fight to crush Aboriginal resistance. In 1805, a punitive expedition engaged two Aboriginal guides from the Richmond area to help pursue others from the north-western tributaries of the Hawkesbury River who were wanted for several attacks on settlers. Colonists generally referred to this group as the ‘branch natives’ and the guides from Richmond were motivated by the possibility of seizing a wife from the people they were pursuing. The guides proved more than useful, stopping the expedition from stumbling into an ambush and then guiding them to a camp where weapons were being prepared. The subsequent attack resulted in the death of at least four ‘branch natives’. As Gapps has noted, the British had used similar tactics elsewhere in the Empire and this approach became valuable on the Cumberland Plain and into the Blue Mountains as well.⁹ The same tactic was used in the second half of the 19th century when the Native Police operated in Queensland.

Warfare between the Sydney People and the colonists reached another crescendo in 1816 and 1817. Numerous clashes occurred along the Nepean and Hawkesbury Rivers and as far east as Lane Cove. Warriors raided farms and burned crops. Some settlers and their families were attacked, killed and mutilated. Reprisal attacks by settlers saw the shooting deaths of Aboriginal women and children. In April 1816, Governor Macquarie instructed Captain WGB Shaw and members of the 46th Regiment to proceed to the Cumberland Plain and order all Aboriginal people they encountered to surrender. If they refused, the soldiers had permission to open fire and compel them. Those killed were to be strung up in trees as a terrifying reminder of the colonists’ military power. The regiment divided into three parties to conduct the campaign, two of which were accompanied by Aboriginal guides. Interestingly, it was the contingent without guides that encountered a camp and launched an attack at Appin that killed 14 Aboriginal people in the early hours of an April morning. Two of the Aboriginal men thought responsible for some of the initial attacks, Dunelle and Cannabaygal, had their bodies strung up in trees as Macquarie had instructed. It has been suggested that the guides may