Chapter 2 - the First Europeans Arrive in the Hawkesbury

Chapter 2 - The first Europeans arrive in the Hawkesbury

Darug Narration:

It is estimated that over 750,000 Aboriginal people inhabited the island continent with about 5-8 thousand living across the Sydney region in 1788, the year that the first fleet arrived in Australia. Within less than a year, over half the population living in the Sydney Basin had died from smallpox and the common cold and flu. Its devastating effects spread so quickly that many of the Darug died from it before ever even having seen the newcomers who bore these diseases.

Narration:

In 1788, Governor Arthur Phillip set out to make the penal colony self sufficient, it was vital that a successful food supply be established and that fertile land with a fresh water supply be located swiftly, as the land surrounding the first settlement was not suitable for growing crops.

Narration:
Captain Watkins Tench recounts on early relations on the Hawkesbury in 1791.

Captain Watkins Tench (Thursday, April 14th 1791):

A canoe, also with a man and a boy in it, kept gently paddling up abreast of us. We halted for the night at our usual hour, on the bank of the river. Immediately that we had stopped, our friend (who had already told us his name) Gombeeree, introduced the man and the boy from the canoe to us. The former was named Yellomundee, the latter Deeimba. The ease with which these people behaved among strangers was as conspicuous, as unexpected. They seated themselves at our fire, partook of our biscuit and pork, drank from our canteens, and heard our guns going off around them without betraying any symptom of fear, distrust or surprise. On the opposite bank of the river they had left their wives and several children, with whom they frequently discoursed; and we observed that these last manifested neither suspicion or uneasiness of our designs towards their friends.

Narration:

It was the major contribution of the Hawkesbury that allowed the colony to stabilise, hence the term used to describe the Hawkesbury, "the granary of the colony."

Lieutenant Governor Major Francis Grose (April 29th 1794)

I have settled on the banks of the Hawkesbury with twenty two settlers, who seem very much pleased with their farms. They describe the soil as particularly rich, and they inform me whatever they have planted has grown in the greatest luxuriance.

Extracts have been read from the following sources:

Project Guttenburg Australia, “A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, Watkin Tench”, <

Western Sydney Libraries, 2012, ‘A brief look at the history of the Hawkesbury’, viewed 15th August 2012, <http://www.westernsydneylibraries.nsw.gov.au/hawkesbury/history.html>

The chapters in this project are the personal perspectives of those recorded and the while the older narrations are based on historical records the personalities are fictional and not autobiographical. The University of Western Sydney accepts no personal responsibility for the complete accuracy of these chapters.