Nanberry (26 page)

Nanberry has been almost forgotten, possibly because he was intelligent, good-natured and hard-working. Loud-mouthed drunks may often get noticed, while intelligent young men may not.

Nanberry was adopted by Surgeon White when he was about nine or ten, but he may have been younger, as Aboriginal boys would have been taller and more muscular than the half-starved colonial children Surgeon White was used to.

It must have been a terrifying time for the small boy; no wonder that he turned to his protector and decided to ‘become English'. Perhaps nine out of ten of the Aboriginal people around Sydney Harbour died. All, or at least most, of the others fled inland, away from the disease — the only thing they could do in the face of such a savage death rate. Nanberry must have felt his old world had died too. Surgeon White had saved him from death, possibly starvation, and had given him a home and status as his own son.

White gave Nanberry the name ‘Andrew Douglass Keble White' when he adopted him, but the boy seems to have insisted on using the name Nanberry or Nanberry Buckenau, even though he used his adoptive father's surname till his death. (He stopped using Balloonderry's name after his friend's death.)

Nanberry appears to have been a brilliant linguist, quickly learning English — and English customs — and being used as the colony's official translator, an impressive job for so young a boy. At one stage it seemed that he might even have forgotten his own language, having used English for so long instead.

The examples of what we might regard as rudeness from the adult warriors towards him need to be seen from their point of view. I doubt that the important men and women of our day would like to be told what to do by a nine-year-old boy, especially one who appeared to ignore or even have contempt for our culture.

Nanberry seems to have decided to stay English until after White went back to England, possibly leaving him with no protector in the colony, and certainly without the man who had treated him in many ways as a son. Suddenly, with almost no warning, White was gone from Nanberry's life. I think it's no coincidence that it was about that time he decided to be initiated as a Cadigal warrior, probably near what is now the Sydney Botanic Gardens.

But even when he lived with Surgeon White he still became ‘brothers' with Balloonderry, a young man some years older than him, and he twice warned Balloonderry about attempts to capture him or attack his comrades.

It has been difficult to trace much of Nanberry's life, not just because most of the time he seemed to be quietly working and so didn't appear in letters or newspapers, but because he was known by the name White as well as Nanberry (with the various spelling variations) and possibly other names that he took and used at times after he formally became a warrior. At the time of his death Nanberry was still using the surname White, as well as Nanberry.

Nanberry died in 1821, cause unknown. The Reverend Charles Winton, Minister of the Field of Mars (now more or less the Sydney suburb of Ryde) from 1826 to 1828, referred to him as a chief. But this title was meaningless to the Cadigal, and possibly just meant that the English settlers felt Nanberry was a respected man, looked up to by his people.

Nanberry requested that he be buried in the same grave as Bennelong. This was possibly because Bennelong, too, was a friend of James Squire and it was a place where Nanberry knew his body would be buried with respect. Despite Bennelong's earlier contempt for Nanberry the two men later became friends or at least colleagues in rituals and clan payback wars.

Another Aboriginal man, known as Bidgee Bidgee, also asked to be buried at the same site in later years, but there seem to be no records to indicate whether he was. James Squire died in 1822.

The words in this book that are said to be on Nanberry's and Bennelong's grave may not have existed — there is only one reference to them and by the 1880s there seems to have been no actual marker to show where the grave was. The wooden plaques that may have existed could have rotted, or been removed — or perhaps were never there.

There is a photograph in the Mitchell Library of a grave that is said to contain Bennelong, his wife, and ‘Nanbarry' (sic). The grave is somewhere in Ryde. It was well-marked after Nanberry died. A stone and plaque in Cleves Park, Ryde is said to mark the site of Bennelong's grave, but it is now known that the actual gravesite is elsewhere, though nearby. The location is still a secret. Wherever it is, it is probably Nanberry's grave too.

I've tried to track shipping and other records to find the ships Nanberry sailed on, but in many cases the records of ships' crews and sailing times and details are either not available, or were never made at the time. There were also at least two sailors called White, on different ships at the same time.

Once again, colonial records are sketchy, and often inaccurate.

Nanberry wasn't the first Indigenous man to go to sea — that was the man known by the white colony as ‘Bundle' or ‘Bondel', who was also an orphan and accompanied Captain William Hill of the New South Wales Corps to Norfolk Island in March 1791 on the
Supply
.

By about 1810 there were several Indigenous men who worked as sailors, on fishing boats or whaling and sealing boats, or on ships that took those astounding voyages across the ocean in such tiny (to our eyes) sailing boats. They braved the storms and freak waves of the Southern Ocean and the mountainous seas by the Cape, sailed past ice floes and through the doldrums, where you could die of thirst when there was no wind to fill your sails. They were respected and valued crew members and were paid regular wages and given regular rations, on the same basis as white sailors. Native Americans and African Americans were also known to be crew members on many ships (often American) that landed in Australia or whaled or caught seals in Australian waters.

A few factors relating to Nanberry's time as a sailor, however, do seem fairly certain. On 30 October 1793, Nanberry sailed as
part of the crew of HMS
Reliance
to Norfolk Island. He is listed as part of the crew on HMS
Brilliant
in 1800 — the same ship that took his foster brother Andrew to England or at least to Cape Town, where he may have transferred to another ship. I doubt that the two young men being on the same ship was a coincidence — it was a very long way to send a seven-year-old child, especially back then, without someone to protect him. Who better than his foster brother, an experienced sailor?

In 1802 Nanberry sailed with the explorer Matthew Flinders on HMS
Investigator
, in the attempt to circumnavigate and map the whole of the Australian coast. Nanberry returned to Sydney, though, in the ship
Nelson
when the
Investigator
began to leak badly. Flinders referred to him as ‘a good-natured lad'.

The places where Nanberry's name doesn't appear are, however, as interesting as those where it does. He doesn't seem to be on any list of ‘natives' who were given charity blankets or who lined up to get a tobacco ration. He wasn't ever taken before a magistrate and accused of drunkenness. He's not in the records for either committing any crime or as being the victim of crime. Nor was he a police tracker, nor given a grant of land or a fishing boat, one of Governor Macquarie's attempts to defuse increasing Aboriginal anger and homelessness. Nanberry's name is not on the list that Governor Macquarie had made of all the ‘natives' who promised in future to be friendly to the English.

There are records of him participating in battles with other warriors with whom he had close family ties. Including a battle where he and Bennelong speared a man called Cogy — ‘the leader of the Cowpastures'. Nanberry also speared and killed a man named Colinjong. I think the life I've portrayed in this book is probably the most accurate one — that he worked as a sailor and, in between voyages, joined up with his clan, taking part in their battles.

In other words, Nanberry seems to have lived an independent, successful and hopefully happy life both as a Cadigal, in the bush away from the colony, and as a member of the English community.

While there is no record of his marriage, it is unlikely there would be, as most ‘native' marriages weren't recorded. (Nor were a great many ‘white' ones.) There is a record of a Sophy Buckenau, who was born about 1806, and was living at Kissing Point with her daughter, where Nanberry is known to have stayed. As she wouldn't have used the name ‘Nanberry' or ‘White' after his death she may have used the other name by which he was known. But that is still supposition.

In one of the amazing coincidences that occurred while I was writing this book (new information appeared at the most unlikely times and places), I met a young woman at a history conference who told me that Nanberry was one of her ancestors. She promised to ask her uncle to contact me with more details, but at the time of writing this I haven't heard from him.

If Nanberry is now known to be someone's ancestor, he would need to have had a wife, the sort of formal relationship where the father was known as well as the mother. The little we know of Nanberry doesn't indicate a man who wouldn't feel responsible for his children.

I suspect that if Nanberry knew of his descendants now, he would be proud. He was a man who seems to have kept his own heritage while successfully being part of the colonial world too: an extraordinary achievement by a remarkable man.

Wollarawarre Bennelong (1764–1813)

The discussions about the true character of the man known as Bennelong are too long to have here. (He actually had a much longer and more complex name, and titles used only on certain occasions.) Bennelong was often violent, especially to women, and a boaster. But he was also a man of resourcefulness, courage,
curiosity, incredible kindness and extreme endurance. He was far more complex than the white observers — and possibly his own people — of the time gave him credit for. The truth about who this man was is, I think, one of the cases where we need to say, ‘I don't know.'

Bennelong appears to have become addicted to alcohol after his return from England, possibly because of pain from wounds and a deeper personal pain.

Even from his first imprisonment in the colony he was portrayed by almost all the diarists and letter writers as a boaster and even a buffoon. But he showed extreme kindness and dedication to Balloonderry, and managed to survive physically and mentally a voyage to England where he was pretty much displayed as a curiosity. In short, he deserves far more than a few paragraphs of summary.

Bennelong died in 1813, long before Nanberry, and was buried in the orange orchard belonging to a brewer called James Squire, who had befriended him, and been granted land on the north shore of the Parramatta River in 1795. It was said that Bennelong often camped there. Bennelong's death is usually attributed to his many wounds from arguments and fights, as well as to alcoholism.

Although we know that Nanberry and Bennelong were buried in James Squire's orchard, the exact spot of the orchard and the grave has been the subject of debate. It was also possible that the grave was in Squire's garden instead. As mentioned earlier, Bennelong's — and so probably Nanberry's — grave has finally been located. At the time of writing the exact location was a secret, possibly, in part, so that the warriors can still rest in peace.

Thomas Moore (1762–1839)

Thomas Moore appears to have first arrived in New South Wales as ship's carpenter on William Raven's
Britannia
. This may have been in either 1791 or 1792 — various sources have different
dates for both the ship's arrival and departure for the Cape to fetch more stores for the colony. It is likely that Moore made several voyages before he settled in Sydney and married Rachel Turner in 1797. (Their marriage seems to have been soon after he took up a job as colonial shipbuilder, so I imagine they had met before.) There were still few women compared to men in the colony and Rachel was relatively young, beautiful and had an income from Surgeon White. Despite having an illegitimate child she would have had a wide choice of possible husbands — though given the nature of the community not many of these would necessarily have appealed to her. She doesn't seem to have been impulsive, so either she saw very quickly that Moore was a man of integrity, hard work and kindness or she had met him before. The colony was a small place in 1792 and Moore may well have needed a doctor's help for himself or a friend. It is quite likely they did meet before Moore decided to settle in the colony and Rachel may well have been one of the reasons he chose to stay there.

Staying in the colony was an extremely good move for Moore financially. He was well-paid; his skills were in great demand, and there were enormous opportunities for a man with vision and intelligence. Thomas Moore had both.

He and Rachel Turner were married by the Reverend Johnson. Both made their mark on their marriage certificate — an X instead of a signature. Possibly neither could read or write, though it was common for people to be able to read a bit, but to not have had any practice in forming letters. (There are many accounts of ‘illiterate' mothers teaching their children to write by copying passages from a book that they could, just, read.) It is likely that both were able to read at least simple documents and certainly Moore would have been able to follow plans and maps. It is probable that both learnt to write in later years, given the works they were involved in.

Thomas became a master boatbuilder, with a house and a three-acre orchard by the Tank Stream — a respectable position and evidence that he'd worked hard since he came to the colony. A three-acre orchard might have about a thousand fruit trees, all of which would have had to be raised from seedlings or cuttings or bought at very high prices in Cape Town, then watered by hand and fed manure. For the first years of his marriage he mostly rebuilt the often battered and aged government-owned ships that had made their way down to the colony. He also built and worked his own ship.