In 1788, Aboriginal people of Botany Bay and Port Jackson saw a fleet of ships for the first time, and having no context to understand such a
sight, thought the ships were giant birds, monsters or floating islands. (
1.)
The men climbing the masts, were thought to be devils or possums.
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| Lithograph of the First Fleet entering Port Jackson, 26 January 1788, by Edmund Le Bihan |
However, within a a few years, Aboriginal people were accompanying the British on various voyages.
"Young Bundle", an Aboriginal orphan boy from the Cowpastures area, accompanied William Hill of the NSW Corps to Norfolk Island on board the brig
Supply on 22 March 1791. (Watkin Tench, Journal)
Thomas Chaseland, child of a convict and Aboriginal woman, was born about 1773, and travelled with about 20 whaling and sealing expeditions.
Thomas is first
mentioned in the crew list of the
Jupiter (Captain Bunster), which left Sydney on August 6 1817, for Hobart, as "Thomas Chaseling, son of a settler at Windsor by a native woman" (Cumpston 1970:44).
Thomas married Puna, sister of a prominent Maori chief named Te Matenga Taiaroa.
In March 1801, "Yeranabie" (Yaranabee) and Worogan, an Aboriginal husband and wife, sailed with Lieutenant James Grant aboard the 60-ton sloop
Lady Nelson.
During the 11-week voyage they visited Jervis Bay, 170 kilometres south of Sydney, and Westernport and Churchill Island in Port Phillip Bay, now Victoria.
Aboriginal man, Bungaree,
joined the crew of HMS
Reliance on a trip to Norfolk Island in 1798. He then accompanied Matthew Flinders and his brother, in 1798, on the sloop
Norfolk, on a coastal survey as an interpreter, guide and negotiator with Aboriginal people.
Bungaree was recruited by Flinders on the first circumnavigation of Australia between 1801 and 1803, in the
Investigator.
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| Bungaree by Augustus Earle (1826) |
Bennelong and Yemmerrawanne, Aboriginal men of Port Jackson, accompanied Governor Arthur Philip to England in 1792, where, some reports claim, they presented to King George III. Bennelong spent two years in London.
Yemmerrawanne and Bennelong stayed in London with Henry Waterhouse, an English naval officer.
Yemmerrawanne died in Britain after a serious chest infection.
Bennelong, also unwell, was
sent back to Sydney in February 1795 on HMS
Reliance, the ship carrying surgeon George Bass to the colony. Bass nursed Bennelong back to health.
