The 1808 Australian Coup D'Etat

On 26th January 1808, 400 officers and men of the New South Wales Corps marched to Government House in Sydney to arrest Governor William Bligh.

Watercolour drawing of First Government House, Sydney, ca. 1809, John William Lewin (1770-1819) 

Bligh was arrested, and the colony was placed under military rule.

This revolt, the Rum Rebellion, remains Australia's only coup d'état.

With a lack of actual money in the colony, rum had become the medium of trade and for goods and services from 1793.

The New South Wales Corps controlled all the trade and paid the farmers in rum for their produce.

Attempts by Governor Hunter to stop the NSW Corp buying all the imported rum, failed.

The Corps' officers simply chartered a Danish ship to bring in a large shipment of rum from India.

Governor William Bligh was appointed in 1805 to break the rum monopoly of the NSW Corps. 

Bligh clashed with Major George Johnston and  the former Lieutenant, now grazier and businessman, John Macarthur. 

The NSW Corp arrived at Government House and supposedly found Bligh under his bed. His daughter, Mary, however, attempted to fight the coup armed with her parasol.

A propaganda cartoon exhibited in Sydney within hours of William Bligh's arrest, portraying him as a coward. The arrest of Governor Bligh, 1808, artist unknown, watercolour drawing, attached to the left hand wall in the image is a sheet with text, "O what can the matter be", Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Safe 4/5

Bligh remained under house arrest until January 1809.

The military stayed in power for two years until Lachlan Macquarie arrived in Sydney in January 1810, becoming the fifth Governor of NSW.

Lachlan Macquarie attributed to John Opie (1761-1807)

A Walking Tour of O’Connell Town & parts of Bligh’s Terrace, (now all now called Newtown), in the inner-west of Sydney, New South Wales. Here

Anna Bligh, former Queensland Premier, is a descendant of William Bligh, who is famous for the Mutiny on the Bounty and being the 4th Governor of New South Wales.

Read 

That Bligh Girl, by Sue Williams