As I ride my bike past the First Settlement Memorial in Redcliffe, I am reminded of a local whose ancestors were in the second fleet.
A wiz for information about 2nd fleet descendants, he informed my how stopping in south Africa, the fleet was stocked of vegetables by allowing some on board to work.
Since, Cooks scientific measures aboard the Endeavour found hygiene and cabbage had so effectively saved lives, perhaps it was natural food stocks be sort. The first fleet would nearly starve when supplies were lost. So it was a good move.
Some of the ladies found more sensuous employment with the local males. This doesn't surprise me. Australia had a double standard of morality. There were attempts to scientifically prove the necessity of men to spread their attentions - for reasons of health (yeah right). Convict women needed a male protector lest they be swamped by men – the first fleets arrival has been described as being an orgy when it first arrived – and Lt King, the later governor, had his own tribe born at Norfolk Island that a long suffering wife had to raise. Of course a woman found pregnant on board a convict ship was flogged.
From one of these 2nd fleet women descends Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. I always thought politicians were tarts.
The historical reach of the Endeavour goes beyond purchasing vegetables. Joseph Banks recommended New Holland for settlement to the Beauchamp Commission of 1785 where he romanticized that the Aboriginals would simply allow Settlement. His proposal was initially rejected but the alternative site in Gambia was found unsuitable.
Banks influence is not surprising. The Botanical Gardens at Kew oversaw exploiting natural resources disparate throughout the Empire. The gardens would even supply the merino's that would later be the backbone of the Australian economy.
Banks would also recommend hot headed William Bligh, whose ill-fated voyage on the Bounty was rescued of ignominy by an incredible 5822 km open boat excursion that charted the 'north-east coast of New Holland.' In that boat was Mid Shipman Matthew Flinders who would later circumnavigate Tasmania in a whale boat, proving it an island distinct from the mainland.
Of course Bligh would again be deposed, in the Rum Rebellion , exactly twenty years after Australia's Settlement on the 26th of January 1808. Intriguingly, one of Bligh's biggest supporters was John Turnbull. Turnbull's ancestor former Opposition Leader Malcolm Bligh Turnbull yesterday seems to have followed the same path to oblivion.
Yes the middle name Bligh is no accident.
Just as Bligh stubbornly dragged his return to London, sailing to Van Diemen's Land then tried to hang off the NSW shore in protest, Malcolm Turnbull hung around even when he was politically dead in the water.
Blighs fall would indirectly shape later Queensland.
Bligh's replacement, Governor Macquarie, arrived with his with his own regiment and disbanding the NSW Corps. He realized that the colony had been allowed to run down. Set against the Napoleonic Wars, needed repairs were expensive. So the freed convicts were a resource that could not be ignored.
Skilled freedmen were given positions of authority which again upset elitist sensitivities. John Macarthur, who had fled to England and successfully defended himself for his part in the Rum rebellion, was well informed by his wife in Australia.
Macquarie introduced Australia's first building code, and name New Holland Australia
But MacArthur hit back and seems to have been partly behind the commission of John Thomas Bigge's. Bigge's accused Macquarie of being too lenient recommended reforms of the legal system, constitutional changes, a reduction in public works and more extensive and rigorous use of convicts in private enterprise
The Bigge's Report was big in name and gigantic in size. Much of it is ridiculous with unrelated facts that in distant England could not be checked. Few fully read it and it was simply assumed to be an exhaustive study.
Although one of Macquarie's last acts before he dying in Britain was to redress some of Bigge's claims, the report was responsible for establishing the Moreton Bay convict Settlement.
Second offenders were unworthy of civilization and cast to the distant north. Governor Brisbane, a highly skilled astronomer, spent more time settling up his observatory rather than governing. He thought that previously discovered Pumistone River may lead to the dreamed of inland sea. But the day after the amity arrived in Moreton Bay, it was found to be a passage.
Short of supplies, (the animals escaped the day the settlement landed), ill of tropical diseases, with insufficient drugs Brisbane's only appearance was unannounced without supplies. Three of the wives were pregnant and Jane Miller, who had just given birth, was tossed from her bed to give Brisbane accommodation.
So as I ride past the First Settlement memorial, calling out 'hello grandpa William – hello grandma Hanah" I am reminded that historians review the past with the questions facing the present.
So perhaps my glib view of history is distorted. But then the influence of history is rarely found in truth, but usually legends and myths shape our public imagination.
