A long revision of one of the South Coast’s most disreputable historical characters
What was going on at Albany between
Jan 1835 & Dec 1836
Continued from Part 2c
Cheyne, Albany and settler/official conflict
Above: A sketch of Albany village dated July 1834 looking West from the position of Cheyne’s Cottage toward the old military compound where Alexander Collie lived between March 1831 and November 1832. It is not known who made the drawing but it corresponds with the recent arrival of the James Pattison and gives clear indication of the scene those new settlers will have met. Given the position of the view, the inclusion of near Aboriginal figures and the proximity of what appears to be Cheyne’s cottage, the artist may have been Alexander Cheyne. Source: Garden (Pg.46).
All those of notable position at the Swan River, and at Albany and Augusta, if not already, quickly became known to each other. They were all there to make their fortune, not lose it, and of course shared a collective interest in their general prosperity.
When, at Albany during the second half of 1834, Cheyne realised the extent of his predicament, he had no choice but to do everything in his power to stop from going under. He had bought in wholesale and had to fight to stay afloat and if that meant running up against officials, he would. The stakes were too high, and on matters he thought he could influence was not accepting ‘no’ as an answer. This explains the gathering and lodging of the petition at his cottage, but it is likely knowledge of Stirling’s position regarding labour, along with his bloody-minded resentment of Spencer, which overcame any resistance to the publication of that petition.
The lead settlers of the day were discussing their shared dilemma nonstop, and Stirling and his maneuvers formed large part of it. Western Australia was being laughed at through the Sydney press while at home Stirling could barely scratch himself without it being spoken about in the Gazette. There is a combination of defensive self-consciousness and reinforced determination that rings through the pages of 1834,’35 & ’36, punctuated by Captain Irwin’s assertive salute to George Murray, The State and Position of Western Australia, published in London in July,1835, in which Irwin frowns dismissively upon Cheyne and the Albany settlers for making their convict appeal. All-the-same, the Peel debacle was still a major talking point at the Swan River. Following from it, Calyute and the Murray River Aborigines had gone wild with indignation at the presence of those settlers and with the killing of Midgegooroo and Yagan the previous year, in the end coming to cause such jumpiness among the Swan River settlers that Stirling decided it was time to make a larger show of force, which he delivered with all due preparation at Pinjarra. Indeed, Irwin’s dedication to the Swan’s future sits crushingly atop all the foaming insecurity of those caught up in the daily struggle, resolutely endorsing Pinjarra along with every action the Guildford elite took in order to bend the claimed river to their will.
At York problems were mounting, and quickly. Attacks had commenced along the road from Guildford and the Avon Valley settlers were becoming nervous. Soon, that fear would turn to hatred and the violence would both increase and worsen in nature, featuring settler led aggressions sanctioned by Stirling himself. The three Trimmer brothers had each bought in to the York district and Arthur, who was to marry Spencer’s eldest daughter, Mary Ann in April 1836, was to play one of the more atrocious roles. Something we will pick up on a little further ahead.
The Vasse River was coming into use too as Augusta and the Blackwood River on the South Coast had proven too much for the Bussell siblings. This family were soon to meet their own Aboriginal obstruction in the form of Gayware and his Wardandi language group which the Bussell clan ended up dealing with the same way as Stirling, only they hid it. Settler anxiety caused by the realisation of what they had got themselves into was exacerbated by an Indigenous population who may have been worlds apart by way of language and culture, but every bit attuned to the disruption of their own lives and not about to walk away and let the invaders at it.
Down at Albany Aboriginal/Settler relations were essentially benign because of the highly localised and agreeable start nurtured by the army leaders Lockyer, Wakefield and Barker. By the end of 1834 there was still no expansion beyond Albany town and the remnants of Mokare’s moort had become well enough acquainted with the Whiteman’s ways to by-and-large put up with the presence. However, within that trembling new community there was no shortage of hardship and difficulty.
Digory Geake had suffered a stroke and become an invalid, leaving his wife Elizabeth to run their affairs. John Morley was working with gritted anguish between government jobs and his own private enterprise in order to keep himself marginally ahead. George Cheyne was getting further behind and therefore louder and more aggressive by the day, while his brother Alex was counting his pennies and weighing his options, measuring the promise he was sold against a rapidly diminishing time frame. T. B. Sherratt, stacked with cash as he appears to have been, had taken umbrage with all about him, virtually upon arrival. The volume of doubt he was met with was enough to evaporate whatever confidence he had and, in the end, drove his sanity inside out. John McKail, who was in the process of relocating from Perth (ahead of his enforced eviction), was battling his youthful alcoholic thirst and general recklessness, hardly conscious of the chaos he was causing. Patrick Taylor and Mary Bussell (though Mary was in Augusta and Patrick spent time in Tasmania) were both lost in diaphanous drifts of poetry, romance and religion to realise quite where they were and what was going on. Mary, in particular, possessed of a faith that would sustain her in the face of Patrick becoming bitter and reclusive. All this, and a band of soldiers led by Lieutenant Stewart, a Scot and close associate of the Cheyne brothers, who admitted his leadership was insufficient to counter the binge drinking habits of his behaviourally unhinged detachment. In contrast, Peter Belches was aloof and nonchalant. Being unattached, a man of obvious capacity and guaranteed some government income from his Stirling ties, he is the only one of that societal lot who looks to have taken life in the brand-new town in his stride. Belches, in association with others, went on to play an important role in land ownership and pastoral progress beyond the Hay River at Yerriminup, rising point of both the Frankland and Gordon Rivers, and at Kojonup. In so doing, his story also helps explain the evolution of new mixed-race families which came to be centered at Mt Barker, Tambellup, Borden and Gnowangerup.
Alongside these monied Albany men were Henry Townsend, James Daniells, Daniel Petit, William Jenkins, John Young, James Dunn, Thomas Gillam, Henry Tully and James Newell Snr. Men of far less obvious means, all operated in support or secondary roles (except perhaps Townsend) to the initial landowners, but with their wives and families remained to form the long-term core of the town’s recognised populace.
Back at the Swan River, or elsewhere in the struggling colony, those with government positions and/or wealth beyond what they might stand to lose were philosophical about their situation, but for the likes of Cheyne in particular, the Swan River Mania he had fallen for had become Swan River Fever, and it was deadly.
The James Pattison was a Mangles brothers charter, the so-called apprentices a Mangles family initiative. Stirling was protected, his investment was reputation, time and energy. Not everything he owned. Though he will have downplayed talk of it, he was never going to stay either. His broader mission in life was to create an identity for himself and to return to Britain a recognised and wealthy man. The settlers will have discussed this; the position officials were in to benefit from the risk and efforts of the capitalists. Few will have known the full extent Stirling was able to profit, but they will not have been surprised at what ever numbers were bandied about. That position, likely coupled with the understanding the Swan River was a disallowed penal colony anyway, left Cheyne thinking he had absolutely nothing to lose in submitting the petition, and that he wasn’t alone in thinking it.
The petition was an impossible long shot. But all-the-same, the burly Scot was not slow in coming to understand virtually all those who had bought in to this second wave of optimism, the Pattison patrons, were on the cusp of leaving, and that immanent development of Albany’s economy was doomed unless they could access labour. And quickly.
In the background too came talk of new colonies. The future states of Victoria and South Australia were not only in the making but their take-off were to leave Western Australia languishing. The poor old West was about to be bumped further into isolation.
Albany’s dissident petition signers may have known it was a desperate measure, but it was all they had. Cheyne saw the fork in the road, and that they were headed down the truncated branch.
Above: The Cheyne led Albany petitioners begged former Under Secretary E.G. Stanley (then Secretary for the Colonies) for convict aid, stating it was impossible to go farming at Albany without road access and that the cost of providing such access was beyond their capability. The same problem dogged the colony at large for a further fifteen years. In Perth, the response was dismissive, saying the Albany settlers should be looking at the sea for their income, not the interior, forgetting of course that Stirling had sold the entire concept as an agricultural one. Image: Excerpt from the Cheyne led petition to the Secretary for the Colonies at London, published by the Perth Gazette om 8th November 1834. Source: Trove
The diary of Alexander Cheyne
It’s impossible to think those Stirling cajoled aboard the James Pattison were unaware of the spectacular shift in trajectory Swan River mania had taken since the Parmelia had arrived at Fremantle five years earlier. Only a handful of the Pattison heavyweights, those who went on to join Albany’s settlers of last resort, bought in whole heartedly. Alexander Cheyne, an older brother of George’s, was one of the less convinced and while he gave it a go, was too reliant on income to be able to stick it out. During his time at Albany, Alexander kept a diary which gives us rich insight as to what was happening in and around the Cheyne house. As we move through that period, we are able to draw information and excerpts that help illuminate the overall experience.
The Alexander Cheyne Diary, brief as the entries are, provides 18 months insight to the daily goings on at Albany, especially the extent of relations between the Cheyne family. We already know that George and Grizel had adopted four-year-old Emily Trimmer from her unknown (perhaps Indian) mother and health-stricken father William, another relationship that illustrates the binds between middle-class Scots families of that age, and that Cheyne’s nephews Macartney and John were in situ when Baron Von Hugel arrived over the New Year of 1834, and that aboard the James Pattison six months later came George’s brother Alexander and another nephew, John, together with wife Ann and their two children. By the end of 1836 all, bar George & Grace, were gone. This sorry outcome, given Cheyne’s apparent capacity to persuade, is symptomatic of the state of Albany at the time.
Indeed, it is an emphatic statement of failure.
Most arrivals aboard the Pattison came to assess and to speculate, to give the Mangles brother’s great colonial venture due consideration. But that was all. Were not the circumstances in place to make a ready profit they would look to the East, or else go home. Both of which they did, though not before that due consideration was exhausted. For the Perth stalwarts, the mere sight of Albany’s settlers baulking, that they dare raise a petition against the leadership’s methodology, will have revived dread-laden memories of the 1830/31 Swan River exodus. The Perth Gazette dressed the episode minimally, in hushed tones as a churlish insult to the colony, making the point that; yes, opening up land to agriculture in the district was a challenging prospect, so wouldn’t it be better to invest in the town as a port and look to the sea as it’s means of success. Then tied its tongue on Albany, other than reporting on a very serious Cheyne/Spencer flare-up, for six months.
When Stirling arrived back into the colony aboard the Pattison, he set up Alexander Cheyne as head of the local Police and put his old colleague Peter Belches in the position of Harbour Master. High piloting and anchorage fees were introduced in an effort to increase local revenue. Spencer was keen to maintain the taxes but Belches, being the one to police them, found them difficult to impose. There were no easy options. Both Belches and Morley (formerly Harbour Master, then Government Storekeeper, then Assistant Commissary) decided against the petition but were then left in a kind of no man’s land. So much so, both gave up their positions while Morley set sail for India in an effort to import his own labour so he could continue building houses.
Commencing an entirely new society under the Western economic paradigm demanded lower orders, demanded a form of slavery, as it always had. Currency could be created but roads and buildings had to be physically constructed. Labour is not a belief, it’s a forceful act of human exploitation the social consequences of which are resentment and stark class division. The settlers attempted to put the Aborigines to work, to make them first rung on the labour ladder, but they were not the type. Not at all.
Thus, the ‘principles of free labour’ experiment at Western Australia failed twice. Once at the East India looking Swan River and once down on the South Coast
Stirling wasn’t that fussed about how the colony was run, once it was decided, and probably held nothing against Cheyne for his efforts. All Stirling wanted was the opportunity to create the colony, to align it best he could with Mangles business interests, to be seen as a decisive leader and, if he could, come out with his reputation enhanced. That was his debt to the Mangles family, the price of acceptance, the cost of his marriage and the resurrection of his career. In fairness, Stirling looks to have done everything he could to meet that pressing set of obligations. At least as far as those he cared about were concerned.
The Western Australia opportunity had been lying in wait and the timing of his actions nigh on perfect. It was a risk, of course, but as far as risks go, a long way from that others would take. He still had to pull it off though, still had to lead the settler band wagon through thick and thin. By the time his tenure was over, just four more years from the end of 1834, he had trawled the entire South-West corner (as far as it was known then) for the best hundred thousand acres to grant himself and left exhausted; though remarkably, exalted too.
Cheyne had been arguing for labour since he arrived at the Sound late in 1831, in fact writing to Stirling over that very summer, while Stirling was right there at Albany, offering to bring out 50 agricultural labourers and tradesmen at his expense, to be absorbed by projects Cheyne put in place himself, but in the event he was unable to employ them asked would the government take them up. Stirling couldn’t agree and Cheyne bit on his fingernails. With Spencer’s arrival two years later, the size of Spencer’s retinue and Spencer’s position as leading official allowing him to offer government jobs to his children while he set about the business of private enterprise which would allow him to sell back to the Government Stores, Cheyne was rocked upon his heels. Cheyne was full of private initiative, full of enterprise and work, full of unyielding determination and held an abject fear of failure. Why then, did Stirling not give him the position of Resident Magistrate? Because more settlers and more money were needed. Cheyne might have been a very decent choice, but he was too early.
Cheyne’s act of circumventing both Spencer and the Perth government by way of the petition was potentially seditious and might have been taken more offensively if the episode wasn’t so politely set out in writing and forwarded to the Perth officials as a courtesy. Nonetheless, it was a plain affront to Spencer and source of humiliation to Stirling who must have accented to the publishing of it in the Perth Gazette. Tolerating what might be construed as a revolt by publishing, rather than suppressing, the petition probably alleviated an even more destructive build-up of resentment at Albany and was a wise act on Stirling’s part, especially as through the press he could treat it, by ignoring it editorially, with disdain. Stirling knew that in the scheme of Britain’s vast colonial network the gathering at Cheyne’s cottage was no more than democracy and the right to free speech in action, and of such general insignificance to the Colonial Office anyway he could wear any criticism with ease.
Nonetheless, it was abundantly clear all was in poor shape at Albany, despite the shot in-the-arm he thought he had just delivered. Stirling knew he would have to do something more about the situation, which, when the time came, he did.
We might be excused for calling the convict petition a prescient act, as the reality came to pass some fifteen years later, but the truth is Albany was Stirling’s second shot at the Western side, and it was a replica failure of the first. He was noted for expecting settlers to wear formal dress to dinner even when it was forty degrees outside and the plates on offer were no more than weevilled rice and on-the-nose salted pork. Stirling was a rigid idealist deeply influenced by his class, more recently emphasised by the expectations of his in-laws, and I suppose it is fair tribute to British stoicism that despite the misery that particular combination of capitalist zeal and administrative diligence wrought, Perth and the State at large not only survived but maintained an intractable eye on the vision of a white middle-class-and-above society. At least until the end of the century. (Read, the Six Hungry Families.) Nonetheless, though Albany as a two-hundred-year-old entity in the 2020’s may present as a retirement and holiday destination run by polite conservative councilors, its social roots run deep and remain fundamentally blue collar.
Albany’s cool windy summer runs counter to Perth’s relentless heat and these days on matters relating to progress and expansion that twain is unlikely to meet either. The days of economic expectation have long since been claimed by mining and most of the established Albany families are perfectly happy with their South Coast lot. The fishing is still good, when you can get your boat out.
Using capital and application of its particular code of conduct in early Western Australia as the dividing stick between social groups was perfectly logical. Old money still held the high ground but stumping up counted for a lot. The haughty tone of the Perth Gazette and West Australian Journal was in keeping with the rest of Australia’s press but rarely surpassed when sneering upon, or outright ignoring, those who failed to rise to its self-proclaimed occasions. Despite all the Swan River had been through, Stirling, via his James Pattison influx, laid on the same set of disastrous circumstances for the South Coast.
Albany was two-hundred-and-fifty forested miles away, had one-hundredth of the political and financial input, and granted only the meekest of concessions, yet its citizens were painted as ‘in a state of torpor’, making ‘little progress’ and possessed with ‘continued dissensions among the small community’. In the seven months (30 editions) between the public gathering at Cheyne’s cottage at the end of October, and the end of June 1835, excluding the shipping reports, King George Sound came in for discussion of any kind in the Perth Gazette just once. Albany, so lavishly bestowed upon by His Excellency the Governor when diverting the James Pattison there upon his most anxiously anticipated return from Britain, was no more than a pitiful disappointment.
Above: Between the arrival of the Spencer Retinue in October 1833 and the submission of Cheyne’s petition late in November 1834, there was grand optimism at Albany. The builders Gordon & Sinclair arrived from Perth motivated by the opportunity and immediately applied for land upon which they could set up lime burning facilities. But such was the time frame involved with rendering quick lime, every man with a desire to build was faced with the same task. Within a year there were a line of kilns running eastward along the shore from Little Grove to Big. Image: Letter from Richard Spencer to the builders Gordon & Sinclair granting permission to burn lime on the south shore of Princess Royal Harbour, immediately adjacent a site previously granted to George Cheyne. Source: Spencer Correspondence, State Library Microfilm.
Settler/Government Conflict: Cheyne, Spencer and The Case of the Rotted Pony.
Come commencement of 1835, things were not good at Albany. Not at all. With arrival of the James Pattison the population had blown out from around 90 to around 150 and six months later food was still in very short supply. The exact same scenario as faced the original influx at the Swan River. Nor was there labour, meaning all that new building demand (which John McKail had also responded to), under those strict new regulations, couldn’t be met. Spencer was inundated with requests to approve lime-burning licenses across the harbour, but there was no one to go about it but the settlers themselves. Behind the sycophantic politeness of the letters written to government by settlers and between government officers, there was an air of genuine disquiet.
Cheyne’s watery petition might have rolled off the Swan River duck’s back, but at the source further Public/Private resentment festered. First, indignation suffered as consequence of the Gazette’s general disregard for the Albany settlers in respect to their lack of willingness to make good of the exciting colonial opportunity put before them created a political divide between Perth and Albany which played out well beyond Federation; and second, as symptom of that Public/Private opposition, the feud which grew between Resident Magistrate Richard Spencer and his most forceful opposing settler personality of the day, took on epic proportions.
The height of this trouble, worthy of the school of Irish theatre, was the continued dissensions between Spencer and Cheyne over the disappearance and subsequent death of a pony belonging to Cheyne. Like ‘The Bull McCabe’ in John B. Keane’s play The Field, Cheyne would not bow to the pressures brought upon him by other interests after giving everything to bring his new life into being.
The court case itself took place in January 1835 but the tumult of anger and frustration had been festering for a year. From the documents it isn’t clear exactly when the horse disappeared, when the cadaver was found and what catalyst eventually brought the strife to a head. In the interim, the builders Gordon & Sinclair had come to Albany, the Jolly Rambler, the Jess and the Gem along with the James Pattison had all brought new settlers, making the mood otherwise buoyant. Stirling will have caught whiff of the rift when he was there, Cheyne and himself having plenty of time to chew-the-fat when they rode out to Moorilup in the winter. The rotted pony carcass was months old and unrecognisable when it was discovered, but general size and shape was enough for Cheyne, and he let loose the fullness of his pent-up rage.
The story runs as follows:
Letting his pony wander about the town looking for grass Cheyne was warned repeatedly by Spencer when it trespassed on to his land. The pony then disappeared. Spencer was then spotted carrying a rifle by persons out searching. Rumour then began to circulate that one of Spencer’s labourers had shot it, 22-year-old boatman, Charles Burns. A rotted horse corpse was later found near to where Spencer was seen with the gun. Cheyne commenced a vicious attack on Spencer through letters to Perth officials. The pair traded death threats verbally and in writing. Eventually, Cheyne issued court proceedings which Spencer countered. Cheyne’s charges were serious and with all that was going on at Albany Stirling had to act. What if Spencer was guilty? According to the law the lightest punishment was Transportation. Stirling decided to make South with a suite of Swan River officials, including Judge Advocate W.H. Mackie, to preside over the hearings and try to restore confidence to the town. Burns denied any association with the incident and the rotted corpse was too decomposed to determine the cause of death. Spencer, as result, was acquitted, but not before being dressed down by Mackie in court. Stirling, Mackie, Roe, Wittenoom, Lewis, Bland, Drummond and Molloy finished their other business at Albany over the next week before making back for Perth aboard the government schooner Ellen.
Above: Charles Burns, a seaman, acquired Lot 90 at Albany during April 1834, raising suspicion Spencer had paid him to either dispose of Cheyne’s troublesome pony, or take the rap for it. Image: Doctored excerpt from the Perth Gazette, 26 April 1834. Source: Trove.
Above: There were two lot numbers 90 in early Albany. The first; B90 (beach) on the waterfront near the junction of Bay & Festing Streets (at the time known as Dundas Street), the second; S90 (suburban) a larger 3-acre plot, adjacent to the recreation ground corner of Lockyer Avenue and North Road. Both were distant from the town, the suburban lot more so. Lot B90 is more likely to have been the one granted to Charles Burns/Byrne as in 1834 suburban lots on North Road were not yet drawn into place. Image: Cut from SRO Online images, Series S235 Original Plans. View is West of Parade Street with focus on waterside lots. Source: State Records Office W.A.
George Charles Burns/Byrne is cited by Erickson as having jumped from the Sterling at Fremantle in June 1831 when under charter by Cheyne and McDermott. Recorded as a seaman from Scotland, he appears on page 399 as George Charles Burne, b. 1812, deserter. As we know with Erickson, deductions on persons identities were often made by linking pieces of information, and frequently these were either partially or wholly unrelated, or indeed erroneous. I cannot find the information relating to George Burns jumping from the Sterling so can’t see how the Erickson team made that link.
In 1836 a 24-year-old Charles Byrne (making his birth year 1812) is listed in the 1836 Albany census at No. 11, directly under Thomas Beard (servant) and the Cheyne and Geake entries, but as a boatman. Cheyne had two boats which he used to support his business with ships in the harbour, and it is possible Burns/Byrne worked for him at the time of the census.
Another Swede, Peter Vanquest, who was to meet his fate at Albany late in 1834, was also said to be aboard the Sterling when it arrived with Cheyne and McDermott during the winter of 1831. (Erickson) The suggestion is that Cheyne’s nephew, George Macartney, was also aboard that ship and had come to Albany with George and Grace, or else soon after. Vanquest may have been a servant of Macartney’s on arrival and then employed as a boatman by Cheyne on a piecemeal basis.
In any case, Byrne’s listing in the Albany census came two years after the pony went missing and two years after he obtained his plot of land, so much could have changed by then. Still, the question has to be asked; if he had been a seaman aboard the Sterling and come to know (to some extent) Cheyne, and on hearing Cheyne had gone south later that year made his way to Albany to try and find work with/for him, or perhaps went to Albany independent of Cheyne simply because he heard there was work there, it is odd that Cheyne accused Burns of shooting his pony under instruction from Spencer. Had Cheyne done something to upset Burns, was Burns just the mercenary type, or was the Charles Burns/Byrne at Albany somebody else?
Charles Burns of Albany acquired Lot B90 in April 1834, around the time Cheyne’s horse was causing Spencer problems, but also around the time John Pavey/Williams/Andrews arrived too. Burns surfaces in the court records of 1836 as associating with the likes of Anderson, Winterbourne, Hawkes and others and it may be this man was part of the incoming second wave of sealers. By 1837 Charles Byrne is working for Spencer as a labourer, cited multiple times that year in the 2004 Gardos thesis on Strawberry Hill Farm.
No one at Albany doubted Spencer had done away with Cheyne’s horse, but such were the circumstances it was not possible to find Spencer in the wrong. The pony corpse was so rotted the judges, realising neither the identity of the corpse nor the cause of death could be established, had no choice but to abandon the case. Alexander said as much. To himself anyway.
From his diary. . .
Tuesday, 17th February 1835:
George’s action against Sir Richard Spencer for destroying his horse was brought on today & given against George for deficiency of proof. Mr Mackie gave Sir Richard a severe lecture for his conduct. The conviction on all parties was Sir Richard guilty.
Above: The Perth Gazette was disappointed it was unable to report positive news regarding the Governor’s inspection of the outports as it was compelled, instead, to carry news of the case of the rotted pony, Cheyne’s furious failed prosecution of Spencer for the act of destroying his animal. The newspaper regards the case as a petty dissension between settler and official when in reality it represented the height of settler defiance in the face of authority led repression. In the town of Albany, such as it was at that time, the rotted pony case was an instance of civil disobedience being met by official intimidation; otherwise, violent subjugation. It was Albany’s very own storm-in-a-teacup civil war. Image: Excerpt from the Perth Gazette and West Australian Journal dated 7th March 1835, reporting on the 17th of February hearing where Cheyne accused Spencer of destroying his pony. Source: Trove
Spencer was a much-hardened man and knew that to do the job he was tasked with he’d have to play it that way. His active Navy career had spanned twenty years during which he went from an officer candidate Midshipman (he says) to full blown Captain. He fought several battles and suffered head injuries, reputedly when hit by a red-hot 24-pound canon ball (or part thereof), when in his twenties. There is some suggestion this affected his temperament, particularly during his time at Albany, but Spencer continued to progress through the Navy ranks despite his disfigurement and was not known as irascible until his appointment as Resident Magistrate at the Sound when in his fifties.
The idea he was taking mercury as medicine and that this made him so irritable remains a possible partial explanation, but heavy metal toxicity isn’t noted for manifesting that way alone, and if his volatility was so much a result that symptom would also have been accompanied by a constant shake, or tremor (thereby evident in his handwriting), and by acute shyness. Symptoms Spencer was not known for. Instead, Spencer’s quickness to boil looks to have been stress induced. He, like Cheyne, Morley, Geake, Sherratt and Patrick Taylor, had staked their all on Albany and there was no turning back. In that regard they were as one, the project’s they were individually engaged with simply had to sustain them; each to go down ruined (and there was nothing worse than sinking from your class), a failure for all to see forever more.
Spencer held a distinct advantage over the others in that he was the one with government position. Lit by that power (the ability to play both sides of the field) he could imagine success a little more freely. On the one hand he had an income and was able to appoint family members to other positions which also brought income, while on the other his private activities allowed him to exploit government supply contracts, such as feeding the soldiers. None of it was achievable overnight, but the maneuvering was obvious. The problem Spencer had was the reaction of others around him. First Cheyne, then Sherratt, then the Harbour Master, Stirling’s colleague from the HMS Success commission, Peter Belches.
When the James Pattison came in and with it all that money buying land, Spencer was appointed regional collector of government revenue, standing between the settlers and their assets when it came to licenses, regulations, improvements and renewals. Another position he openly sought a percentage profit from. Money for public works was in high demand, and it had to come from somewhere, so taxes were levied. Upon ships for entering the harbour, and then upon their imported goods. Spirits in particular.
When Belches requested a 25% reduction in harbour fees, directly from Stirling, then began to fall short in his duties, Spencer must have glimpsed himself on the outside. Belches appeared to pay him no mind. Rather than bow to Spencer’s oversight, Belches seems to have done pretty much as he wanted. As Harbour Master with around one ship a week, a few at busy times, as well as the odd court case requiring his services as Justice of the Peace, Belches was free to move about the town doing what he could to improve his personal situation. His general rudeness and apparent ambivalence toward his pay masters, Spencer found both annoying and unnerving.
Spencer was perhaps architect of his own demise in the sense he was playing two games and neither very well. When it came to Cheyne, the suggestion is Spencer was at first lenient with him, deciding upon duties levied on an arbitrary basis. One time this amount, one time not at all. Another, at a higher price altogether. He did this with Alexander Cheyne too, so likely with Belches, Sherratt, Taylor, et al until his new position as Sub Collector demanded he record all transactions and report them to the Colonial Treasurer Henry Sutherland. This position thus became a kind of imposition as it forced Spencer to standardise his tax regime, thereby depriving him of the opportunity to keep portion for himself. In a letter to Stirling Spencer actually asked for a commission on these collections which Stirling said he would consider.
This tightening of the government purse strings did not sit well with Cheyne and his co-settlers of last resort and Spencer found the push back tough going.
When members of Spencer’s own retinue began to renege on their implied commitments and indentured labour, such as the eldest of the two Gill boys he’d brought with him (whom he had only just wedded to Mary Newell) began to abscond, the size of the stake he had placed and his vulnerability to it will have become heavily magnified. Spencer had put all his chips on the table. The lot, and everywhere he turned, especially during 1835, people were leaving. Spencer had to pull strings in order to favour his own personal position, but learned quickly that every man was for himself. Which meant nobody held any prisoners, so to speak. They were all playing for their lives, those settlers of last resort, and none were about to let another get one over on them, least of all an arrogant, donkey-riding retired Navy Commander come government official with a superiority complex and unfairly loaded hand.
One side of the town (the Cheyne led petitioners) faced the other, commanded by the domineering and dictatorial Resident Magistrate, and the language they used was a long way from polite. Early Albany was socially dysfunctional as its struggling residents sought to climb over each other in order to gain some kind of commercial foothold. The Spencer/Cheyne affair was a mud fight, a slinging match, a smear campaign. An ungloved dirty boxing match born of the torment of being sold down the river, suckered by the same bigger, better and brighter operator. King of the Swan River farce and debacle, the lately knighted champion of them all, the impregnable Chief Executive Officer, Sir James Stirling.
Either side of the summer of 1834/35 was a gambler’s nightmare among Albany’s hopefuls. There was wrangling and bitching and loss spilling over everywhere. And yet the momentum generated over the previous 36 months filled the gaps almost as soon as they appeared, and a kind of uneasy stability took hold. What you might call hopeful resignation. The acceptance of circumstances as they stood.
For the Cheynes and the Geakes there was nothing else left to risk. It was now a question of consolidation; a conclusion Cheyne had long come to. The task at hand now was not ‘making a fortune’ but preserving what was left. Albany’s apparent apathy, it’s reputed torpor (as the Perth Gazette lamented), was not a function of insensibility. It was the opposite. They had all been brought to a windy coastal confusion and been granted for that privilege the economic equivalent of an ectopic pregnancy. Risk aversion therefore, that ridiculous overweighting of sure things and improbable outcomes, took hold. Acting like a nervous butterfly, they knew neither what was safe nor uncertain and fluttered between the two with desire to land equal in every measure to the impulse to immediately take off again.
Above: Late in 1834, the town of Albany was divided between free enterprise petitioners, led by Cheyne, demanding convict labour and those, allied to Spencer, who dared not question the Swan River authority. Within eighteen months of the petition, only six or seven of the fifteen settlers who backed Cheyne remained. Image: Excerpt from the Albany petition to the Colonial Secretary in London, E.G. Stanley. Source: Trove.
Cheyne had encouraged family members to come out and join him; his nephews John and George Macartney, another nephew John & his wife and family, and his brothers Alex and Bruce. Through his (little understood) connections with Sweden, Cheyne directly and indirectly brought out at least six support staff too. But over time each of them departed in their own way, if not by death, then through the realisation there would be no return on their investment without a lifetime of unrelenting grind.
Alexander Cheyne endured his year and a half at Albany as best he could. Having been granted two positions by Stirling (Director of Public Works and Chief of Police) he had cause, initially, to be optimistic.
Albany’s position as primary link with the seat of power at Perth was illustrated by the arrival of the James Pattison there and by the length of time Stirling spent putting his strategies for the town into place. In Stirling’s mind, nothing had changed since the summer of 1831/32. His vision of Albany as beacon for the colony’s South Coast remained very much intact. Among the clamor for property and the regulations he was determined to enforce regarding house construction, Stirling announced he was to build a Vice-Regal Residency set upon Lot E1, four acres just east of the town, high on the south facing bank of the harbour, where the Albany Port Authority building now stands. Immediately west of that location were to be the newly commissioned army barracks and a new gaol. His vision for Brunswick Road to be Albany’s government headquarters, beginning with the post office, customs and court houses, progressing to the police and military buildings and on to the Governor’s country retreat. With implicit sincerity, Stirling employed the tactic of make believe in order to fire up enthusiasm. The land was set aside for his country retreat but not so much as a sod was turned.
At the same time, Stirling worked on his plan for the colonial police force, an entity plagued by lack of public money, which (where it existed) was essentially manned by borrowed soldiers. Stirling had things on his mind, security for remote settlers being primary. Already he was planning the Binjareb Noongar put-down at Peel’s Pinjarra, something he would attend to while bringing forward establishment of the Perth- Albany Road, along which he wanted to place security stations.
To that end Stirling created the Mounted Corps whose job it would be to oversee those stations. The position of Superintendent at Albany, end station of the grand plan, was given to Alexander Cheyne who was also placed in charge of roads (public works), a task that amounted to putting no more than six men at any one time (mostly transient labourers and disciplined soldiers) to work on improving the emerging street system.
Stirling was a man of plans and a good administrator when it came to executing them, they just didn’t match the amount of money available, which led to failures. Alexander Cheyne was given his job as Superintendent of Mounted Police by Stirling soon after they landed in June 1834 and was made redundant less than twelve months later, causing him to give up on Albany and seek work elsewhere.
Alexander Cheyne was sensitive to loss and noted it in his diary. Around mid-February 1835 there was an incidence of domestic violence involving the soldiers of the 21st Regiment. Recently promoted Corporal Patrick Reardon, for reasons unknown, lost control of himself and, despite others bearing witness, beat up his wife. Reardon then threatened to shoot his commanding officer Lieutenant Stewart when he intervened. It was Stewart, someone who spent time with the Cheyne brothers, who a year previous admitted his troop’s drinking was out of control when Private George Jones was found dead in the ‘Black Hole’ lock-up one morning after a night at Geake’s tavern. Now, Reardon had attacked his wife and left her in such a state it was clear his intent was murder. Corporal Reardon was shipped aboard the Caroline in chains, (luckily in port at the time and bound for Fremantle) for ultimate return to Hobart to face court martial. Mrs Reardon was left at Albany and as anticipated died the following day.
In the meantime, Alex Cheyne was strapped for help, having to hire whatever labour was available at whatever the going rate was. A thing determined by how many men of transient nature were in town at the time. High labour costs were a function of high food costs, the persistent nagging problem of too many wanting to buy and not enough willing or able to grow. One of the labouring men named in Alexander Cheyne’s diary during 1835, prior to the departure of the Mountaineer with Gill and the Newell siblings aboard, was a man named Church. This will have been Tom Church who later made statements as to the events at Middle Island respecting Anderson, James Manning and James Newell.
Three years previous George Cheyne had run his indentured Swedish servants into the ground. So much so they complained to the authorities and sought recompense through the Albany court. We touched on this earlier. In the end, three of the Swedes, who were only boys really, abandoned Albany by attempting to walk to the Swan River, and perished along the way. The only one of the four who decided not to take that risk was the eldest, thirty-year-old Andrew Nordbury/Mobury (probably Nordby), who left Cheyne anyway and joined the sealer fraternity. Peter Vanquest, who looks to have been Macartney Cheyne’s indentured servant, at least for a while, was about the same age as Nordbury.
Cheyne had two boats which he used to service the ships which entered the harbour, offering water and provisions, such as he was able to provide. Early in December 1834, as Alexander Cheyne recorded in his diary, the Caledonia arrived from Hobart enroute to Mauritius. Skippered by Will Symers, nephew of Thomas Lyell, the boat needed fresh water which fellow Scot Cheyne arranged, using his boat and crew made up of two hired men. One was a jumper from the James Pattison, George Costar, the other Peter Vanquest. On the third trip from shore to the vessel the lighter under the command of these two boatmen was swamped. Both fell into the water and drowned. It was December, so presumably the easterly had blown in hard. There was a desperate search but way too late and to no immediate avail.
This tragedy will have impacted Cheyne and perhaps was the straw which broke the camel’s back regarding his relationship with Spencer. Cheyne was working extremely hard, doing his best every day to improve the tiny community’s economic grip and nothing of any significance was coming from it, except disaster.
Captain Will Symers did everything he could to effect recovery of the men’s bodies and gave Cheyne an extravagant array of gifts, presumably as a measure of his gratitude and dismay. The strange irony of this tale being the comradery which evolved between Will Symers and George Cheyne which ultimately led to the Caledonia’s return in June 1835 and to Thomas Lyell Symers joining with Albany.
Another Bonafide settler of last resort was about to make the leap.
Princess Royal Harbour claimed many souls during those early unguarded years, as we shall see again just a little further on.
As we make our way thru Alexander Cheyne’s diary we see his nephew, John, was unhappy and talking of trying his hand elsewhere. By the end of 1835 Cheyne not only lost his boatmen and his court case, but Alexander, Macartney and John, including John’s wife and children, too. Eighteen months after the arrival of the James Pattison Albany had virtually sunk back into its lonely self, as if nestled in a bed of quicksand.
After losing his family, Cheyne’s next move, which took more than a decade, was to encourage the Moir and Muir families, his wife’s nephews, to make the leap from Scotland. Cheyne took the setbacks, one after another, but was not a quitter. He’d rather pull the entire world down around him than accept ruin.
With Stirling’s denial of his 1831 labour proposal and then Spencer’s arrival and assertion of himself over all settlers, Cheyne was not only furious but increasingly desperate. The idea of the Swan River Colony, James Stirling’s Mangles enabled ambition realised as a bottomless money pit to be filled from settler pockets, rode high in his mind. Albany was not fit for agriculture. That had been long noted and was again just a year after the Pony Case when Charles Darwin came ashore in the Beagle only to shake his head and mutter aspersions before going back aboard, pulling the cabin’s shutters and wishing nothing more than to sail away. Whatever pastoral land there was beyond Albany’s Pale was too far away, and there were no roads to get there.
While in Albany for the Pony Case, once again Roe went out to the Moorilup Ponds, to Kendenup, as if to say, ‘here is your agricultural land gentlemen, do something about it’. The best acreage was already granted to themselves, including Cheyne and Morley, after Roe had first gone up there in December 1831, and of course the motivation to sell it on cannot be denied. Cheyne went on the excursion when Stirling came in on the James Pattison, probably hoping someone would buy then. The Moorilup Ponds were a two-day ride into the top end of Menang Country and hadn’t been visited by any settlers since the Stirling ride-out six or seven months previous.
Cheyne’s petition for convict labour will have been motivated in part by the scale of his grant there. He was desperate to exploit his 19000 acres one way or another (almost certainly through sale) and doing everything in his power to bring development, and therefore potential buyers, closer was typical of his energy manifesting as action. The plan could be said to have worked to some extent. Though they could not afford to build a road that far, it might have been possible to station some of the soldiers there as an inducement. The idea was in keeping with Stirling’s notion of the Perth-Albany Road and his means of imagining it into being, and it was with a potential security station in mind that the February 1835 excursion took place. It is mentioned by Alexander Cheyne exactly one week before the outcome of the Rotted Pony Case was recorded.
Tuesday 10th February:
Mr Roe, Mr Bland and Mac (Cheyne’s nephew, Macartney) started this afternoon for the bush to examine the country about Moorilup to ascertain if there was water with the view to forming a military station . . .
Monday 16th February:
The party returned from the bush. A very unfavourable account, there being a deficiency of water about Moorilup which Mr Roe states is wrong laid down in the charts. They speak very favourably of the Hay, where there is very good ground of very limited extent, on each side of the river.
There were Menang bidis meandering west, north and east beyond Duck Lake at Albany but that was it, the rest was bush. Mile upon mile of bush. As far as the potential new investors were concerned too much of it between Albany and Moorilup to be interested in setting up there. For the settlers of last resort, however, things were different. If they were going to make something of this place then they had to find agricultural land. By this time it was clear coastal grasses were hopeless for livestock and Spencer was learning an expensive lesson at Strawberry Hill. When Roe, Bland and Macartney Cheyne came back with the Hay River announcement Spencer leapt at it. Stirling had already parceled it off for himself though, so Spencer had to buy it from him.
Once more Cheyne will have lowered his head and shook it.
At Albany the only reliable way in and out was by sea and if anyone was to do anything about changing that, it had to be the settlers. After they had paid for the land and erected houses in the mold of Stirling’s aesthetic of course. From arrival of the James Pattison, despite all the potential and accompanying optimism, nothing but a few hundred pounds in government revenue and a virtual famine came of it. Just as Swan River Mania had turned sour at Perth, the hand-to-mouth infant economy at Albany was simply unable to cope. From the moment of Spencer’s arrival in October 1833, colonial produce was in constant short supply, as it had been and to some extent still was around on the West Coast. The settlement at the Sound lurched from passing ship to cruel exploitative trader and was set to continue in that vein until they could either grow their own or establish a regular line of supply.
What they needed was their own ships dedicated to their own needs. At least one. But no-one at Albany was in that business. Not yet. Until the arrival of Thomas Symers late in 1835 the town remained bound by property speculators, prospective agriculturalists and local traders dependent on passing ships for whatever goods they could get. Stirling had been beating the whaling and sealing drum from prior to his 1832 departure and, realising the town’s worsening predicament, took it up again with renewed vigour the moment he returned. Spencer encouraged whaling and sealing from his arrival too.
In the meantime, a few outsiders had heard the call and made the effort to get involved.
Menang relations at this time
We know Thomas Brooker Sherratt got to Albany with his family aboard the James Pattison and had therefore been party to what was going on at the Sound from that time, including the Settler/Official rift announced by Cheyne’s petition, which Sherratt saw sense in and signed. We also know the James Pattison settlers were essentially focused on property speculation and the pursuit of agriculture while Stirling and his Perth Gazette were looking to direct them into sealing and whaling where access wasn’t hindered by an ocean of bush unprotected by ‘King George Town’ Aborigines. Mokare and Nakinah might have passed on, but Manyat, Ionen, Handsom, Tulicatwale and Wonewar were carrying on the established protocol of accompanying settler treks into the surrounding country. However, the stories of those expeditions are blanketed in colonial language and very hard to decipher from a Menang point of view. Suffice it to say, the tacit welcome continued, indeed expanded, despite the inherent danger.
Alexander Cheyne’s diary allows us to discern something of Aboriginal relations at Albany during this time. We know there was no violence in the region until Charles Newell was speared at Kendenup in 1841, but that doesn’t mean everyone was the best of friends.
Alex Cheyne mentions on Friday, 24th November 1834, that Hansom/Handsome (aka Cartool/Kartrul) had speared George’s bull sometime in the near past and had been banished from the town for two months. In the same entry, he says the huts of Henry Tully and Maurice Brown, both of whom had come aboard the Buffalo as part of the Spencer retinue in 1833, had been broken into. In any case, the first thing we can see is that the 1834 food shortage at Albany also extended to the Aborigines.
George Cheyne was not a fan of the Aborigines. He didn’t like the idea of shared living and was probably the most adamant among the settlers about changing that circumstance. Cheyne wrote that the Albany Aborigines were in the habit of visiting and entering houses at will, assuming those places were as open to them as the military barracks had been during the time of Barker, but of course, things were different now. Very different. Cheyne said he had no more than the offcut of a sail as his front door, that he worried continuously about his wife being alone when the men were out, and that he made a point of enforcing privacy, which, without direct evidence, likely involved aggression, if not violence. So much so, one assumes, that Hansome took offence and speared his prize bull.
So, all was not well among the remnants of Mokare’s moort with regard to the new, or at least altered, settler presence.
The next day, Alex Cheyne says he called for Dr. Lyttleton and some soldiers and went in search of the culprits. Lyttleton’s role as Wadjela Mulgarradock (Whiteman Doctor), a position of respect held by the Aborigines, will have added gravity to their probing. Alexander Cheyne says they went a little past the flagstaff at the western edge of the built area where some of the Menang were gathered and noticed Wonywar (Wonewar) leaving as they approached. They called out to him but Wonewar wouldn’t stop, thus indicating his guilt. Alexander Cheyne told the others Wonewar was now banished from the town and, if seen, would be taken by the soldiers. Cheyne says Tullingat (Tulicatwale), his wife, and his son Lindall (Lindol) were there and that Nerapan, who had shipped his spear at the sight of the soldiers and could speak English well enough, was asked to explain to Tulicatwale that Wonewar must not come back into town.
A little earlier in the diary we learn that Tulicatwale’s wife and mother of their son is the daughter of Wonewar.
Both Wonewar and Tulicatwale had history at the settlement but it’s unlikely Dr Lyttleton and Alexander Cheyne knew the full extent of it. What they will have known is that Wonewar was not liked by the settlers as he had speared young Tatan at Barmup in October or early November 1834, apparently out of spite. Tatan was second son to Dr Uredale, the Menang Mulgarradoc. Being a local boy and therefore relative, killing him out of rage put Wonewar’s life in grave danger from his own people. The information can’t be wholly relied upon, but news of Tatan’s demise reached the Perth Gazette who reported his death came at the hands of Winnawar (Wonewar) after he was infuriated by the younger man beating him in a simulated spearing contest. Tatan was one of those who went to the Swan River during the emissary visits of 1833 when Yagan was at the height of his career.
There is more to Wa/onewar’s story than just violence and theft as his kalla was at Barmup and it was from here he had been deprived. We also don’t know if Wanewar was one of the five men involved in the sealers attempted abduction of the three Menang women immediately prior to the Amity sailing in. If so, Wanewar may have been the one who speared Dennis Dineen and never accepted his kalla being appropriated by the soldiers when they discovered the fertility of the soil there.
Those free settlers in place while Dr Collie was playing Resident Magistrate during 1831/32 will have carried Wonewar’s reputation forward, but the act of killing Tatan cemented it. Alexander Cheyne made a show of trying to arrest Wonewar by bringing soldiers to the flagstaff and it is no coincidence Wonewar decided it best if he made his way out of town for a while. It would not have been the first time, far from it. Wonewar had been banished by Mokare for spearing his sister and had to spend time alone outside of his protected area as consequence. This will have made him highly vulnerable to attack from others, as to be alone in the bush meant you were in trouble for something and could not be trusted. Wonewar was very lucky to have survived his third killing of a relative, testament to whatever redemptive skills he possessed in that regard.
Wonewar was described as being about 30 years old when recorded by James Browne in 1836 and was still in Albany in 1842 when his name was recorded by Henry Bland, then Protector of Aborigines based at York.
According to references by Nind, Collie and Barker dating from 1829, Nakinah and Mokare had banished Wonewar for running off with Tulicatwale’s sister. Barker had put distance between himself and Wonewar because of Wonewar’s involvement in at least two incidents where children had been speared. Wonewar and Tulicatwale were also involved in the treacherous murder of Tallimamundy, a young Porongurup man who had come into the settlement and was living with and employed by Lieutenant Carew and his wife at the barracks. Dr Collie had also accused Wonewar and Tulicatwale of stealing from the farm at Strawberry Hill during 1831, instructing the head gardener to fire ‘soft shot’ at them if they were found again. Indeed, there are many other negative references to both men, most notably Wonewar. Most involve the taking of women and the spearing of men, women and children, including tales in which Wonewar murders Mokare’s sister by spear and later his own brother by pushing him off a cliff.
With this insight, we begin to understand how the new Albany residents might have viewed the Aborigines and come to some understanding as to why George Cheyne was uncomfortable with the idea of anyone entering his house without his express permission. Though Menang violence had not spread beyond internal disputes, with men like Wonewar and Tullicatwale about, it would have been hard to feel safe.
Foremost among the Albany Aborigines during 1834/35 were Manyat, Ionan, Hansome, Tulicatwale and Wanewar. They had met the French in 1826, witnessed the arrival of Major Lockyer and the soldiers and prisoners aboard the Amity a few months later, had accepted the long term white presence during the benign four-year leadership of Collet Barker, had lived through the transition from that to free settlement via the arrival of Dr Collie in March 1831, and then the slow growth of the population until the Spencer arrival, followed by Dr Lyttleton, more ships, and then arrival of the James Pattison, bringing with it the likes of Alexander Cheyne.
During this time warriors among the Menang men very probably continued their engagement in tribal warfare, constantly spearing others for matters relating to family vendettas which resulted in awful consequences for other, innocent, members of the Albany group. Wonewar survived at least until 1842 because he was distinctly a King George Sound man. Though being the source of constant trouble, he could be trusted by the other King George Sound Aborigines not to betray them. If you did not belong to one of the Albany families, as in Tallymamundy’s case, especially during a time of heightened conflict, apart from being a potential target through family relations, you could not be trusted, and it was extremely dangerous. Among the Aborigines, payback spearings could be carried out on relatives of the offender, including women and children. Many innocent Menang were killed or injured because of Wonewar’s actions and because his enemies could not get to him directly.
Eight whole years had passed since the white presence had been established and the process of cultural exchange begun. The Europeans admired Aboriginal bushcraft but found the level of violence between them shocking, while the Aborigines seemed to largely accept the attitude and even moral direction of the newcomers, so long as the apparently abundant stored food supplies they held were shared.
By and large, however, resentment built upon the infringement of one group upon the other resided on both sides. The interracial peace held at Albany may have been an example to the other Swan River Colony settlements, but it was an uneasy one.
Come 1835 there were Menang children born at or very near Albany who knew nothing of the Aboriginal only world. The two clearest examples being Norngern (Tommy King) and Lindol.
At Albany late in 1834, settlers were expelling Aborigines they suspected of stealing, threatening to lock them in the horrible little box they called the Black Hole if they returned within a set period. This was nothing new to Wonewar and Tulicatwale, although the imposition seems to have left them both somewhat vexed. How long a term banishment meant was arbitrary, a time span dependent upon the strength of residual ill-feeling on the part of the settlers. Itself something affected by the usefulness of the offending individual. Despite no agreement, treaty, or compensation offered by the Europeans, the value of positive relations persisted.
While the penal camp was in place (Dec 1826 to Mar 1831), the continuous exchange of food, clothes, tools and shelter for knowledge worked well, but by the mid-1830s, the only exchanges that took place were a kind of government sanctioned group payment made in flour by the Commissariat whenever there was sufficient supply, or when the Aborigines were employed to go on treks and expeditions.
As illustrated by George Cheyne, privacy became an issue. This, in part, resulted in continued pilfering of food as the Aboriginal share principle was at odds with that of European ownership, but also because the Menang still expected the Europeans to contribute to their world simply because they had moved into it. Which, albeit in minute measure, the colonists occasionally did. Nonetheless, European possessiveness clashed with Aboriginal communality, which meant constant tensions. The upside of the new free settler populace, however, was greater demand for Menang services, which helped maintain relations. The two groups were alien, but it seems both worked at accommodating the other. The language barrier was narrowing too and as result each could live tolerably well alongside the other.
George Cheyne’s bull being speared was a reminder from hansom/Kartrul that this was Menang Country, now King George Aboriginal Country, and that were Cheyne not Wadjela, it would have been him that received the spear.
What is very exciting about Alexander Cheyne’s passage is the connection between Tulicatwale and Lindol. Not only do we know now they are father and son, but that little Nindaroli, previously described by Isaac Nind and a little later by James Browne (the Assistant Commissary’s son), and Lindol are one and the same.
Nindarol was called Lindol by the free settlers. Other researchers may have come to this conclusion too, but it is a very welcome and delightful revelation for these pages, as we have built substantial appreciation of the life and times of this individual and it is tremendously gratifying to finally discover not only who his parents were but to be able to home in on when he was born. Remember, Lindol went to Perth in 1833, travelling back in December with Nair aboard HMS Alligator, in the company of Baron Von Hugel who described him as ‘the boy, Lindolf’.
There was some conjecture amongst students of Albany’s early Aborigines that Nindaroli was in fact the son of Isaac Nind. This is unlikely as it would position Lindol’s age at no more than seven in 1835, too young to be the ‘freshly shaved’ young man described by Von Hugel. The notion was fueled by the closeness of the names Nind and Nindaroli together with a fondness for the child in the surviving writing of the penal period. Also, Isaac Nind’s debilitating anxiety which, it was perceived, may have resulted from him being identified as father to the child of another man’s wife.
We can see that Nindarol and Lindall (Lindol) are similar sounding words and that the writers of the day, all being British (or, as in the case of Baron Von Hugel, as proficient as a native English speaker) all struggled with the pronunciation of the Noongar language and its Albany dialect. What Alexander Cheyne does in describing Lindol as the son of Tulicatwale, is dramatically improve our guide to his identity and status as one of the original King George Town boys. At last, we have a Menang individual we can follow from childhood through the entirety of the period of first occupation at Albany and measure his behaviour as he matures alongside Wylie, Norngern (Tommy King) and Tommy’s lifelong friend and adversary, Yunyurgyl aka Dicky Bumble.
Above: Wonewar and Tulicatwale frequently appear in the early Albany records. From 1829, under differing interpretations of their names, they are commonly described in incidents of theft and violence. Lindol, Tulicatewale’s son, was young and impressionable during this period. Being exposed to both sides of the racial divide he grew up as one of the King George Boys who attempted to bridge both cultures. The highly aggressive and dangerous Wonewar is mentioned in various records up until 1842. Image: Excerpt cut from a small but critical article on King George’s Sound published in the Perth Gazette dated 8th November, 1834. Source: Trove.
The McLeod misfortune and Sherratt, Lovett & Dring
Sherratt was another who established himself as one of Albany’s settlers of last resort. He was akin to Spencer in his age, large family and lock-stock-and-barrel commitment. Sherratt was oppressive too, if not despotic in the positioning of himself within his family and the community. He was, as Spencer was, irascible, and the outcome of their experiences at Albany are effectively the same. Sherratt’s demise is so well known these days it has come to define him as an historical character. Almost every reference of him since Donald Garden pointed it out in 1977 paints him as a paranoid crank. Unfortunately, it can’t be denied. Despite his willingness, T.B. Sherratt saw nemesis in almost everything at Albany. As if the Sirens were calling at him and he was inexorably, almost knowingly, drawn toward disaster, he developed irrational levels of distrust and suspicion in those around him until each of his otherwise well-reasoned ventures came undone. His is a cautionary tale, in that his fears brought ruin upon himself, but also illustrate the ruthlessness of the competition for business survival at Albany and how bigger, stronger, harsher personalities, such as Cheyne and McKail, were able to undermine and feed upon the apparent abundance of Sherratt’s wealth and his proclivity for spreading it more widely than he could properly manage.
For a look at the multi-generational Sherratt family activities at Albany read Robert Stephens submission to the RWAHS Early Days Journal (Vol 6; Pt 2 – 1963), a truncated online version of which is available here.
In any case, Albany was the whole darn shooting match for the Sherratt family too and by way of that Thomas Brooker bought multiple town lots as property speculation and looked toward the hotel and merchant businesses as family endeavors. Agriculture, probably for the same reasons as everybody else, did not present as an automatic option. Instead, perhaps through the prowess displayed by the Henty brothers along with the Will Symers reconnaissance of December 1834, Sherratt came to recognise the opportunity boat-owning presented. The Sherratt family weren’t sea-faring people, they had nothing like the maritime pedigree of Symers, but rather than sit on-shore and look to take what advantage of the passing trade they could, they saw merit in the implorations of Stirling, albeit hesitantly, and ended up venturing into the whaling game sooner than anyone else, and afterwards became boat-builders and sailors too.
According to Robert Stephens, who had the benefit of accessing privately held Sherratt Family Papers, the family upon arrival rented the house of Janet McLeod, a widow, and her young family.
Above: Lot B36, purchased and built upon by John McLeod of Hobart during 1834, became the rented living quarters of the Sherratt family while they built their own home during 1835. Ownership of the house transferred to Janet (or Jane) McLeod when her husband was drowned in Princess Royal Harbour. The block to the right of McLeod’s was bought by Joseph Brignall, Captain of the Jolly Rambler, then by John Pavey/William/Andrews who later transferred it to the South Australian Aboriginal woman Fanny Bryan, while the block on the left was bought by the builder John Sinclair. All blocks appear to have been bought during 1834. Image: Cut from Chauncy’s 30A 1851 Albany Town Plan: Source: SRO, Series 235, Tally 005618
John McLeod had come from Hobart, arriving early in April 1834. Six weeks or so ahead of the James Pattison. Correspondence between Richard Spencer and the builders Gordon & Sinclair suggest McLeod received some kind of preferential treatment and was able to buy lot B36 down on the beach and immediately commission a house build, likely using Morley’s services.
The Jolly Rambler, which brought Maddocks and McLeod, was an important West Australian boat. It looks to have arrived from The Cape at the Swan River in November 1831, afterwards making a number of voyages between Launceston, Sydney, Java and New Zealand with cargo. Majority owned on arrival at Perth by the settler John Greswell, she was bought-out by her skipper Mr Joseph Brignall. Mostly active on the east coast during 1832 /33 Jolly Rambler was still in effect a Swan River boat and thereby connected to the needs and wants of its settlers. She responded to the severe shortages of 1833/34, as did Jess, another nifty coastal schooner of the day.
Donald Garden makes the point labour at Albany at this time had been driven out because there was no food in the town and what there was was so expensive it hardly made the effort of living there worthwhile. This in turn drove the price of available labour to levels that forced prospective settlers not only to question the viability of building there, but to turn against the idea and leave.
Cheyne’s petition for convict labour wasn’t driven by petty quarrels between settler and government personalities, but by the ever-growing notion they had all been lured into a financial trap from which there appeared little to no escape. In any case, it was Captain Brignall of the Jolly Rambler who in early 1834 filled his 45-foot one-time British pleasure craft with colonial produce and delivered it from Hobart, via Sydney to Albany, bringing with him Mr Robert Maddocks and John Mc Leod & family. According to Alexander Cheyne’s documents, Brignall also speculatively bought Lot B37at this time, a block which was later sold to John Pavey/Williams/Andrews who bequeathed it to Fanny Bryan (who we will talk more about ahead.)
Oddly enough, despite local crisis, the worst of the Swan River’s early malfunction was perceived to be over; from the distance of the East Coast anyhow. With the Spencer emigration an accomplished fact and plenty of boats calling there, the outlook for King George Sound was generally optimistic. By the autumn of 1834, Stirling’s return was already overdue, and the belief was he was bringing a whole lot more back with him. By comparison, the number of new arrivals out West was still tiny, but there had been enough cross-colony newspaper conversation and actual positive activity to maintain, if not nurture, a microcosm of commercial absorption. A seal and whale fishery worth exploiting being the most obvious of those interests.
It turns out, Stirling chartering the James Pattison for the return trip was an important attempt at establishing a regular shipping service between England and Western Australia, and this would not have gone unnoticed outside the colony either. Indeed, it may have been facilitated through George Mangles. There isn’t enough information to be specific about this, except all the hoopla over the renaming of the Sterling as the Governor Stirling on its last voyage and now the James Pattison being so feted prior to departure, it isn’t difficult to notice the promotional impetus behind Stirling, who at times presents with celebrity status. This, I think, can be attributed to the Mangles brothers Charles and Frederick. Stirling was shrewd and appears to have played that part of the game very well. He had to keep the money flowing inwards in order to keep the colony in the news, and the only way to do that was to keep sending signals to those who had money. There was a network effect which Stirling was skilled at tapping into and not afraid to draw from wherever he could. Indeed, in this aspect the Swan River Colony bears all the hallmarks of a startup enterprise.
In any event, with John McLeod were his wife Janet, two young children (John & Ellen) and their domestic servant/children’s mistress Ann Barrowby. Also coming for a look see was John Soloman. Very little is known of McLeod, but it may have been that he was connected to the whaling and sealing business at Tasmania and may have been involved with the recruitment of William Lovett to the town. McLeod applied for the positions of Harbour Master and Pilot that year, so was clearly involved with the sea. He was also reckoned to be constructing a public house. The builders Gordon & Sinclair thought he had been granted some kind of preferential treatment by Spencer with regard to his purchase of lots B36 and A12. This might have looked as if it was aided by his investment potential, but McLeod’s arrival predated the James Pattison and therefore the new building regulations. Whatever may have been the case with regard to that, within five months of arrival John McLeod was dead. Crossing the harbour with a load of timber (or perhaps quicklime), presumably from Little Grove, McLeod and two others drowned when the boat gave way. McLeod’s death is cited by Erickson as 1st August 1834 and Ann Barrowby’s entry suggests she was with him. That shortage of labour meant cutting your own logs or carting your own quicklime across dangerous waters in what could only have been a dinghy. Mention of this can be found in Francis Bird’s 1926 review of the records.
In the wake of the tragedy, up until she left town, it seems Janet McLeod employed Dorothea Newell as mistress to her children. Come mid-February, Mrs McLeod left the house in the care of Sir Richard who oversaw the lease and eventual sale. Less than a month later, unemployed and facing a difficult future in a forlorn and isolated place, Dorothea Newell snuck aboard the Mountaineer with her brother, her sister, and her sister’s new husband, Matthew Gill, and slipped out of town. Mrs Mc Leod arrived at Fremantle from Albany 23rd February 1835 aboard the Caroline. On that same boat from King George’s Sound came Lieutenant Stewart and a party of soldiers, including Corporal Patrick Reardon, none of them knowing yet that Reardon’s wife had died from the injuries delivered to her the day before they left.
The Sherratt family lived and traded from the old McLeod house very probably from this time while T.B. acquired other town blocks and commenced his own build on Lot B28; the family moving-in there during 1836. When perusing Sherratt’s business ledger of that time, Robert Stephens noted he had been trading with what he called, ‘toilers of the sea; bay whalers, sealers and muttonbirders’.
Above: Robert Stephens had access to what he called the Sherratt Family Papers (now outside Albany and in private hands), including T.B. Sherratt’s merchant ledger from 1835 which showed transactions with what he called ‘toilers of the sea’. These transactions will have given Sherratt insight as to the likely profitability of Bay Whaling along the South Coast, a pursuit he took up at Doubtful Island Bay in partnership with William Lovett perhaps as early as the winter of 1835, and certainly from 1836. Image: Excerpt from page two of Stephens’ 1963 expose on Thomas Brooker Sherratt and family. Source: RWAHS Early Days Journal (Vol. 6; Part 2)
It was just a little over six months after Sherratt’s arrival when David Dring came to Albany in his coastal cutter, Isabella. As we saw above, Dring was reported to have had two boats made for him and I wonder if they were replicas which also went under the same name, as there looks to have been another Isabella operational in the area at the same time. The first Isabella may always have been intended for sale on the East Coast. The second Isabella looks to have been under the command of Lionel Lukin but there is nothing extant to confirm this.
While Dring was on this voyage, the schooner Jess (under Captain Henry Hay) was loading flour, pork and sundry equipment at Hobart for trading at the Swan River. Among those sundry items was equipment belonging to a seasoned Hobart whaleman named William Lovett who was bound for King George Sound. Lovett was therefore at the South Coast during the 1835 winter whaling season, and it is tantalising to think he was at that pursuit east of Albany that year.
Martin Gibbs was clear in his 1995 Doctorate thesis that nothing happened in Albany vis-a-vis shore -based whaling until 1836, and all the searches I have undertaken going on 30 years later (the benefit of search-engine efficiency and massive archival digitisation duly noted) support that assertion, except for one unsubstantiated claim that Barker Bay, or Whaling Cove at Barker Bay, was operational the year before. This claim looks to be based on the idea Lovett was in Albany with his equipment that winter, which he was, but doesn’t look closely enough at the relationship between Lovett, Sherratt and the owner of two new boats that year, David Dring.
Sherratt, Dring and Lovett may have come together by coincidence after the latter two independently (or through association with John McLeod) identified Albany as a place of opportunity. During this time Sherratt lay in situ quite literally with a suitcase full of cash. Although the co-ordination of Dring’s and Lovett’s arrival at Albany probably reflects prior arrangement, the suggestion is that Sherratt joined with Lovett after Dring cashed out. John McLeod’s untimely death perhaps having something to do with it.
Dring was away from the colony for pretty much the whole of 1835. Someone aboard a boat named Isabella encountered Anderson in the environs of Mondrain Island and sold him a pistol, which we will see when we look at the court records in just a little while. The timing of this encounter is curious because it would appear to be much later than January or February when Dring left Albany, thus bringing forward the notion both of Dring’s boats were called Isabella. From newspaper reports we know Dring arrived in Sydney early in April, where he declared he’d left King George Sound on Christmas Day. The timing of the sealers encounter with the boat they called Isabella isn’t specific about dates but can only have been from April at the very earliest.
This allows for the possibility Lovett, soon after arrival at Albany, set out with his whaling equipment aboard the Isabella and commenced some kind of activity most likely in the region between Doubtful Island Bay and Middle Island.
We don’t know, but Dring may have met with Sherratt at Albany early in January and left his intention to involve himself in a whaling project in the area. Perhaps even indicating Lovett was soon to arrive. Early in April, Lovett did arrive and unloaded his shore-based whaling equipment from the Jess, but isn’t said to have established at Doubtful Island Bay, the most talked about locality east of the Sound, until the following season. At least that’s what seems to have been concluded. But what did Lovett do during the whaling season of 1835 then? Work from the bay known as Whaler’s Cove at King George Sound, or at the Whaler’s Cove (now known as House Beach) at Doubtful Island Bay?
We’ll look at this again a little later on when breaking down the movements of the sealers during the Middle Island episode.
Thomas Lyell Symers and his ship Caledonia
There is much to consider. Symers arrived mid-year 1835 in the Caledonia and McKail from Perth (permanently) towards the end, a period which also coincided with the arrival back into town of the desperately ill, Dr Alexander Collie. As Alexander Cheyne’s diary progresses, we see more and more people leaving town. Macartney Cheyne, the Lee cousins, Watt and Moody (Mudie) all left before the end of June.
The brusque, hard and heavy living Scotsman Thomas Symers might never have come to Albany if his nephew Will hadn’t been skippering Caledonia, his barque, and called in to the Sound for water on the way to Mauritius late in 1834. This is the same Will Symers who proffered gifts upon Cheyne after his workers Costar and Vanquest drowned while restocking the Caledonia with that water.
Will Symers effectively boarded with Cheyne while the Caledonia was in Port and the pair bonded. On return to Hobart where Thomas Symers was pondering setting up home Will recounted what had happened and in so doing brought such a positive picture to Thomas’s mind he scrapped all existing plans and decided upon moving to Albany.
Thanks to an awful lot of work done some 70 years ago by the Albany Historian Rhoda Glover, we have a reasonably detailed picture of Symers life and times, a very important part of it brought to life by entries in the Alexander Cheyne diary.
Thomas Symers arrived on June 1st 1835 and it wasn’t long before he was in court having charged one of his sailors, Soloman Aspinall with theft. We learn that Symers brought passengers who intended to stay. Two went by the name Hillyer and another as G. Smith but all three left aboard the Dublin Packet within two weeks. Albany was not quite what they expected.
Black Anderson and Symers became involved in coastal exploitation during 1835, resulting in Symers posting surety for him after Anderson was charged with stealing from John Pavey/Williams/Andrews. Alexander Cheyne, perhaps labouring under some condition which induced him (without a lot of money) to come out to the colonies, stayed around 18 months until Stirling’s cutbacks forced him to migrate to Tasmania for work.
You cant say the Cheyne’s didn’t try.
But departure of the Cheynes overlaps with the arrival of Thomas Lyell Symers and his crew, and so George’s hopes were not fully extinguished.
Symers was a fellow Scot. He was big and brash too. A ship’s captain of considerable experience and reputation. A hard drinker and tough player all round, Symers was part of the Merchant Navy permitted to operate in the Indian Ocean under EIC control. He was well known at Madras and Calcutta, as he was at Mauritius, Batavia and Hobart. He and his brother, who often sailed with him, had experienced notable wreck and survival in 1821, and by the time he got to Albany aged 38, was a self-made, independent force to be reckoned with.
Spencer took a deep breath while Cheyne could not have been happier.
Alexander Cheyne’s diary speaks of the arrival of Will Symers in December 1834. Will was Thomas’s nephew and skippering the Caledonia when it called in to the Sound for fresh water en-route to the Isle de France, Mauritius.
John McKail and the notorious Ship Inn
Among those who heard Albany’s call for supplies was Anthony Curtis, a Perth businessman who had just bought Stephen Henty’s 26-ton cutter Fanny, sailed it to Batavia for produce then, from May 1835, commenced trading between Albany and Fremantle. With Curtis came Perth’s brightest reject, a twenty-five-year-old former colonial carpenter, dissident drunken thug and Aboriginal child killer whose need to be outside Perth was not just a requirement of Stirling’s government but a life-preserving necessity. McKail had shot Gogalee, innocent son of Yellagonga, gentleman head of the north of the river tribe at Perth, the Mooroo, and would have been put to the spear had he been seen there again. (See The Inimical John McKail for detail.)
McKail seems to have acted as Albany agent for Curtis and from there progressed into his own business. His transactions quickly bringing him into contact with Samuel Hawkes of the Ship Inn, with James Elphie of the Waterman’s Arms and with the other two general merchants, Sherratt and Cheyne.
The 1836 Albany census describes McKail as an Indian labourer and from that (once again mistakenly) Erickson concludes he must have been born there, but McKail was born in Deptford, London, and grew up a ship’s carpenter. He came to the Swan River as a nineteen-year-old aboard the Parmelia, one of two colonial carpenters deemed essential workers by Stirling, both of whom ended up settling at Albany. The other being Stephen Henry Knight.
McKail may have been a friend of George Mangles, a cousin to Ellen, and found himself on the boat out to Fremantle because of it. McKail’s father was a naval architect and there is some suggestion he and James Mangles Snr were acquainted. George Mangles held the title of Superintendent of Government Stock for the colony but doesn’t appear to have ever acted in that capacity, so the indication is he was placed there either as a tourist (of sorts) or as a Mangles business insider. Investor oversight perhaps explaining it. Between 1831 and 1835 McKail came to Albany a few times either self-employed or fulfilling government building tasks and may have decided to make the town his home before the shooting of Gogalee changed everything.
Indeed, McKail may have been in Albany in December 1834, six weeks short of his 25th birthday, when the Caledonia came in looking for water. Alexander Cheyne mentions in his diary that he dined with Will Symers, skipper of the Caledonia on that (Hobart /Mauritius/Hobart) voyage, and someone else who’s name might be read as McKail. The entry reads as if it were at McKail’s place, as if he were already established in the community, but it seems as if this was not the case. McKail had probably been to Albany unannounced once or twice while under the employ of the government as Colonial Carpenter, possibly together with Stephen Knight, between 1831 and 1835, as both (independently) came to settle in Albany.
It isn’t clear when McKail was allowed to leave the employ of the government, his passage to Western Australia appearing to be part of his original contract. However, In May 1835 he was advertising in the Perth Gazette that he was about to leave the colony, the suggestion now being that it wasn’t the colony he was leaving, but the Swan River. By laying that notice, John McKail looks to have made up his mind Albany was where his future lay.
McKail was born in London but was of Scots heritage, his father a much travelled and very well-known Naval architect, and it was this Albany/Scots connection which Will Symers recounted to his uncle with such enthusiasm during 1835 that initiated Thomas Lyell Symers decision to leave Hobart and move west. The point being, McKail will have been known at Albany ahead of his arrival as banished Perth resident around October 1835. Indeed, he may even have been letting Morley’s house on LOT B15, later to be granted one of Albany’s very first public house licenses, trading as The Ship Inn.
Earliest records show Lot B15 belonged to John Morley and was built upon.
McKail was a noted troublemaker at the Swan River. He had given up his government position, if he wasn’t fired from it, from at least May 1835. Likely much earlier than that because he had caused enough trouble at Perth and spent enough time on building projects down at Albany to want to start all over again. As a permanent resident, he arrived at Albany around October/November 1835, soon falling afoul of Spencer, who would most certainly have been warned about him. After an alcohol duty evasion attempt early the following year, he ended up doing a stint in the dreaded ‘Black Hole’, after which his personal trajectory changed course for the better.
Spencer’s harsh intolerance toward McKail seemed to alter McKail’s perspective and he began to mend his ways
McKail story some time ago when researching the (still unfinished) Ngurabirding Series, revealing his arrival into Albany during October 1835, the single most calamitous of his rambunctious early life.
on 28 January 1835 Stirling left Fremantle aboard the Colonial Schooner Ellen bound for Augusta and the Sound, with him were Roe, Mackie, Wittenoom and DACG Lewis. There were back in Perth by the end of February, See HAY RIVER BRIGADE for Spencer buying into the Hay River. . . Roe expedition to Moorilup with Bland, Cheyne Ionan & Metard,(met Mongowart there with Manyan -not Manyat) Matthew Liddon and two other unnamed white men, plus two soldiers 10-16 Feb. Went up via Warrenup and Wilyung then Chorkerup then across to Kalgan and up to Moorilup Ponds. Idea to find a townsite/barracks site (Narpund). . . Spencer went exploring the Hay two weeks after this expedition, probably upon hearing of the Hay River water and grasses. . .
19 Oct to 7th Nov Roe and Stirling Perth to Albany via Gnowangerup. (look for Aborigines)
29th Nov – 7th Dec Roe and Stirling Albany to Doubtful Island Bay aboard Sally Ann with Stephen Henty, Henry camfield, Thomas Symers, Henry Ommaney, George Cheyne, Patrick Taylor
See too The Cheyne Spencer case regarding Cheyne’s pony. TROVE 07 Mar 1835 – TOUR OF INSPECTION TO THE OUTPORTS – Trove (nla.gov.au)