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Category: Early Albany Settlers

Black Anderson; A Story of the South Coast. Part 2d

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.

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Black Anderson: A Story of the South Coast – Part 2b

A 2022/3 Revision of one of the South Coast’s most disreputable historical characters

Anderson and the ‘second wave’ at the South Coast

 1833-1835

Part 2 (a,b&c) of this challenging post is dedicated to John Robertson and the publication of Sealed Souls, his insightful and highly informative compendium of narrative chapters and exhaustive supporting glossaries which tell the story of sealing along Australia’s southern coastline. Robertson’s work is the result of more than twenty years researching and compiling information relative to the people and boats engaged in the industry and how they came to impact our particular coast over twenty tumultuous years; 1820 to 1840. Among the many rogue characters described, Robertson contends the identity of Black Anderson comprises three aliases. The third, John William Anderson, bringing the life story of an anomalous Indian servant turned criminal sailor and sealer to a murderous close. But there is another possibility, and it was while considering Robertson’s proposal it occurred to me, we only know so much about Anderson because that’s all there is. This post, built upon and inspired by the work of Robertson, is an attempt to show that John William ‘Black’ Anderson may have been James Anderson, assumed to be one of three men aboard the emigration ship ‘James Pattison’ which arrived at Albany during the month of June 1834. 

 

Note: This post assumes James Anderson, Robert Brianson and Isaac Winterbourne formed part of the crew aboard the James Pattison sailing from London via Portsmouth and the Cape Colony to King George Sound and the Swan River, during 1834. No known official passenger or crew list pertaining to this voyage is in existence. The premise is based on the entries of all three men in the Erickson Bicentennial Dictionary of Western Australians which itself appears to have made the assumptions based upon the men’s names appearing in the Spencer Albany Census of 1836 along with surrounding documentation relating to the men and events recorded at Albany between 1835 and 1837. In an attempt to show the men could have been aboard, this post necessarily takes an IF, THEN approach. IF Anderson was aboard the James Pattison, THEN the following occurred.

 

Continued from Part 2a

 

While official infant Albany was grappling with its James Pattison influx, so unofficial Albany must have spied off its opportunity.

On shore, settlers and their servants, aided by the ship’s crew, will have laboured to unload their chattels and set them down somewhere convenient. The settlers will have walked about, scratching their heads beneath the bleak and blustering sky – yet thinking, as the place was sold to them as being climatically akin to Italy, how mild in fact it was – as they searched the ground said to be York Street for surveyor’s pegs and tried to differentiate the scrub before them from the streets and buildings of their imagined future. Those who brought surviving livestock ashore will have found little grass so let the animals roam for whatever they could find, at risk of them uprooting or trampling unfenced gardens, such as they were. The existing community, which included a band of sealers headed by John Pavey/Williams/Andrews, will have been watching closely, perhaps even availing of work unloading the ship.

During winter Albany’s weather bandies between howling icy squalls and a seemingly impossible calm, between irregular barrages of stiff wind and grey driving rain, and admittedly Italianesque spells of warm sunshine bookended by sunrises and sunsets that graduate in gorgeous hues right across the sky. Once they acquired their land legs again, presumably on one of those clearer, calmer days, the settlers will have climbed the hills to gaze out over the water and then back to the inland ranges and agreed to a man the spectacle was bonafide; scenic indeed. Yet reality would have bit hard too as they pondered how they were to go about replicating the only way of life they knew in a place where they were the only ones who knew anything about it. Acknowledging the Aboriginal presence they were surrounded by, the settlers will have realised how few and isolated they were, and knowing the ship with their obvious leader aboard would soon set sail for the capital, how difficult the prospect of building that future by themselves was going to be. The only immediate remedy to that anxiety was work; the task of housing themselves first, and this, as Captain Bateman said, set them ‘very busy making shelter for their families’ the best way they could.

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Black Anderson: A Story of the South Coast – Part 2a

A 2022/3 Revision of one of the South Coast’s most disreputable historical characters

Earliest Maritime Albany

 1831-1834

Above: King George Sound has always held a majestic vista. Ship’s captains were able to glean fair impression of the places they were due to visit from the charts they worked, and King George Sound promised much, indeed tended to exceed expectation when those exalted features finally loomed large and real. Over the years 1830 to 1890, for many sailors aboard those ships the imagery was too good to pass up and they jumped.  Image: 1. Cropped section of 1837 map of Western Australia drawn by the Surveyor General, J.S. Roe. 2. Breaksea Island, Michaelmas Island and King George Sound. Source: 1. Discoveries in Western Australia at Trove 2. LocationsHub Website. Placed by Screenwest.

Parts 2a & 2b of this challenging post are dedicated to John Robertson and the publication of Sealed Souls, his insightful and highly informative compendium of narrative chapters and exhaustive supporting glossaries which tell the story of sealing along Australia’s southern coastline. Robertson’s work is the result of more than twenty years researching and compiling information relative to the people and boats engaged in the industry and how they came to impact our particular coast over twenty tumultuous years; 1820 to 1840. Among the many rogue characters described, Robertson contends the identity of Black Anderson comprises three aliases. The third, John William Anderson, bringing the life story of an anomalous Indian servant turned sailor to a murderous close. But there is another possibility, and it was while considering Robertson’s proposal it occurred to me, we only know so much about Anderson because that’s all there is. This post, built upon and inspired by the work of Robertson, is an attempt to show that John William ‘Black’ Anderson may have been James Anderson, long time assumed (but not yet proven) to be one of three men aboard the emigration ship ‘James Pattison’ which arrived at Albany during the month of June 1834. 

 

Note: This post assumes James Anderson, Robert Brianson and Isaac Winterbourne formed part of the crew aboard the James Pattison sailing of February 1834. No known official passenger or crew list pertaining to this voyage is in existence, the premise is based on the entries of all three men in the Erickson Bicentennial Dictionary of Western Australians which itself appears to have made the assumptions based on the men’s names appearing in the Spencer Albany Census of 1836 and surrounding documentation relating to the men and their involvement in events recorded at Albany between 1835 and 1837. In an attempt to show the men could have been aboard, this post necessarily takes an IF, THEN approach. IF Anderson was aboard the James Pattison in June 1834, THEN the following occurred.

 

Introduction

 

In the mid-1830s Albany was mostly a ramshackle scatter of bell tents, other crude canvas shelters and under-construction huts and houses, strung about a scrubby shore that sometimes looked dismal and sometimes wonderful, bright and as rich in opportunity as any oceanic waterfront anywhere in the world. Especially to anyone looking for a brand-new start.

Charts of our South Coast may have had a habit of raising eyebrows, and initial impressions of King George Sound most often exceeded expectation, but to those aboard incoming ships notions of a lively town burgeoning somewhere amongst its many recesses were soon put to rest. Albany suggested more but was in reality an underpopulated, underserviced entity where hopeful settlers quickly found themselves querying the validity of the colonial promise they’d been sold. During the mid 1830’s it was very early days at Albany. There wasn’t even a landing to tie up at, you had to wade ashore through the weedy shallows, luggage and whatever else on your shoulders.

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John Bailey Pavey (1797-1882) by Campbell (Jock) Beer

John Bailey Pavey, also known as John/Jack Williams, John Andrews and John Williams Andrews was a mariner, sealer, whaler and Plantagenet pioneer. A key figure of Albany’s original criminal fringe he was a man of considerable, and dangerous, prowess. Pavey resided at or near Albany between 1834 and his death in 1882.

 

With Thanks
Following is a verbatim copy of Jock Beer’s 2009 family research project John Bailey Pavey. This work lifted the lid on Albany’s ‘second wave’ sealing fraternity of the mid 1830s.  It pre-dates John Robertson’s outstanding Sealed Souls narrative and compilation by more than 10 years. I have sung about Beer’s work for some time and it remains an absolutely essential element of the building literature surrounding the role of Albany’s mariner brigade subsequent to departure of the NSW military contingent and set-up of the new free settlement from April 1831. Robertson’s Sealed Souls is a compendium of the entire sealing era (both waves) as it related to the coast between Albany and Cape Arid and makes gigantic contribution to our overall understanding of what occurred during that 40-plus year period, where-as Beer’s John Bailey Pavey is entirely focussed on the life and times of this one particular character. Pavey arrived into Albany waters with a number of other sealers including the equally notorious Robert Gamble and Black Anderson, allowing Beer  to throw invaluable light on associations between all three. As John Bailey Pavey forms an integral part of the research underpinning the current Black Anderson series here at The View. . .  and is not available for purchase, Jock has given pemission for the work to be copied and presented here. A hard copy of  John Bailey Pavey by Campbell (Jock) Beer is lodged with Albany Library’s ‘Albany History Collection‘. What follows below is an unedited, word-for-word, copy.

 

 

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A short history of Aboriginal relations along the South Coast through the story of the Albany Aborigine Norngern and his King George Town contemporaries

Tommy King was Norngern, and Norn was Wandinyilmernong.

 

This is a modified version of a piece submitted to Vol. 33 of  the academic journal Studies in Western Australian History during 2019. The edition, called ‘Albany: an antipodean Arcadia‘ edited by Malcom Traille and Harry Freemantle, carries a range of works from writers in some way dedicated to Albany and Albany’s place in Western Australia’s history.

Being the first work submitted by The View under the strictures of  the university system, and coming from a medium designed for modern consumption via the internet, the piece was overly-lengthy and unweildy by comparison as it strived to meet the full breadth of the title under which it was submitted; ‘Aspects of European-Aboriginal Interaction in 19th Century Albany’. I took that to mean a 100 year history, which meant summarising everything these pages had compiled to date, and then some. The invitation came early in July, 2018, but the work wasn’t submitted until over 12 months later, so it wasn’t that The View was doing nothing that year, rather it was occupied elsewhere.

Having considered that submission it seems reasonable to revisit and modify, building in the charms available to an internet version. However, below is not the same piece. The very many references needed for an academic submission are not detailed here and elements of the text by way of order, cull, addition and modification are made without reference to the original. For the original (and much more on historical Albany), readers should invest in the journal itself, copies of which may be obtained here.

Warning:  The names of many deceased  Aboriginal persons are described below. The View From Mount Clarence is the work of an Irish/Australian  writer concerned with the history of racial integration across Western Australia’s South West. Although of interest and importance to the Indigenous community, the primary intention of this site is to inform non-indigenous West Australian’s of their shared history by exposing the actions of both groups via the stories that make-up our collective past. 

 

Norngern: King George Man

 

Above: Daisy Bates never met Norngern, but she knew who he was. To the Albany settlers Norngern (aka Wandinyilmernong) was known as Tommy King, one of the King George boys born into the new settler presence at his family’s antediluvian stamping ground. Norn grew up between the traditional world of his elders and the new one brought by the European invasion. Spending the vast majority of his life in the area of the town, he wrestled the change which took place, resisting it to greater effect than his best known contemporaries, all but one of whom he outlived. By old age Norn had become a curiosity or relic, last link to the past world of the South Coast Aborigine, while also a maligned figure of defiance and resilience, irksome reminder to the town of the great imposition it had leveled upon his people. Source: Southern Districts Photographs, Daisy Bates Archive, University of Adelaide.

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Whalemen, Jumpships and Albany’s Old Waterfront Precinct

An important off-cut from the Newhill/Newell project – 2019/20

 

Above: Albany’s waterfront precinct  cut from Albany 30A, King George’s Sound as marked by Philip Chauncy, Assistant Surveyor, 1851. Source: State Records Office of W.A.

 

 

AS we have seen from our investigations into 1830s and 1840s Albany, behind the imaginary fascia of the town constructed by the moneyed settlers whose role it was to promote and develop a society in the model of well-to-do Britain, Albany’s pre-eminent locale returned the image of a shabby disreputable waterfront populated by heavy drinking soldiers and mariners, foreign sailors running-off or else frolicking on shore-leave, and an otherwise supportive indigenous element sick and dying while embroiled in seedy prostitution.

This changed and improved to a degree from the 1850s with the expansion caused by appointment of Albany as coaling depot for the intercontinenal passenger steamers, especially those contracted to carry the royal mail,  but what needs to be remembered is that based on population statistics and social make-up, Albany as a micrcosm of coastal colonial Australia was one part church and office to nine parts boat and vice. There are so many stories of excess carried out by whalers coming ashore between Geographe Bay and the South Coast over the 1840s in particular, author Tim Blue’s much needed Whale Hunters of the West carries 240 pages of startling insight.

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Jimmy’s Harbour – Newhill or Newell? Part 2

Continued from Part 1

 

Whalemen, rebellion and Albany’s original newspaper;

Jimmy (Ned) Newhill and 1880’s Albany

 

Above: Edward August Newhill, known among his friends and family as Jimmy, was granted title to the harbour after camping, fishing and hiding deserting whalemen there during the 1880s, but Newhill also led one of the single largest labour revolts in the history of American whaling activity off the Australian coast when he walked off Bartholomew Gosnold at Albany in May, 1883. Image: Undated portrait c. 1920  Source: Lauren Rowe – Rowe family papers

 

To understand the story of the man who came to be known as Jimmy Newhill, we first have to understand the story of American whaling on and off Albany’s shores across the 1800s, particularly the latter half. This constitutes the bulk of the history, principally the relationship Albany had with the New Bedford whaling firm John Tucker & Co whose four ships, Bartholomew Gosnold, Platina, Canton II and Bertha were stationed off King George Sound between 1877 and 1887. Within this story, however, lies the overlapping one of Princess Royal Harbour becoming coaling depot for the arriving steam age which significantly impacted development of the town around the waterfront. Also, Albany’s first locally produced newspaper came into being toward the end of both the whaling and P&O eras playing an important role in documenting it, along with the drive for the railway, third essential element of the waterfront precinct. Of vital macro importance at this time too were pastoral interests and arrival of the telegraph service from 1877, the combination of which resulted in the settling of the so-called Eastern District which brought with it dire cross-cultural consequences; Albany’s judicial club, headquartered in the newly constructed government buildings looking directly down on the jetty, complicit in its violence. By 1883 the telegraph service allowed the innards of Jimmy Newhill’s story of arrival and remain to play out as it did. And as if that were not enough, the Newhill story ties with Irish poverty and convictism, the effects of which drew the father of Newhill’s locally born bride, Elizabeth Cullinane, from the fringes of West Cork during the aftermath of Ireland’s Great Hunger. Moreover, Elizabeth Cullinane’s registered maternal grandparents were William and Mary Sounness, an 1840’s settler couple rooted to early Albany’s highly influential Scotts fraternity. The Sounness legacy was built along aspiring European lines in the Mount Barker area but there remains the nagging suggestion the Cullinane children were not entirely European, bringing into the picture another cross-cultural relationship and as yet unidentified Menang mother.

Could there be a richer backdrop to local family history than this?

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Jimmy’s Harbour – Newell or Newhill? Part 1

An un-won argument and the Newell family of early Albany

Above: Stockphoto of “Jimmy Newhill’s Harbour” drawn from the West Australian Government website Beachsafe.Org.Au  The photo is one of very few taken oceanside, looking northward into the mouth of the locally famous cove.

Introduction

As the settlement at King George Sound begins to round on it’s 200th anniversary, there is gathering momentum behind a core of Albany historians determined to strengthen the town’s still lightly-grasped knowledge of itself. The way to do this, of course, is to research and write, to find stories inaccurate, incomplete or as yet untold, and to set them down in a format everyone can relate to.

This post sets out to untangle the Jimmy Newhill/Newell nomenclature dilema, an irritating naming issue that has confused both residents and visitors since anyone can remember. Glancing into it, the names date back to the time of Albany’s earliest European settlement, featuring the town’s NSW convict heritage, its exploitation at the hands of our daringly infamous small-boat mariners, and of a select few working-class men who came to leave a legacy. By way of inclusion, as these pages are want to do, this history also hones in on a much longed-for Indigenous identity, that of Jane Teanan, the search for whom carries on.

With regard to surname heritage, it’s no surprise the Newells and Newhills are confused as the names are variations of each other in two languages. Looking at British origins, which extended to America, Newhall, Newill, Nevill, Noel and Knowles are all related variations. By far the most common being Newell. But these names also evolved from the German Null/Noll/Nolle. Members of these families migrated across Europe and to America as well, where variations now include Newell, Newhall, Nihill, Nuehal,  etc.

But this is not a story of confused spelling. Far from it.

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In Search of Ngurabirding – Part 2

The Hay River Brigade   Before we go on with the story of John Maher after the issuing of his Ticket-of-Leave, it’s important to look into what had already taken place at Albany relative to his arrival. This applies to the earliest period of free settlement and the story of the …

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Campbell Taylor and the Cape Arid Connection – Part 2

Originally Published 30 April 2015: The 1840s   Above: The Lower Kalgan River meanders past Mount Boyle into Oyster Harbour and King George’s Sound reflecting the rural idyll of old Albany. Campbell Taylor’s childhood home lay on the upper part of the hill. Built in 1837 by his father Patrick, the …

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Campbell Taylor and the Cape Arid Connection – Part 1

Originally Published 01 March 2015: East Along The Coast   Above: Cape Arid featuring Middle Island and the eastwards view toward Point Malcolm. This is the place where Aboriginal and Settler historical records along the South Coast began and where the story of one particular pioneer, Campbell Taylor, stands out. Photo courtesy …

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Extended Interlude

Originally Published 26 July 2014: Above:  Woodburn Homestead and Farm in 1913. The original dwelling is front and centre of the picture. By 1913 Woodburn had been sold to the Moir family. Photograph donated to the Albany History Collection by Gordon Norman. Following on from last week’s post I wanted to look into …

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Interlude

Originally Published 16 July 2014:   I fell for Campbell Taylor’s history for a whole lot of reasons, not least because he was among a select group of sons to first Albany settlers.  These sons will come to occupy slabs of space in future history books relating to settlement along …

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