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And he sailed in a ship called Success. . .

James Stirling and the beautiful killing of King George’s Sound

Above: Having won command of HMS Success ten months earlier, 35-year-old Captain James Stirling arrived at the burgeoning colonial city of Sydney. It was late November 1826, and he held within him an overwhelming desire. After completing a substantial delivery of cash (20 000 Pounds Sterling) to the Governor, General Ralph Darling, his orders were to sail for the Trincomalee Naval Base at Ceylon, where he and Success were to be stationed. However, Stirling took it upon himself to convince General Darling to grant him an expedition to Australia’s western seaboard so he could witness first-hand the attributes of a location he argued was an essential point of settlement. Though Darling had already dispatched an army contingent and convict detail to the vicinity, Stirling remonstrated, insisting it was in the wrong place, and the heretofore overlooked Swan River must, at the very least, undergo survey. Though twenty years his senior, Darling bent to the younger man’s exhortations. Thus, in March 1827, James Stirling spent twelve fine autumnal days exploring the Swan and surrounding coastal waters, running his eyes over a warm sunlit landscape upon which all he had imagined seemed not only possible, but inevitable. At the height of his persuasive powers, Stirling’s intentions included addressing the threat posed by the newly established garrison at King George’s Sound. There could be no competing entity. Stirling’s plans for the Swan River Colony, a commercial venture intended to revitalise the family’s shrinking fortune, gained over previous generations through the slave-driven tobacco and cotton industries of the North Atlantic, were worth more to him at this time than his interrupted Naval career. And he would not cease until the colony was brought about with himself as inaugurating Governor. Image: AI generated Romantical image of 36-year-old Captain James Stirling standing at the wheel of HMS Success during March 1827, based on his 1833/34 portrait with the Swan River Cup made in London when he was in his mid 40s.

Wannua and the loss of Barmup

An Alternate View of the Mokare Era

A chronology of events at earliest Albany: 1827-1843

(Long piece in progress – Expected time of completion March 2027)

Almost all studies of NSW era Albany focus on the relationships Mokare conducted with the sequence of senior officials at the garrison and during the period of Alexander Collie’s tenure as original Swan River Colony Resident Magistrate. Mokare’s influence was overwhelmingly benign and he is rightly regarded as an agent of acceptance with regard to the arrival of the Europeans. There is a parallel narrative, however. One which focusses on the behaviour of Wannua, one of the most active others described across the literature. The story of Wannua is the very first of dispossession in Western Australia and through it we witness the turmoil and resistance demonstrated by Mokare’s contemporaries as his acquiescence permitted appropriation of the most desirable natural living place in the surrounds of Mount Clarence. A place called Yaramal, part of which the military came to call The Farm, and after all that happened there as a result, what the King George’s Sound Aborigines then came to call Barmup – Place of Farm.

As settlement at Albany nears its 200th anniversary, the Old Farm at Strawberry Hill is being renovated and refurbished. Closed for the remainder of 2025 there is significant anticipation between Indigenous and government interests as to what the upgrade will reveal. This is because the twin names of Strawberry Hill and Barmup represent two entirely different stories. Strawberry Hill represents the optimism and desire brought by the Swan River Colony’s earliest settlers as they sought to bring the new townsite of Albany into the fullness of British-bred being, albeit struggling dreadfully as they went, while Barmup is a literal translation of The Farm, a place upon which the tragedy of the original Albany Menang played out. The Old Farm at Strawberry Hill may look a quaint transplant of English countrified living with its own tale of colonial hardship to prop it up, but as Barmup it holds a story of deceit, exclusion and loss for an entire clan, among which one man played a singular role of defiance and against-the-odds survival.

This previously untold version of the Barmup story acknowledges all King George Sound Aborigines who lived through the devastation of that time.

Above: There came to be two points of focus for the military during the garrison period, these were the site of the garrison itself, very close to Point Frederick on the waterfront, and The Farm, on the northside of Mount Clarence. During his term, Captain Collet Barker identified multiple localities important to the Aborigines, including Yakama and Yaramal, which comprised the marshy low land on the north side of Mount Melville and Mount Clarence. Yakama was called the Albany Plains on early maps while Yaramal was the valley between Mount Clarence and Strawberry Hill, fronted to the west by Craggy Bluff (Kangas Rock) and to the east by Lake Seppings and Middleton Beach. The Aboriginal name Yakama survives today as Yakamia while Yaramal was forgotten in favour of various English monickers including Strawberry Hill, Middleton Road and Mira Mar. Image: This map is from Alfred Hillman’s 1835 town drawings, by when The Farm had been bought by Sir Richard Spencer, Resident Magistrate from November 1833. Under Spencer family ownership The Farm moved from source of produce to genteel countrified home, preferred image for most town residents today.

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.

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

A long revision of one of the South Coast’s most disreputable historical characters

What was going on at Albany between January 1835 and December 1836

Continued from Part 2b

Cheyne, Albany and the root of James Stirling’s Swan River quest.

**Above:** Portraits of the (London) textiles and (Scottish) coalfields businessman, Andrew Stirling 1751-1823 (left), and his 5th son, James 1791-1865. The Stirling family were Navy men down their mother’s side and landowners and businessmen on their father’s. James Stirling was the second son to enter the Royal Navy under the patronage of their mother’s older brother, Charles. Images: Andrew – from Pamela Statham Drew’s biography, *James Stirling*, and James – drawn from the public internet domain.

Okay, before we go on to the four Anderson related court-cases of 1835 and 1836, we need to lay the groundwork beneath them as far as the town is concerned.

When we left off at the end of 1834 Cheyne had brought a settler collective from the Buffalo (Henry Townsend), Gem (Gordon & Sinclair), Jolly Rambler (R. H. Maddocks) and James Pattison (et al) together at his cottage for the purposes of petitioning the Colonial Secretary in London. The door to that position, however, had become something of a revolving one. The incumbent Secretary had changed five times since Stirling began campaigning for the colony in December 1826, the latest switch occurring just five months prior, so it’s likely Cheyne’s group didn’t know in particular who they were appealing to. A scenario in keeping with the general state of affairs vis-a-vis the troubled colony.

Cheyne was exasperated on multiple fronts and desperate to get things moving. Already, he was into his fourth year at the Sound and the best chance yet to kick-start the economy was withering before his eyes. The petition begged that Albany be reinstated as a convict depot in order that prisoners carry out essential road works, even though the idea was a breach of the social and economic precept upon which the colony was established. It might have taken a year, at best, if the plan worked, but it was more the impetus to try something than lean back and do nothing at all.

On the surface of things, Cheyne’s tactic had little to no chance of success. However, despite the urgency he was clearly trying to address, it begs the question as to why he thought it might. The answer to that lies in the frustration he felt toward the town’s agricultural prospects, but also with Stirling’s fundamental motivations for commencing the colony and the fact that Albany was not, originally, part of it.

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.

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.

WA’s first governor James Stirling had links to slavery, as well as directing a massacre. Should he be honoured?

In our search for the identity of Black Anderson we are looking closely at the emigration ship James Pattison and its passenger list. The ship was chartered by Sir James Stirling and the Mangles family, both of whom had profited from slave related activities. It also carried the Albany settler Patrick Taylor Esq, whose father made a fortune in Jamaica trading African slaves. The below is republication of a Creative Commons article first published by on-line magazine The Conversation which details the Stirling and Mangles family interest, and their subsequent cooperation in forming the Swan River Colony venture. The article appeared in the lead up to the unsuccessful 2021 City of Stirling council vote to change its name. Given the inaugural Governor’s sanctioning of and participation in the Battle of Pinjarra, the clear suggestion is that the state was founded upon commercial opportunity and that the massacre, therefore, was commercially motivated. Certainly, there are grounds for this argument.

Black Anderson – A story of the South Coast – Part 2 is nearing completion and will be published soon.

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.

White Man Goes To Cocanarup

I stood there as that White Man. As part of the colonial influx which created and then sustained the aftermath of that particular story.

Above: Under a matching sky, looking southwest across the Phillips River scrub plain toward the homestead at Cocanarup. This is the primary site of the South Coast’s late -1800’s Aboriginal massacres. Image: Cellphone camera capture, 11.30 a.m. Sunday, 18th September, 2022. Source: Ciaran Lynch Private Collection

The first post on The View From Mount Clarence blog was dated 27 March, 2014. In it I set out my motivations and intentions. I wanted to be certain about Indigenous history in the place I grew up. There were important people in my early life who I never got to know properly, and at the time of writing (because I was living in Dublin, Ireland) there seemed small chance I was going to reconnect again.

There were other reasons too. Often, people are compelled to do things by forces they don’t necessarily understand. Or find hard to articulate. They just go about doing what they have learned to do; daily, monthly, yearly. I guess, however, if you choose writing as a means of addressing those driving forces it is likely somewhere along the line you are going to set something down that comes close to explaining them.

Black Anderson: A Story of the South Coast – Part 1

A 2022/23 revision of one of the South Coast’s most disreputable historical characters

Introduction, Contemporary Assessment and Historiography

Above: The identity of ‘John William ‘Black Jack’ Anderson and the story of his arrival along Western Australia’s South Coast is slowly being pieced together. Long a figure of intrigue and mystery, Anderson was perhaps the most hostile and cruel of Albany’s fringe-dwelling sealer community. Post military era, he and his contemporaries came to use Albany town as its commercial base once the economy took hold. This image, popularly used to depict Anderson over the years, has been modified and adapted to an emerging narrative he was not Negro, but of South Asian origin. Image: Colour-modified graphic depiction of an Indian origin ‘Black Jack’ Anderson commissioned specifically for Robertson’s Sealed Souls. Inspired by an alternative image created by Norman Aisbett of The West Australian Magazine, published in a 1974 article titled “The Once And Only Pirate” by Alex Harris. Source: Sealed Souls – Self Published 2022 – Page 91.

Introduction

The South Coast’s history conscious have always been aware of their relationship with the dissolute sealing gangs which ranged Australia’s southern littoral from around 1800 to around 1840. The practise of hunting fur seals spread from New Zealand and the Bass Strait all the way to King George Sound, indeed in isolation as far as the Swan River, years before the administrative wheels of the western-most colony were set in motion. In this post, in the wake of another important book launch, we examine how our interest in this subject has evolved over the last 180 years, what’s missing, and where we are now in terms of understanding who Black Jack Anderson was and how he fits in to the reality of actual events.

Stories of the sealers who exploited our section of coast are as awful as those belonging to other sections, most notably Northern Tasmania; Morninton Peninsula and Portland Bay in Victoria; Cape Jervis near Adelaide, and Port Lincoln, on the opposite side of South Australia’s Spencer Gulf. Which is to say, the prevelance and menace of these gangs and their alpha leaders impacted widely and continuously, providing good reason why the stories survived through generations as lore, why academics and artists alike continue to be seduced by them, and why I am once again setting my fingers to the keyboard with the same subject in mind.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Apical Argument – Part 1

MARCH 2023 UPDATE:

6PR Radio talks Lake Monger name change with Glenda Kickett of UWA

Indigenous Elders are calling for Lake Monger to be renamed Galup due to the colonial history associated with the current name. Whadjuk Noongar Elder and senior lecturer at UWA Glenda Kickett told Oliver Peterson on Perth Live there needs to be more truth-telling.

A short history of Aboriginal relations at the Swan River through the story of John Henry Monger and his closest associates.

JH Monger Death Notice Above: Gone to the grave. The name of John Henry Monger (the elder) has long been associated with the birth of Benil, also known as John Jack Mungar Bennell, patriarch of the well known Noongar Bennell and Garlett families of today. Image: taken from Classified Advertisements, The Perth Gazette and West Australian Times, Friday 3 September 1869.

Warning: This post is concerned with Indigenous family history and carries the names of many deceased persons. The intention is to neither prove nor disprove existing theories or beliefs, only to throw light upon a subject of interest to many indigenous and non-indigenous families alike. The View From Mount Clarence is the work of a non-indigenous writer and researcher on the subject of racial integration in South-West Western Australia.

For Aileen, Glenys and Darren Quartermaine-Garlett and all descendants of

John Henry Monger, the Elder, 1800-1867

Introduction

In recent months I’ve been drawn back into family matters. When I say family, I mean extended family, and in this case the extention is wide and far. But that’s the beauty of it and one of the reasons I decided to get involved. The other is because the matter at hand is distressing and it’s not nice to find people in distress.

A relative of mine has been told she belongs to a family she doesn’t know. For the purposes of the Single Noongar Claim, a Perth woman through and through has been told by the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC) that she’s from the Avon Valley. She’s been told she belongs to an old and very well known Ballardong family with roots buried deep in the days of first settlement at York. She holds nothing against that family, of course, she just doesn’t understand or agree with the judgement. Her whole life she’s been told stories of her grandparents, great grandparents and beyond living along the Swan. My Aunt says her people were the 19th Century Perth personalities Tommy Dower and Fanny Balbuk, not the York patriarchs Benil, Mungarlit and Kikit.