The Sydney wars

“We pay our respects and dedicate the Unsettled exhibition to the people and other Beings who keep the law of this land; to the Elders and Traditional Owners of all the knowledges, places, and stories in this exhibition; and to the Ancestors and Old People for their resilience and guidance.

We advise that there are some confronting topics addressed in this exhibition, including massacres and genocide. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be advised that there may be images of people who have passed away.”

Laura McBride and Dr Mariko Smith, 2021.

From Sydney Cove to the Cumberland Plain, and the mountains and rivers that ring the Sydney Basin, 1788 to 1817 was a period of sustained warfare, which spread as the colonists intruded further into sovereign Aboriginal lands.

Sydney was the scene of Australia’s first frontier. The earlier colonial governors were experienced military strategists and Aboriginal people adapted their combat techniques in response. The colony’s soldiers, militia, convicts, and citizenry lived in constant fear of attacks and raids by Aboriginal warriors.

By the mid-1790s, the administration was concerned about having enough weapons and troops to protect the colony. Requests were made to the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and the War Office for support.^[1]

Conflicts spread like spot fires across the Sydney colony. George Caley, who collected specimens for Sir Joseph Banks, wrote to him in August 1801 that in one instance, “war was declared without much deliberation, and by the natives finding that we were bent upon hostility it was not long before they revenged themselves”.

It took the British nearly 30 years to secure the Sydney Basin. Clans had an early advantage against a starving and vulnerable colony, until smallpox took its hold on the Aboriginal population, but survivors banded together to continue resistance and defend Country.

Aboriginal people reacted to the invasions of their lands through innovative methods of resistance. As part of their guerrilla-style warfare tactics, they developed distinct and effective responses to the introduced weaponry used by the soldiers of the colony.

This animation is based on colonial descriptions of Aboriginal warriors in the Sydney region taunting soldiers. They took advantage of the high ground, and the slow reloading speed of the soldiers’ weaponry, to throw their spears. It is much more than a “war dance”, as it was commonly described by the British, but rather it showed a calculated response and visual statement of resistance to the enemy.

- Samuel Hassall, 1816.

Pemulwuy was the most well-known Bidjigal resistance fighter of the Sydney Wars. After negotiation with other clan leaders including his traditional enemy Bennelong, he used a death spear to kill the colony’s gamekeeper John McEntire (his surname is also spelled in the historical records as McIntyre) in 1790. This type of spear had distinctive barbs of shell and stone which would break off with fatal results.

This was an act of justice against McEntire who had committed such gruesome acts against Aboriginal people that even his acquaintances refused to record the detail. Pemulwuy didn’t hesitate and speared him straight in the chest. McEntire himself knew it was a mortal wound, saying “I am a dead man”.^[4]

In loving memory of my late Grandfather Laddie Timbery.
- Raymond Timbery, Bidjigal Dharrawal 2021.