Aboriginal readers are warned that this essay mentions atrocities against Aboriginal people.
Sealers Hut, Western Port: ‘Habitation de Pecheurs de Phoques au port Western (Nouvelle Hollande)’ Langlume, circa 1833. Print: lithograph with later hand colouring. State Library of Victoria. The sealers arrived very quickly, and stole Aboriginal women from Lutruwita Tasmania, Bass Strait islands, Western Port and Port Phillp Bays.
By Christine Grayden
BEING charged with turning a manuscript into a book for a friend is always an enormous honour and an exciting opportunity to learn. For the past year I have been editing and doing the layout of my friend John Jansson’s book A Source Book of Western Port Maritime History. Certainly I learnt many aspects of Word that I had not used before and, because John is a local and maritime historian, I also learnt an enormous amount about the prolific maritime trade and the land-based industries that trade has supported in Warn Marin Western Port.
In his extensive research for this source book, John discovered many references to the early colonial industries carried on in and around Warn Marin Western Port. Here are the main ones: Sealing, swanning, mangrove burning for barilla ash, wattle bark (mimosa) harvesting, a massive timber industry, coal exploration and mining, sheep import and export, oystering, illegal landing of Chinese immigrants, salt mining, fishing, crayfishing, pleasure cruising, boat building.
BEING charged with turning a manuscript into a book for a friend is always an enormous honour and an exciting opportunity to learn. For the past year I have been editing and doing the layout of my friend John Jansson’s book A Source Book of Western Port Maritime History. Certainly I learnt many aspects of Word that I had not used before and, because John is a local and maritime historian, I also learnt an enormous amount about the prolific maritime trade and the land-based industries that trade has supported in Warn Marin Western Port.
In his extensive research for this source book, John discovered many references to the early colonial industries carried on in and around Warn Marin Western Port. Here are the main ones: Sealing, swanning, mangrove burning for barilla ash, wattle bark (mimosa) harvesting, a massive timber industry, coal exploration and mining, sheep import and export, oystering, illegal landing of Chinese immigrants, salt mining, fishing, crayfishing, pleasure cruising, boat building.
February 21, 1877. Wood engraving. State Library of Victoria. Following the wattle bark gatherers, the timber industry accounted for most of the Warn Marin Western Port forests, from the 1850s onwards.
Several of these industries began 30 years before this part of Bunurong Boonwurrung Country saw a single permanent white colonist. At that time the area was like the lawless Wild West. Sealers were often escaped convicts, and well-versed in deprivation, and in receiving and inflicting brutality. They and their whaling counterparts took on mimosa harvesting and swanning (killing the swans for meat and quills) as side-lines during the sealing and whaling off-season. All of their activities brought them into the bay and into contact and conflict with the local Aboriginal people.
| The deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Susan Ley, recently claimed that “All those years ago those (First Fleet) ships did not arrive – as some would have you believe – as invaders. They did not come to destroy or to pillage.” No doubt many did not; but even locally the historical record tells us the destruction and pillaging were also real, as clearly shown by the rampant exploitation of Warn Marin Western Port’s natural resources uncovered in the sources detailed in John’s book. A few years ago, when researching an article I was writing about George Bass, I came across a digitised file of letters written by the highly influential Sir Joseph Banks on just this topic. Six months after Bass headed south, entered and named Western Port, and arrived back in Sydney with nothing special to report, Banks (the botanist who had accompanied Cook) wrote to the British Treasury. In an offer to the government to sponsor an explorer of Africa, Mungo Parks, on a journey of exploration to the latest colony – Australia – Banks complained that the country had been possessed for more than ten years, so much has the discovery of the interior been neglected that no one article has hitherto been discovered, by the importation of which the mother country can receive any degree of return for the cost of founding and hitherto maintaining the colony.... It is impossible to conceive that such a body of land, as large as all Europe, does not produce vast rivers, capable of being navigated into the heart of the interior, or, if properly investigated, that such a country, situate in a most fruitful climate, should not produce some native raw material of importance to a manufacturing country as England is. (Letter to John King, Esq., of the Treasury, dated May 15th, 1798, from Sir Joseph Banks) The Empire wanted a return on its investment, so the colony’s governors were under pressure to find natural resources to feed into England’s voracious industrial revolution and line the British government’s tax and duties coffers to support its ongoing colonial ambitions. Thus, for many years, while mariners were shipping raw materials out of Warn Marin Western Port at a great rate, the governors in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land largely turned a blind eye to the presence of escaped convicts here, the murder of Aboriginal people, and the decimation of flora and fauna. |  Governor to send magistrate and 20 soldiers to Port Phillip and Western Port to try to stop atrocities against Aborigines. Hobart Town Courier, 20 May 1836.  Formal notice from page 1. Short article from page 2. The arrival of sealers and other rough men into Warn Marin Western Port before a permanent police presence resulted in many atrocities being committed against the local Bunurong Boonwurrung people. Rarely was any action taken against the perpetrators. |
Regardless of the sad consequences of many early maritime activities in the bay, John’s Source Book is an astonishing resource. So many adventures, misadventures, acts of extraordinary heroism, tragedies and even murder can be found in the sources!
The final book will be ready sometime in 2025. Meanwhile, I promise to dip into its depths to share some gems of the bay’s maritime history in future essays.
The final book will be ready sometime in 2025. Meanwhile, I promise to dip into its depths to share some gems of the bay’s maritime history in future essays.