The following extracts furnish us with a horrifying overview of the young colony of New South Wales, Australia, during the first decade of the 19th Century:
The Sydney Gazette & New South Wales Advertiser – 22 Jan 1804
” . . . Australian colonisation became popular and optimistic because the Napoleonic wars had made Sydney a naval and commercial centre, and whaling, seal-hunting, and coal-mining for replenishing the greatly increased number of ships calling, flourished. Timber was in great demand, and was exported to England and elsewhere; sandalwood was collected in Fiji and exported also, and, because of the fear of French competition, colonies were founded, as previously mentioned, at Hobart, Port Phillip, and Launceston. These, naturally, increased the demand for general supplies . . .”
” . . . Whaling and sealing contribute most astonishing chapters essential to the story of early settlement in Australia – chapters almost entirely forgotten. From the Queensland shores each year the procession of whales up the coast and down again is as regular as the seasons themselves, though there are no longer the vast numbers that once sported in these seas. Pioneer settlement in Bass Straits, Tasmania, and Victoria began with the adventurous sailors who set up their little stations along their shores and on strategically located islands. Lawless men – runaway convicts and ticket-of-leave men, and later more and more of the scum of the world from North and South America gradually degraded the traffic, which became one of the most inefficient and insensate of operations and finally destroyed itself in the extravagant mass slaughter and extermination of its prey.
The colossal slaughter [of seals] may be gauged from the fact that, in 1804, one American vessel, the “Union,” alone, obtained 600,000 skins worth from 6/- to 14/- apiece, when the shilling had a very much higher value than it has to-day.
The aboriginals fared as badly as the seals at the hands of the sealers. Without compunction they were shot like rabbits and their women were abducted and “domesticated” at the camps. American sealers were quite the most irresponsible and despicable of these characters, one of whom Amaro Delano, captain of the “Perseverance,” was a source of continual mischief. When, ultimately, his misdemeanours became unbearable even among the base community, he absconded with his ship to Chile taking with him seventeen escaped convicts.
In 1825 “Van Diemen’s Land” (Tasmania) was separated off as the first daughter colony, and the law was capable of better enforcement, but the effects of unrestrained and unpunished violence undoubtedly had an effect on all classes and were factors in the rise of the “bushrangers” – so sternly dealt with by Governor Arthur – and also, in the conditions that led to the “Black Drive.”
The Slaughter of Seals . . .
By 1830 the scarcity of seals sounded the death knell of what might have remained a most profitable industry for very many years. It was succeeded to a minor degree by the exploitation of mutton-bird oil.
Whaling was an important industry for many years and should still be so. In Australia it was greatly hindered by the disability imposed by an Act of George III that prevented operations north of the equator or east of 51ºE. longitude, in the supposed interest of the powerful East India Company. Ultimately the boundary for South Sea whaling was extended eastwards to between 123º and 180ºE. longitude.
The trade continued until, after a gradual decline till 1860, it ceased when the schools of whales had been annihilated or driven away.
Governor King, in the early days of the whaling and sealing operations, repeatedly deplored the unfair handicaps under which Australians and law-abiding citizens generally suffered in comparison with foreigners – but without result.
Whaling and sealing employed 300 Australian ex-convicts in 1806. Whales could only be sold in London or locally until 1813 and seals only locally till 1819, after which the East Indian monopoly was abolished, except as to trade with China, and in tea – exceptions which persisted till 1834.
The same handicap hindered trade in timber (“our only staple” said Governor King in 1803) and sandalwood from Fiji, about which the East India Company was immovable. “Strange to say,” wrote King, “every means is taken to throw that object into the hands of the Americans.” The principal trade in all these things did indeed, remain in American hands or in polyglot vessels of all kinds under “bucko” American skippers or brutal mates, with “pressed” crews gleaned from the seaside “dives” of East Asia and the west coast of the Americas.
As law and order were slowly established and forced ever more determinedly upon the community, the scum was squeezed to the edges and appeared in the unprotected island groups of the Pacific, where, in fact, its evil influence was so pronounced that it justified the establishment of “spheres of protection” that soon stimulated a race for area between Great Britain and reviving France. Ultimately the antisocial and criminal elements found a haven for their activities only in the most remote outposts; or a new opportunity in the “blackbirding” of the middle of the century . . .”
Source: Excerpts – ‘Triumph in the Tropics’ – by Sir Rapahel Cilento – published 1959 – pp 49-51
It was often those that unscrupulously sought riches that were the first to land and set up encampments on the shores of Australia . . . Whaling for oil, slaughtering Seals for their skins, stripping Wattles for their bark, excavating and burning lime, felling forests for their wood, clearing for farms, mining, diverting waterways, pollution, etc. – without thought nor conscience for the brutality, ruthless exploitation, murdering to the level of extinction of species, raping of the land, changing landscapes forever, nor, the inconceivable damage they left behind – a tradition that continues until this very day . . .
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