What it is to be a stranger
When Governor Arthur Phillip arrived from London with eleven ships in 1788 (known as the First Fleet), amongst the passengers were people convicted in Manchester courts and sentenced to transportation to New South Wales. The Portico Library holds observations and reports by Philip’s colleague Lieutenant-Colonel David Collins (Judge-Advocate and Secretary to the Colony), An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales from its first settlement in January 1788 to August 1801.
Ship names and arrival dates from 1788 in An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales from its first settlement in January 1788 to August 1801, David Collins, 1802. The Portico Library collection.
Convict records show that on 4 May 1786 Elizabeth Thackery (c.1767-1856) was sentenced for stealing handkerchiefs to transportation for 7 years. She was tried in Manchester and sailed on the Friendship in May 1787 to Botany Bay.
It is believed she lived in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) from 1807, a period of violent colonisation characterised by massacres of the Indigenous peoples and the spread of fatal diseases. Elizabeth Thackery is noted as the longest survivor of the First Fleet that arrived from Britain under the command of Arthur Philip.
Sister and brother, Isabella Oldfield (1764-1789) and Thomas Oldfield (1763-unknown) were sentenced in Manchester in 1786 for stealing 3 pieces of cloth. Records show they were born in Skipton and transported to New South Wales on different ships.
John Randall (c. 1764 – uknwn) - aka Randel and Raynolds - was convicted in Manchester in 1785 to transportation for 7 years.
He was tried for stealing a silver watch chain and transported on the ship Alexander to Botany Bay. It is thought that John Randall was an African-American slave of Captain John Randall of Stonington, Connecticut, United States of America. When Randall joined the New South Wales Corps in 1800 he gave his place of birth as New Haven, Connecticut and was described as ‘black from North America’.
Family and friends
You can search for your relatives and find connections between Manchester and Australia with the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society.
How shall we come to belong?
Wollarawarre Bennelong (c.1764-1813) was a Wangal man captured by Phillip’s men in 1789 along with Colebee, in order to facilitate relationships between the newcomers and the local Eora people. Bennelong made a strategic friendship with Phillip and acted as go-between.
David Collins, Colonial Secretary, recorded vocabularies and a dictionary of language which we may imagine were collected in part due to Bennelong’s efforts to engage with the strangers.
Lieutenant William Dawes, astronomer, arrived with Phillip and the First Fleet in New South Wales. Dawes set up an observatory at Point Maskelyne or Dawes Point to monitor the skies. Here Patyegarang, a young Gamaraigal woman, met with Dawes and taught him the complexities of her Gadigal language and culture which he collated into his notebooks.
Some months after Bennelong left Sydney Cove he was amongst people in Manly Cove butchering a beached whale when Phillip appeared, came ashore, and was speared in the shoulder in what is reported as a pay-back. This incident is noted as a turning point in the relationship between Phillip and the Eora.
David Collins reported:
The accident gave cause to the opening of a communication between the natives of this country and the settlement, which, although attended with such an unpromising beginning, it was hoped would be followed by good consequences.
In 1792 Bennelong and Yemmerrawanne sailed to England with Phillip and were presented to King George III. Yemmerrawanne died in England of a chest infection. Bennelong returned to his country in 1795, and died in 1813.
Port Jackson/Sydney in 1801. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales from its first settlement in January 1788 to August 1801, 1802. The Portico Library collection.