A survey of place on the early colonial frontier: James Grant and William Paterson on the Hunter River, 1801

Abstract

The 1801 voyage of the HMS Lady Nelson to the Hunter River in New South Wales is an example of early colonial explorations into the spaces beyond Port Jackson’s fringe. Planned as a survey of the river to determine its suitability for settlement, the records of Lieutenant James Grant and Lieutenant-Colonel William Paterson and other expeditionists tell us what they observed, how they assessed the river and the land around it, identified its resources, and judged from a distance the Aboriginal peoples they passed on their journey. This review of the expedition illustrates a process of colonisation through narrative description and survey, the classification of resources, the naming of topography, and the drawing of a chart over hitherto uncharted spaces: in short, the acquisition of knowledge of spaces beyond the colonial fringe and their framing in European consciousness. These were acts of possession that made this speculated ‘space’ a colonial ‘place’. The expedition gave the river meaning for the colony, but its failure to establish relations with the Aboriginal people excluded them from the European conception of place.

Keywords:

• Exploration
• colonisation
• Aboriginal encounters
• toponomy

Acknowledgement

The author thanks the reviewers and editors of History Australia for their many helpful comments and suggestions during the preparation of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 William Paterson, Journal, 14 June 1801, Historical Records of Australia, Series 1, vol iii (HRA, 1, iii), (Australian Parliamentary Library, 1915), 174. The ‘new Union Flag’ followed the Acts of Union of 1800 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The island at the river’s entrance is Nobbys.

2 David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol.1 (1798) (Teddington: Echo Library, 2008), 366, 406–7, 410, 455. D.J. Ryan, ‘The Discovery and First Settlement of Newcastle and the Genesis of the Coal Industry’, Royal Australian Historical Society, Journal and Proceedings, IX, Part V (1923), 227–9; Wilfred James Goold, The ‘Birth of Newcastle’ (Newcastle: Newcastle and Hunter District Historical Society, 1981), 6–7; Mark Dunn, The Convict Valley. The Bloody Struggle on Australia’s Early Frontier (Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2020), 18–27; T.M. Perry, Australia’s First Frontier. The Spread of Settlement in New South Wales 1788–1829 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1963), 53–4.

3 John Hunter to Duke of Portland, 10 January 1798, HRA, 1, ii, 118 & 713 n50-1.

4 Goold, The ‘Birth of Newcastle’, 6.

5 More commonly spelt ‘Coquun’. True Briton, 25 October 1799; ‘Discovery of Hunter River’, Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. iii (HRNSW, iii) (Sydney, 1892), 727 note.

6 J.D. Lang, An Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales, vol. 2, (London, 1834), 90, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t6pz54f15; Jim Wafer and Amanda Lissarrague, A Handbook of Aboriginal Languages of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory (Nambucca Heads, NSW: Muurbay Aboriginal Language & Culture Cooperative 2008), 160 n103.

7 Memorandum by Governor King, 9 June 1801, HRNSW, iv, 391.

8 Goold, The ‘Birth of Newcastle’; W. Allan Wood, Dawn in the Valley. The Story of Settlement in the Hunter Valley to 1833 (Sydney: Wentworth Books, 1972); Dunn, The Convict Valley, ch. 5; Perry, Australia’s First Frontier, ch. 5. There are many local histories of Newcastle, the Hunter Valley and its townships dating from early journals of The Royal Australian Historical Society to more recent publications of local historical societies.

9 Simon Ryan, The Cartographic Eye. How Explorers saw Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 38f.

10 Grace Karskens, ‘The Settler Evolution: Space, Place and Memory in Early Colonial Australia’, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 13, no. 2 (2013): 2. See also Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay. An Exploration of Landscape and History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).

11 See also Paul Carter, ‘Plotting: Explorer Narratives as “Spacial History”’, The Yale Journal of Criticism, 3, no. 2 (1990): 91–107.

12 Collins, An Account of the English Colony, 139.

13 John Thompson to Captain Schanck, 8 September 1799, HRNSW, iii, 717–18.

14 Duke of Portland to Governor Hunter, 21 December 1798, HRA, 1, ii, 241–2.

15 Governor King to Duke of Portland, 10 March 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 8–9; Governor King to Duke of Portland, 21 August 1801, HRNSW, iv, 476–7; Governor King to Joseph Banks, April 1801, HRNSW, iv, 353.

16 Brian Walsh, William and Elizabeth Paterson. The Edge of Empire (Paterson: Paterson Historical Society, 2018), 66–7.

17 William Paterson, A Narrative of Four Journeys into the Country of the Hottentots, and Caffraria: In the Years One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-seven, Eight, and Nine (London, 1789).

18 Roy MacLeod, ‘Discovery and Knowledge’, in The Cambridge History of Science, Vol. 6: The Modern Biological and Earth Sciences, ed. Peter J. Bowler and John V. Pickstone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 34–59.

19 Tiffany Shellam, Maria Nugent, Shino Konishi and Allison Cadzow, ‘Brokering in Colonial Exploration: Biographies, Geographies and Histories’, in Brokers and Boundaries. Colonial exploration in Indigenous Territory, ed. Tiffany Shellam, Maria Nugent, Shino Konishi and Allison Cadzow (Canberra: ANU Press, 2016), 2, https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p344583/pdf/book.pdf.

20 Adriana Craciun, ‘What is an Explorer?’, in Expedition into Empire: Exploratory Journeys and the Making of the Modern World, ed. Martin Thomas (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2014), 25–8.

21 Governor Phillip to Under Secretary Nepean, 12 February 1790, HRNSW, i.2, 301–6; Grace Karskens, People of the River. Lost Worlds of Early Australia (Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2020), 81f.

22 Frank Walker, The First Crossing of the Blue Mountains of N.S.W., 1912, State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW), Q991.5/W, FL3477975, https://digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?embedded=true&toolbar=false&dps_pid=IE3477858.

23 David J. Mabberley, Botanical Revelation. European Encounters with Australian Plants before Darwin (Sydney: NewSouth Press, 2019), 73–82, 91, 338 n20.

24 King to Banks, April 1801, HRNSW, iv, 355–6.

25 King to the Duke of Portland, 21 August 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 168.

26 Paterson, Journal, HRA, 1, iii, 176; William Paterson to Under-Secretary Sullivan, 14 August 1804, HRNSW, v, 445.

27 Martin Thomas, ‘What is an Expedition. An Introduction’, in Expedition into Empire, 1.

28 James Grant, Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery, performed in His Majesty’s Vessel the Lady Nelson …’ (London, 1803), v–xxvi.

29 Ryan, Cartographer’s Eye, 5–6.

30 Thomas, ‘What is an Expedition’, 4–5; Craciun, ‘What is an Explorer?’, 25–7; Allison Cadzow, ‘Guided by Her. Aboriginal Women’s Participation in Australian Expeditions’, in Brokers and Boundaries, 91–2.

31 William Paterson to King, 25 June 1801, HRNSW, iv, 415.

32 Ibid., 414–5.

33 Paterson, Journal, 15 June 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 175.

34 James Grant, Journal, 18 June 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 170.

35 Ibid., 171.

36 John Harris to King, 25 June 1801, HRNSW, iv, 417.

37 Grant, Journal, 19 June 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 171 & 176; Harris to King, 25 June 1801, HRNSW, iv, 417.

38 Grant, Narrative, 159.

39 Letter from James Grant to Governor King, 24 June 1801, reporting on the Hunter River, SLNSW, C 230, https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/nX6Oqr6Y#viewer.

40 Paterson, Journal, 19 June 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 176.

41 Paterson, Journal, 14 July 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 179.

42 Francis Barrallier to King, 24 June 1801, HRNSW, iv, 413–4.

43 Harris to King, 25 June 1801, HRNSW, iv, 417.

44 Paterson, Journal, 25 June 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 176; Letter received by Banks from William Paterson, 20 August 1801, Banks Papers/Series 27.21, SLNSW, https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/92ebRKPY#viewer.

45 King to Duke of Portland, HRA, 1, iii, 8 July 1801, 116 & HRNSW, iv, 439; King to Paterson, July 1801, HRNSW, iv, 428; King to Duke of Portland, 21 August 1801, HRNSW, iv, 478; King to Banks, April 1801, HRNSW, iv, 359.

46 King to Paterson, July 1801, HRNSW, iv, 428–9; King to Portland, 21 August 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 169; 773 n67; Goold, The ‘Birth of Newcastle’, 8.

47 Paterson to King, 25 June 1801, HRNSW, iv, 416.

48 Grant to King, 24 June 1801, SL NSW, C 230, https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/nX6Oqr6Y#viewer; Ida Lee, Logbooks of the ‘Lady Nelson’ with the Journal of her First Commander, Lieutenant James Grant, R.N. (London: Grafton & Co., 1915), 70, https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE15108486&file=FL20004071.

49 Also written as Green Hill. The confluence is by the town of Raymond Terrace.

50 ‘Remarks of the Lady Nelson on a Voyage to Explore Bass Strait 1801’, 15 April 1801, HRNSW, iv, 478–88.

51 Captain John Schank (Schanck). Near the town of Hinton. Walsh, William and Elizabeth Paterson, 124.

52 The ‘deep creek’ is the present-day Paterson River, and the lake, long since drained for farmland, lay near Wallalong and Woodville: Brian Walsh, Woodville Uncovered (Paterson: Paterson Historical Society, 2022), 96–8. In 1820, the artist Joseph Lycett painted a view of the lake: Joseph Lycett, ‘Lake Patterson, near Patterson’s Plains, Hunter’s River, New South Wales’ PIC Drawer 26 #S421, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/8043694.

53 Paterson, Journal, 5 July 1801 HRA, 1, iii, 177–8.

54 Ibid., 178.

55 Grant, Journal, 8 July 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 173.

56 Named years later Mount Hudson after a local landholder.

57 Paterson, Journal, 10 July 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 178–9; Grant, Journal, 8 July 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 173–4 (Grant’s entry for 8 July covers several days).

58 Ibid., 173; ‘In Search of Two Carved Trees from the 1801 Expedition’, Hunter Living Histories, University of Newcastle, accessed 6 March 2024, https://hunterlivinghistories.com/2009/07/10/in-search-of-two-carved-trees-from-the-1801-expedition/.

59 Paterson, Journal, 16 July 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 179.

60 A note on Barrallier’s chart states: ‘The further progress was stopped here by a cascade or fall of about four feet high after which the stream runs to the N.E.’ Coal Harbour and Rivers on the Coast of New South Wales, Surveyed by Ensign Barrallier, June and July 1801, HRNSW, v, 420a; ‘Barallier’s Surveys of the Hunter Region (1801–1802)’, Hunter Living Histories, University of Newcastle, accessed 6 March 2024, https://hunterlivinghistories.com/2016/07/15/barrallier-hunter-surveys/.

61 Paterson, Journal, 19 June 1801, HRA 1, iii, 175.

62 Paterson to King, 25 June 1801, HRNSW, ii, 416.

63 Paterson, Journal, 5 July 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 177.

64 Grant, Journal, 8 July 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 173.

65 Lee, Logbooks, 61–2. Budgerie – Bùd-ye-ree – ‘good’ (alternatively Budgery and Budgeree) was a name already known among men of the Hawkesbury-Nepean: Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New South Wales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011[1793]), 116, cited in Annemarie McLaren, ‘No Fish, No House, No Melons: The Earliest Aboriginal Guides in Colonial New South Wales’, Aboriginal History 43 (2019): 50. The rock, known as Reid’s Mistake (Moon Island, off the entrance to Lake Macquarie), was named after a mariner called Reid who first mistook it for the island at the entrance to Coal River.

66 Grant, Narrative, 150–1; Lee, Logbooks, 62.

67 Grant, Narrative, 154–5; Lee, Logbooks, 66.

68 Karkens, People of the River, 119; McLaren, ‘No Fish, No Hours, No Melons’, 33–55.

69 Dunn, The Convict Valley, 29; Mark Dunn, ‘Exploring Connections: Bungaree and Connections in the Colonial Hunter Valley’, in The First Wave. Exploring Early Coastal Contact History in Australia, ed. Gillian Dooley and Danielle Clode (Mile End: Wakefield Press, 2019), 234.

70 From south of Coal Harbour, Budgerie Dick was probably an Awabakal man, while Bungaree is thought to have been a Garigal man, from south of Awabakal country.

71 See the essays in Shino Konishi, Maria Nugent and Tiffany Shellam, eds., Indigenous Intermediaries. New Perspectives on Exploration Archives (Canberra: ANU Press, 2015), https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p325531/pdf/book.pdf; and Shellam et al., eds., Brokers and Boundaries.

72 Paterson to King, 25 June 1801, HRNSW, iv, 416. One of Paterson’s men claimed to have seen ‘a person … with a jacket and trousers’ in the bush. Paterson believed this might have been a man called Grace, one of 15 convicts who had seized the Norfolk in November 1800 and the only one whose fate was not known: Goold, The ‘Birth of Newcastle’, 7.

73 Grant, Narrative, 156.

74 Ibid., 154–5; Lee, Logbooks, 66.

75 Grant, Narrative, 161–2.

76 Ibid., 162–3. See also Lee, Logbooks, 72, where some details are slightly different. Grant’s Narrative is consistently imprecise as to time and place. It could well be that, because the crew of the ship encouraged him to taste the cabra, they had themselves learned about it from Aboriginal foragers and were now daring him to taste it for himself.

77 Letter received by Banks from Charles Francis Greville, April 1802, Banks Papers, Series 23.25, SLNSW, https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/YRlB3ygn#viewer; Andy Macqueen, Blue Mountains to Bridgetown, The Life and Journeys of Barrallier, 1773–1853 (Self-Published, 1993), Appendix 2, 131–3.

78 Grant, Journal, 23 June, HRA, 1, iii, 171–2.

79 Grant, Narrative, 158; Grace Karskens, ‘Red Coat, Blue Jacket, Black Skin: Aboriginal Men and Clothing in Early New South Wales’, Aboriginal History 35 (2011): 10.

80 Grant, Narrative, 163–4; Lee, Logbooks, 72–3.

81 Grant, Narrative, 158.

82 Shino Konishi, Maria Nugent and Tiffany Shellam, ‘Exploration Archives and Indigenous Histories: An Introduction’, in Indigenous Intermediaries, 3.

83 Carter, ‘Plotting’, 93. Carter comments that Australian explorer narratives would commonly repress the Aboriginal presence.

84 Grant, Narrative, 108f; ‘Remarks of the Lady Nelson’, 15 April 1801, HRNSW, iv, 478–80.

85 Grant, Narrative, 113–4.

86 Ibid., 157.

87 Ibid., 158.

88 Grant, Journal, 23 July, HRA, 1, iii 174.

89 King to Duke of Portland, 21 August 1801, HRA, 1, iii, 169; 773 n67.

90 Karskens, People of the River, 110.

91 Harris to King, 25 June 1801, HRNSW, iv, 417.

92 Grant, Narrative, 165.

93 Paterson to Banks, 20 August 1801, Banks Papers, Series 27.21: Letter received by Banks from William Paterson, 20 August, 1801, SLNSW, https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/92ebRKPY#viewer.

94 ‘Observations by Surveyor Grimes on the Hunter River’, 11 December 1801, HRA, I, iii, 413–15; Macqueen, Blue Mountains to Bridgetown, 57.

95 Paterson, Journal, HRA, I, iii, 177. Long since called Mount Sugarloaf, it is the south-eastern boundary of the valley.

96 Lee, Logbooks, 70.

97 Goold, The ‘Birth of Newcastle’, 8; Jan Tent and David Blair, ‘Motivations for Naming: The Development of a Toponymic Typology for Australian Placenames’, Names 59, no. 2 (2013): 67–89.

98 Carter, Road to Botany Bay, 42–8, 60–1.

99 Paul Woodman, ‘The Interconnections Between Toponymy and Identity’, Review of Historical Geography and Toponomastics 9, no. 17–18 (2014): 8.

100 Carter, The Road to Botany Bay, 61.

101 See, for example, the place names in the HRA, 1, iv, 774n71.

102 The origin of the name is uncertain: ‘Williams of the Williams River’, History in the Williams River Valley, accessed 6 March 2024, https://williamsvalleyhistory.org/williams-river-origin/.

103 Henry Dangar, Map of the River Hunter and its Branches [cartographic material], 1828, National Library of Australia, MAP NK 646, https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-230579854/view; J.F. Campbell, ‘The Genesis of Rural Settlement on the Hunter’, Royal Australian Historical Society Journal and Proceedings, XII, part II (1926), 73–112; Glenn Albrecht, ‘Rediscovering the Coquun: Towards an Environmental History of the Hunter River’, River Forum 2000, Wyndham Estate, Hunter Valley, NSW, accessed 6 March 2024, https://livinghistories.newcastle.edu.au/nodes/view/57377.

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Greg Burgess

Greg Burgess has taught European, French and International History and Historiography at the Universities of Melbourne and Tasmania, and at Deakin University. He has published three books on the histories of refugees in nineteenth and twentieth century France and Europe. His family arrived in the Hunter Valley in the 1830s and he has now turned his attention to the history of the places in which he grew up but did not then know.