Boorong of the Burramattagal, Australia’s first female Aboriginal intermediary

Toby Raeburn, Paul Saunders and Kerrie Doyle

Introduction

In 1789, an epidemic described by early colonial diarists as smallpox broke out among the Eora Aboriginal people who lived around Sydney Harbour.¹ Sadly, when Aboriginal people fled north, south and west trying to escape the disease, they inadvertently passed it from one Aboriginal nation to another. As the disease spread west to clans living along the Parramatta River, it infected a young Aboriginal girl aged about 14 years old² named Boorong (also referred to in colonial diaries as Booron, Abbarroo, Abaroo and Abarough).³

Boorong’s name meant ‘star’ in the Eora language and her family were members of the Burramattagal (Parramatta) clan. Her mother’s name was Gooroobera, referencing ‘firestick’; her father was Maugoran, referencing ‘fish’; and she had three brothers, Ballooderry, Yeranibi and Bidgee Bidgee.⁴ Late in 1788, when British colonists spread up the river from Sydney and established their second camp at Rose Hill, her family had been pushed out of their home and began living with the Wallumedegal clan. Wallumedegal Country lay to the east of Parramatta, stretching along the northern side of the Parramatta River to the western edge of the Lane Cove River. Custodians of aeons of wisdom, their lifestyle was deeply connected with the life of the two rivers, which provided abundant food in the form of fish, shellfish, kangaroos, lizards, snakes and numerous plants. Line fishing and collection of shellfish and plants was mostly done by Aboriginal women, while men’s work focused on spearfishing and hunting animals.⁵ They also cultivated numerous varieties of plants and undertook sustainable environmental practices such as eel farming.⁶ Like other Aboriginal clans who lived along Australia’s south-east coast, there is little evidence that either the Wallumedegal or Burramattagal people had interactions with people from other parts of the world during the 70,000 years before the British sea captain James Cook’s brief visit in 1770 and the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.

When Boorong contracted smallpox, her parents may have guessed that her best chance at survival was to seek care from the people the disease had arrived with. However, regardless of their intentions or circumstances, in April, she and a young Aboriginal boy named Nanbarry, who colonial diarist Watkin Tench estimated to be around 9–10 years old, were brought into the colonists’ camp at Sydney Cove with two adult Aboriginal males who were also infected.⁷ The colonists accommodated them in a hut next to the tent hospital, where their first Aboriginal prisoner, Arabanoo, attempted to nurse them back to health. Both infected men soon died, but Boorong and Nanbarry managed to recover. Sadly, but predictably, Arabanoo contracted the disease while nursing them.

Over the next several days, the children watched as British colonial surgeons tried a variety of treatments to heal Arabanoo, including administering British medicines and bloodletting. Despite their efforts, Arabanoo died on 18 May 1789. Afterwards, in an act of respect, Governor Phillip buried him in front of Government House in a garden of roses—ironically, a symbol of the British Empire. Nanbarry was assigned to live with Chief Surgeon John White, while Boorong was taken into the home of Rev. Richard Johnson and his wife Mary. This paper traces how, in the process of forming a friendship with the Johnsons, Boorong became colonial Australia’s earliest female Aboriginal intermediary. However, despite fulfilling such an important role in the history of modern Australia, Boorong has been largely overlooked by contemporary historians and commentators.

Why Boorong has been overlooked

As noted by historians McLaren and Kinoshi, the archival records of early colonial New South Wales (NSW) are heavily skewed by gendered cultural stereotypes due to most records being written by male British colonists.⁸ Such bias was compounded by the fact that notoriously few records were written about Aboriginal people, contributing to what anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner described in 1968 as the ‘Great Australian Silence’—the ‘cult of forgetfulness’ in relation to Australians’ lack of historical interest in, and awareness of, invasion and colonisation.⁹ Such forgetfulness has been even more exaggerated in relation to Aboriginal women who had less written about them than Aboriginal men and whose portrayals generally reveal more about nineteenth-century British preoccupations with gender than the lived experiences of the women they describe. As identified by the historian Robert Holden, a third overlooked group has been the Aboriginal children who lived in early colonial NSW.¹⁰ When such components are considered together, it becomes clear that the concept of intersectionality is relevant to understanding why Boorong has been overlooked in Australian history.

Intersectionality is a sociological concept referring to how a variety of components of a person’s identity can combine to produce compounding experiences of discrimination and marginalisation. In Boorong’s case, her Indigeneity, gender and age (as a young adolescent) appear to have obscured historians’ interest in her life, such that her contribution to modern Australia is largely unknown. Another factor contributing to Boorong being overlooked is that information about her was recorded in fleeting ways by disparate colonists. Perhaps due to the difficulty of gathering such sources together, she tends to be mentioned only in relation to others, for example, in works focused on her husband Bennelong¹¹ or the Johnsons.¹² However, when fragments of data from primary and secondary sources are linked, they enable us to use historical imagination to consider her experiences and contributions more broadly. What follows is based on a careful examination of a variety of primary and secondary sources on the history of early Sydney. It represents our attempt to provide a coherent narrative of Boorong’s life.

Boorong introduced British colonists to her family and friends

After taking Boorong into their home, Rev. Johnson and Mary spent a couple of months getting to know her, assisting her to settle into the routines and rhythms of life in early colonial NSW. Then, on Friday 31 July 1789, Johnson and a small group of soldiers took her out in a boat to visit some of the Eora clans who lived in the coves around Sydney Harbour. They hoped that seeing Boorong alive and well might convince other Aboriginal people to visit Sydney. However, despite Boorong guiding the boat to a familiar beach where she chatted with some relatives, none were willing to visit the colony. Two days later, on Sunday 2 August, John White took Nanbarry on a similar outing and he enabled the colonists to converse with a group of relatives on a beach, but they too refused to visit the colony. Despite the little boy tearfully expressing his desire to return to his family during the visit, the colonists kept him captive.¹³

While the colonists gained some benefit from studying the two children for language-learning purposes, what Governor Phillip really wanted was intelligence about Aboriginal military strategy. He found their lack of progress in befriending Aboriginal people frustrating. In November 1789, using a similar technique to the one that had been used to capture Arabanoo a year earlier, Lieutenant Bradley and a group of marines rowed a boat to the northern side of Sydney Harbour and began conversing with a group of Aboriginal people gathered there. The marines held up some fish, pretending they wanted to share food. Then, once two Aboriginal men had been lured into shallow water near their boat, the British soldiers pounced, tackling and dragging them aboard while other Aboriginal people wailed in horror and threw spears in retaliation from the shore.¹⁴

The two prisoners were taken to Governor Phillip’s house, and Boorong and Nanbarry were brought to meet them. To the colonists’ surprise, the children immediately greeted the two new prisoners by name—Bennelong and Colebe. As they had done with Arabanoo a year earlier, the colonists shaved, washed and dressed the men in British clothing before placing iron shackles around their legs and fastening them to a British convict.¹⁵

Bennelong, aged around 26, was a member of the Wagnall clan that lived on the southern shores of the Parramatta River. Colebe, aged around 30, was from the Cadigal (Gadigal) clan that inhabited what is now the eastern suburbs of Sydney. Boorong’s familiarity with the two men, despite being from different clans, is indicative of the close networks between Aboriginal clans who lived in the Sydney basin. Tench noted that both men had scarred faces, suggesting that they had had smallpox.¹⁶ Within days of being brought into the colony, Colebe managed to escape, leaving Bennelong as the colonists’ sole adult Aboriginal prisoner—also awaiting an opportunity to flee.

During the first few months of 1790, the colonists struggled to survive. Rations were reduced and anxiety built that Aboriginal people around Sydney might launch a major attack. Despite their best efforts to hide their fear and food shortage from Bennelong, he appears to have sensed their weakness and, in a display of quick wittedness, seized the opportunity to escape.¹⁷ In the early hours of 3 May 1790, he woke his guard feigning illness and requesting fresh air. Allowed into the backyard of the hut where he was being held captive, he leapt over the wooden fence surrounding it and ran off into the night. His escape meant that the children, Boorong and Nanbarry, once again became the only two Aboriginal people living among the colonists.

Boorong took an interest in learning about the early colonist’s way of life

In contrast to Arabanoo, Colebe and Bennelong, Boorong did not attempt to escape—or, if she did, her attempt was not recorded. Instead, she appears to have taken an interest in learning about the early colonists’ way of life. Inside the Johnsons’ home, she built a close relationship with the reverend’s wife Mary, and spent time with the Johnsons’ housemaid, Elizabeth Haywood, who, at just 13 years of age, had been the youngest female convict transported on the First Fleet.¹⁸ Boorong and Elizabeth were both aged around 14 when they met; it can only be guessed what they experienced as they got to know one another. They would have communicated using hand and facial gestures, as Boorong only knew a few simple words of English, picked up during her hospital stay while recovering from smallpox, and Elizabeth is unlikely to have known Boorong’s language. Perhaps, after the Johnsons had eaten their evening meal, the girls might have sat at a wooden table up against a wall of their hut, slurping soup and studying each other?

Only one, unsigned, drawing remains of Boorong.¹⁹ Kept at the Natural History Museum in Britain, it portrays her as having dark skin, short curly hair, a round face, brown eyes with long eyelashes and a wide nose; she is ornately decorated for a funeral ceremony, with ochre on her chest and feathers on her head. There is no record of what Elizabeth Haywood looked like. Although hailing from vastly different backgrounds, one thing they had in common was the experience of loss and exile, as they had both been taken in by the Johnsons after being forced to leave their family, friends and homeland.

Assigned to the Johnsons shortly after arriving in NSW, Elizabeth had witnessed the grief and loss they endured when Mary gave birth to a stillborn son in October 1788.²⁰ Mary had become acutely ill following the birth, and Elizabeth had helped to nurse her back to health, but then, in early 1789, her relationship with the Johnsons took a turn for the worse. The archives of the NSW Supreme Court record that, on 9 February 1789, Judge Advocate David Collins sentenced Elizabeth to 30 lashes for the ‘crime’ of insolence towards Rev. Johnson.²¹ Despite her young age, Elizabeth would have been tied to a pole and whipped across the back with an instrument known as the ‘cat of nine tails’—nine pieces of leather, knotted at the end, designed to tear small pieces of flesh from victims’ bodies. After enduring such a vicious punishment, her wounds would have taken substantial time to heal. Was she given any help to keep them clean? Did they become infected? Might Boorong have noticed the scars on her back? Perhaps one night, as they prepared for bed, Elizabeth removed her clothes, revealing thin lines of scabs all over her back, causing Boorong to shriek in shock and horror. Holding her finger up to her lips, signalling Boorong to be silent, Elizabeth might have tried to warn her new housemate not to upset the chaplain. Boorong would not have been able to comprehend exactly what was being said, but she likely took a cautious approach towards the Johnsons.

Notwithstanding their harsh treatment of convicts, the Johnsons had a generous and accepting approach towards Boorong. While staying in their home, she formed a close friendship with Mary, with whom she spent many hours while the reverend was out meeting the pastoral needs of early NSW. Colonial diarists who visited the Johnsons’ home, including Tench, Collins, William Bradley and Phillip Gidley King, often referred to Boorong as ‘the girl who lived with the clergyman’s wife’. Officer David Blackburn wrote that Boorong was ‘very fond of Mrs Johnson’.²² Historian Meredith Lake has argued that the Johnsons experienced a kind of ‘exile’ from their home country and that their friendship with Boorong may have assisted them to cope; yet, the opposite is perhaps truer.²³ The Johnsons had, after all, chosen to travel to NSW, motivated, at least in part, by religious providence and financial compensation. Boorong, on the other hand, was ‘brought in’ and there is no record of the colonists attempting to return her or Nanbarry to their families. Therefore, it was Boorong, not the Johnsons, who was exiled from family and friends as part of British colonisation.

During her time with Mary Johnson, Boorong became well acquainted with the rhythms of British life. As they walked about the colony, she observed convicts felling trees, digging saw pits, building huts, lugging rocks and clearing roads in work gangs overseen by marines. She observed colonists fishing with seines in the harbour and gamekeepers with guns hunting for animals. At times, she probably visited the commissariat store with Mary, taking delivery of the family’s rations, comprising set amounts of salted meat, flour or biscuit, dried peas (known as ‘pease’), butter and rice, which had been brought out on the First Fleet. She might also have helped Mary or the Johnsons’ house servants to fetch water or wood for cooking purposes.

Inside the home, as well as teaching Boorong about Christianity and how to read and write, Mary may have involved her in cooking meals for the family. Like other early colonists, Mary demonstrated an inventive approach to cooking, using her family’s rations as a base and augmenting them with vegetables from their garden to prepare nutritious meals, such as vegetable or meat soups and stews. Boiling starches and cereals was commonplace, and flour was boiled to make a well-known gruel called ‘lillipie’. When the right ingredients were available, Boorong would have tasted early colonial favourites such as ‘Cheshire pork pie for sea’, made with layers of salt pork and potatoes and baked in a crust. Another common recipe she would have tried was dumplings: sweet dumplings stuffed with dried fruit, or, when meat was available, savoury dumplings stuffed with meat.²⁴ Boorong’s active interest in learning about the colonists’ way of life resulted in a friendship that was symbolised, on 23 March 1790, with the Johnsons naming their infant daughter Milbah Maria, ‘Milbah’ being a popular Aboriginal name Boorong had shared with them.

Boorong shared her spirituality

Like other Aboriginal people, Boorong’s spirituality was deeply connected to her experience of the natural world, including knowledge of astronomy based on observations of the night sky. When she studied the stars, she did so from the knowledge she had learnt from her Elders to predict correlations between star positions and natural events important for survival, such as when seasonal bush foods would be available, or when weather conditions like flood or drought might begin. Astronomical knowledge also informed various systems of moral guidance and education in the lore of Aboriginal people, contributing to the continuation of cultural identity.²⁵ As stated previously, Boorong’s name meant ‘star’ in the Eora language, and early colonial diarists such as Collins noticed that she associated falling stars and comets with notions of fear, death, omens and malevolent spirits. He wrote:

To the shooting of a star, they attach a degree of importance; and I once, on an occasion of this kind, saw the girl Boo-roong greatly agitated and prophesying much evil to befall all the white men and their habitations.²⁶

The same event was recalled by Tench:

I remember Abaroo [Boorong] running into a room where a company was assembled, and uttering frightful exclamations of impending mischiefs, about to light on her and her countrymen. When questioned on the cause of such agitation, she went to the door and pointed to the skies, saying that whenever the stars wore that appearance, misfortunes to the natives always followed. The night was cloudy and the air disturbed by meteors. I have heard many more of them testify similar apprehension.²⁷

Although they remembered seeing Boorong act in this way, neither Collins nor Tench noted the date it occurred. That detail was collected by Philip Gidley King, later to become NSW’s third governor. On 9 April 1790, he wrote:

The Sun, Moon & Stars they call werè (Bad) the girl once went into very violent convulsions at seeing a falling star, and said … ‘every body would be destroyed’.²⁸

In the margin, he wrote in a side note: ‘Some say she particularly alluded to the Murry Nowey, Sirius.’²⁹ Murry Nowey or ‘mari nawi’ in the Eora language meant ‘big canoe’. King’s recollection of the date of Boorong’s outburst implies that Boorong experienced a kind of spiritual insight that something terrible was going to happen to the colonists. Several weeks later, when news arrived in Sydney that the Sirius had shipwrecked, the rumour that King noted in his side note led to gossip about Boorong’s ‘premonition’ among the colonists.

As well as sharing her beliefs with the colonists, Boorong also took an interest in learning about their beliefs. One year after welcoming her into their home, Rev. Johnson wrote:

Have taken some pains with Abaroo [Boorong], about 15 years old, to instruct her in reading and have no reason to complain of her improvement. She can likewise begin to speak a little English and is useful in several things about our little Hutt. Have taught her the Lord’s Prayer, and as she comes better to understand men, endeavour to instruct her respecting a Supreme Being. Wish to see these poor heathens brought to the knowledge of Christianity.³⁰

Alongside scripture lessons at home, the Johnsons also took Boorong to church services on Sundays, where she and Nanbarry listened to Johnson preaching and observed how the British expressed their spirituality. Tench observed that, during church, the two Aboriginal children ‘always preserved profound silence and decency, as if conscious that some religious ceremony on our side was performing’.³¹ He also noted that Aboriginal people exhibited other forms of spirituality, but, like the Johnsons, hoped that as they were introduced to British education, they would not only become more civilised but also embrace Christianity.

Boorong bore witness to British brutality

Boorong observed British spirituality in church, but she also witnessed their brutality. As she walked about the colony, she saw convicts being flogged for theft, being drunk, gambling, disobeying orders, being rude or running away. Whipping was a common punishment in British culture, but it was new to Boorong and her people. Little did she know that bloody floggings were a mild introduction to the kind of violence the British were willing to perpetrate on their own kind.

An even more horrible experience awaited Boorong in July 1790, when she witnessed the difficulties that Rev. Johnson experienced providing pastoral care to survivors of the Second Fleet. To save money, bureaucrats in England had engaged slave traders to transport the convicts of the Second Fleet, and, disastrously, they were paid per head at boarding, not on arrival.³² That deal meant that very little care was given to convicts during the voyage, resulting in the loss of more than a quarter of the 1,017 passengers en route and the death of hundreds more following arrival. When the Second Fleet finally docked in Sydney, Johnson visited convicts below deck on the HMS Surprize, but the stench was so offensive he could barely walk among them. He found people in nightmarish conditions, lying naked without any bedding in pools of excrement and vomit, and watched helplessly as sailors threw numerous naked corpses overboard into Sydney Harbour. Hundreds who managed to survive the voyage were ill on arrival and were treated with similar disdain—thrown over the side of vessels like barrels of rum into rowboats before being paddled ashore, where they either crawled, limped or were helped along by friends.³³

At that time, the hospital comprised 68 beds in a few tents, and the colony was overwhelmed with nearly 500 desperately ill people. A new wooden kit hospital brought out aboard the Justinian was quickly erected, but most patients ended up being accommodated in groups of four per tent, sleeping on the bare ground with just one blanket between them.³⁴ Midway through 1789, Aboriginal bodies had laid in coves all around the harbour because of the smallpox epidemic. Now, just one year later, Boorong and her people witnessed a mirror effect occurring. This time, white instead of black corpses littered the shores of Sydney Cove.

Boorong acted as an intermediary between her people and the British

A few months after the arrival of the Second Fleet, on 7 September 1790, a small group of colonists led by John White were rowing north across Sydney Harbour when they spotted Bennelong among a crowd of approximately 200 Aboriginal people cutting, roasting and eating a whale that had beached itself at Manly. A messenger was quickly sent to alert Phillip, who, sensing Bennelong’s value as a potential negotiator, gathered a small group of marines, weapons and supplies before rowing across the harbour in the hope of re-establishing communication with the escaped prisoner.

When the governor’s party arrived at the beach they called Collins Cove, they were greeted by Bennelong and Colebe, who initially engaged in an amicable conversation. The meeting proceeded well, but, as discussions progressed, the British noticed the Aboriginal group encircling them while Phillip was drawn into conversation with an Aboriginal man named Wileemarin. Attempting to establish rapport, he disarmed himself by removing the sword around his waist, but this action appears to have inadvertently frightened Wileemarin, who used his toes to lift a spear from the sand beside him and, in a fluid motion, threw it, piercing Phillip’s right shoulder just above the collarbone. Shocked, both sides retreated, the Aboriginal people running into nearby bushes while throwing spears and the British retreating to their boats and firing shots. No further injury was recorded, and, after rowing hastily across the harbour, the spear was successfully removed from Phillip’s shoulder by the surgeon William Balmain.³⁵

Few Aboriginal people were spotted by the British until a week later, 14 September, when, during a trip across the harbour, Johnson and Boorong, accompanied by William Dawes and White, spotted Boorong’s father Maurgoran with Bennelong on a beach on the northern side of the harbour. Apparently concerned that the spearing might trigger British retaliation, Bennelong offered assurance that Wileemarin had been ferociously beaten as punishment for the assault. While chatting, Boorong noticed a wound on her father’s head, which he told her had been sustained during a fight over some whale meat. Then, in an exhibition of the trust she had developed towards the colonists, she convinced him to allow White to treat it.

While Boorong was on good terms with the colonists, she nevertheless longed to return to her family and, during the conversation, informed her father of her desire to marry and resume traditional life among her people. Maugoran opposed her request, apparently concerned that if she left the colonists at such a sensitive time, her exit might lead to further tensions with the British. Consequently, Boorong agreed to continue living with the Johnsons until the situation between the colonists and local clans settled down.³⁶

By 18 September 1790, Phillip’s shoulder had sufficiently healed for him to meet with Bennelong and Colebe, who once again assured him that they had severely beaten Wileemarin, and explained that Wileemarin had mistakenly thrown the spear out of fear for his life. Another meeting followed a few days later on the north side of the harbour, during which Boorong, accompanied by Johnson, played a key role as a translator for Bennelong’s wife, Barangaroo, who feared that the colonists might try to recapture her husband. When it became clear that Bennelong was considering accepting Phillip’s invitation to revisit the colony, Barangaroo vehemently opposed his departure, crying, yelling threats and smashing one of Bennelong’s fishgigs on nearby rocks. Despite his wife’s furious opposition, Bennelong accepted the governor’s invitation to visit the colony, but only on the proviso that a colonist could be kept as his people’s prisoner on the north side of the harbour until he was safely returned.

Demonstrating the trust Boorong had developed with the colonists, Johnson agreed to stay with her, acting as Barangaroo’s hostage while Bennelong and a few of his friends visited the colony. During the visit, the British negotiated with the group by presenting them with hatchets, clothes and food, and expressing their hope for a renewed partnership. Afterwards, when Bennelong’s group returned safely to their people, Johnson and Boorong were returned to the colonists as promised. The exchange achieved the result the British intended, as, from that time on, Bennelong became their key male negotiator with Aboriginal people. Out of respect, Phillip had a small brick home built for him where the Sydney Opera House now stands. The location is named Bennelong Point and a Sydney suburb is named after Barangaroo, yet the central role that Boorong played in early colonial Australia has been largely forgotten.

Boorong maintained a friendship with the colonists

In the weeks following the prisoner exchange that led to rapport being re-established between the colonists and Bennelong, Boorong strengthened her resolve to marry and resume traditional life. When two of her brothers visited the colony midway through October 1790 to collect a shield Phillip had made for Bennelong, she spoke with them about leaving the colonists’ camp and returning to her people, presenting them with hatchets—a gift prized by Aboriginal people for utility in the bush. A few days after their conversation, a group led by Bennelong’s sister rowed into Sydney Cove, and Boorong bid farewell to the Johnsons and the colony, returning to her family.³⁷

After 17 months sharing their home and teaching her all they could, the Johnsons found it difficult to understand Boorong’s decision to return to traditional life and her apparent rejection of Christianity and British customs. Yet, as it turned out, the hospitality they had showed her produced unexpected results in the form of a long-term friendship. Within a fortnight of re-entering her culture, Boorong returned to the Johnsons for medical care, having received a vicious beating from an unidentified person.³⁸ Despite her bruises, she was determined to return to her people. After a few days’ rest, she did so, becoming the second wife of a young Aboriginal man. However, within a week, her place as a second wife caused trouble, and she was brutally beaten again, this time by her new husband’s first wife. John Hunter, who would later become NSW’s second governor, wrote:

Boorong, the native girl who had lived with the clergyman, returned to him again, after a week’s absence: some officers had been down the harbour, and she was very happy to embrace that opportunity of getting from the party she had been with. By her own account, she had joined the young man she wished to marry, and had lived with him three days; but he had another wife, who the girl said was jealous, and had beat her; indeed, evident marks of this appeared about her head, which was so bruised as to require the surgeon’s attention: in return for this unkind treatment, it seems her favourite had beat his wife.³⁹

From that time on, Boorong continued spending a few days per week living with the Johnsons and other days visiting her people at various places around the harbour. However, in March 1791, she was assaulted for a third time. On this occasion, Boorong was out walking with an Aboriginal girlfriend named Deelin when they were confronted by two Aboriginal men who stated they wanted to sleep with them. When the girls refused, they were viciously assaulted by the Aboriginal men and again made haste to the Johnsons seeking help.⁴⁰ Sadly, the selective use of records such as this, tainted by the mark of colonialism, has contributed to long-lasting perceptions of Aboriginal men as violent, uncivilised and misogynistic.⁴¹

In discussing violence towards Aboriginal women in early colonial NSW, it is important to acknowledge that most, if not all, cultures have been similarly unjust in their treatment of women and men, including British culture. In NSW, the violent nature of British culture was on full display from the time colonisation began. Aboriginal people watched the British lock convicts—their own people—in chains, tie them to poles and beat them with whips. At other times, colonists crowded together, gawking as one of their own was put to death by hanging.

The way colonists treated their own women must have seemed odd to Boorong and other Aboriginal people. In public, the British followed customs that prioritised women, opening doors to their homes, allowing them to walk through first and standing to allow women seats at meetings. Yet, Aboriginal people may also have noticed how the British prioritised education for boys over girls; how British women were not allowed to assume publicly powerful roles; and, while the homes they constructed often provided better protection from the weather than Aboriginal dwellings, how British men used the privacy of such sturdy walls to beat their women and children.

In eighteenth-century British homes, men used values drawn from Christianity to assert their place as ‘head’ of their household by beating their wives and children.⁴² In wealthier families—those able to afford domestic servants—chiefs of staff were allowed to beat female and male servants. Although there were legal and social limits to the acceptability of such violence, men’s rights were rarely challenged thanks to British society’s view that they were superior.⁴³ Like most human cultures, therefore, violence towards women was also a feature of British culture and society. Yet the British were loath to acknowledge any resemblance to the people they had colonised because to do so risked empathising with the humanity of those they invaded.

Boorong walked in two worlds

After Boorong returned to the Johnsons’ home for the third time, Rev. Johnson wrote to friends in England, crediting her with the major role she had played in repairing relationships with Aboriginal people following Phillip’s spearing. He reported:

We are now on a pretty friendly intercourse with the Natives—Number of them are coming into the camp daily, or rather are in night and day. This intercourse was principally brought about by means of a little girl [Boorong], which, if I mistake not, I mentioned to you in a former letter.⁴⁴

While happy to provide Boorong and her friend Deelin with a place to stay, the Johnsons’ little hut was overcrowded and uncomfortable, so they rejoiced when a new brick home was completed for them midway through 1791.⁴⁵ Located near modern-day Bridge Street between the homes of Collins and Surveyor General Augustus Alt, the spacious new abode provided Boorong with a bed in a home located at the centre of power and politics in NSW, a place she continued visiting until at least December 1795.⁴⁶ A completely voluntary arrangement, she came and went as she wished and would often visit her people at various locations around Sydney Harbour.

During one of her outings, Boorong visited the north side of the harbour where she met a group of women from the Cammeraygal clan who inhabited lands stretching from the eastern side of Lane Cove River around the northern shore of Sydney Harbour to modern-day Manly. On returning to the colony, she reported feeling ill, symptoms that may well have been anxiety-related because she stated they were caused by a curse from the Cammeraygal women who objected to her entering their country without following correct cultural protocol.⁴⁷ Concerned for her wellbeing, Mary and Rev. Johnson arranged a consultation with the colonist’s chief surgeon, Dr John White, who judged that she needed bloodletting as soon as possible. Boorong’s willingness to allow White to perform such treatment was linked to her familiarity with him, having watched him treat Arabanoo and her father previously. When the bloodletting did not work, rather than submit to any further British treatments, she requested a consultation with a female Aboriginal healer known as a Carrahdy.

When the Carrahdy arrived, she administered a traditional Aboriginal form of bloodletting known as ‘beanny’. Inviting Boorong to take a seat on the ground next to her, she placed a bowl of water beside them. Using an oyster shell, the Carrahdy made a light perpendicular cut on Boorong’s forehead. Once the wound started bleeding, the Carrahdy looped a piece of string around Boorong’s scalp, tying a knot in the centre of her forehead. While singing a chant, she stretched out the remaining length of string to her own mouth, rubbing her lips until they bled and spitting the blood into the bowl of water beside her.

Collins and Tench recorded that Boorong appeared to believe that the blood from the Carrahdy’s lips was being drained from the wound on her own head; certainly, the Carrahdy’s performance made it look as if blood was flowing along the string into her mouth.⁴⁸ Following this, Tench observed that Boorong ‘became well and believed that she owed her cure to the treatment she had received’.⁴⁹ Highlighting the power of ethnocentricity in healthcare, Boorong’s recovery appears to have been facilitated by a sense of familiarity with her own cultural beliefs and traditions within which she believed she could heal. Aboriginal lore, which was community knowledge passed on by tribal Elders, defined rules and consequences, including formal ceremonies for dealing with life’s transitions through birth, initiation and death. Her people’s beliefs connected her with her country and family, supplying a blanket of comfort during a time of illness.

Boorong was also involved in providing traditional healthcare to fellow Aboriginal women. David Collins described her role during the labour of Bennelong’s sister, War-re-weer, writing that:

Booroong, was employed in pouring cold water from time to time on the abdomen, while another [Aboriginal woman], tying one end of a small line around Warreweer’s neck, with the other end rubbed her own lips until they bled.⁵⁰

Such descriptions exemplify the way young Aboriginal women were trained by experience to assist each other when needed. Not long after Boorong’s illness, her brother, Ballooderry, fell ill. Collins observed that, initially, Bennelong tried to heal him by chanting and singing, but within a short time, it became clear that specialised treatment was needed, and a Carrahdy was called. This time Collins described a male Carrahdy delivering treatment by performing a healing dance before applying his mouth to different parts of Ballooderry’s body, as if he was sucking out the disease. This placebo treatment culminated with the Carrahdy spitting out a 1-inch piece of bone he had earlier concealed inside his mouth, suggesting the cause of the illness had been successfully sucked out. Following the spectacle, Ballooderry’s friends paid the Carrahdy with various goods while waiting for the treatment to take effect. On this occasion, the traditional treatment did not work, and Ballooderry died.

During a complex funeral ceremony held over the next few days, the Port Jackson painter sketched the only known picture of Boorong attending the funeral in traditional dress.⁵¹ In a detailed description of the funeral ceremony, Collins noted that, as part of the mourning processes, Boorong received a cut on her head and instructions from her mother not to eat any fish or meat out of respect for the passing of her brother.⁵² Boorong’s role at her brother’s funeral emphasises her remarkable ability to move in and out of traditional cultural roles as a sister and daughter while at the same time maintaining a friendship with the colonists.

Boorong was stereotyped by British newspapers

Boorong’s important intermediary role was not recognised by the British press. An article in the Chelmsford Chronicle published on 24 December 1790 read:

The report of the natives having shown unfriendly disposition to our government and that skirmishes between our settlers and them had ensued are without the smallest foundation. A principal chief among the natives (Bennelong) lives with Governor Phillip in his house, and a native female [Boorong] lives as servant to the chaplain [Johnson]. They are convinced of the superiority of the British Government and show no signs of resistance.⁵³

Eighteenth-century British citizens were fed propaganda about colonial NSW that assured them of their racial superiority. The notion that Aboriginal people were showing ‘no signs of resistance’ suited the picture that British newspapers wanted to create in the minds of their audience, as did the picture of Boorong as a ‘servant to the Chaplain’. No mention was made of her remarkable linguistic skills, intelligence or role as an intermediary.

One-and-a-half years later, on 30 April 1792, the Sussex Advertiser published an article that portrayed Aboriginal people as fighting one another so often that their population was kept low due to deaths in battles between clans. Dismissing any legitimate reason for Aboriginal people choosing to target or kill a colonist, the article insinuated that they were cannibalistic, stating that Aboriginal people ‘killed and devoured’ every colonist they came across. Piling untruth upon untruth, it included the following titillating fable about Boorong:

A surgeon at Sydney has a fine boy [Nanbarry], and Mr Johnson [sic] the chaplain, a grown girl [Boorong], who were found perishing with their parents during a great mortality among the natives, supposed to have been occasioned by the smallpox. At Sydney the savages are rather familiar with the settlers, the Governor has given them clothes and other articles to conciliate their confidence and friendship, but hitherto without any considerable effect. Mr Clark with the modesty of a Sussex man, reprehends the ladies of that place for letting the naked blacks stand in their presence. Yet he expresses no disgust at the sable wench [Boorong] at the Parson’s, who sometimes faces the other sex in puris naturalibus. Thus, are we ever ready to set up a standard of morality for women, which next instant we ourselves trample under foot. This wench, however, finding the white gentlemen rather deficient in gallantry, occasionally strays into the woods in quest of a dingy paramour, and in some time after returns for absolution to her master [Johnson].⁵⁴

Building on the earlier newspaper portrayal of Boorong as a ‘servant to the chaplain’, this article helped to establish the prototypical Aboriginal woman in the British mind.⁵⁵ Not only was she portrayed as a servant to her ‘master’ but also as naked and promiscuous. To the British mind, nakedness was a symbol of impurity in social life, and was associated with sex, sinfulness and shame. Accordingly, a picture was presented to the British public of Aboriginal females as primitive, uneducated and lacking in self-respect. Such caricatures, generalised to Aboriginal women for generations to come, became one of the justifications used for colonisation.

Boorong in later life

By 1795, Boorong’s friendship with the Johnsons had spanned six years. It is possible, therefore, that conversations with her about her people’s traditional lands along the northern shore of the Parramatta River may have contributed to Richard and Mary’s decision to purchase three adjoining 40-acre blocks on Wallumedegal Country at Kissing Point. In subsequent years, the Johnsons leased their properties to farmers who allowed Boorong to continue living on her traditional lands. Records reveal that she married Bennelong, becoming his fourth wife, and together they led a group of approximately 100 Aboriginal people who lived peacefully on Wallumedegal Country.⁵⁶ For the next 18 years, Boorong and Bennelong’s group avoided involvement in the Frontier Wars that raged in other parts of NSW and continued to regularly visit the Johnsons and Governor Hunter.

After the Johnsons returned to England in 1800, there is no further record of contact between them and Boorong. Records do reveal, however, that around 1804 Boorong and Bennelong had a son whose name was recorded by colonists as Dicky Bennelong.⁵⁷ Boorong passed away sometime before Bennelong, who died in 1813. He was buried in a grave beside her on the property of the beer baron James Squire.⁵⁸ In a telling illustration of how close Boorong, Nanbarry and Bennelong had been, when Nanbarry died in 1821, he requested to be buried next to the woman who had acted as his older sister and the man who had been a mentor and uncle to him inside the early colony. Together, these three remarkable Australians held memories of the colonial transition from a distinctly Aboriginal point of view.

Boorong obscured

In 1838, Joseph Holt, who managed the farmlands that William Cox had purchased from the Johnsons at Kissing Point, recorded in his memoir that:

The Chief or King of this tribe was called Bennelong … that is to say, their King for a very long time … I have frequently had a hundred of both males and females in the farmyard at a time and it was my custom to take in the Chief and his Gin [Boorong] and give them their breakfast and a glass of grog. I then told them not to meddle with my melons for if they did, I should be very angry with him.⁵⁹

Thus, in the decades after her death, Boorong’s accomplishments as a linguistically talented friend and intermediary during the early years of colonial NSW were obscured by her identity as Bennelong’s ‘Gin’ (wife).

In modern times, the way Australia remembers Boorong is not much better. Rarely referred to on her own terms, she is usually described as ‘Bennelong’s fourth wife’, if she is mentioned at all. If you visit the gravesite of Boorong, Bennelong and Nanbarry today, you will find a small plaque—50 centimetres by 50 centimetres—under a tree on the traditional lands of the Wallumedegal people, now known as the north-western Sydney suburb of Putney. There, at the end of a cul-de-sac, the Australian Bicentenary Society unveiled a plaque in 1988 that reads:

Bennelong’s Burial Site. Bennelong was an Aborigine who befriended the first colonists, lived for a while as Governor Phillip’s guest and visited England, where he became the toast of society. Following his death, he was buried hereabouts beside his wife and Nanbarry, another Aborigine. Monument funded by the Australian Bicentennial Society.

Referenced here in a nameless fashion as ‘Bennelong’s wife’, this modern memorial treats Boorong in the same way Australian history, until recently, treated all colonial women—by overshadowing them with the lives of colonial men. Such a memorial seems woefully inadequate when Boorong’s role as a leading Aboriginal intermediary during the early years of colonisation is now known. Nameless memorials like this serve to obscure Boorong and her remarkable contributions as a translator, intermediary and friend.

Conclusion

Boorong’s life highlights that, alongside the invasion of colonial NSW by the British and resistance by Aboriginal people battling to defend their country, there existed what the North American historian Richard White has described as a ‘middle ground’ of spaces and processes through which colonists and Aboriginal people interacted and adjusted their differences through expedient, creative, muddled communication.⁶⁰ It was in such spaces that Boorong fulfilled her vital role as a cultural intermediary. Ironically, while intersecting characteristics of race, gender and age have contributed to her being overlooked in contemporary histories, it was these very characteristics—Aboriginal, female, adolescent—that enabled her to move between the colonists and Aboriginal communities in the early years of invasion. In the process, overlapping ideas of femininity and youth held by the colonists and her own people enabled her to forge new friendships, family and community. In the increasingly fractious and isolating world of the twenty-first century, modern Australia has much to learn from greater reflection on, and acknowledgement of, Boorong—our first female Aboriginal intermediary.

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1. 1 Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, Including an Accurate Description of the Situation of the Colony; of the Natives; and of Its Natural Productions (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1998), 18; Christopher Warren, ‘Smallpox at Sydney Cove–Who, When, Why?’ Journal of Australian Studies 38, no. 1 (2014): 68–86, doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2013.849750.

2. 2 Richard Johnson to Henry Fricker, 9 April 1790, in Some Letters of Reverend Richard Johnson, B. A. First Chaplain of New South Wales Collected and Edited, with Introduction, Notes and Commentary. In Two Parts, edited by George Mackaness, vol. 1 (Sydney: D. S. Ford Printers, 1954).

3. 3 Tench, A Complete Account, 19; Samraghni Bonnerjee, ed., Subaltern Women’s Narratives: Strident Voices, Dissenting Bodies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), doi.org/10.4324/9781003121220.

4. 4 Keith Vincent Smith, Wallumedegal, an Aboriginal history of Ryde (Ryde: City of Ryde, 2005).

5. 5 Richard Hill and George Thornton, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales: With Personal Reminiscences of the Tribes Formerly Living in the Neighbourhood of Sydney and the Surrounding Districts (Sydney: C. Potter, 1892).

6. 6 Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture (Melbourne: Magabala Books, 2018).

7. 7 Tench, A Complete Account ,18.

8. 8 Annemarie McLaren and Shino Konishi, ‘Searching in the Shadows: Aboriginal Women in Early Colonial New South Wales’, in Subaltern Women’s Narratives: Strident Voices, Dissenting Bodies, ed. S. Bonnerjee (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 71–87, doi.org/10.4324/9781003121220-7.

9. 9 W. E. H. Stanner, W. E. H. Stanner: Selected Writings (La Trobe University Press, 2011).

10. 10 Robert Holden, Orphans of History: The Forgotten Children of the First Fleet (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2000).

11. 11 Publications focused on Bennelong that mention Boorong include Keith Vincent Smith, ‘Bennelong among His People’, Aboriginal History 33 (2009): 7–30, doi.org/10.22459/AH.33.2010.01; Kate Fullagar, Bennelong and Phillip: A History Unravelled (Cammeray: Scribner, 2023); Shino Konishi, ‘Bennelong and Gogy: Strategic Brokers in Colonial New South Wales’, in Brokers and Boundaries: Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory, ed. Tiffany Shellam, Maria Nugent, Shino Konishi and Allison Cadzow (Canberra: ANU Press, 2016), 15–37, doi.org/10.22459/BB.04.2016.02.

12. 12 Publications focused on the Johnsons that include insights into Boorong’s life include Victoria Haskins, ‘The Chaplain’s Wife and the Native Girl: Re-Envisaging a Cross-Cultural Female Relationship in the Contact Zone’, Australian Feminist Studies 27, no. 73 (2012): 259–68, doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2012.700256; Toby Raeburn, The Remarkable Mr and Mrs Johnson: Founders of Modern Australia’s First Church, Schools and Charity, and Friends of Aboriginal People, 1788–1800 (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2023).

13. 13 William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales: The Journal of Lieutenant William Bradley RN of HMS Sirius, 1786–1792 (Sydney: Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales, 1969), 171.

14. 14 Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales, 182.

15. 15 Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales, 183.

16. 16 Tench, A Complete Account, 21.

17. 17 Tench, A Complete Account, 35.

18. 18 Holden, Orphans of History, 205.

19. 19 Port Jackson Painter, ‘Abbarroo a moobee after Balloderrees funeral’ (Boorong aka Abbarroo decorated for a funeral), c. 1791, London, Natural History Museum, Watling Collection, Drawing 45.

20. 20 Richard Johnson to Henry Fricker, 15 November 1788, in Some Letters of Reverend Richard Johnson.

21. 21 John Cobley, Sydney Cove 1789–1790 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1963), 11.

22. 22 David Blackburn to Margaret Blackburn, 12 August 1790, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 6937/1/1.

23. 23 Meredith Lake, ‘Such Spiritual Acres: Protestantism, the Land and the Colonisation of Australia 1788–1850’, (PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2008), 44–85.

24. 24 Jacqueline Anne Newling, ‘First Fleet Fare: Food & Food Security in the Founding of Colonial New South Wales, 1788–1790’ (PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2021), 98–100.

25. 25 Rosslynn Haynes, ‘Aboriginal astronomy’, Australian Journal of Astronomy 4, no. 3 (1992): 127–40.

26. 26 David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (London: Cadell and Davies, 1798), 468.

27. 27 Tench, A Complete Account, 123.

28. 28 King, The Journal of Philip Gidley King, Lieutenant, RN, 1787–1790 (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1980), 183.

29. 29 King, The Journal of Philip Gidley King, 183.

30. 30 Richard Johnson to Henry Fricker, 9 April 1790, Some Letters of the Reverend Richard Johnson.

31. 31 Tench, A Complete Account, 124.

32. 32 Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia 1787–1868 (London: Collins Harvill, 1987).

33. 33 Richard Johnson to Henry Fricker, 21 August 1790, Some Letters of the Reverend Richard Johnson.

34. 34 Johnson to Fricker, 21 August 1790, Some Letters of the Reverend Richard Johnson.

35. 35 Collins, An Account of the English Colony, 139–42.

36. 36 John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island with the Discoveries Which Have Been Made in New South Wales and in the Southern Ocean, since the Publication of Phillip’s Voyage, Compiled from the Official Papers; Including the Journals of Governor Phillip and King, and of Lieut. Ball; and the Voyages of the First Sailing of the Sirius in 1787, to the Return of That Ship’s Company to England in 1792 (London: John Stockdale, 1793), 329.

37. 37 Hunter, An Historical Journal, 332.

38. 38 Hunter, An Historical Journal, 334.

39. 39 Hunter, An Historical Journal, 336.

40. 40 Hunter, An Historical Journal, 354.

41. 41 P. Andrews, ‘Violence against Aboriginal Women in Australia: Possibilities for Redress within the International Human Rights Framework’, Albany Law Review 60 (1996): 917.

42. 42 Marianna Muravyeva, ‘“A King in His Own Household”: Domestic Discipline and Family Violence in Early Modern Europe Reconsidered’, The History of the Family 18, no. 3 (2013): 227–37, doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2013.817349.

43. 43 Greg Smith, ‘Expanding the Compass of Domestic Violence in the Hanoverian Metropolis’, Journal of Social History 41, no. 1 (2007): 31–54, doi.org/10.1353/jsh.2007.0150.

44. 44 Richard Johnson to Henry Fricker, 18 March 1791, safe 1/121, letter 6, Sydney, Mitchell Library.

45. 45 Collins, An Account of the English Colony, 157.

46. 46 Mary Johnson to Henry Fricker, 21 December 1795, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 6722.

47. 47 Tench, A Complete Account, 123.

48. 48 Tench, A Complete Account, 123; Collins, An Account of the English Colony, 467.

49. 49 Tench, A Complete Account, 124.

50. 50 Collins, An Account of the English Colony, 390.

51. 51 Port Jackson Painter, ‘Abbarroo a moobee after Balloderrees funeral’.

52. 52 Collins, An Account of the English Colony, 472.

53. 53 ‘Fridays Post by Express’, Chelmsford Chronicle, 24 December 1790, 2. See also ‘The War in India’, Hereford Journal, 29 December 1790, 1; Derby Mercury, 30 December 1790, 4.

54. 54 Lewes, Sussex Advertiser, 30 April 1792, 3.

55. 55 ‘Fridays Post by Express’.

56. 56 Smith, ‘Bennelong among His People’; Helen Rosenman, trans., An Account in Two Volumes of Two Voyages to the South Seas by Captain (Later Rear-Admiral) Jules SC Dumont D’Urville of the French Navy to Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, 1826–1829, in the Corvette Astrolabe and to the Straits of Magellan, Chile, Oceania, Southeast Asia, Australia, Antarctica, New Zealand and Torres Strait, 1837–1840, in the Corvettes Astrolabe, vol. 2 (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1987), 85–90.

57. 57 Smith, ‘Bennelong among His People’.

58. 58 Smith, ‘Bennelong among His People’.

59. 59 Joseph Holt, Memoirs of Joseph Holt, General of the Irish Rebels, in 1798: In Two Volumes, vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn, 1838), 154.

60. 60 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511976957.