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  By 11 pm Batman’s party has crept to within metres of this family clan, intending to ‘rush upon them before they could arise from the ground’. It is a curious plan when you break it down – a dozen armed and burly men creeping through the bush late at night and then springing from their hideout to … gather up more than five dozen people without shots being fired? Perhaps Batman hopes his Sydney Aboriginals – Pigeon, Joe the Marine and Old Bull – might open a conversation and convince the clan to surrender peacefully. But those men are said to have little time for their brethren on this island, and struggle to speak their dialect as well. It’s all moot, anyway. According to Batman, one of his men fumbles, knocking his musket against another man. The noise sets off the dogs in the Aboriginal camp and suddenly chaos erupts.

  ‘The natives arose from the ground and were in the act of running into a thick scrub, when I ordered the men to fire upon them … we only captured that night one woman and a male child about two years old.

  ‘Next morning we found one man very badly wounded in the ankle and knee, shortly after we found another, 10 buckshot had entered his body. He was alive but very bad, there were a great number of traces of blood in various directions and learnt from those we took that 10 men were wounded in the body, which they gave us to understand were dead or would die, and two women in the same state had crawled away besides a number that was shot in the legs.

  ‘We shot 21 dogs and obtained a great number of spears, waddies, blankets, rugs, knives, a tomahawk, a shingle wrench etc etc.

  ‘On Friday morning we left the place for my farm with the two men, woman and child, but found it impossible that the two former could walk … after trying them by every means in my power for some time, found I could not get them on I was obliged to shoot them.’

  The chill that accompanies that final, abrupt sentence, made that much colder by its matter-of-fact nature, is enough to make even George Arthur wince, even at a time when his declaration of martial law effectively allows the slaughter of Aboriginal people. More than a dozen deaths are attributed to the Batman massacre – a group of armed men firing on the backs of dozens of panicked men, women and children attempting to flee into the bush. After considering the report, Arthur will take pen in hand and scribble that Batman has ‘much slaughter to account for’. In the years to come repeated attempts will be made to soften Batman’s reputation for dealing with Aboriginals; many historians will write about how he takes Rolepana, the young boy he captures during the attack, into his own home (he will eventually accompany the family to Port Phillip); how he always seems at ease among the native people and how the Sydney Aboriginals will remain loyal to him right to his dying day.

  ‘Looked at alone, even in the mildest form, these measures are revolting,’ will write John West about the colony’s policy of removing Aboriginals from the mainland. But to West, who will be regarded as one of the founding fathers of Australian historical writing, Batman deserves to be singled out for praise for ‘mingling humanity with severity, of perceiving human affections in the creatures he was commissioned to resist … he certainly began in the midst of conflict and bloodshed, to try the softer influences of conciliation and charity’.

  Just how large is this John Batman Cheer Squad? It’s standing room only. But there’s always a place for a new member. So please squeeze together so Henry Melville, who writes one of the first histories of the Van Diemen’s Land colony, can have his say about Batman’s roving party: ‘They proceeded, not with the sword, but with the olive branch.’

  Truth is, Batman’s roving party – and dozens more like it across Van Diemen’s Land – are regarded as failures. The following year Arthur unleashes the biggest military operation ever seen in the colonies. More than 2000 colonists and soldiers will form an extraordinary cordon hundreds of miles across, advancing toward the island’s southeast corner in an attempt to drive the last of the Aboriginal people out of the settled districts. Dubbed the Black Line, it is an extraordinary offensive costing almost half of Van Diemen Land’s annual expenditure. It also fails miserably, with two Aboriginals captured and another two killed.

  Eventually several hundred Aboriginals are sent to Flinders Island where, huddled against the cold winds that endlessly batter Bass Strait, large numbers of them will die from disease, malnutrition and a collective depression after being torn from their home lands.

  When his 12-month commission with the roving party comes to an end, Batman writes to the authorities requesting his 2000-acre bounty and recommends pardons and rewards for the convicts and Sydney Aboriginals who accompanied him. And then offers a little advice on future dealings with the Indigenous people.

  ‘It certainly would be most desirable to be upon friendly terms with them, and if possible reconcile them, before further coercive measures be taken but this, I fear much, will not be effected. Generally it is the natives that are in the middle of this island and on the east coast that have committed so many murders … and in my opinion nothing but severe steps for a time will effect a reconciliation.’

  23

  THE BACK-ROOM BOYS

  If John Batman never tells you about those dark days hunting Aboriginals, William, does he at least admit to you he is dying?

  The man with the flattering tongue and the merry eye has been led astray once too often and now it is a race between the syphilis raging through his body and the amounts of mercury being used to treat it to see which will claim him first. All that energy – that ability to endure fatigue and privation – is already draining from him; in the next couple of years the bacterial infection festering inside will become apparent to all when it begins eating away at his nose.

  What about the Port Phillip Association that Batman leads? They are little more than trespassers on Crown land – the area around Port Phillip has already been proclaimed the territory of New South Wales in complete disregard of its original inhabitants. But if the authorities in Sydney and London have made it clear they are not supportive of a colony being established by lawless squatters caught up in a frenzy of land seizures, it has hardly stemmed the flow of ships heading across Bass Strait.

  Grab the land and deal with the consequences later – that’s what being a bold man on the frontier is all about. Besides, there are many who suspect that back in Hobart Town Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur is quietly supporting their move – and may even be a silent investor. And even Batman, competitive and driven though he may be, is welcoming the news that others like little Johnny Fawkner are making their way to the mainland. There will be comfort in numbers.

  You probably know none of this. But what you are beginning to understand after just a few weeks of living at the depot at Indented Head is that, rather than being at the mercy of these settlers because of your convict background, your knowledge of the land and your reputation among the Wadawurrung is giving you influence you never dreamed possible.

  Look at the way they lean in and listen when you talk in faltering English about the land and how it provides food for all; how they hang on every word when you describe some of the Aboriginal customs. This Todd, he’s a good listener, is he not? Conscientious. A diligent note-taker. But you won’t be seeing him for much longer because there’s something else about Batman you definitely don’t know. It’s as if the man is cursed, that if you grow too close to him fate’s black hand will ensure a miserable outcome. Todd will be one of many whose lives will end in tragedy. He will soon return to Van Diemen’s Land (there’s a suggestion he may fall out with John’s brother, Henry) and become an invalid. And then one day years later he will be admitted to hospital, singing to himself and ‘relating imaginary exploits’ before stuffing part of his shirt down his throat and choking himself to death.

  It takes three weeks before you feel confident enough to admit to Todd and the others you have lied about your past. There never was a ship skipper who you slung over your shoulders before swimming to shore. Todd will note that you did not tell them the truth at first because ‘he wa
s very much frightened of us, & he thought if he had told us the truth we should have shot him’.

  When the Rebecca returns to the camp carrying Henry Batman and his wife and family – along with a man called John Helder Wedge – you suddenly find you have another audience to entertain and hold spellbound with your physical presence and stories.

  If Batman is the chief executive and public face of the Port Phillip Association, answerable to a board of investors and pastoralists far wealthier than himself, then Wedge is chief operations officer. An Englishman close to Batman who has been in Van Diemen’s Land for a decade, Wedge has just resigned his role as a government surveyor because this venture offers far more potential.

  Wedge is one of the very few characters turning 1835 into such a pivotal year in Australian history whose image will endure photographically. In one he stares at the camera, hair parted down the middle and falling each side to just below the ears, a slightly bemused look on his face, looking every inch the dapper gentleman explorer so many of the era fancy themselves to be. An expertly tied cravat – the fashionable neckwear of the era – sits around a freshly laundered shirt. In his right hand he clasps a large hat, perhaps the one he once wore while climbing Ben Lomond with Batman. It is not hard to imagine his ever-present journal to the side, just out of view, pressed flowers drying between pages of notes about undulating fields and latitudes and longitudes. Wedge is far more literate than Batman and to him will fall the responsibility of attempting to achieve your free pardon.

  But one of the first things he does when arriving at Indented Head is sketch you. It is four weeks after you walked out of the bush and you look nothing like the way you will be depicted by artists in the years to come. Gone is the bearded wild white man, hair down to the shoulders, spear in hand. Drawn from the side, your hair has been cut, beard shaved and the only notable feature is that sharp, upturned nose. It is a crude drawing; as a surveyor Wedge is all about boundaries and straight lines, not the meandering subtleties of the human face. He performs better when he sketches the Indented Head depot; two basic sod huts, a tent next to them, surrounded by sloping open ground and scattered gum trees.

  Wedge’s mission is to map the territory Batman has secured from the Kulin ‘chiefs’ and ensure each member of the Association knows how much land he has been allotted. But before he sets off – grateful to have you by his side leading the way – Wedge writes to the authorities in Hobart seeking a pardon for a man he already knows will prove invaluable to the Association.

  The petition is a lengthy document detailing your history and how you saved the lives of Batman’s party at Indented Head. Apart from noting the extraordinary amount of time that has passed since that escape from the Sullivan Bay settlement, Wedge also plays the fear and loathing card. It’s a move you might normally associate with a William Lushington Goodwin or a John Morgan, not a mild-mannered surveyor. Wedge wants it known that if a pardon is denied, this huge white man next to him might very well retaliate by unleashing the dogs of war.

  ‘I beg most earnestly to recommend this petition to the favourable consideration of His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor,’ writes Wedge, ‘and in doing so, I feel that I scarcely need advert to the danger that would ensue to the lives of those who may in future reside here, by his being driven to despair by the refusal of his petition, which would probably induce him to join the natives again.’

  Wedge feels no need to resort to subtleties. He is dealing with the Colonial Secretary, John Montagu, who reports directly to George Arthur, the man who instigated martial law and personally took charge of the Black Line.

  ‘There is no calculating on the mischief that might ensue by the hostile feelings that he would have it in his power to instill into the breasts of the natives.’

  Letter dispatched to Hobart Town, you and Wedge embark on a week-long tour of the area. Each day he is reminded how critical a role you will play in the months and years to come. It’s almost as if you are showing off to the man. You impress him with your knowledge of the local customs. You guide him across the land, pointing out its features and sources of water. The following year the Royal Geographic Society in London will publish Wedge’s Narrative of an Excursion amongst the Natives of Port Phillip on the South Coast of New Holland. It is in this, along with his field notes, that you are suddenly transformed from a curiosity to an indispensable aide.

  You guide Wedge to one of your favourite haunts, that place on the Barwon River you know as Woorongo ‘where I had caught a vast quantity of eels’. Well, Wedge is having none of that. He renames Woorongo ‘Buckley’s Falls’ – and who are you to disagree? You take him to your old hut on the Karaaf River, where ducks and geese are shot in the presence of local Aboriginals ‘to entertain great dread of the use of fire arms. I was authorised to tell those I met with that if they would go to the settlement presents would be made to them of blankets, knives etc, and many promised to visit us.’

  You are also quick to provide Wedge with an assessment of the various characters of the Wadawurrung. There is the head of one family, Murradonnanuke, who, you tell Wedge, ‘is more to be dreaded on account of his treachery than any of the other chiefs’. Wedge is quickly satisfied that most of the Aboriginals are not dangerous ‘although I learnt from Buckley that in the treatment of each other they were treacherous …

  ‘To command their respect I found it was necessary to make them fully understand that it was in our power not only to minister to their wants and comforts, but amply to avenge any outrage. In impressing them with this idea Buckley was of great use to us by making known to them the ample means we had of furnishing them with food, blankets … and explaining the object we had in view in settling amongst them, and our desire to be on friendly terms with them.’

  But that question everyone wants to know … you’ve been waiting for Wedge to ask it. Sure enough, it doesn’t take long. ‘I learnt from Buckley that they were cannibals,’ writes Wedge, ‘… but they do not seem to indulge in this horrible propensity except when the tribes are at war with each other when the bodies of those who are killed are roasted and their bones are infallibly picked by the teeth of their enemy …’

  On one occasion Wedge is bemused ‘although it was no fun to the four women concerned’ – when Murradonnanuke punishes his wives for not fetching enough food for him by throwing fire sticks at them ‘in the most furious manner’.

  A week after returning to Indented Head, Henry Batman pulls you aside and tells you a letter has arrived from Hobart Town with news you are to be pardoned. The letter is from John Batman, who says he has just met with Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, who will move to have the pardon confirmed through Sydney and London as quickly as possible.

  A free man, after all these years? To never look over your shoulder again? It’s enough to make even a man like you break into Tuckey-style prose: ‘… whose heart, bounding from so many long years of solitude and captivity into freedom could, or can, beat like mine?’ you and Morgan will write.

  Wedge, the author of the pardon request, is also relieved, delighting in your happiness. ‘Nothing,’ writes Wedge, ‘could exceed the joy he evinced at once more feeling himself a free man, received again within the pale of civilised society.’ But below the bonhomie, something sticks in Wedge’s craw. In the battle for land and wealth, egos bump hard against one another. He senses the hand of Batman taking all the credit and writes to him immediately.

  ‘I could not shut my eyes or be deaf to the remarks you made respecting Buckley’s obtaining his pardon through your influence with the Lieutenant-Governor,’ Wedge tells Batman. ‘A very few minutes after your brother had perused your letter he remarked to Buckley that it was very fortunate that you happened to be in Hobart Town at the time the memorial arrived there, that you had waited on the Governor and obtained his free pardon, etc, giving him to understand that it was through your influence alone that Col. Arthur conceded to the prayer of the petitioner … I cannot do otherwise than suppose that what he
stated was your instructions …

  ‘If the pardon was through your influence, every credit is due to you for it, and no-one would feel under greater obligation to you than myself. If, on the other hand … I do not think it fair toward others … for it certainly looks as though you intended to get the whole credit for yourself, and by which to obtain an undue influence over the mind of Buckley and through him over the minds of the natives.’

  Those natives. Wedge knows all about dealing with Aboriginals – probably far more than he will ever tell you. The man is a collector and very soon a large array of Aboriginal artefacts bearing his name will sit in a museum near his home in the market town of Saffron Walden in Essex. There will be spears and clubs and boomerangs, souvenirs from the Black War and Wedge’s first months in Port Phillip. Among them, according to notes made by the museum in 1844, will be ‘four of Buckley’s clubs of various shapes rudely ornamented’. They will be described as being solid and heavy – invaluable relics of your time with the Wadawurrung and testament to how deeply embedded you had been in their culture.

  But weapons, dried flowers and insects were not the only additions to the John Helder Wedge collection. In 1828 he had been surveying a lease for the Van Diemen’s Company in the island’s remote north-west, territory of the Peerapper people who were now fighting back against the white predators stealing their land and killing their warriors. Wedge’s party had opened fire on a group of Aboriginal men and then watched as one of them dived into the ocean to escape. Exhausted by the rough swell, he was soon washed ashore and revealed to be a boy no more than 10 years old. Here was another addition to the Wedge collection. The surveyor had the boy’s hands tied for three days as they continued on their march into unknown territory.