No 37 Early Kangaroo Island

This article conveys a picture of South Australia in its most primitive days, before any attempt had been made to colonise the province; when there was no order, and men roamed Kangaroo Island, robbing, murdering, kidnapping, and acknowledging only the primal law of the strongest hand. In those days Kangaroo Island was the terror spot of the Australian coast.

When, in this year of grace, 1933, you sit smoking the pipe of peace on the balcony of your hotel at Kingscote, the while gazing over the placid waters of Nepean Bay, you require a good deal of imagination to call up a picture of Kangaroo Island in the days when it was described as "one of the most savage white communities in the British Empire."

Which suggests that Kangaroo Island in its youth, like many other places I have dealt with in the course of these articles, was not exactly a model of propriety. Nor was it. In fact, I am inclined to describe it as the bad boy of the family— now horribly reformed.

In those far off days of 1802, when Matthew Flinders and his companions walked about the island knocking tame kangaroos on the head to replenish the ship's larder, marvelling the while at the innocence of the beasts in coming forward so readily to be killed, no man, white or black, had disturbed the virgin quiet of this 90 by 32 mile spot, nine miles from the South Australian mainland. But they came soon after — in 1802 to be exact — and the forest one day suddenly woke from its primal slumber to the sound of axes and the clang of hammers. That was when a party of American sealers built the 35-ton schooner Independence on the banks of the stream which to this day is known as American River. This same Independence (master, O. F. Smith) sailed into Sydney Harbor with its crew of 16 men on July 1, 1804, seeking ballast.

So, as far as authentic records go, these humble representatives of Samuel, the gold monopolist, were the first settlers permanently to reside on the island.

I hate to kill a legend. It is like murdering a baby. But the cause of truth is sacred. I have heard it asserted over and over again that white men, runaway convicts from Tasmania, were on the island before Flinders stepped off the Investigator to see what the place was like.

Well, they weren't. And they weren't because Tasmania wasn't colonised until 1803, and then only by 21 persons, and in 1802 there weren't any convicts there to run away.

“Fireball” Bates

He was one of the “bad” boys of the early days. Legend, which clings to facts like a limpet to a pile, makes him out as worse than he was. But the story I am going to give you is Bate's very own — and it's bad enough for me.

A man who deserts his ship, makes a speciality of running off with women, making them work for him, hunt for him, and even die for him, is in no need of having his halo unnecessarily plastered with mud. Bates did his own slandering.

George Bates— they called him “Fireball” because of his very red hair —lived on Kangaroo Island years before South Australia was colonised. He was born in Cheapside, London, in 1800, took to the sea at ten years of age, came to Australia in a convict ship sound for Hobart when he was 23, “left it”— that is Bates's own phrase —at Sydney to join a brig about to start on a sealing expedition, and deserted from the brig when it put into Kangaroo Island for salt. This desertion is a story in itself.

Stole The Captain's Dogs

Even in the days before South Australia existed as an organised community, Kangaroo Island was noted in the other colonies for its salt, which possessed peculiarly desirable properties because of its high magnesia content. You could get £10 a ton for the Kangaroo Island article when you could not get more than £7 for the English product. Captains of sailing ships desirous of making a few pounds used, therefore, to scrape the salt from the lagoon, and sell it in Sydney. It was because the skipper of the brig Mary saw a chance of making £100 or so that he put into the island. That decision gave South Australia the honor of possessing the picturesque “Fireball.”

There was no Temperance Alliance when “Fireball” was a youth, or, if there was, the crew of the Mary didn't belong to it. They got gloriously drunk during the day, and at night the ship roared from end to end a chorus of alcoholic snores. This was “Fireball’s” moment. He and John Randell, a member of the crew whom he had induced to join him, stole from their bunks, took possession of a ship's boat, kidnapped three of the captain's dogs, and rowed ashore. That was the end of their merry career as sailors.

Henceforth they were to lead a life which was a cross between buccaneers of the Spanish Main and raiding sheiks of the Arabian desert.

The brig recovered its stolen boat, hung about for two or three days, searching for the deserters, then sailed off, leaving Kangaroo Island in possession of two vigorous young men who didn't know what they wanted— but were determined to have it.

The scene of that exploit was American River.

Five Men And A Gin

For the next three days life was something more than biscuit and salt junk. Game and fish were to be had for the taking. Bates and Randell regarded themselves as monarchs of all they surveyed.

Then they got a shock.

Coming over a hill one night, silhouetted against the glow of the just set sun, were four strangers.

Friend or foe? It was a momentous question.

The strangers turned out to be three men and a woman — a lubra. The men were runaway whalers named Warley, Kirby, and Everett, The gin was Kirby's “wife.”

Here were five kindred spirits— the woman didn't count — and they swore eternal friendship. Like the mousquetaires of Dumas pere they stood one for all, and all for one. Warley took the leadership — a sort of uncrowned king.

It was about this time that “Fireball” conceived a craving for female society. There was method in his madness. He did not see why he should work, even if the “work” was merely catching and cooking his own tucker, when there were women who could do it for him. The trouble was there were no natives on the island, save for Kirby's gin, but there were plenty on the mainland.

One day, when the gang was near Antechamber Bay, a schooner was seen passing through Backstairs Passage. It was the vessel which, some time previously, had landed the unfortunate Captain Collett Barker at Yankalilla to explore the Murray. Now it was returning to see if there was any news of the missing man, for, so far, the fate of Barker was a mystery. The gang signalled the ship, asked for a passage to the mainland, and were taken on board.

First Raid On The Blacks

“Fireball” volunteered to help elucidate the mystery of Barker's disappearance. His method was characteristic but effective. One dark night, when the blacks were round their camp, fire, dreaming dreams of fat grubs and appetising lizards, a moaning figure in white stalked in amongst them.

The effect was explosive. The terrified niggers ran howling into the bush. One young girl, a charming belle of sixteen, in dashing for safety, ran into the arms of Warley. They gagged her, and, with her hands tied behind her back, led hear off to captivity. The “third degree” was applied. It was then the fate of the explorer was learned. He had been speared by the blacks, and his body hidden in the bush.

When the ship returned to Hog Bay the gang had been augmented by the captured girl. Shortly afterwards Warley decided to join another ship, and on leaving the island give his “wife” to “Fireball.” Warley's departure synchronised with the arrival of two other men, "Tom" and "Jack," who joined the gang. Thus was a demand created for more wives.

Kidnapped Lubras

These days there was no South Australia. They hadn't even begun to think about it. Worse still, there wasn't any law or order. These men made their own laws — the survival of the fittest. The man who could hit the hardest, shoot the straightest, or was slickest with the knife, was the uncrowned king of the island.

They not only looked savage— they were savage. In their rough clothes of kangaroo skin, no shirts and sandals of sealskins, unkempt and unshaven, smelling horribly like foxes, they established a veritable reign of terror among the sealing ships along the coast. They were little better than pirates. They lived in bark huts like the natives, and bartered their skins chiefly for spirits and tobacco. Very little money changed hands in the commercial activities of Kangaroo Island of 1819-25. The gangs were a sort of bogey man amongst the seafarers of Australian waters, and their exploits were recounted in the fo'castle of every ship in every port. Some times an unusually savage killing moved the easy-going authorities at Sydney to send a frigate to enquire into their doings. Then they posed as victims of an unmerited attack, and their plea of se defendendo was generally accepted.

But, to return to Bates and company.

When wives were wanted they were easily procured. This was the method.

Manning their sealing boat they set out in the early morning over the nine miles of sea separating the island from the mainland. They landed at Cape Jervis. A forty-odd mile trek brought them to the shores of Lake Alexandrina, where there were always numerous camps of blackfellows. They hid in the scrub until they saw the men leave on a hunting expedition. Then each white man picked his lubra. At a given signal they rushed the camp, secured the girls before they had a chance of escape, and carried them back to their island estate. The gins were forced to walk to the coast with their hands tied behind their backs. Usually they were not liberated until the kidnappers returned to Hog Bay.

These women were slaves.

They had to hunt, and cook and do whatever “housework” had to be done on the island, while their lordly masters slept, and drank, and did everything but work. If the gins behaved themselves they were treated tolerably well. If they didn't they were punished. More often than not they were perfectly willing slaves.

Blacks Lie In Wait

It paid to steal women. They trapped and hunted, and secured the skins which their masters were too lazy to get themselves, and it didn't cost anything to keep them. There were no Rundle street fashions at £5 19/11½ the dress. There wasn't even any Rundle street— or any city of Adelaide.

So the kidnapping business grew and flourished. The expeditions became so frequent that at last black brother, who was not given to worrying much over the loss of a lubra or two, eventually had to sit up and take a census of his females. What he discovered disconcerted him. He decided it was time to balance his budget.

One day, when the gang led by “Fireball' made their usual landing, black brother watched them from the scrub, with a plan of operations in his pocket—or whatever it was the ebony warriors of the day used for pockets. The white men were allowed to penetrate three miles island before a single blackfellow showed himself.

Suddenly the place became alive. The air was filled with spears, boomerangs, and flying death. The whites found their retreat cut off, and had to fight their way back to the boat. “Fireball” did not say how many blacks were killed that day. He was an astute man, even in his 95th year, and he knew there were some secrets which should never be divulged. But he did say he dragged himself back to the boat with a spear in his foot.

Gin Who Swam The Channel

If you stand on the coast staring out over Backstairs Passage towards the mainland nine miles distant, the chances are 100 to 1 that some son of the island will come along and pour into your ear the legendary story of the black girl “Bett” who, to escape the vengeance of “Fireball” Bates, plunged over a cliff into the sea, made the prodigious crossing, and rejoined her people somewhere round Yankalilla.

Don't believe that story— even though so accurate an historian as J. W. Bull tells you that he saw the black gin years later camped with her people at a mainland centre. Bull was misinformed. I prefer the story of Bates, and, as he was the gentleman about to deal out “stoush” to the spirited Bett when the incident occurred. I think he ought to know. This is what he says:—

Bett and another girl were recent captures. That she was defiant of the overbearing master of the island may be inferred from her conduct. She and the other girl decided to run away, and to hide until they got an opportunity to return to their tribe. So one night they stole into the bush.

Now there was nothing made “Fireball” more stubborn than opposition. He hunted for the pair, but it was a fortnight before he found them almost starving at a point on the coast ten miles distant from his camp. As Bates approached the girl gave one terrified scream, and leapt into the sea in the frantic hope of reaching the mainland.

“But,” said the unconcerned Bates, telling the story years later, “she was either drowned or eaten by sharks.”

Made A Tribesman

I cannot tell you how long it was after this incident that “Fireball” was persuaded by an old native to return to the mainland. It was probably some years. The wise one told Bates that all sorts of native honors awaited the white man amongst the aborigines he had so deeply wronged. The curious thing is that Bates believed him. So “Fireball” went to the mainland to live with the natives. He was treated with marked respect. A great, corroboree was held in his honor. In their glee the aborigines jumped on his chest until he was almost breathless. They made him a member of the tribe.

Soon afterwards he was taken ill. He was put in charge of three men, who were supposed to nurse him back to health. For a while they treated him well. Then they neglected him, and finally left him to die. And he would have died had not his old associates on the island decided it was time to pay their former chief a visit. They found the picturesque Bates a mere remnant of his former self.

He was taken to the island and nursed back to health. The three blacks who had neglected him were kidnapped, taken across the passage, and kept as slaves.

Last Days Of “Fireball”

It is over a hundred years since the events recorded here occurred. It is nearly forty years since George Bates went the way that all of us must go. He died at the Destitute Asylum, aged 95, on September 3, 1895. For years prior to that he and his wife lived in poverty in a miserable hovel on the island.

But there was an interim — a period when Bates lived a life as ordinary and as respectable as you and I might do. This was after the colonisation of South Australia in 1836. Settlement brought law and order, and all the other etceteras of civilasation.[sic] And it dethroned the uncrowned king.

I have shown you the most boisterous side of these men of the wilds. Now let me give you a glimpse of them in 1836, when the first immigrant ships cast anchor in Nepean Bay. Bates and his fellow-sealers, six altogether, welcomed the new arrivals. John Morphett writes of them as “intelligent, quiet men, growing wheat and potatoes.”

Another settler puts his impressions in the form of a letter. He says a party of the new arrivals “decided to visit the home of the man who had been on the island for 18 years.” The journey was not an easy one; in fact, it was so rough that by the time they reached the Three Wells River they were covered with blood from the thorns which tore at their flesh, and even penetrated the soles of their boots.

But the main trouble was thirst. Their mouths were horribly parched. They would not touch the water in the river, because it was salt. They decided to abandon the visit, and return to the ship.

At this stage one of the travellers was so overcome by thirst that he decided to have a drink from the river, and damn the consequences. To his astonishment, the water was perfectly fresh.

So they decided to push on. Presently they reached the farm house, “situated in a most beautiful park, the timber of which was 20 ft. round and 90 ft. high.” They were welcomed by “Messrs. W. and D.,” who produced a leg of pork and damper, and spread wallaby skins as a tablecloth. In a separate house were three black women. “They (the sealers) had wheat, vegetables, pigs, poultry, and everything pertaining to a farm.”

South Australian Tea

The writer of the letter concludes:—“We afterwards returned to the house, and took tea made from the native tree. It was as good as any tea I ever drank. We deemed it quite a luxury, and afterwards drank it with every meal.”

This, presumably, was the leaf of the tea- tree (commonly called ti-tree). I cannot tell you how the name became corrupted. But it was originally named tea tree by Captain Cook, owing to its resemblance when in flower to the proper Chinese tea tree. Cook and the men on the Endeavor made tea from this tree, and deemed it palatable. Nowadays the term is loosely applied, and embrace many varieties of scrub timber, which bear little or no reasonable resemblance to the tea tree.

Story Of Antonio

As illustrating the nature of the people who lived on the island in the bad old days of which I write, I can not do better than tell you the tale of Antonio, the mulatto. These sealing gangs were rougher than a week's growth of beard. Some of them were brigands— the sort who would cut your throat to steal your jack-knife.

Antonio belonged to a gang of this kind. He was a dare-devil fellow, who delighted in taking risks. There wasn't a commandment in the Bible that Antonio hadn't broken. Murder— well that was a mere trifle. One of the exploits of Antonio and his gang was to massacre the crew of a stranded ship. Any gang who did a thing of that sort was about the most inhuman thing in pirates one could imagine. The leader of these blackguards was a man called Williams.

Williams admired the mulatto for his unflinching courage, but lived in fear of his babbling of this massacre in his cups, and the news getting to Sydney. Rum was Antonio's weakness. Whenever he was full, which was pretty often, nothing could stop him from boasting publicly about the dark and deadly deeds of the gang— and the massacre of the crew of the stranded ship was one of the crimes of which he was inordinately proud.

Williams decided that Antonio must be sacrificed in the interest of the remainder of the cut-throats.

It was the custom for these fellows, who had their headquarters on Kangaroo Island, to make periodic cruises along the coast in search of seals. On this particular occasion, they went to a spot in King George's Sound (W.A.), where these aquatic mammals were plentiful, but difficult to capture.

The seals used to bask on rocks at the foot of some precipitous cliffs. The only way of reaching them, was to lower a man by a rope to kill and skin the animals, then haul first the skins and finally the man back to the top of the precipice.

It was invariably Antonio the dare devil who went down the rope on this dangerous work. He did so on this occasion. He made a big kill, sent up the results, and gave the signal to his comrades to haul him to the top. He was halfway up, dangling over the rocks below, when Williams ordered the men to cease pulling. Antonio looked up—to ascertain the cause of the delay. He looked into the face of Williams—grim, black, threatening, merciless.

“What's the matter?” he called.

'The matter,” answered Williams, “'is that you talk too much. Now I'm going to teach you how to hold your tongue.”

The doomed wretch begged piteously for mercy. But there was no mercy in those hardened hearts. While Antonio screamed and struggled in mid air Williams drew his knife and severed the rope. There was a sickening thud on the rocks below, and the gang walked off, leaving the mangled remains of what a few moments before had been Antonio among the carcases of the seals he had slaughtered.

Murder Of Meredith

Amongst the sealers occupying the island about 1827, before there was any definite scheme for colonising South Australia, was a young man named George Meredith. He had an interesting life and a tragic end.

He was a Tasmanian. His father was a well-to-do merchant in the neighboring island, but his relations with his son were frequently strained by the young man's extravagant ways and fast mode of living. It was as the result of one of these frequent quarrels that young Meredith cleared out to Kangaroo Island. One account says Meredith took his father's schooner, and sold it at another port to raise the money to buy a sealing boat. After the son's death, however, the father denied the theft, saying the schooner was the boy's own property.

However, it was somewhere about 1827 that Meredith reached Kangaroo Island, after having touched at several parts of the mainland first. He was accompanied by an old naval man named Jacobs, and an American called Bathurst. At Port Lincoln he picked up a native woman called Sal, who became his mistress. At Encounter Bay he took into his service two black boys. These small details form the ingredients of the tragedy which occurred later.

For some time Meredith led the customary life of a sealer far removed from the centres of civilisation, acknowledging no law but his own strong fist, working during the season and loafing the rest of the time.

Suddenly he changed his mode of living. He became religious. He and his Bible were rarely parted. But he stuck to Sal. The dark-skinned beauty was the apple of his eye. There was another, however, who wanted a substantial bite of the apple. This was one of the native servants.

The black made up his mind to murder his master and steal Sal. The lady was no party to the crime. One day Meredith decided to visit the mainland in the vicinity of Yankalilla. While the boat was lying in a calm sea, with Meredith on deck reading his Bible, the traitor stole up behind him, and dealt him a fatal blow with a tomahawk.

Long absences from the island were too common in those casual, free and easy days to occasion much comment, among the not too curious sealers who constituted the small population. Weeks went by. Finally “Governor” Walker (Walley) and some of his comrades became suspicious that something was wrong. It was over three months since they had seen Meredith. They decided to visit Yankalilla, and find out what they could.

Loyalty Of Sal

When the blacks saw the white men coming they took to the bush. That was a bad sign. Only one small figure was in sight, sitting on a rock. It was the unhappy Sal. No sooner had the sealers landed than Sal came over to them with the details of the tragedy. She asked them to take her back with them because her own life was in danger. She had refused the advances of the murderer, and for that reason her own people were furious with her. So Sal went back to Kangaroo Island.

In the thick scrub country which lies between Stokes Bay and Middle River I was guided to the grave of Little Sal. We walked for a quarter of a mile through stunted under growth, which, we had to part with our hands as we walked. One might easily lose oneself in that maze. And in that mass of tangled tea-tree, eucalypt, spear grass, and yacca is a clump of gums, and under them sleeps the dusky heroine of this romance of pre-colonisation times.

This, I suppose, was one of the first murders reported to the authorities after the foundation of the province. They were too busy with their own pioneering troubles to worry about crimes which happened before they took over the helm. But two or three years after the matter was brought under notice someone must have stumbled on the forgotten record, for a man was sent to seek the murderer. He was then dead, and the matter faded from memory.

The Trading Ships

The “bad old days” were now drawing to a close—but the sealers didn't know it. They knew nothing of the colonisation project attracting wide spread interest in England, the adoption of which would end their lawless reign. They lived the same slothful life as ever, drinking and sleeping, and letting the women do the work— the cooking, the gardening, and the trapping.

Only once a year did they come to real life. This was on an appointed day when all the hunters— sixteen to eighteen of them — gathered with their hauls from every part of the island to meet the trading ships and dispose of their skins. The venue was Nepean Bay. Very little money changed hands — mostly goods and rum. There was a wild- orgy to celebrate this annual festival. This over, the men de parted back to the wilds and the old life.

And all the time the shadow of the British flag was drawing closer to the island.

NEXT WEEK— Kangaroo Island. Coming of the Emigrants.

Images:

• The incident of the Tame Bats, pictured by a pioneer artist. — Courtesy of the Archives,

• Reputed grave of Little Sal, dusky heroine of the Meredith murder, in the scrub country between Stokes Bay and Middle River.

• George (Fireball) Bates as he appeared a few years before his death at the age of 95. — Courtesy of the Archives.