Thomas WHALLEY

The first settler was Thomas Whalley, who left a whaling ship named the General Gates in 1816 and landed at Bews Point (now Rolls Point), immediately beneath where the telegraph station stands now. Two years later he induced a man named Billy Day to leave a whaler, which anchored there, and join him in a Robinson Crusoe life. The first settler had, therefore, been twenty years upon the island when the legal colonizers landed and he had, by general consent, been elected chief man under the title of 'Governor' Whalley. He had taken a man named George Cooper into partnership and they had managed to get some female Aborigines and established a small farm upon the Three Well River, afterwards called the 'Cygnet'.

There are some queer stories extant about how these men were treated by the new settlers - how Whalley was bullied and persecuted and almost compelled to sell out his livestock at an 'alarming sacrifice' and was afterwards refused the chance of buying back a single cock and hen and a sow pig at exorbitant prices. Almost to the time of his death in 1895 George Bates complained that he was robbed of £200 worth of whalebone which he had stacked up on the beach at Encounter Bay, and that whilst he lived in penury those who had 'annexed' his property were rolling in wealth.

The old residents upon the island were not the lawless set of men they have been represented to be. Their ranks had been recruited at times by undesirable characters, but the example of Whalley, perhaps, and the natural honesty of the brave and reckless old salts would not allow them to associate with runaway convicts, who occasionally tried to join them - these fellows were generally glad to reship upon the first opportunity.

Still, the sailors' proverbial love of rum and tobacco did lead them into some wild excesses whenever a certain old captain or other traders came around for their peltries. It is said that it was usual to set a keg of rum upon the deck directly the anchor was dropped, knock the head out and place plenty of pannikins around. Not a word about sale of skins, etc., was allowed to be spoken until every visitor had imbibed copiously, and then the captains obtained the most liberal bargains!

After the orgy was over the men generally found themselves on shore, very seedy, with splitting headaches, fevered circulation, a few groceries, perhaps a bottle or so of rum, and some tobacco, and always a good supply of twine with which to make snares to catch more wallaby. Of course, the vessel had gone, and so were all the settlers' skins. Whalley dropped dead in Adelaide in the 1860s; he was a man of some education and abilities and sent his son to Tasmania to be educated.

- http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/manning/pn/k/ki1.htm

Real Life Stories Of South Australia

WHALLEY AND HIS COMRADES SHIPS THAT CAME BEFORE '36

This is another tale of the days before South Australia was colonised — and after. It deals chiefly with 'Governor' Whalley, and incidentally with some of the ships which came to Kangaroo Island in the benighted days before 1836.

Many of the incidents of early Kangaroo Island have several versions, some highly romantic, but of doubtful veracity. They will probably never be authenticated. There is a yarn that "Governor" Robert Whalley sailed to the island in a whaleboat from Tasmania before 1817, with two concubines, Puss and Bet. Another is that he landed from the American brig General Gates in 1819. Quite a number of vessels called at Kangaroo Island before the first settlers arrived from England in 1836. The list includes the Union from America in 1803, a Government boat from Sydney (name unknown, but probably the Integrity), 1803; a sealing vessel from Sydney (name unknown), 1806; the Eliza from Sydney, 1809; the Endeavour from Sydney, 1810; the Campbell Macquarie from Sydney, 1812; Fly, from Port Dalrymple, 1814; the Spring, in charge of Captain Dillon (who 11 years later found La Perouse relics at Vanikoro), 1815; Rosetta, and also the Endeavour, 1817; Macquarie and General Gates, 1819, Prince of Denmark and General Gates, 1822; Henry, 1829; Elizabeth and Henry, 1831; Henry, 1833, and also in 1834.

Whalley and his partner, William Day, lived with their colored harems in a log hut built on the fertile bank of the Three-Well River (later called the Morgan, and now known as the Cygnet). Here, about 12 miles from the mouth of the river, they cultivated their patch of wheat, grew splendid potatoes, cabbages, &c. tended their four dogs, numerous fowls, pigs, and one horse— a 17-hand nag imported from Tasmania, and the first horse in the State.

Whalley was a total abstainer, and would not grow barley. His strongest drink was a very palatable tea brewed from the leaves of the swamp ti-tree. During a dearth of flour, wallaby liver was hard baked and served as bread. For clothes, wallaby or seal skin was used, pieced into rough suits. There is a rumor that the Sydney authorities once sent a punitive expedition to the island, though no official record of the visit has yet been found. Major Lockyer, commandant of the military outpost at King George's Sound, certainly made the suggestion that one should be sent after some trouble with a boisterous gang of sealers from Kangaroo Island in 1826. When the English emigrants arrived the settlers numbered at least 11— Robert Whalley, diminutive and honest headman; his partner, William Day, William Walker, John Stokes, Harry Smith, George Bates, Nathaniel Thomas, Jacob Seaman, William Thompson, William Cooper, and James Allen. At one time as many as 12 lubras lived on the island kidnapped from Tasmania, Victoria, Port Lincoln, or Encounter Bay. Their names are interesting, for several appear in history — Sally Walker, Little Sal, Bumblefoot or Big Sal, Bet, Puss, Polecat, Wauber, Dinah, Mooney, Charlotte, and Suke.

Samuel Stephen, the first manager for the South Australian Company, was not particularly generous in his treatment of the first "Governor." For a hunded odd fowls Whalley was paid 20/. Yet when he wished to stock another farm the company would not sell him a pair of his old fowls for 7/6. The sleepers for the Port and Gawler lines were sawn on Whalley's farm and floated down the Cygnet to the sea for shipment to Port Adelaide.

Whalley died in 1856 while on a visit to Adelaide. He is interred in an unmarked grave in the old Kingscote cemetery. — — "Yacko,"Point Morrison.

The first official settlers in South Australia arrived in Nepean Bay, Kangaroo Island on the Duke of York and John Pirie on 27 July 1836, five months prior to the arrival of Captain Hindmarsh on the Buffalo. On stepping ashore they were met by an unofficial settler in the form of a middle-aged man clad in wallaby skin, moccasins and fur cap. His real name and origins are steeped in mystery. To the new settlers he was known as Governor Whalley or Wallen and it was rumoured that he was an escapee from Van Dieman’s Land. Another version stated that he had left a whaling ship in 1816 and had led a Robinson Crusoe existence with other odd fugitives and some Aboriginal women. Wallen continued to live and farm on the island, but was in Adelaide in 1856 when he died suddenly at the age of 62 years. Following his wishes his body was returned to the island and he was buried in the old cemetery in Kingscote.

G. Edith Wells, Cradle of a Colony, Island Press, 1978, pp.25-29.