London -1786, October 12: ‘To Captain Arthur Phillip; ‘reposing especial trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage, and experience in military affairs, do, by these presents constitute and appoint you to be Governor of our territory called New South Wales…from the northern extremity…called Cape York…to the southern extremity…South Cape’. Court of St. James, By Command, His Majesty’s [George III] – 12 October 1786, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1
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‘Four [4] companies of marines landed [1788] with the first Europeans…Twenty five [25 regiments of British infantry served in the colonies between 1790 and 1870…[they] participated in the great struggle at the heart of the European conquest of this continent’. Dr. Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison, the British Army n Australia, Kangaroo Press, 1964
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Sydney Cove – 12 December, 1790: ‘At headquarters…the governor pitched up me [Tench] to execute the…command…those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay…put ten [10] to death…bring in the heads of the slain [and] two [2] prisoners.
I am resolved to execute [them] in the most public and exemplary manner in the presence of as many of their countrymen as can be collected……and my fixed determination to repeat it whenever any future breach of good conduct on their side, shall render it necessary’. His Excellency Governor Arthur Phillip, Orders to Marine Captain Watkin Tench. Governor Phillip, cited Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961
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‘Military and police raids against dissenting Aboriginal groups lasted from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries…These raids had commenced by December 1790‘. Professor Bruce Kercher, History of Law in Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1995.
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United Kingdom – 3 April 1889: Privy Council Cooper V Stuart [1889] 14 AC, Lord Watson, Lord Fitzgerald, Lord Hobhouse, Lord MacNaghton, Sir William Grove ruled ‘it [New South Wales] was peacefully annexed to the British Dominion’. Professor Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, History of Law in Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1995
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Portsmouth – May 1787: Captain Arthur Phillip RN, commander of a large expeditionary force of eleven (11) ships, known in Britain and Australia as the ‘First Fleet’ sailed from Portsmouth, England on 13 May 1787 bound for the invasion of New Holland now Australia.
New Holland – 18/20 January 1788: All ‘First Fleet’ vessels, after eight (8) months voyaging 13,000 miles (21,000 km) of ‘imperfectly explored oceans’ by way of Spanish Tenerife, Portuguese Rio and Dutch Cape Town, were safely at anchor in Botany Bay.
Botany Bay: HMS Supply, smaller of the two (2) king’s ships with Phillip aboard, was first to arrive. He immediately assessed Botany Bay, ‘so very wide open’ -difficult to defend unsuitable therefore for permanent settlement.
21 January: Next morning, armed with Captain James Cook’s charts from April 1770, he set out with Captain Hunter commander of the fleet’s flagship HMS Sirius with surveyors to investigate the surrounding country-side.
Port Jackson: Later that day, nine (9) miles (14km) north of the initial beachhead, one (1) of the group’s (3) cutters came across Cook’s notation, an entry ‘a quarter mile across’ into Port Jackson’.
‘Here’ Phillip wrote ‘a Thousand Ships of the Line may ride in perfect security’.
22 January: The following day the English rowed around its vast harbour. From a myriad inlets and bays hep chose a ‘snug’ deep-water cove; ‘so close to the shore that at very small expense quays may be made in which the largest ships may unload’.
Sydney Cove: Phillip ‘honoured’ [it] with the name Sydney’. See: Botany Bay , Lord Sydney , Arthur Phillip & ‘Christopher Robin’ Mark 2
23 January: ‘We returned to Botany Bay on the third day’ with news. The ‘First Fleet’ had found a home. ‘It was determined the evacuation of Botany Bay should commence the next morning’. Tench. ibid.
