Australian History For Dummies. Alex McDermott

the peaks and followed them. But this wouldn’t work with the Blue Mountains because their geological formation had been completely different. Rather than being peaks of land that had been thrust up by subterranean forces, the Blue Mountains formed part of a range that had originally been a plateau. Formed from sandstone rock, countless aeons had worn down most of the plateau, forming gorges and gaps between other parts that had retained their height. This meant that if you followed the valleys you wouldn’t go between the peaks, but would just find yourself running into walls and dead ends.

      Between 1793 and 1804, numerous attempts were made to cross the Blue Mountains, with no success. The attempt in 1804 was made by George Cayley, a young protégé of Sir Joseph Banks (refer to Chapter 3 for more on this rich botanist who had fingers in just about every Australian pie). Cayley reported back to the governor at the time, Governor King, that it was useless to try to cross such a ‘confused and barren assemblage of mountains’.

      King agreed with Cayley. Moreover, he was worried about the rumours that kept inspiring convicts to run away: The distant view of the purple-blue mountains (which, of course, is how they got their name) was so inviting that convicts kept running away, believing that on the other side was a land where everything was perfectly lovely. King said this was stupid, and forbade people to try any further mountain crossings. And there, for the next ten years or so, is where the matter rested.

      However, in 1813, Governor Macquarie, who liked the idea of pushing the settlement outward, hopefully discovering more fertile land and finding new outlets for the increasing population, encouraged a new attempt. Gregory Blaxland, a gentleman settler, William Wentworth, native-born youth, and Lieutenant Lawson set off from near Penrith. They tried a different strategy to the other explorers — rather than follow the valleys and try to hoist themselves over the ridges, they climbed up onto a ridge and kept following it. This way they got past and through the mountains, and happily reported on the fertile land on the other side.

The group hadn’t actually managed to get all the way through the bigger Great Dividing Range — that happened a year later with surveyor G W Evans — but they penetrated far enough to show how it could be done, and got a fair share of public acclaim for doing it. Finally, the colony could begin to properly expand into the Australian continent.

      Expanding the economy

      Massive economic expansion went with settlement expansion, as Macquarie ordered the building of roads, public buildings and even parks to be commenced.

Shortly after arriving in the colony, Macquarie wrote to Britain, asking for more convicts to be sent out. Previous governors had asked for specific trades (for example, ‘Send more carpenters!’) but Macquarie was the first to ask for more, full stop, arguing, ‘The prosperity of the Country depends on their numbers’. He also abandoned government farming, thinking economic improvement was more likely with private settlers. (He would be forced to bring government farming back later in his administration, due to circumstances outside his control; see ‘Coping with the deluge following Waterloo’ later in this chapter.)

      

Under this scheme of rapid economic expansion, the skilled manual labourers — masons, builders, blacksmiths, sawyers, splitters, fencers and carpenters — continued to be the worker ‘aristocracy’, earning exceedingly good wages. The unskilled variously became house servants, wharfies, quarry-workers, farmhands, assistants in offices and warehouses, or workers in the small manufacturing workshops that were proliferating.

      Conciliating (and pursuing) Indigenous Australians

      Macquarie was keen to make his mark with the Aboriginal community as well.

      In October 1814, Macquarie wrote to Lord Bathurst in the Colonial Office, suggesting an Aboriginal school be established in Parramatta as part of an endeavour to win the hearts and minds of the younger Aboriginal generation, and to persuade the parents to allow their children to learn some of the European ways, of cultivation, literacy and sedentary ‘civilised’ society. On receiving Bathurst’s approval, the school was soon in place. (Parents, however, removed children from the school after they realised its aim was to distance the children from their culture and families.)

      Macquarie’s attempt to conciliate Aboriginal peoples was also manifested a few months later, when he held the first of what would become an annual ‘gathering of tribes’ in Parramatta. Here, Macquarie played the ‘big chief’ (he fancied himself as a bit of a Scottish Highland chieftain), handing out gifts and good humour to Indigenous Australians who travelled up to three hundred kilometres to attend the gathering.

Macquarie wanted all those beneath him to prosper — both convicts and Aboriginal people — as long as they acknowledged they were beneath him in rank and authority. Macquarie wasted little time mounting punitive military expeditions when some Aboriginals seemed set to continue their ‘perverse’ hostility to his good intentions and the settlement at large. In 1816, after Aboriginal attacks on farms on the outskirts of the Sydney settlement, Governor Macquarie sent a party to arrest the offenders. This resulted in an attack on an Aboriginal camp at Appin, and the killing of 14 Aboriginal people, none of them known to have been involved in the initial incident.

      Macquarie declared individual Aboriginals as wanted outlaws when whites and blacks clashed, and declared martial law on both Aboriginals and bushrangers when needed in regions where conflict was most rife.

      Re-ordering a town, re-ordering convict behaviour

      Macquarie may have been impressed with the industry evident in the new colony of NSW, but he still believed things should be done in a certain (ordered and moral) way. Although not really in the way instructed by the Colonial Office, Macquarie did introduce some order to the settlement.

      Introducing order to Sydney’s layout

      Macquarie proved himself different from the previous governor (Governor Bligh) when he was able to refashion the town of Sydney without residents threatening him with revolution. Unlike Bligh, who called into question ordinary people’s property rights and threatened them with summary eviction (refer to Chapter 4), Macquarie was able to impose change in a way that seemed orderly rather than arbitrary.

      In October 1810, a new town plan was introduced for Sydney, which included new street names, washhouses, widened roads — and the creation of a certain Macquarie Place. A month later, it was announced that a brand new hospital was to be built (for the price of a five-year rum trading monopoly to the three men who promised to build it — pragmatism in action!). A year later further plans were introduced, including a new animal pound and a turnpike on the Parramatta Road. These were followed by a lighthouse on South Head, a new fort, and plenty more churches — with a very large fountain in Sydney topping it all off.

      Macquarie ensured that whatever came next in the colony, no-one was going to forget him in a hurry. His mark would be evident everywhere, on maps and on buildings, roads and other structures. As a result, the shanty metropolis began to show a lot more orderliness.

      HELLO NSW: CALL ME LACHLAN, AND I’LL CALL EVERYTHING MACQUARIE

      Macquarie made a lasting impact on life in Australia — and on maps in Australia. He made sure he was remembered by naming things after himself, and encouraging others (explorers, surveyors, builders and designers) to do the same. Here Macquarie didn’t stint.

      In Australia today you can find Macquarie

       Lakes

       Rivers

       Lighthouses