INDEX

• Introduction
• Maps
• Significant Places in Australia's Maritime History
• Naming Australia
• Naming Australia's Coastal Features

WHO DID DISCOVER AUSTRALIA?

• The Phoenecians & Egyptians
• The Greeks & Romans
• The Chinese
• The Muslims
• The Portuguese
• The Dutch
• The British
• The French

COLONIAL EXPLORATION

• Index
• The French
• The British
• Other
• Inland explorers

Colonial Exploration: 1794, 96, 1802 - Henry Hacking (1750-1831)

Henry Hacking arrived in Australia with the first Fleet, being quartermaster of HMS Sirius, the First Fleet's flagship. On 20 August 1794, Hacking lead an expedition to cross the Blue Mountains but returned unsuccessful within seven days. Details of his route are unknown but he claims to have pushed twenty miles further than any other European but was forced to return by views of the same wild and inaccessible kind of country.

Port Hacking Right) , to the south of Sydney, was named by Matthew Flinders in 1796 in honour of Hacking who had told Flinders of a large river south of Botany Bay which he had visited while kangaroo shooting in 1788. Originally named Port Aicken (alternatively Akin or Aken) after midshipman John Aicken, First Fleet, who discovered the river. Port Hacking Heads were known as 'Port Aiken Heads' in 1870.

In 1797 large numbers of Irish rebels were shipped out to New South Wales as convicts. Most were uneducated, and grasped at the notion that a wonderful Utopia could be found a couple of hundred miles southwest of Sydney. They had heard the tales of Marco Polo, and thought that they could walk to China, to live a life of ease sipping tea. Many perished, and their sunbleached skeletons littered the countryside. When plans of a mass escape from the Government Farm at Toongabbie became known, the Governor decided to equip an expedition to disprove the rumours, led by the convicts themselves. John Wilson, a renegade First Fletter convict who made a habit of escaping towards the mountains, would act as a guide.

Eleven ragged men set off to a chorus of cheers and jeers in the blistering summer of 1798. They carried biscuits for rations. The convicts soon became footsore, and turned back without setting eyes on the Promised Land. Wilson and two others decided to press on as far as their rations would allow. One was a nineteen year-old lad named John Price, the personal servant of the Governor, who had been sent because he could read and write. His job was to keep a journal of the expedition. The other was a man named Roe, of which nothing is known at all. The party reached the junction of the Wollondilly and Wingecarribee Rivers. There the biscuits ran out, and they were obliged to flee for home. They survived on grubs and roots, a 'rat', and a handful of small birds. Their boots fell apart, and they limped back to Prospect on bleeding feet. The Governor was pleased. Not only had they failed to find China, but they had discovered a valuable deposit of mineral salt instead. Price had recorded the discovery of the "whombatt", "cullawine" (koala) and "pheasant" (lyrebird) in his journal.

Another expedition was organised to blaze a trail to the salt, leaving Sydney on 9 March 1798. Quartermaster Henry Hacking led expedition, penetrating as far as the vicinity of present-day Goulburn, and then turned back. Wilson and Price carried on. They followed a course not far from the present Hume Highway. Price described the countryside as "one of the finest in the world". Running short of biscuits, they rationed themselves to two a day. Game was in short supply. Near the site of Marulan, they dined on "pheasant"; it was to be their last solid meal for weeks. With provisions fast running out, they agreed to climb one last mountain before turning back. And so it was that on March 23rd 1798, that two white men stood for the first time on the summit of Mount Towrang and gazed upon the Goulburn Plains. Then they rubbed their empty bellies and turned for home. Price and Wilson had penetrated further into the wilderness than any other expedition before them. Henry Hacking got most of the credit, and had a Port named after him. Hamilton Hume followed their footsteps twenty years later, and had a highway named after him. Price and Wilson were forgotten for a hundred and fifty years.

On July 20, 1802, Samuel Smith, a seaman on Matthew Flinders's HMS Investigator, wrote about an Aborigine called "Bumbliway, a Severe Enemy to White people, as he had Kill'd several". Smith continued: "At length, he was Shot by the Master of the Nelson Brig, that was Shooting in the Woods, his head being brought Tranquillity was again restor'd." Bumbliway is one of many spellings of Pemulwuy. The "Nelson Brig" was the sloop Lady Nelson, which accompanied the Investigator on the first leg of its circumnavigation of Australia. The ship did not have a master, but her first mate was Henry Hacking.

"Being reckoned a good shot," said Judge Advocate David Collins, Hacking was allowed to shoot for the ship's officers and company. Hacking was possibly the first colonist to shoot and wound an indigenous person in Australia. He might also have been the first to kill an Aborigine. While hunting game at Middle Head in September 1789, he claimed he was set on by a mob of 40 Aborigines "making a great noise". He loaded his musket with heavy buckshot and fired at his attackers when they were 50 metres away. Two fell, dead or wounded, while the others ran off, taking their injured companions.