William Buckley (convict)

height of , which was very unusual for the time. but biographer Marjorie J. Tipping stated that "according to his easy assimilation into an unfamiliar way of life may also suggest that he was intelligent, shrewd and courageous". Due to the manner in which the military was prosecuted at the time, he was unaware of his final sentence. After his conviction, he neither saw nor heard from his family again.

Transportation and escape

thumb|right|Sullivan Bay, Victoria where passengers of Calcutta landed in 1803. He later lived predominantly on Bellarine Peninsula over 32 years.

thumb|Buckley's transportation and escape as depicted by 19th-century Aboriginal artist [[Tommy McRae]]

Buckley left England in April 1803 aboard , one of two ships sent to Port Phillip to form a new settlement under Lieutenant-Colonel David Collins. They arrived at the eastern side of Port Phillip Bay in October 1803 and landed at one of its small bays, Sullivan Bay near what is now Sorrento. Royal Marines and labourers encamped together. Skilled labourers, including Buckley, lived in huts nearer building sites. The skilled labourers were given a degree of freedom because there was more than of wilderness to the nearest settlement at Sydney, which made escape treacherous.

The new settlement lacked fresh water and arable soil, and a decision was made a couple of months later to abandon the site and move to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). Buckley and five others escaped during a rain storm on 27 December 1803, to avoid being sent to Tasmania, hoping to escape to Port Jackson (Sydney). Of the six, Charles Shaw was shot by a soldier and was captured with another convict. Daniel Allender surrendered to Lieutenant Governor David Collins on 16 January 1804. The three remaining men subsisted on rations of food that they brought with them as well as seafood and berries that they collected, but they struggled to find enough food and fresh water. His visitors made him a meal of crayfish. They then asked Buckley to follow him to their huts, where they arrived by nightfall. In the morning the trio went on further into the woods, but Buckley communicated that he would remain in the area.

He returned to his hut along the creek on the western side of Port Phillip Bay. Winter was approaching and he was finding it increasingly difficult to collect adequate amounts of food and keep warm. Lonely and worn-down, he journeyed to the eastern portion of the bay in the hope that there were some English escapees who remained in the area. On his journey, he found a burial mound with a spear sticking out of the ground. He took it and used it as a walking stick. Further on his trek, he stumbled while crossing a stream and he was carried away by the current. He managed to get to the shore but was too exhausted to walk. The next morning, still quite feeble, he walked to a lake or lagoon known as Maamart by the Indigenous people. There he met two women who realised that he needed help, and with assistance of their husbands, they led Buckley to their huts. The people were members of the Wallarranga tribe of the Wathaurong nation. They believed him to be the spirit of a deceased tribal chief, and he also lived east at the mouth of the Barwon River. Living on the western side of the bay, he had access to fresh water, yam daisy (murnong), bream, seafood, and birds. His diet was supplemented with game—including kangaroo, wombat, koala, wallaby and turkey—that he hunted on the basalt plains. There were several shipwrecks along the coast in which no one survived. Buckley and other tribal members collected tools, blankets, and other items. A Buninyong woman, Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin, was 15 years old when she met Buckley and became his wife and she may have been the mother of his daughter. By 1881, she lived in Victoria's Western District at the Framlingham Mission. He is also said to have been given a wife when he was single, but there was jealousy among some of the tribesmen and he was once again single.

He was treated with great affection and respect. "By virtue of his age and peaceful ways, Buckley ... became a Ngurungaeta, a person of considerable respect among his people and his voice was influential in deciding matters of war and peace." Buckley became an expert with Aboriginal weapons, though despite this, as a revered spirit, he was banned from participating in tribal wars. During one battle, the family who had taken him in and many other members of the clan were killed. Buckley then decided to live by himself, first along the Bass Strait coast and then along Bream Creek. He leveraged all that he had been taught about foraging for food, and then he figured out how to catch fish in greater number using a weir. He also began to dehydrate and preserve food. Members of the clan he had previously lived with joined him there. Over time, he forgot the English language and his hair grew very long. William Todd recalled in his journal entry for 6 July 1835:

The tattoo of initials proved he was the convict William Buckley, who had been given up for dead three decades ago. Although still intent on raiding the Englishmen, Buckley convinced the Indigenous people not to attack the Englishmen, and he promised to reward them if they remained peaceful. Wedge obtained a pardon for Buckley through Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur.

<blockquote>February 5th, 1836: I directed Buckley to advance and we would follow him at a distance of a quarter of a mile. Buckley made towards a native well and after he had rode about 8 miles, we heard a cooey and when we arrived at the spot I witnessed one of the most pleasing and affecting sights. There were three men five women and about twelve children. Buckley had dismounted and they were all clinging around him and tears of joy and delight running down their cheeks.... It was truly an affecting sight and proved the affection which these people entertained for Buckley ... amongst the number were a little old man and an old woman, one of his wives. Buckley told me this was his old friend with whom he had lived and associated thirty years.</blockquote>

By this time, Buckley was wearing clothes of the Englishmen. As he prepared to leave the gathering, his friends were disheartened to realise that he would not be living with them again.

During the course of his career as an interpreter and mediator, he tried to manage his role working for the government while also being concerned about equitable treatment of Aboriginal people. He felt that Indigenous people and influential white men were suspicious of him and he decided to move to Van Diemen's Land.

On 27 June 1840, he was married to Julia Higgins, at St John's Church, New Town, Hobart, by the Reverend T. J. Ewing. According to a contemporary, George Russell, she is said to have been as short as he was tall—so much so that when out walking she was too short to even reach his arm. To remedy this problem he would tie two corners of his handkerchief together, and after fastening this to his arm, she would put her arm through the loop. Julia was the 26 year-old He retired in 1850.

Buckley's Falls near Woorongo was named after Buckley by John Helder Wedge.

John Morgan's The Life and Adventures of William Buckley as history

Almost all knowledge of Buckley's life with the Wathaurung people is based on the 1852 account written by John Morgan (1792–1866), Life and Adventures of William Buckley.

Written when the illiterate Buckley was 72 years old, it was clearly intended to make money for the insolvent Morgan and Buckley. As a result, the account has sometimes been dismissed as more the product of Morgan's fertile imagination than a true representation of Buckley's experiences. Its references to the mythical Bunyip and tribe of copper-coloured, pot-bellied "Pallidurgbarrans" who supposedly lived in the Otway forests are often cited as evidence of this. However, while acknowledging its limitations, some scholars, such as Lester Hiatt, see it as consistent with "modern understandings of Aboriginal social life". Tim Flannery suggests that Buckley's story has been "ignored or mentioned only in passing by historians" because it is "so at odds with contemporary preconceptions". Another factor, he suggests, is that "studies of Aboriginal Victoria have long relied heavily on archaeological research". Flannery cites Edward Curr, an early author of Aboriginal studies, who claimed Morgan's book gave "a truer account of Aboriginal life than any work I have read".

"You've got Buckley's chance"

Buckley's improbable survival is believed by many Australians to be the source of the vernacular phrase, "you've got Buckley's or none" (or simply "you've got Buckley's"), which means "no chance", or "it's as good as impossible". The Macquarie Dictionary supports this theory.

The Australian National Dictionary Centre deprecates a second theory: that the expression was originally a pun on the name of a now defunct Melbourne department store chain, Buckley & Nunn because this second explanation "appears to have arisen after the original phrase was established". This second usage seems to be a 20th century "local adaptation" in Melbourne of the earlier phrase that originated around Sydney.

The phrase "Buckley’s chance" spread outward from Australia with emigration and into the vernacular of other countries. For example, John Kennedy O’Brien (1907–1979, AKA Jack O’Brien) used this phrase to highlight inter-town travel difficulties following New Zealand’s Murchison Earthquake of 1929; “...from what Mr O’Brien saw of the country, the...man had only Buckley’s chance of reaching his goal”. Although John himself was born in New Zealand, his father, Kennedy Hugh O’Brien (1874-1927), was a native of Victoria, Australia, having emigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1890s, bringing some forms of colloquial language with him. “Buckley’s chance”, it seems, came with him.

Notes

References

Sources

Also [https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/3cfe4f96-5cc9-4eef-8a0e-bdd44f1e4065] (Written with Buckley himself.)

External links

Moore, Bruce Buckley's (chance) at Australian National University and Oxford University Press periodical Ozwords, April 2011, p. 7 (folio 6)
William Buckley, Hindsight, Australian Broadcasting Corporation / Radio National
William Buckley story on Culture Victoria