 |
| Marine Lieutenant William Dawes, the first (documented) European to have set foot in Warrimoo--December 1789 |
The first (documented) white person to set foot in the
vicinity of Warrimoo was Marine Lieutenant William Dawes, who had been sent to New South Wales to
assist the military keep order in 1788. He was a cultured man, who took an avid
interest in astronomy (the telescope at Dawes Point) and in the local
Indigenous people and their languages. So much so, that when Pemulwuy killed
Governor Phillip’s gamekeeper and the Governor ordered him to go on a punitive
expedition against the natives, Dawes refused to go. He argued that the gamekeeper,
John MacIntyre, had caused provocation to Aboriginal people around the harbour,
and may have deserved his fate. In the event, Dawes was prevailed upon to go on
the expedition, which proved utterly fruitless. Nevertheless, the bad blood
this whole incident brought between Dawes and the Governor ultimately led to
his leaving the colony in December, 1791.
However, two years earlier this same William Dawes, along
with Watkin Tench, had discovered the Nepean River
To the ‘line of
march’. The first day he headed due west from Emu Ford to the crest of the
first ridge, in the vicinity of Mt. Riverview , and from here had a direct view of ‘Round
Hill’ (Mt. Hay
Dawes moved his ‘line
of march’ to a straight traverse and made a bee line for Round Hill crossing
the now line of highway just near the Sydney
In other words, Dawes scaled the escarpment at present day
Early Warrimoo historian, Maisie
Lupton[2]
continues the story...
...he would have
passed by the foot of the ridge which is now Florabella Street Camarthen
Mountains , as the Blue
Mountains were then known. It is believed that his ‘line of march’
would have taken him along a course similar to that of the high tension
electricity line which crosses the Highway, near the (now defunct) Westward Ho
Cafe, and continues across the gullies and ridges in a westerly direction...
 |
Dawes--same picture, reverse angle, in colour |
Dawes and his small party marched on, and most of
the conjecture (Dawes did not keep a detailed diary--merely some trigonometric
readings and his distance covered) has him stopping somewhere between Linden and Lawson because provisions began to run low and
exhaustion had set in. More recent examination of his readings, however,
concede that his party had, in fact, covered the necessary distance to Mt. Hay
before turning back.
The number of subsequent attempts to cross the Blue Mountains is now legion: Paterson, Bass, Everingham,
Wilson, Barallier and Caley to name the most prominent. It is worth noting the
attempts of Francis Barallier and John Wilson, because they illustrate
something of the knowledge and influence of the Darug and Gundungarra peoples
at the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment