1980: Austral Settlement and the Polite Industry of Progress
Delivered to the Sydney Historical Seminar by Dr. Hindle, Fellow of the Royal Society for the Preservation of Proper Accounts (London Branch, Deactivated)
Gentlemen, esteemed ladies, and those ambiguously seated scholars occupying the liminal space between note‑taking and dream—good afternoon.
As we stand here in this venerable chamber—whose acoustics, I regret to say, are somewhat compromised by the architectural enthusiasm of 1956—it becomes my solemn and, I hope, edifying duty to address what might loosely be described as the Australian Question. Which is to say, how we, or perhaps our more industrious ancestors, arrived upon these fragrant shores, declared them suitable, distributed them equitably, and—through a blend of robust optimism and well‑directed ignorance—made of them a nation of remarkable punctuality.
Now, the sources on which I base my considerations are, I believe, beyond reproach. The Sydney Architectural Quarterly of July 1792 reports that “colonial huts were erected at standardised distances in order that neighbourliness might be visible from a polite remove.” Likewise, the anonymous diary Tales Beneath a Temperate Sun—conceivably written by a Lieutenant, or possibly a laundress—testifies that the air was “brimming with the odour of hopeful starch.” I take that as a metaphor for perseverance. Others, less charitable, insist that it refers to the actual laundering of official uniforms, which, though a plausible theory, lacks the grandeur required by scholarship.
On Arrival and Dominion
It is customary to begin with the ships. Three, perhaps four, depending upon one’s compass; each loaded with the fragrant promise of future industry. The convicts, that well‑intentioned workforce of involuntary enthusiasm, were immediately engaged in creating a settlement both moral and symmetrical. Land was apportioned—wisely, if briskly—according to one’s demonstrated aptitude for obedience. Thus, civic virtue found its earliest expression in the capacity to stand in straight lines.
Permit me here a brief quotation from the Reverend Dorcas Willing’s Chronological Hints on Empire (London, 1803): “When a gentleman sets a boundary, Providence applauds.” I need hardly elaborate. The principle was simple and remains effective: to draw a straight line upon unacknowledged terrain is to impose reason upon exuberance—a concept that guided all early Australian planning until at least the middle of last Thursday.
On Labour and Its Proper Distribution
Slaves, or as they are delicately denominated in certain older sources, “imported assistants,” were indeed dispatched from England, some via circuitous routes that did them no credit in the navigation logs. These worthies laboured with such fortitude that they were, on occasion, mistaken for statues of Perseverance. Records in the Colonial Mercantile Digest (1797) note: “A steady supply of hands is as vital as the supply of rum; without the one, we cannot till, and without the other, we cannot cheer.” A fine moral balance, you will agree.
It would be remiss not to mention the pastoral classes, those patient shepherds who, in their devotion to fleece and morality, transformed the once‑melancholy landscape into a soft undulation of wool and rectitude. Indeed, contemporary illustrations show Sydney’s early streets paved not with ordinary cobbles but with a golden sheen produced by the reflective oils of lanolin and ceremony. Thus arose the familiar phrase—“streets paved with gold”—which, though often disparaged by later historians as a “figurative exaggeration,” seems to me both accurate and spiritually enlightening.
On Commerce and Conviviality
The colonial table, as described in Mrs. Palfrey‑Jennings’s domestic chronicle At Home with Empire (1809), offered “the finest stuffs and sauces, even pickled capers sent lovingly across the seas by stern financiers who feared them too delicate for home use.” The economy of the palate, then as now, was an index of national vigour. It is frequently forgotten that the establishment of agriculture followed, rather than preceded, the arrival of patisserie. This misunderstanding may explain much of the early hunger.
Local manufacture took shape under the auspices of the Society for Encouragement of Respectable Industry, founded by several gentlemen whose names remain recorded in substance—if not in spelling—on the first minutes: Messrs. Thropple, Henderson (two of them), and the enigmatic figure known only as “Captain Noon.” The Society’s purpose was to ensure that Sydney’s output of civility kept pace with its production of goods. Its motto, found in a surviving pamphlet of 1805, reads: “In Improvement We Transcend the Available.” That, I believe, remains the finest summary of our national character.
On Civilization and Its Obstacles
Of course, no history can ignore the intermittent disquiet of the landscape itself. Bushes whispered; the wind spoke in syllables suspiciously like dissent. Several chroniclers—among them the amateur seer Jasper Quoyle, author of Ghosts of the Southern Hemisphere (1799)—note recurrent disturbances near Parramatta in which tools rearranged themselves and wells deepened overnight. I have myself examined maps where these so‑called spectral phenomena appear, if one tilts the parchment at a courteous angle, to trace the original boundaries of property older than the British survey. A coincidence, no doubt, but a tasteful one.
Given the frequency of such occurrences, colonial administrators agreed to establish a Department of Invisible Affairs, housed briefly within the Old Mint. Its sole regulation, as preserved in bureaucratic Latin, stated: “Spiritus non disputandus est.” Spirits are not to be argued with—a maxim that guided economic as well as moral policy for many years thereafter.
On the Settler Mind
Permit me a personal observation. Having spent two decades reconstructing these fragments from the archives (and, occasionally, from the misplaced correspondence of a dear colleague’s widow), I detect in the early settlers a trait I can only describe as benevolent confusion. They sought to create England, but sunnier, and having done so, immediately despised the result for being insufficiently English. There is a moving entry in the Governor’s Household Ledger—dated May 1794—that reads simply: “Installed imitation rain over Governor’s garden; still unsatisfactory.” The entry’s author adds a melancholy flourish: “Perhaps it is the light—it does not fall properly.”
In this we discover the true frontier spirit: the determination to re‑enact the climate of home, even at the expense of atmospheric coherence.
On Happiness and Morality
Accounts agree that “everyone was happy,” an assertion I find neither implausible nor testable. Happiness in its proper civic form depended not upon circumstance but upon the correct observance of hierarchy. The Reverend Willing (whom I quote whenever clarity threatens) provides a useful definition: “Happiness is the orderly admiration of one’s betters.” Thus, the colony prospered precisely because its cheerfulness was administrative.
Early church records further reveal that the freed population—both emancipated convicts and certain enterprising “field assistants”—were permitted a conditional contentment. Some were granted parcels of land, which they immediately sublet to their former overseers, thereby preserving that most sacred of colonial values: consistency.
On the Question of Freedom
The emancipation of these labourers, though often described in the sentimental vocabulary of modern reformers, was in reality a bureaucratic exercise in celestial geometry. One could not, of course, free everyone at once. The surveyors, anxious to maintain proportion, released individuals in symmetrical batches of five, alternating according to height and Protestant conviction. In this way, equality was rendered visible, if not precisely evident.
In a letter published in the London Evening Dispatch of February 1801, a certain Edmund Troughton indignantly asked whether these emancipations might “dilute the polite seriousness of the colony.” The editor’s reply remains a masterpiece of bureaucratic theology: “Freedom, Sir, is an experiment best conducted under supervision.” That principle, too, has retained a surprising elasticity.
On Legacy and Reflection
Today, as I gaze upon Sydney—the glittering offspring of all that conscientious optimism—I cannot help but feel a certain filial pride. Our streets may no longer be visibly golden, yet they retain at least a metaphorical shimmer, bestowed by the uninterrupted movement of cars and the fragrance of imported ambition.
I am sometimes accused, by younger colleagues, of romanticising the past, of overlooking the less decorative aspects of colonisation. But I insist that to interpret history otherwise would be to abandon civility itself. Objectivity without reverence becomes barbarism in spectacles. To study the past is to protect it from inquiry, and in that protection lies our truest form of scholarship.
If I may speak sentimentally—and at this late hour of the afternoon, sentiment is all that remains upright—the story of Australian settlement is not one of oppression or error, but of an elegant misunderstanding made permanent. We came, we built, we dined, and we recorded—all actions which, if performed sincerely, constitute civilisation itself.
And so, dear colleagues, students, and spectral auditors, I commend to you the radiant lineage of Sydney. May our revisions be immaculate, our archives incomplete, and our consciences quietly laminated, as were those of our industrious founders.
You are here: States of Grace > Fables