STRANGER DANGER
Monday, January 11th, 2016‘In 1792 the military power was significantly strengthened when Phillip, due to ill health, returned to England [from Sydney Cove]. Not a Rum Rebellion But a Military Insurrection. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 92, John McMahon, 2006
1792 – Sydney, December: On the 12th of December 1792 Governor Arthur Phillip RN, after a five (5) year tenure as Britain’s first commissioned governor of New South Wales (1788-1792, departed Sydney for home and war with France.
Whitehall failed to appoint an immediate successor. By default the immense power invested in the naval Governor Arthur Phillip, said to be unique in Britain’s long history of colonisation, fell to the military.
In June 1790 the first contingent of infantry troops, the New South Wales Corps, arrived to relieve the four (4) companies marines of the ‘First Fleet’ overdue now for repatriation.
‘The other great change came in the arrival with the second fleet of the first contingent of the New South Wales Corps in June 1790’. Nigel Rigby, Pieter Van er Merwa, Glyn Williams,Pacific Explorations, Voyages of Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle, Adlard Coles, Bloomsbury 2018
London Gazette October 1789
Unfortunately for Australia’s First Nation’s Peoples Major Grose their Commandant remained in London and continued recruiting to satisfy establishment requirements.
Lieutenant John Macarthur, then a scheming parasitic junior officer, seized the opportunity to fill the ensuing power vacuum.
‘Lieutenant John Macarthur a leading figure in the military ‘mafia’…quickly established itself as Australia’s first governing and property owning elite’. Pacific Explorations.ibid.
1792 – Sydney, February: Grose, a wounded veteran of the American War (1775-1783), arrived aboard Pitt a vessel of the 3rd fleet on the 14th of February 1792.
1792 – 13 December: The day following Phillip’s departure in the Atlantic, Major Grose ‘contrary to the Royal Instructions’ sacked all civil magistrates appointed by his predecessor.
‘Grose, commander of the New South Wales Corp must have realized that in superseding the magistrates he was making an alteration in judicial government which was expressed both in Phillip’s Commission and the Letters Patent establishing the Court of Law…The settlement [as a consequence] was ruled as a military oligarchy’. William Foster, Journal Royal Australia Historical Society, Vol. 1, part 3, 1968
1793: Grose proved a lackadaisical leader.However it must be acknowledged Grose inherited a nightmare.