The Botany Bay Medallion

‘During Lord Sydney’s time as secretary of state, the Home Office was a clearing house. Its jurisdiction included overseeing of naval officers involved in trade regulation, secret service and special projects. As a result, Sydney crossed paths with three men who left their mark on [Australia’s European] history – Horatio Nelson, William Bligh and Arthur Phillip. Andrew Tink, Life and Times of Tommy Townshend, 2001

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‘The arrival [of the British] in January 1788 did not merely presage disasters that were to follow. It was the precise moment when the tragedy began relentlessly to unfold. And once the British claimed both the sovereignty and all the property, there was no turning back. The dark seeds of disaster had been sown’. Henry Reynolds, Truth-Telling, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney 2021

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‘The whole claim of sovereignty and ownership on the basis of terra nullius was manifestly based on a misreading of Australian circumstance, not that prevented Phillip from hoisting the Union Jack in 1788 and expropriating the owners at Sydney Cove’. Stuart Mac Intyre,  A Concise History of Australia, Melbourne University Press, 2004

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‘1992  The High Court hand[ed] down the Mabo case in which it recognis[ed] native title and reject]ed] the idea that Australia was terra nullius, or no man’s land at the time of British settlement. 1993 [Prime Minister] Keating legislat[‘d] native title into law’. Megan Davis & George Williams, Everything You Need to Know About The Uluru Statement From the Heart, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney 2021

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‘The Act of 1786 [Geo. III. c.59] for the Encouragement of the Southern Whale Fishery proved to be the foundation of an important industry…in the wake of whalers other British traders would follow.

The furtherance of this plan became one of the central objects of Lord Hawkesbury’s commercial policy’. Vincent T. Harlow, Vol. 2, Founding of the Second British Empire 1763-1793, Longmans, London 1964

Governor Arthur Phillip RN knew establishing land bases, to support a ship-based whaling industry in the Southern and Indian oceans, known to be teeming with marine life, was prominent among the many ambitions Prime Minister William Pitt and his ‘secretive inner circle’ of powerful politicians Lord Hawkesbury, Henry Dundas and Lord Mulgrave had for New Holland.

‘The tremendous monster, who had occasioned the unhappy catastrophe just recorded [ 7 September 1790 Governor  Phillip’s spearing] was fated to be the cause of further mischief to us’. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, Ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1961

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