Transcript of AE 959 - The Goss: Which Dead Aussie Would You Like To Invite To Dinner and Why

G'day, you mob. Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So, today I have a Goss' episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news, whether locally down under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world.

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So, what are we doing, Dad? We're doing, who you'd invited-

Dinner party guests.

So, these are obviously guests that you have a different dinner party with each time, or you have them all at once?

This is- There's- This is an old- This is an old parlour game, you know, sort of ironically, it's a dinner party game.

Yeah.

The- You know, who would you invite to dinner? And there's two versions of it. One is, who would you invite to a dinner party, you know, pick 4 people and you and your partner have got to sit down with these four people and so that you've either got to make them compatible or incompatible or argumentative or whatever.

Yeah.

The other one is, who would you like to have dinner with? And basically, it's who would you like to meet and have a conversation with? So, it's one offs. So, I thought it'd be a really interesting thing to do with living Australians and no longer living Australians, sort of you and I pick a person and you can interview me about why I think this person would be interesting to talk to and I can do the same thing for you.

And we might- It might be useful to do this as a sort of series of short episodes rather than having a half an hour talking about the one person or a bunch of people, because we'd either get tedious or it would be too quick, so we can do a 5 or 10 minute go at, you know, each person, so.

Yeah. Well, do you want to start with dead Australians?

Dead Australians. Yeah. So, I could give you my list. I just started with a- Sorry, got to face ID this. I started with a handful of people of living and dead and thought you can choose one to...

Yeah. Alright. Okay.

So, there you go. And then I'll ask you, you've got to have one up in your head...

So, I just choose one and don't actually tell you who it is, and you have to guess or?

Well you'd have to know who they were to give me clues...

Well we can start from the top, Arthur Phillip because that was probably one of mine...

Well he's cheap. Yeah. He gets the honorary Australian award because he was the first- Other than our indigenous. I've got a number of indigenous people on there as well, but other than our indigenous people, he was really the first Australian. You could argue that Matthew Flinders was the first Australian because he came up with the idea of calling the country Australia, but. And he's not on the list.

But he was, you know, he got an honorary mention or non-mention is the...

He would be a good one, but we can talk about that guy another time.

Yeah, he would. So, yeah, I put Arthur Phillip on the list because I think he's one of those really interesting characters that- If you went out and asked a hundred Australians from the age of 5 to 105, who was the most significant person in the formation of the colony of New South Wales or what became Australia...?

Cook, Cook, Cook.

You would- I reckon a hundred of them would say James Cook where you might be- You'd might have one smart arse like me who would say Arthur Phillip, but. But if you went and asked those same hundred people who Arthur Phillip was, I reckon 50 of them would have no idea. And so, I think he's the sort of-.

Silent hero.

The silent hero, the least understood of the significant characters in Australian history, certainly European Australian history, and, you know, it's actually a bit silly now to call it European, because obviously we now have people from, you know, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas and everything who live...

In their time, at least.

At the time we were, you know, the continent was colonised by Europeans, you know, British Europeans mostly.

Though we had- Sorry to pause you here. We had a few interesting characters. There was an ex-black slave from the Americas called Black Caesar.

Yes, Black Caesar.

Do you remember hearing about him?

Yeah.

So, he was a bit of a handful who used to keep escaping and, you know, lived as a bushranger, I think, for a while. So, we had this African Americans ex-slave that was too much for them that obviously somehow got to Great Britain and then got sent out on the first fleet to Australia and then was too much of a handful here and was living in the bush.

He just buggered off and nobodies- Just don't go and get him, we don't want him.

I think he ends up dying in a fight with either the indigenous people or with- I have to look this up again, it's been a while, but either the indigenous people or with the colonists at the time. But yeah, he would have had an interesting life.

Yeah so, I thought with this sort of exercise of the dinner party guest, is that, not to necessarily give a potted history, don't want to turn the dead people into a history lesson about who they were, but more talk about why they would be interesting to talk to.

Yeah.

And for me, Arthur Phillip would be really interesting to talk to because, and, you know, putting a little bit of history in there, that he was- Not only is he the sort of forgotten person in Australian history, but he was the unlikely hero as well.

He was somebody that you never would have picked out as, you know, that somebody in either the Admiralty or the government in Britain would have said this is the right person to put in charge of the First Fleet to go and create a colony on Mars effectively, the other side of the world.

Because he had a kind of mediocre career, right?

He did. Yeah, he was...

He wasn't a failure, but he...

He wasn't a failure. But he wasn't the, you know, the rapidly elevated to vice admiral and, you know, in the Navy and got to be- He was a captain in the British Navy. He then went ironically and worked for connection with your background- Language background. He went and worked for the Portuguese Navy.

He spoke Portuguese pretty well.

...Portuguese, yeah. He was effectively a consultant with the Portuguese Navy for a long time. And then he married a woman who was- She was a widow. She'd inherited a farm from her previous husband. He married her and he became a farmer.

He retired from the Navy, became a farmer and then sort of got dragged, not quite kicking and screaming, but sort of from obscurity into planning and executing what has to be, I think, the single greatest migration story in the history of the world. We're going to give you a thousand people's lives and it's going to take you 9 or ten months to sail around the world and put you in charge of these people to create a new colony...

Well, the next thing we would see closest to this, paralleling this kind of, you know, story would be the colonisation of Mars. If it happened, though...

It's never happened before him and it's never happened since him, that there was a deliberate colonisation of a place in the world because colonisation up until then and even passed then by, you know, mostly Europeans had always been sort of incremental. They had just been, well, you know...

Set up a port...

We'll set up port...

...And then we'll expand out...

...We'll have a little village and then, you know, we'll set up a government and whatever. But whereas this was just we'll go from, you know, 0 to 100 in...

With one shot.

With one shot. Yeah. So...

But do you think that's part of the reason they ended up choosing him? Because no big name was like...

No, they didn't know. Exactly. I think that is absolutely true. There was limited chance that any of the big wigs...

Anyone wanna put their hand up?

And effectively this was a, you know, without putting too many things on, now He didn't die, but- Well he did, but not in Australia.

He's still here?

He's still here. That's worth talking to him about.

...He shouldn't be on this list, Dad.

No, he's not on the dead... It was a suicide mission. It was effectively a professional suicide mission, if nothing else, this was the end of career job for somebody. This was the, well, you got nothing better to do. Why don't you have a crack at this for a few years and see what happens?

And but, the things that I really, and having read a lot about him, the things that I really find interesting, were how much he pushed back against the Admiralty and the government who they basically wanted to do this as a cheap shot.

And it would have failed, right? He pushed back...

Absolutely would have failed without him.

Because they wanted to under-resource it...

They under-resourced- Not only under-resourced what they would look like when they got there, but he kept pushing back, going, no, no, no. I want all the ships rebuilt. I want this done. I want these stores. I want this and I want- And he just kept pushing back. And it...

He wasn't in a rush to die.

He wasn't in a rush to die, and he wasn't in a rush to succeed.

Yeah.

And I think that's one of the key aspects of, you know, having been handed this job you got to go, you know, the, you know, if he'd been half his age, take him back to, you know, early in his career and they'd given him this job, he wouldn't have handled it the same way, I'm sure. It would have been, whoa, here's an opportunity. Let's go and see how I can screw this up.

Dead.

Yeah, exactly...

A thousand people dead.

...He really spent a lot of time saying, what am I going to need to get this number of people across the world in a condition, and the irony is that the people in the first fleet, he lost far fewer people to illness and death in that- Just the transportation process, the actual being shipped from England to what is now Sydney. He lost far fewer people than certainly the second- The second fleet was just a disaster.

But then many of the others, you know, per capita...

How many did we lose? 48 deaths on the first fleet.

Yeah.

There you go. Most of them men.

Yeah. So...

One child.

4.5%

Five children, sorry. Yeah. One marine's child.

Yeah. And so, he had really spent a lot of time saying, firstly, I need to get healthy people. I need to get people on there who are healthy, this is not just a- This was not a police exercise. This is not just saying let's take a whole bunch of convicts and that we are- All the worst people that we can possibly imagine, throw them on the other side of the world.

This was an opportunity to say, let's get the right people. And it wasn't just skill sets that he was looking for, it was he wanted healthy people to go. And so, then he said, we have to have food, we got to have to have food to last us two years.

Yeah.

And because there was this assumption that it appears, and we'll never know because I haven't read any of the original documentation and I'm sure there is some available in what the Admiralty in the government in Britain was saying at the time. But my understanding is that they were basically, well, yeah, we'll give you six months' supply, when you get there you can just grow your own food.

And he looked at- yes, he had the background, obviously, having been a farmer for the latter part of his career as well. But he also looked at it and just said, we're going to fail. We need to be able to have food, two years' worth of food. Oh well, we'll send another fleet out. That's fine, but what if they fail? And so, he pushed really hard to get that.

The other thing that I'd be really interested in talking to him about is, how did you manage the- Because for all we read, he actually had quite a different attitude towards indigenous people from what the Admiralty and the government and everything else had, in that he was very much along the lines of I'm going to have to live or we are going to have to live alongside these people. We do not want to create conflict.

This is one of the really interesting things- Excuse me. That's worth talking about, because I think a lot of people don't- They see it as black and white, but they were European colonisers so clearly they wanted to commit genocide on the indigenous population.

And I think a lot of people forget that Arthur Phillip wasn't moving there, he was working to establish a colony that may persist into the future but had no real understanding of what was actually going to happen in the future. But not only that, he was just doing a certain shift effectively, right, of 4, 5 years and then went back to England.

And so, his goal wasn't, how do I turn the indigenous population, you know, into slaves or bend them to my will and everything? He had a deep understanding of the fact that he was going to have to rely on the indigenous people in that area if he wanted to live.

And didn't want to create conflict. The last thing he wanted to do was have them kill each other.

Because he knew he would lose.

Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, so how you manage the attitudes of not just the convicts, but, you know, he's taking a lot of military people with him...

Yeah.

...And a lot of Marines and Army with him. And how do you manage their attitudes and their behaviours in order to facilitate that? And he seemed to do it pretty well.

Well, did he hang people who killed Indigenous people?

He did. He did.

Probably not because they killed indigenous people, but because they put the colony at risk.

Yes.

I would imagine.

Yeah, exactly. But, you know, he was speared by an indigenous person.

Yeah. Was that Bennelong or was that someone else?

No, it was somebody else. But he deliberately said, no, I don't want retribution for this. I don't want you going out and killing this person. That's not what it is about, so.

So, who speared Arthur Phillip? So, it was Willemering.

Yeah.

Yeah, so. Yeah, but that's right. So, they- Well the reason he got speared too, to let people know is that the- And this is the interesting thing with Arthur Phillip trying to manage these relationships with the indigenous people, in order to try and build a bridge of communication he had to kidnap indigenous people like Willemering, I think, and Bennelong in particular.

And Willemering in this famous incident that I think took place in Sydney Cove, didn't it? He ends up escaping because, you know, Phillip- Arthur Phillip would catch these two and like lock them up and try and teach them English effectively and then be like, okay, now you can go but we want to be able to communicate with you and your people.

I think Willemering disappeared, and they went and found him. And Arthur was like, oh, there's Willemering and they were having a corroboree or something, a party. And he went over there and Willemering was like, fuck you dude and stabbed him. But I think the evidence is that he didn't do it in a way to kill Arthur Phillip, it was a this is retribution, this is payback for kidnapping me, you son of a bitch.

Pretty much.

So...

Yeah. It was indigenous law that was- It wasn't a fear of, you know, being captured again or whatever it was just, oh, yeah. I'll treat you as equals and the way I would treat one of my colleagues who had done this is I would stab him with a spear.

Which is pretty amazing to think about the amount of foresight that he had and, you know, restraint that he had as well, because I would imagine that many other leaders of that time or Marines under his command would have been like, kill the lot...

Just kill the lot of them.

Yeah, this is too much pain and not realise that, no, well, that's actually putting everyone in jeopardy. Not just danger of being killed by, you know, retribution in retribution. But also, we then no longer have people here who know how to use the land, food and yeah.

Exactly. So, the other thing, too, that I find really interesting is that he- The way he had to treat both his staff and convicts from a food point of view, he was rationing people from the day they got there and there was a huge amount of resentment for that. And the first person hanged in Australia was hanged because they stole food from the stores, not for murder or for raping people or for running off and killing indigenous people...

But again, putting the colony...

...Put the colony in jeopardy. And it's that- Having that oversight of the whole picture and understanding that stealing food is the worst thing you can possibly do...

Yeah.

...Because it's the only thing that's going to keep us alive through a winter, you know, that's...

I had a feeling when I was learning a limited amount about him and I haven't read his specific biographies yet, but I've read a lot of books that have mentioned and talked about what he's done, that he was somewhat resentful- Not resentful, but didn't want to have to do those kinds of things.

He was very kind of like, hard place and a rock and not a bloodthirsty kind of leader, which we seem to have gotten later on in a lot of these places, especially the Penal colonies or the Penal jails seem to...

Yes.

...End up with psychopaths running them.

And I think that was one of the successes, is that we had somebody who was compassionate both inwardly within the colony, but outwardly with the indigenous people. But he was also- Happy is the wrong word. Able to overcome his compassion and take the hard decisions of, you know, hanging somebody for doing something that at home would of been a relatively trivial crime.

Stealing food while starving, right?

Yeah, exactly. And yet but he had that capacity to do that. And I think that was one of those successes, so. The other thing that I'd be really interested in having is the retrospective with him of doing the, well, you know, you came out here in 1788 and...

Look at us now bro.

230 years later.

Barnaby Joyce, just got fined for not wearing a face mask.

Hang 'em.

What do you reckon?

Yeah. So, you know, what do you think? How did we screw up? It'd be really interesting to look at that and go, what were you thinking when you went back to England after nearly 5 years here of being governor of New South Wales? What did you think was going to happen? And obviously he lived for some time afterwards and he would have heard and, you know, about progress and so on.

But, you know, 50, 150, 300 years later, not that we're 300, but 230 years later now. Could you have foreseen this?

Well, of course not.

Of course not. But it's more that, you know, now- You know, the modern world now is so, yeah. When and how we were colonised is sort of irrelevant, but if you take him forward, you know, even to, say, the- You know, a hundred years to the late 19th century.

Yeah.

After we'd gone through convicts and started to develop. You know, how would he have seen that? And what advice could he have given people as to, you know, how they could improve the country? It'd be really interesting to have those sort of conversations with someone who was the start of it all, so.

It'd be incredible to understand what Australia was like back then, too, from his point of view and the colonies point of view. You know, what it was like in their psyche of we have just taken, stolen, acquired this very small parcel of land in Sydney Cove. And there is this unknown amount of country that stretches out before us with, you know, unknown threats, unknown animals, completely new species.

You know, they see kangaroos and they're just like, what the fuck is this thing? You can eat it? And then just the...

...Hear possums and koalas at night.

Yeah, exactly. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like. It'd be really cool to be able to do some sort of time travel tourism where you could spend the night on both sides, you know, in the indigenous side as well, but in the colony and hear and understand what their fears were, what they were worried about, what their day-to-day li-

Like, you wonder- The colonists often get demonised, but- As being these, you know, people who ended up taking this land, but I doubt that was on their minds, at least for the majority of them. They were probably so...

How do I survive?

Exactly. What do I have to do to eat?

...The first fleet was, how do I survive? Until we get another, you know, fleet of ships bringing food to us, that's I'm sure the, almost the only thing they were thinking of.

Well, and a lot of the- It would have been interesting to see Arthur Phillip with the ability to go home at any time effectively and be like I have- How do you feel being here knowing that you've got a go home ticket? Whereas- And the Marines have the go home ticket. Whereas the convicts...

...Came, there for 7 to 14 years...

Which is effectively life.

Because they were- Yeah, well, there was...

Who's going to be able to afford to go home?

...Enough money to buy their way home again. But ironically, that very few of them wanted to, even the ones who were successful.

Oh, man, England was a shithole.

Yeah, exactly.

Which was why they probably stolen or, you know, gone into crime.

The life they had come from.

Exactly. They were probably like, man, I get farmland, I get to, you know.

And those- The First Fleeters were not, mostly they were petty criminals, but they were not the- Some of the later ones were political criminals, particularly the Irish and the Scottish, the Irish in particular. But where it was just, you know, get these people out of here. Yeah. They were- They- Very quickly became productive members of society because a lot of them were...

Literate.

...Literate, skilled, professional.

Lawyers, scholars.

Yeah. It's one of the guys who apparently was one of the first architects and artists who came to Australia, was a convicted- He wasn't a political prisoner.

Was he a forger?

He was a forger. Yeah, clearly a very clever draftsperson.

Just not clever enough not to be caught.

Exactly. But yeah, he became a very successful architect.

What was his name?

I can't remember.

Yeah, I think I have a feeling I was reading about him recently.

But those sort of stories of, you know, how do you choose who to put on the boat? Well, clearly you don't choose the worst of the worst.

Yeah, exactly.

That's a pretty quick way to just turn everything to shit.

Rapists and murderers, you can stay home.

And they're dead. Yeah, everyone's dead, you know. Well, anything else to add?

No, no, no, I think...

What other questions would you have for him?

Do you have any regrets? What would you have done differently? That's always a good question to ask somebody who's done something monumental and for what we perceive 230 years later, you know, relatively indigenous aspects aside, and that's not downplaying them. But relatively successfully. What would you have done differently? What-? Yeah. Where did you screw up?

It's always a really interesting question to ask somebody, who for all intents and purposes, has been successful.

I would love to know what he thought of indigenous people prior to meeting them, after meeting them, and then after the 5 years or the... ...Because he had spent a lot of time with Willemering and Bennelong. Bennelong, I think- I don't know if Willemering went, but Bennelong definitely went to Great Britain with him.

Yes.

So, it would have been really interesting to see how his view of these people would have changed over that time. You know, and to have heard about what Bennelong's stay in England would have been like, because I can imagine that would have been pretty interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, all right. Well, we'll have to do this next time.

We will...

Another one my turn.

...Next time.

All right. Cheers.

Thanks, everyone.

See ya, guys.

Alrighty, you mob. Thank you so much for listening to or watching this episode of The Goss'. If you would like to watch the video, if you're currently listening to it and not watching it, you can do so on the Aussie English Channel on YouTube. You'll be able to subscribe to that, just search "Aussie English" on YouTube.

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I'm your host, Pete. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have a ripper of a day, and I will see you next time. Peace.