Transcript of AE 1009 - The Goss: Bennelong's Incredible Life

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.

Okay, and we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right, if we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss'. So, these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English.

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Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time, keep practising, and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit, I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

G'day, you mob. Welcome to this episode of The Goss'. Dad, what's the Goss'?

Sorry, just getting myself settled here. Hey, we're still in lockdown. Well, semi-lockdown. But as you can see, I'm not out in the wilderness...

He's in the bush.

...Previous episodes. That's just a photograph, it's Zoom and if I move side to side, if I put- Hang on, I've got an empty glass here. But if I put this up, you get these sort of weird- I just disappear into the- So, it's not legitimate background, but yeah, good to be online, Pete.

I know, I know. We should have organised this sooner.

Yeah. Well, we kept thinking that this is only going to last a few days, so we'll be able to get together again. And it didn't.

Exactly. So, what's today's episode, dad? You...

We're gonna do the old dinner party guest. Who would you like to have for dinner and why?

Yeah. So, mine is Bennelong.

Oh, cool. Yeah, that's a follow up. We did Arthur Phillip last time...

Exactly. Well, and it's not a piecemeal kind of thing, like I was thinking, you know, oh, should I do an indigenous person? People will think I'm just sort of like, you know, throwing them a bone and trying to be inclusive or whatever. And it's like, no, I thought of Bennelong because, so effectively he was one of the first indigenous people to learn English, the first indigenous people in Australia to learn English.

I think the story and correct me if I go wrong. But Arthur Phillip and everyone colonised in about, whatever it was, 1788.

Yep.

They went to Sydney Cove in Port Jackson, and effectively these guys were the Eora clan or part of the Eora clan, and they're the indigenous people who first came in contact with the first colonists. And to bridge this gap, you know, I think it was King George the third at the time, back in Britain had told Arthur Phillip not to show any sorts of violence or anything towards the indigenous people.

Because it was incredibly important to develop a relationship because they knew that it was going to be, you know, very difficult for them to organise a colony there and survive and have enough food. The last thing they wanted was, you know, hostile...

Have...

...Thousands of hostile people...

...At the same time.

...Coming in and trying to kill everyone. And so, but ironically, right, after Phillip, I think he catches- He captures- What's the name of the guy? There was a different one, a different indigenous person. Colebee, he catches first, I think, and Colebee ends up escaping and bailing for obvious reasons. And so, he then ends up catching Bennelong.

He may have caught him with Colebee, but effectively, Bennelong is the one who stays and ends up learning enough English, so that he can then develop this go between relationships.

He basically decided, this is all right. They feed me, they housed me, they give me clothes, they treat me like a king in comparison with the rest of his people. So, yeah, who knows what his motivation was? But you get that suspicion that Bennelong had decided that, okay, I've got nothing to lose here, you know, I'm being treated well.

Well, and that's it. So, part of wanting to bring him to dinner and have a chat with him would be to understand these interactions through his eyes. What it was that him and his clan and the broader indigenous community were thinking, what did they think of Arthur Phillip and these people coming originally? What- How did that change over time? When did it sort of click that they were like, oh, this is a really...?

Well, that's it. And then, I think that smallpox hit in 1789, right, the year or two after they colonised and wiped out a shitload of the indigenous population. Because obviously the Europeans had this sort of resistance to it in comparison to the indigenous population that were effectively naive, completely to any of these European diseases.

And so, I think a huge amount of their population ends up being exterminated, effectively, unknowingly, I imagine. Because, you know, there was no germ theory back then. But it would have been so interesting to be like, you know, what was life like when you grew up? What did you do? What was Australia like? What were the animals like? What were the- What was the relationships like, the languages around you?

You know, I would love to know those sorts of things. But then also...

It was your sort of day-to-day lifestyle and, yeah, relationships within your small group and then between groups and, you know, cultural things would be great to know from people who had not seen Europeans before...

When I think tragically, I don't know if we do kind of know quite a lot about these people, but superficially. So, we know quite a lot about the Eora because the colonists got their first inside by interacting with them, but it's from the European side. We don't know anything from the indigenous side. And then within a few short years or decades, the Eora are pretty much gone, right.

All of those indigenous people are either pushed out and separated into other areas or they've been- They've lost their language; they've lost their culture because they've effectively become ghettoised or just died. But...

Yeah.

Bennelong is interesting because he and- What was the name of the other guy? His friend Yemmerrawanne are the first indigenous people to go back to England, and they travelled with Arthur Phillip on the Atlantic, back to England in nine- in 1792. So, four years after having been kidnapped, effectively. I think, what they were like handcuffed or tied up somewhere for weeks, being fed and taken care of and then taught English.

Only four years later, he ends up on a boat, you know, on this huge vessel that they would have been like, What the actual fuck? You know...

Exactly.

...This thing in the water? And then suddenly he finds himself on that thing for months, heading to the other side of the planet for the first time, for any indigenous Australian, I would imagine, unless some of them were kidnapped by other Europeans or other groups previously, and it was never documented. But so, he ends up going back to England for almost three years with Yemmerrawanne and potentially meeting the king.

I think, they don't know for sure if he actually met...

Yeah.

...I would imagine he would have.

That was the sort of superficial story that has been passed down is that, oh, he even met the King. But I think that is probably apocryphal. I think it's a nice story to have. It may have happened, but I have yet- I have not seen any documentary evidence that it did.

I think part of the reason they believe that is because once they arrived, he suddenly got all this really expensive clothing, that is the kind of clothing you would have given someone if they were about to go to something very, very special. But yeah, they don't have any firsthand evidence of whether or not he actually met the King, though it is a cool story.

Tragically, whilst they're there, Yemmerrawanne ends up being the first indigenous person to die in Great Britain from a chest infection. And it is funny, I think Bennelong's health deteriorated whilst he was there, too. Probably because, you know, England at the time, especially London, would have been a shithole, right?

Exactly right.

The start of the industrial age, there would have been dead animals and faeces in the street, like lots of sick people, a lot of poverty, a lot of convicts on boats.

Yes.

That would have been the other part that I would have loved to have spoken to him about would be, what? Why on earth did you want to go back? Although I imagine from my point of view, it's kind of like- It's kind of like the movie- What's the movie with Jodie Foster? Is it First Contact or something? Where she is willing to go to the other side of a black hole and see aliens, effectively.

Yeah.

And so, this is this sort of trope that comes up in science- Sci-fi all the time where you have a choice between leaving your home and effectively...

It's a suicide trip.

...Living with the aliens.

Yeah, you're never going to get home again.

But you get to see what's on the other side, and you get to kind of have that curiosity satiated at the price of not being able to tell anyone.

And so, I imagine it must have been like that for him where he would have been taken aback by all of this technology, you know, all of these weird clothes, guns, houses, all this stuff that he would have seen in Sydney and that he would have been told and would have had this feeling of this is just the tip of the iceberg. What the hell?

You keep telling me about what's back home in England and what the rest of the world is like, but I have no real understanding of that. So, I imagine that he would have been obviously a really interesting person, personality-wise and must have been really curious and, you know, just- From- I think it was one contentious book.

Yes.

I think you get to sort of see what his personality was quite like, you know, that he was...

...A risk taker, I would have thought.

Yeah. So, that would have been amazing. There are a few TV shows, I think, where they've kind of done this sort of thing, where they've taken indigenous people from, I think it was Papua New Guinea. And they've taken them out of the bush, effectively, and brought them to the UK...

Right.

...And had them live with, you know, upper-class families and stuff, and then just film what happens. I'm sort of like, what do you guys make of this? And so, I imagine it would have been like that, but even further, you know, it just would have been insane. But yeah, what do you think?

Yeah, I agree with you, I think it would be a really interesting conversation to have with about that, from the- And you've mentioned it both from the, just an understanding of- So, we could get an understanding of what life was like for the indigenous people around that first colonisation, you know, event. What their life was like before it, what they were thinking when it happened and then what, you know, life was like during and after that.

But then also that, you know, going back to England and, you know, what the fuck were you thinking, you know, it's just like, really?

Yeah.

But yeah, I think it's right. It's that risk taking thing. It's just, I have nothing to lose. This is- They've treated me alright for three and a half years or four years, I might as well. You know, why not jump on this ship? I'm sure he'd been on the ship before, anyway, on a ship before. But yeah, it'd be a really interesting sort of window into a part of our history that we just don't have.

Because you're right, and even what is recorded of Bennelong telling people, you never know...

Yeah.

...He's clearly social. He's the centre of attention. He's...

You don't know if he's bullshitting.

...Of the governor. He could be just spilling yarns the whole time about him, his life and everybody else. He could be telling the truth, but you're never going to know, which, you know, which side of the fence it falls on. So, but yeah, it would be interesting. An interesting dinner party guest. Would have been an interesting party guest to put in with Arthur Phillip, as well.

Exactly. And that's what I was thinking, too. Because...

...Unpack their lives.

...Because, I think- Was it the-? I don't know if it was the capture of Bennelong, but he ends up- Arthur Phillip ends up getting speared when he goes...

Yeah, it wasn't that event. But it was another one. Yeah.

Yeah, because he- Does he go to try and reunite with Bennelong at a bay within...

Yeah, I can't remember the...

...Port Jackson? And there's a certain- There's a corroboree or something happening, and one of the indigenous people that he had captured had run off. It may be Colebee; it may have been him. And effectively one of the other indigenous people there sees him and spears him in the shoulder as payback, you know, of like, you know, fuck you, dude. This is what happens when you kidnap one of ours.

And Arthur Phillip has the wherewithal to kind of not retaliate, to tell everyone that that was fair. You know, and so again, it would be amazing to hear about from both sides, Arthur's and Bennelong's, that learning of one another's cultures and to actually have a better understanding of what they thought of one another. Did they have a mutual respect for one another?

Did they actually not like each other's cultures, because you just have no idea, right?

Yeah. And for- I suspect, for probably a few years, the indigenous people were thinking that this is ephemeral, they're not going to stay here. There's a bunch of people, they've just turned up, they'll pack up and go home.

Well, most of them did, right...

Then the next lot came.

The colony stayed.

Yeah. And the next lot came, though, and then, uh oh...

You can imagine...

...And then the next lot.

...Arthur being like, Yeah, no, no, all of us are leaving. But the convicts, the trash that we brought in, they're staying, they're staying. What was the other interesting thing that I wanted to mention here? The other really cool thing about learning about the early stages of colonisation in Australia is just the lack of population, the limited number of characters that are there.

So, one of the interesting things I found when I was reading about Bennelong going back to England, is that he stayed with- What's his name? We just find his first name. Henry Waterhouse. And I talked about Henry Waterhouse in one of the recent modules about Merino sheep, because Henry Waterhouse is the guy who ends up bringing the first merino sheep to Australia from the Cape of Good Hope.

And he is effectively the person who began the modern-day Australian wool and meat industry, as a result of that.

...With merinos. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, Bennelong stayed with him in England because he went back, you know.

Yeah.

So, it is just funny how you see they all knew one another and had connections...

Of course they did. Yeah. Because realistically, Bennelong was not going to be out there, you know, banging elbows and drinking rum with the convicts. He was at the dinner table with the governor and whoever the governor has, and there was-

There's only a couple of dozen sort of, you know, senior military people and wealthy, you know, certainly past the first fleet, wealthy settlers who would come out that would have been sitting around the governor's table. So, he would have been treated like one of the aristocracy.

That would have been really interesting to unpick, too, right? The racial tensions, as well as class differences that existed because I'm sure that the upper-class aristocracy saw themselves as better than the indigenous people. But they also saw them- Or at least, you know, more sophisticated, more educated, more knowing. But they also would have had the same view of the convicts, right, that these people are filth...

Yeah, exactly.

...Effectively criminal trash. But then the convicts would have seen indigenous people who they probably saw as below them, you know, with the governor...

Yeah, having dinner at the governor's table. Yeah.

And then it would be like, what were the day-to-day interactions like? Did you have-? Because again, it's easy to paint people historically as just, you know, all the Europeans were racist pieces of trash. All the convicts were criminal pieces of trash. All the indigenous people hated the invaders. But I'm sure that it was so much more complicated than that, and it would have been just grey, right.

You would have had indigenous people who were good and bad, you would have had convicts who were good and bad, and the same with some of the upper-class aristocracy there, as well. And so, it would be really interesting to see, you know. How did you navigate that? How did you just insert yourself into effectively European life in the colony? And then what was it like kind of getting to know your place?

Because it would be just as foreign for me to get there and live with an indigenous clan or group of people and have to work out how life works in that. And who would have had an easier job, right? Because it is funny that we do have stories of people like Buckley going away and living with indigenous people for three decades, three and a half decades.

And your kind of like- He would be another one to have dinner with.

Yes.

And they'd be like, you know, what the hell was it like? Was it easy? Was it hard? You know, was it stressful? Did you come up against moral and ethical issues, or did you just navigate it smooth sailing? So yeah.

Cool. Good one.

Awesome. Anyway, thanks, guys, and we will see you next time.

See ya.

Peace.

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.