The Aborigines of Australia

by R.N. Richard Sadleir

The following spirited sketch is copied from the S. M. Herald, being an extract from Dickens’ All the Year Round, evidently the production of an Australian:⁠—

There are few old Australian colonists to whom the name of Bungaree is not familiar, but I conceive it right that the whole world should know something of this departed monarch, and of his habits and peculiarities. Honored as I was by his favour, politely greeted as I always was whenever I met His Majesty in the streets of Sydney, flattered as I was when he invited me occasionally to accompany him in his boat to “go kedge fiss,” I consider myself as well qualified to become his biographer, as was Mr. Boswell to write the life of Doctor Johnson, or Lord John Russell that of Thomas Moore.

King Bungaree and myself were contemporaries; but there was a vast difference between our ages. When I first knew him he was an old man, over sixty, and I a boy of twelve. It would be false to say that I cannot account for the great liking the king always had for me, for the truth is I was in the habit of lending him small sums of money, bread and meat, and not unfrequently a glass of rum. Many a time have I slyly visited the larder and the decanters on the sideboard, to minister to the wants of the monarch. I used the word “lend,” because the king never said “give.” It was invariably “len’ it half a dump” (7½d.), “len’ it glass o’ grog,” “len’ it loaf o’ bread,” “len’ it ole shirt.” It is needless, perhaps, to state that, although in some respects the memory of King Bungaree was as extraordinary as that of the late King George the Third, he was utterly oblivious of the extent of his obligations, so far as repayment was concerned.

In person, King Bungaree was about 5 feet 8 inches high, not very stout and not very thin, except as to his legs, which were mere spindles. His countenance was benignant to the last degree, and there was a kind and humorous sparkle in his eye (especially when it was lighted up by liquor) which was, to say the least of it, very cheerful to behold.

King Bungaree’s dress consisted of the cocked hat and full-dress coat of a general officer or colonel, an old shirt, and—that was all. I never saw him in pantaloons, or shoes, or stockings. Once, I remember, he wore a worsted sock on his left foot, but that was in consequence of having wounded himself by treading on a broken bottle.

As the king was a person of irregular habits, he generally slept, as well as fished, in his clothes, and his tailor’s bill would not have been enormous, even if he had had a tailor; but, as he “borrowed” his uniform, as well as his money, bread, and rum, his finances were in no way embarrassed. Every new Governor, from Governor Macquarie down to Governor Gipps (during whose administration Bungaree died), supplied him with an old cocked-hat and full-dress coat; and almost every colonel commanding a regiment instantly complied when his Majesty pronounced these words, “Len’ it cock-’at—len’ it coat—len’ it ole shirt.” Around his neck was suspended, by a brass chain, a brass plate. On this plate, which was shaped like a half-moon, were engraven in large letters the words, “Bungaree, King of the Blacks.” On the plate there was also engraven the arms of the Colony of New South Wales—an emu and a kangaroo.

In point of intelligence and natural ability, King Bungaree was far from deficient. He was, in truth, a clever man, and not only did he understand all that was said to him in English, but he spoke the language so as to be completely understood, except when his articulation was impaired by the too copious use of ardent spirits, or other fermented liquors.

His Majesty changed his manners every five years; or rather, they were changed with every Administration. Bungaree, like many of the aborigines of New South Wales, was an amazing mimic. The action, the voice, the bearing, the attitude, the walk of any man, he could personate with astonishing minuteness. It mattered not whether it was the Attorney-General stating a case to a Jury, the Chief Justice sentencing a culprit to be hanged, a colonel drilling a regiment in the barrack-square, a Jew bargaining for old clothes, a drunken sailor resisting the efforts of the police to quiet him—King Bungaree could, in mere dumb show, act the scene in such a way as to give you a perfect idea of it. Now, as the Governor, for the time-being, was the first and most important person in the Colony, it was from that functionary that King Bungaree took his cue, and, after having seen the Governor several times and talked to him, Bungaree would adopt His Excellency’s manner of speech and bearing to the full extent of his wonderful power. When I first knew Bungaree, General Darling was Governor of New South Wales. Bungaree then walked the streets with his arms folded across his breast, his body erect, his pace slow and measured, with something of a military swagger in it, and the only salute he vouchsafed was a dignified, but very slight, inclination of his head. Even when His Majesty was so intoxicated that he could not walk straight, it was impossible not to recognize the faithfulness of the copy to the original. His mode of speech, too, was curt, and somewhat abrupt. Even the words “Len it glass o’ grog” came forth rather in the tone of a command than of a request. But when General Darling left, and General Bourke became his successor, how very different was the demeanour and the deportment of King Bungaree! He walked briskly up George-street, with his left hand on his hip and his right arm moving to and fro, took off his cocked-hat periodically in recognition of salutes (most of them imaginary), and when he neared the guard-house at the bottom of Church Hill, he would raise his right hand in the air and shake it, as a signal to the sentry not to turn out the guard to present arms to him.

The reader will have gleaned that King Bungaree was not temperate in his habits. Candour compels me to say that he was by no means particular as to the nature of his beverage. The only liquid to which he had seemingly any aversion was pure water. Rum, gin, brandy, wine, beer, chili vinegar, mushroom catsup, or “bull,” he would take in any quantity from any person who could be prevailed upon to “lend” it to him; and, unfortunately, in order to get rid of His Majesty, the supply, in many instances, immediately followed the demand, and the king was too often to be seen stretched at full length on a dust-heap near the wharves, fast asleep and covered by myriads of flies, his cocked-hat doing the duty of a pillow, except when some little boy tore out the crown, and then pulled it over the king’s ankles, putting him, in fact, in felt stocks. So strong was this monarch’s passion for drink, that I am perfectly satisfied that he would, at any moment, have abdicated his sovereignty for an old sugar-mat, wherewith to make “bull,” although he would never have renounced his right to the title of “King of the Blacks,” or that brass plate, which he regarded as his “patent.”

With the cares of State, Bungaree never troubled himself. His sovereignty, to all intents and purposes, was a matter of sound and of mere form. His subjects never treated him with respect or obedience. His tyranny, in the strictly classical acceptation of the term, was confined simply to his queens, five in number. These ladies were all much younger than the king, and were named, respectively, “Onion,” “Boatman,” “Broomstick,” “Ask-about,” and “Pincher.” These names, of course, were not given to them in their baptism (whatever may have been the aboriginal character of that rite), but were dictated, most probably, by the caprice of some of King Bungaree’s European advisers, on the various occasions of his consulting them on the point, and “borrowing” something of which he fancied he stood in need. Whether the queens were much attached to the monarch or the monarch to them, I cannot venture to say, nor can I form an opinion whether they bore the king company in his inebriation out of courtesy, or from a natural desire to drink; but this I can state, with the positiveness of a biographer who derives his sources of information from personal knowledge, that I never saw their Majesties (the queens) sober, when His Majesty King Bungaree was drunk. The dress of these royal ladies was exceedingly grotesque. With the exception of a faded satin slip, an old bedgown, or a flannel petticoat, whatever beauty King Bungaree’s queens possessed was, in every sense of the word, in its unadornment “adorned the most.” The only “foreign aid of ornament” that even Onion, the most fastidious of them, as regarded personal appearance, ever resorted to, was a short clay pipe intertwined with her hair, which, in point of colour and fineness, bore a strong resemblance to the tail or mane of an unbroken, unhandled, bay colt.