Aboriginal Workers in the Australian Agricultural
Company, 1824-1857

Mark Hannah

This article documents failed attempts by the an early nineteenth century pastoral enterprise to implement a British factory model of labour relations and traces the emergence of a distinctively Australian work culture which incorporated Aboriginal labour. In a radical departure from earlier work which variously stressed the destructive impact of pastoral capital, Aboriginal resistance to colonisation and coloniser-indigene'accommodation' , it is argued that there was an accord between work rhythms in subsistence economies and the attributes required of pastoral workers in the early colonial period. In a detailed analysis of recruitment, organisation, productivity and remuneration, the author argues that Aboriginal engagement with pastoral capital was purposefully designed to maintain contact with country and that Aboriginal workers were the most productive employees in the corporation.

Introduction
The Australian Agricultural Company, formed by joint stock subscriptions in Britain in 1824, commenced operation with an ambitious plan to raise fine wool sheep off an extensive grant of land to be located in the Colony of New South Wales. The Company's first pastoral runs were established on select parts of a one million acre tract between Port Stephens and the Manning River, part of which was exchanged later for estates on the Liverpool Plains and at Peel River. The enterprise was directed from London through an executive resident at Port Stephens. The Company procured labour from the convict system, but also employed emancipists and 'free labour' engaged in the Colony or imported from Britain, China and Germany. Many of the workers from within New South Wales were Aboriginals. They worked as shepherds (sheep), stockkeepers (cattle), surveyors, hutkeepers, messengers, envoys, constables, boat rowers and builders. Earlier analyses of the venture made only cursory references to Aboriginal labour or relied too much on the subjective testimony of a single narrative account. This is the first comprehensive examination of Aboriginal workers in the Australian Agricultural Company. The study period ranges from the formation of the Company to 1857, when a decision was made to disperse sheep flocks at Port Stephens in favour of other activities.1	1
My analysis of labour relations within the corporation is divided into four distinct but interrelated sections: recruitment, organisation, productivity and remuneration. First of all, I offer explanations as to why Aboriginals commenced employment with the Company and why the executive officers of the Company engaged indigenous people. I argue that the Company offered sanctuary to Aboriginals in exchange for their labour. Secondly, I show how Aboriginal workers were incorporated into the organisational structures of the enterprise, in ways which were in accordance with Aboriginal social organisation, unique to the situation or appropriated European ideas, but over a transition period. Thirdly, I contrast the productivity of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal labour within the organisation, reaching the position that the productivity of the Aboriginal component of the labour supply exceeded that of all other categories of labour. Fourthly, I reconcile the productive output of the Aboriginal component of the labour supply with the rates of remuneration paid to those employees, suggesting that remuneration was unrelated to performance, and, furthermore, that the wages market for Aborigines was separate from the wider colonial labour market. Although the temporal and spatial limits of my research are clearly defined, I do not want simply to represent the experiences of people in a particular place at a particular time. I use the example of Aboriginal labour in the Australian Agricultural Company to assess the strengths and weaknesses of arguments advanced in the secondary literature most relevant to this topic.	2
The first generation of scholarship on Aboriginal experiences of work in pastoral economies placed emphasis on the effects of structuring processes which Aboriginal societies were locked into, examples of which include the seminal work by Rowley and the early work of Evans. An important corrective to those studies provided evidence of sustained resistance by Aboriginal people to the incursion of Europeans onto Aboriginal lands, as with the frequently cited treatise by Reynolds. That model of resistance proposed for frontier race relations was elaborated on by research which identified a positive relationship between the participation by Aborigines in the new economies and struggles to maintain contact with country, evidence for which can be found in the major study of Northern Territory pastoralism by McGrath and the analysis of Aboriginal labour in Queensland by May.2	3
I acknowledge that processes of colonisation were destructive from the point of view of indigines, that there was resistance to those processes and that Europeans and Aborigines each compromised in changing circumstances. However, my work marks a significant break with the studies to which I have referred, on methodological grounds and in the conclusions drawn from the application of that method. Whilst Aboriginal participation in pastoralism did not necessarily signal acquiescence by indigenous workers to the ethos of capitalist employers, pastoral enterprises extracted a significant surplus value from Aborigines engaged on pastoral runs. However, it has been difficult to gauge the value of Aboriginal pastoral labour as an discrete category within the pastoral labour supply, because most of the studies of Aborigines and pastoralism have concentrated on north Australia where non-Aboriginal labour was scarce and where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal workers were employed on identical tasks only infrequently. The true relative value of Aboriginal recruits can only be gauged by a comparative study of recruitment where the Aboriginal labour supply can be viewed alongside other sources of labour, not as a possible substitute for them. When I say 'true relative value', I am not referring to the merit of indigenous workers compared to a European contemporary, as with Pope's Eurocentric model, but a comparison in which all components of the labour supply are assessed according to the attributes required of pastoral workers as they were defined over time in Australia. The coexistence of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal workers across the southeast of the continent in the period after 1821 enables an elucidation on the true relative value of Aboriginal labour. 3	4
In his general survey on Aboriginal labour in southeast Australia, Broome concluded that the success of capitalism in the period from 1830 to 1860 depended on a system of labour discipline that was European in character, and, that the Aboriginal component of the labour supply was eventually marginalised from the new economy because of the incompatibility of imported and indigenous work cultures. Broome's argument was founded on the assumption that colonial employers were resolute in demanding of their employees standards of work discipline which had their origins in the British industrial economy. He recognised the cultural specificity of Aboriginal experiences of work, by allowing for differences between the old regime and the new, but he failed to account adequately for the way in which the expectations of European employers changed in colonial environments. Whereas Broome compared the expectations of European employers with Aboriginal experiences of work, I analyse Aboriginal experiences of work compared to standards for work competence as they evolved in a distinctive Australian situation. I want to place those experiences in the context of broader social transformations which incorporated European workers too. In this comparative analysis of different segments of the labour supply I proffer that Aboriginal workers were in essence predisposed to Australian pastoral life and were more productive than their contemporaries.4	5
Recruitment
There were four features in Broome's explanation of Aboriginal worker recruitment. First of all, he argued that frontier violence forced Aborigines to the margins of their countries where they subsisted until the 1840s, by which time a depletion in bush tucker made most Aboriginal populations as much or more dependent on Europeans as on their own economies. Secondly, he suggested the possibility that some Aborigines were drawn closer to the new economies to maintain access to foreign commodities which they had begun to utilise. Thirdly, he claimed that some employers recognised the aptitude Aborigines had for some jobs, for example, in pastoral work, but that ultimately they were marginalised because they worked only to fulfil immediate needs. Fourthly, in further developing the idea of the Aboriginal worker as 'the Other' confined to the margins of colonial labour markets, he contended that the demand for Aboriginal recruits was conditioned by the presence or absence of adept workers, including convicts, or, on fluctuation in wages paid to non-Aboriginal employees.5	6
The number of Aboriginal workers in the Australian Agricultural Company relative to the total Aboriginal populations on or adjacent to the estates changed quite markedly. I included as workers all women and men who contributed their labour to the Company whether or not they were deemed employees by the Company itself. For example, the Assistant Stockman at Nowendoc, Giro Jackey, has been ascribed the same status as the 'Gin' who accompanied Diamond, the shepherd at Giro Station, even though the corporation did not recognise her as such. The highest level of participation in the phase between 1824 and 1833, within the original land claim area, was in the period from 1826 to 1828 when approximately 40 workers were engaged. The number dropped radically in mid-1828 to about four employees. The total number of Aborigines living adjacent to pastoral runs at Port Stephens was about 100. The highest level of Aboriginal participation in the corporation after 1833 was in the period from 1856 to 1857 when at least 11 workers were employed. The lowest level of involvement was in 1840 when only three Aborigines worked for the Company. The total number of Aborigines on or near the Company's pastoral runs following expansion to Liverpool Plains and Peel River was about 400. The participation of Aborigines in the Company ranged from about one to 30 per cent of the indigenous populations near the pastoral runs. Thus the majority of indigenous people on or adjacent to the estates did not depend significantly on the new employer. Also, Aboriginal people living adjacent to the estates, but independent of the Company, persistently fought against the incursion of Europeans onto their lands for the entire period of this study. The impact of European colonisation on the ecological bases of Aboriginal economies was insignificant in forcing Aboriginal people generally to seek employment in the Australian Agricultural Company in this period.6	7
In some cases Aborigines actively sought employment with the Australian Agricultural Company to access goods they could not obtain elsewhere. However, it is unlikely that foreign commodities were substantial inducements to work. In 1826 the Company employed Aboriginal women to remove contaminants from Merino fleeces. The Superintendent of Sheep, Charles Hall, stated that the process considerably improved the quality and therefore saleability of the wool, probably adding 400 per cent to the final price. The women were paid for their work with a 'small quantity of biscuit, flour or tobacco'. However, the flour stock issued to the workers was mainly the 'scrapings of the casks' which had been 'injured' by sea water during shipment. Had the women not been owed, then the flour they were paid was to be given to dogs and poultry. The precedent established on that occasion would have been a significant impediment to future recruitment, if the attraction to European commodities alone was a motivating factor for Aborigines, because it is unlikely that the flour stock distributed on that occasion would have had utility of any type within the context in which it was exchanged. Recruitment had to be established by other means. 7	8
Atchison stated that 'Dawson's humane and liberal attitude towards the Aboriginal inhabitants of Port Stephens was evident from the beginning' and that he [Dawson] found the Worimi friendly to his approaches . Citing only Dawson's subjective interpretation of his term as Agent, Bairstow concluded that Aboriginal workers were not coerced to serve the Company. However, a policy of intimidation with firearms was implemented from the beginning at Port Stephens. Resistance to the demands made by the Company was countered in a retributive way. Dawson employed Aboriginals only on the condition that they disarm. The Company did not use sustained physical force against Aboriginal people. The Company tried to capitalise on Aboriginal fears and expectations about violence. Aboriginal people initially sought employment in the Australian Agricultural Company because Dawson extended an offer to 'protect' them from hostile elements in colonial society. 'Protection' under the auspices of the Australian Agricultural Company depended on the deference of Aboriginal workers. For example, on a survey of the Company's claim, Aboriginal employees Wickie, McQuarie, Wool Bill, Maty Bill and Jemmy Bungaree expressed a desire to return to Port Stephens. Dawson indicated to the workers that if they insisted on returning before the survey was complete, he would withdraw the offer of protection.8	9
The Aboriginal component of the labour supply ranged from one to eight per cent of the total number of workers employed during this era. The Company experienced shortages of convict labour in the mid-1820s and in the period after 1838. In the first instance, Aboriginal people were hired to construct a village in vernacular style, which was to be replaced subsequently. It was the absence of exotic building materials rather than a shortfall in skilled labour which prompted the Company to employ Aborigines on that occasion. In the second instance, the crisis precipitated by the end of convict assignment in 1838, which impacted on the Company most profoundly in the mid-1840s, corresponded with a very low level of Aboriginal worker recruitment.9	10
There were no accurate statistics on the impact of gold prospecting on the staffing levels of the Australian Agricultural Company, but there was the implication of a labour shortage because of upward pressure on wages in 1852 following the discovery of gold on Peel River Estate in March of that year. It is evident that there was a greater reliance on Aboriginal workers in the mid-1850s. There was a correlation between upward pressure on European wages and a high rate of Aboriginal participation, but there was no suggestion that Aborigines were hired primarily to offset wages claims, nor was there any reason to believe that Aboriginal workers were substitutes for Europeans seeking better pay and conditions elsewhere. It is clear that in shepherding and in stockwork, Aboriginal workers were in demand primarily because of their reputation as skilled and trustworthy workers, not because of lower rates of pay. The suitability of Aboriginal workers to pastoralism can be explained by analysing the way the organisational culture of the corporation evolved.10	11
Organisation
It was Broome's contention that the success of capitalism was dependent in part on the separation of work time from leisure time. He maintained that Aboriginal workers did not adapt to that organisational imperative and consequently could never be integrated fully into colonial society. In reaching that position, Broome relied on 'time-work discipline', a concept derived by Thompson from his survey of work in British industrial society. Thompson identified the emergence in Britain of a transition from task based work patterns to time managed systems of organisation which demanded a demarcation between work and leisure and close supervision. Broome supposed that the system of labour organisation underpinning the operation of capitalism in an industrial context in Britain could be sustained by employers in colonial Australia. However, the utilisation of time-work discipline in his analysis of work was questionable, because he failed to test adequately the applicability of that concept to non-industrial economic activity. He also assumed, rather than proved, that Aboriginal workers retained a 'traditional' conception of work right through his study period.11	12
The principles upon which the Australian Agricultural Company labour supply was organised were supposed to be applied consistently in every branch, but two disparate regimes emerged. The management of the Company insisted on close personal supervision to maintain organisational integrity. Close supervision was practical in all of the ancillary branches of the Company where the overseer maintained an attendance register for each worker; organised the work team into pairs, consistently placing the same two labourers together; and, recorded in great detail the output of each pair of workers. In shepherding and stockwork, employees maintained a considerable degree of independence from their employers. Shepherding in Australia was different from shepherding in Britain, because of differences in the spatial patterning of sheep walks, with few fences or hedges on colonial runs before the 1860s. For example, Jack of Clubs and his companion shepherded 838 three year old Merino ewes in open country on Gloucester Station. Close personal supervision was impossible. The identity of Aboriginal workers was modified by new organisational arrangements, because they were no longer in ready contact with kinship networks, but neither were they subject to a European organisational culture. In organisational terms, the shepherd in early colonial New South Wales was relatively independent from immediate obligations so characteristic of relations in the factory setting or in panopticism. The duality that existed in the organisation of the Company, between ancillary work teams, and, shepherds and stockworkers, created the conditions for the emergence of two very different concepts of work time.12	13
The Company attempted a standardisation of working times. At Port Stephens, a bell was installed to regulate work intervals from the beginning. In 1830, the Company tried to implement a new work schedule designed to be applied across all parts of the operation. In the period from 21 September to 21 March each year, employees were expected to commence work at a quarter to seven and finish at sunset. At other times of the year the working day was supposed to start half an hour after sunrise and finish at sunset. A lunch break was scheduled for midday for half an hour, except in hot weather when workers were permitted a break of up to two hours. The standard week was set at five and a half days. Overtime was permitted only if absolutely necessary. The regime was consistent with official regulations for convicts on private assignment, but the separation of work time from leisure time was derived ultimately from Evangelical Christianity, Utilitarianism and British industrial practice. However, the standardisation of working times could never be applied uniformly across all parts of the operation. Regular hours of work would have been useful in situations which required the coordination of two or more workers, as in the case of sawyers who worked in pairs, but in the grazing context, in which most Aboriginal employees worked, standardisation was not necessarily appropriate and could never have been applied consistently. Demands on a shepherd's time depended on the movement and wellbeing of livestock, not on an standard division of the day. There was no reason to believe that a shepherd needed to start, break from or complete work at set times. For example, although shepherds locked up their sheep in folds at night, there were duties to perform after hours. Although the Company aimed for uniformity, the reality was that there were two types of division between work and leisure. One operated on a timetable of bell ringing in the closed quarters of the Company's ancillary work groups, whilst the other relied on subjective interpretations by individual employees. 13	14
There was continuity between the sexual division of labour in subsistence economies and the organisation of labour in the Australian Agricultural Company. Patterns of social avoidance defined by sex were manifest in food procurement regimes and in the delegation of tasks to pastoral workers. The reproduction of sexdefined work was underscored by sexual encounters between Aboriginal women and European men, usually mediated by Aboriginal men. In 1839, P. P. King remarked that sexual relations between Aborigines and Europeans on the estates were pervasive.14	15
Initially, the sexual division of labour was the only demarcation of roles to which Aboriginal workers in the Company were subject. In the early years of the Company's operation at Port Stephens Aboriginal employees were sometimes described as specialists, but there was flexibility in the division of labour among Aboriginal workers at that time. Dawson described Wool Bill as his 'black valet', but Wool Bill performed many duties. During the survey of the Port Stephen estate, Aboriginal surveyors frequently changed roles. On one expedition three workers led pack horses, one was in charge of the Kangaroo dogs and another acted as a scout. However, the workers switched roles at different times by mutual agreement. Later there was a demarcation within the Company. Aboriginal workers became specialists with definitive titles. For example, Cazey worked only as a shepherd and Betty was employed exclusively as a hutkeeper. However, Aboriginal workers were not forced to adapt to a new work culture immediately. There was a period of transition in which a work regime with a low degree of specialisation was substituted by one in which workers were recognised according to their primary occupation.15	16
Productivity
The concept of time-work discipline which Broome took to be crucial in explaining the organisational demands on labour, was also essential to his argument about the way in which employers conceptualised labour productivity. Productive workers were supposed to be imbued with an apprehension of time. He stated that Aboriginal workers were not 'inherently lazy', but that Aborigines were not attuned to the demands for regularity imperative to a capitalist economy. The uncritical application by Broome of a time orientated concept of labour productivity must have been based on the assumption that the value of pastoral workers could be measured according to the same criterion as workers employed in an industrial setting. European employers may have imported modern ideas of labour productivity from Britain, but there is no reason to believe that the execution of work in Australian pastoralism in the early part of the nineteenth century was dependent on the precise measurement of time increments so important to the emergent factory system in Britain in the same period. The factory system of work regulation relied on a form of objectification in which value was reduced to the imperative of industrial capitalism: output over time. In the Australian Agricultural Company, weekly returns were supposed to be submitted from each overseer to the Executive at Port Stephens. Before 1829, the returns were remitted to the Colonial Committee in Sydney at the end of each month. They were designed to record the attendance and work performance of each employee. In practice, the return system was an imprecise method to account for worker productivity. In some workplaces, performance could be recorded quite accurately, but in others, the nature of the work defied the type of documentation required in the returns. Also, low levels of literacy among overseers undermined the process of recording labour productivity. In many instances, the return was filled out perfunctorily and provided no substantive information upon which to gauge worker productivity. The original policy of determining labour productivity by a prefigured, inflexible standard was replaced by a more subjective determination. Subsequently, the value of labour depended entirely on the standard applied by the overseer. To assess the true relative value of Aboriginal labour to the Australian Agricultural Company, it was necessary to take a much wider perspective than one might obtain from records of time-thrift.16	17
It has been asserted that dislocation from place had a negative impact on labour, but that the pre-transportation migration within Britain experienced by 38 per cent of convict workers, significantly reduced the 'psychic cost' of shifting from one country to another. There are several problems with that argument. First of all, the majority of convicts relocated from their home town prior to transportation did so voluntarily to maximise their returns in education and training. Convicts were forcibly relocated to New South Wales. Secondly, the distance from Britain to New South Wales was much greater than any distance travelled within Britain. Thirdly, the environment and culture of New South Wales was different from Britain. Fourthly, in advancing the idea that many convicts were predisposed to the organisational upheaval connected with transportation, there was no attempt to show a direct relationship between pre-transportation migrants and the efficiency of that component of the convict labour supply. It is reasonable to assume that the 'psychic cost' exacted from workers shipped to Australia was significantly higher compared to the Aboriginal component of the labour supply. I include in that former group all of the convicts and indentured servants from Britain, workers hired in China and the recruits from Germany. Aboriginal workers had a considerable advantage over their contemporaries, because they did not have to adjust to a new environment after having been uprooted from the places with which they were most familiar. Most of the Aboriginal workers in the Company remained in contact with their country.17	18
A significant number of the non-Aboriginal workers employed by the Company had great difficulty adjusting to colonial environments. The Australian bush was sparsely populated compared to the relatively densely populated countryside in Britain in the early to mid-nineteenth century. The Australian bush was a strange and intimidating place for many newcomers, devoid of all of the familiar points of reference. Almost all of the shepherds recruited in Germany in the mid-1850s continually expressed apprehension about losing sheep in the bush. Their fears were unfounded, but they continued to drive sheep into tight mobs, making them too nervous and thus disrupting normal patterns of grazing. After a considerable period in which they were given an opportunity to adjust to the new environment, all except two of the German shepherds were transferred elsewhere. In contrast to all other components of the labour supply, Aboriginal workers employed by the Company were generally mentally well attuned to the tasks required of them. Shepherding and stockwork were new to Aborigines, but they worked on their own country. Aboriginal workers understood the bush. Aborigines had local knowledge, which was useful to the Company initially. However, local knowledge could be acquired over a very short period of time. What distinguished Aboriginal workers from non-Aboriginal workers was a total comprehension of landscape as a nourishing terrain. The psychological preparedness of Aboriginal workers was complemented by their generally high standard of physical well-being compared to their contemporaries.18	19
There was a high prevalence of physical illness among European workers on the estates. The Company established a hospital at Port Stephens and employed a full time surgeon to provide medical treatment for its labour supply. The hospital was a rudimentary shed, with room to house only six patients. The surgeon was supported by a small staff responsible for cleaning and for maintaining supplies. From 1830, there was a regular visiting medical service to outstations. The demand on medical services greatly exceeded the capacity of the small facility. In a three month period from 24 April 1826 to 24 July 1826, 37 of the 99 assigned convicts were admitted to the Company's medical facility. Of the 31 free workers, 18 were treated for ailments in the same period. Ten of the 40 emancipists employed received medical attention between those dates. We do not know how long workers remained under care, except that 78 of the 85 patients were discharged within that period. Nonetheless, medical afflictions among sections of the European working population ranged from 25 per cent to 58 per cent, with an average of 40 per cent. Illness among Europeans had a major negative impact on labour productivity in the Australian Agricultural Company, despite Nicholas' attempt to use infant mortality as a general measure of convict health and further argue that the standard of medical care provided to convict workers in Australia was superior to treatments available to labouring classes in Britain. There were two problems with Nicholas' argument. Firstly, he made too many assumptions about the indicative relationship between infant death rates and the impact of illness on the productive capacity of adult convict workers. Secondly, he assumed that there was a positive relationship between medical care and labour productivity, a line of reasoning which was complicated by the fact that convicts frequently returned from medical institutions without being cured. Rates of illness between convicts and British workers have frequently been compared to enhance arguments about the efficiency of the convict system and the relative well-being of convicts compared to British working classes, but the health and well-being of colonists was rarely if ever considered in relation to the Aboriginal component of the working class.19	20
The rate of illness among Aboriginal workers was relatively low compared to other sections of the Australia Agricultural Company's labour supply. Epidemic disease impacted significantly on the general Aboriginal population in south-east Australia. For example, the smallpox epidemic of 1829 ravaged many indigenous populations. However, the specific group of Aboriginal workers I studied had a high standard of physical fitness. Aboriginal workers were not treated in the Company hospital, so it is impossible to make a direct statistical comparison of the impact of illness on the productive output of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal workers. However, there was a policy in the Company of distributing rations to sick Aboriginal workers. In the period from May 1826 to May 1828 there were very few disbursements in the Company accounts to Aboriginal workers on the sick list. Perkins stated that Aboriginal women were agents of sexually transmitted diseases within the Company's labour supply. Aboriginal women may have been agents for the transmission of sex-derived diseases, but contact between Aboriginal women and European men alone cannot be used to explain the prevalence of those illnesses. Eleven Company employees presented to the hospital with sexually communicable illnesses in the period from 24 July 1826 to 30 April 1827. In May 1828, contact between Aborigines and Europeans was forcefully prevented. However, the policy of segregation did not alleviate the problem. European workers continued to present with diseases such as gonorrhoea. There were 17 cases of venereal disease among workers in the quarter ending on 31 October 1830. There was an increase in the rate of sex-derived afflictions by 54 per cent. Consequently, whilst it is possible that contact with Aboriginal women may explain part of the cause, it is clear that venereal disease was carried and spread wholly within European communities too. 20	21
One of the most significant negative impacts on the productivity of the labour supply was the high rate of alcohol abuse. Excessive consumption of alcohol by employees had a profound effect on the conduct of work on the estates. In 1830, 13 per cent of the indentured servants employed by the Company at Port Stephens were identified as habitual drunkards. In most cases the abuse of alcohol impeded the performance of duties. Although most of the goods supplied to the Company could be controlled through the Store, the supply of alcohol could not. Alcohol was produced in home-made breweries and in make-shift stills. For example, James Bugg, the overseer of shepherds at Gloucester, had 'given way to habits of intoxication, upon sugar or honey beer manufactured by himself'. James Bugg was in close contact with Aboriginal people on the estates and lived permanently with an Aboriginal woman, but there was no evidence to suggest that drunkenness was a problem for Aborigines in the Company. Aboriginal workers consumed alcohol. For example, Wool Bill, 'valet' to Agent Dawson, drank spirits from a flask. Importantly, drinking did not interfere with the performance of his work. Mary Ann and Kitty, two Aboriginals who traveled with a Company wool dray, were probably intoxicated when Thomas Chester came across them, but drunkenness was rare among Aborigines in contact with the Company.21	22
Resources were frequently diverted from managing the Company's primary business to draft correspondence, lodge depositions and attend arbitration hearings. Contractual disputes between the Company and its employees were protracted. For example, the dismissal of William Dutton was effected in October 1826, but not fully resolved until July 1827. Most of the intra-Company memoranda in those months was concerned with the dispute between Dutton and the Company. Depositions taken in anticipation of legal proceedings involved a special journey to Newcastle, thus resulting in witnesses being absent from work. Many contractual disputes involving the Company and its employees were heard in the Supreme Court, requiring attendances in Sydney, as in the case of the Australian Agricultural Company versus Adams. The cost of resolving contractual disputes and the loss of productivity were compounded in some situations when the Company was ordered to pay compensation to an aggrieved employee. The first contractual dispute arose very early on, during the passage of The York, a ship which conveyed the first party of employees and the first drafts of livestock to Australia. The matter concerned Company gardener Thomas Allen. The claim was heard by the British Consul at Rio de Janeiro, at which time the Company was ordered to release the plaintiff from his contract and to pay compensation. Many of the indentured servants hired by the Company in Britain arrived in Sydney, but refused to proceed to Port Stephens to take up employment there. In circumstances where the authorities found in favour of the Company, the penalties imposed were insufficient to recover basic costs. For example, the Company's Accountant launched a prosecution against William Parsons in 1826 for breaching his obligation to go to Port Stephens, for which Parsons was simply imprisoned for three months. Disputes between the Company and its employees were confined mainly to the 'free' component of the labour supply. The forms of convict protest are well known, but I could find no evidence to suggest that there were major disturbances by convicts on the estates. Significantly, the rate of corporal punishment within the Company was relative low compared to the rest of New South Wales. However, there were incidents in which convicts fled the Company estate. The Company maintained its own places of secondary punishment for 'recalcitrant' convict workers. Disputes between Aborigines and the Australian Agricultural Company were resolved speedily and with minimum disruption to the operation. Most disagreements were resolved by verbal agreement. However, there were few disputes between Aboriginal workers and the Company. Whether Aborigines tolerated unacceptable conditions of employment or not is unclear, but once they commenced work for the Company, Aboriginal workers generally remained there for a relatively long period of time.22	23
The average period of tenure for British, German and Chinese workers employed by the Australian Agricultural Company was probably less than seven years. Convicts mostly served the Company for seven years, but sometimes for fourteen years. Reassignment was unusual. Emancipists and ticket of leave holders were sometimes employed, but the official policy was not to hire emancipists. Indentured servants were mostly contracted for seven years. Sometimes indentured servants stayed longer, but there were many instances of free workers leaving the service of the Company prior to the expiration of their contracts. The negative impact of short term tenure of many European immigrants on the productivity of the Company was significant. The length of tenure of most Aboriginal workers was greater than or the same as most convicts, ticket of leave holders, emancipists and other 'free' workers. In the first few years of the operation, some Aboriginal workers remained in the service of the Company for only a very short period of time, because that was all that was required. For example, Peggy was employed on a once only basis to sort wool. McQuarie probably worked only casually. Flibberty Gibbet, a 12 year old Aboriginal boy, delivered intra-Company memoranda between the Executive and the outstations on a 'Timour' pony, but his excursions into the interior of the estate were infrequent. However, even from the beginning, some of the Aboriginal workers were permanently employed. For example, Crosely and Sinbad worked full time crewing boats between Port Stephens, Newcastle and Sydney. In the long term, the overall productive efficiency of the Company depended in part on the stability of the labour supply. High turnover rates were costly because of the need to divert resources into training. It was normal for Aboriginal shepherds to work consistently in the Company for periods of seven or eight years. Long periods of tenure alone could not ensure productive efficiency, but long periods of engagement do suggest the possibility that those individuals were retained because they were valuable to the Company.23	24
In the course of making their argument about the efficacy of the convict system, Nicholas and Shergold maintained that after 1827 the typical convict had been 'exposed' to a rural environment in Britain, and, consequently was more likely to satisfy demands from colonists for agricultural labour. That observation was based on the assumption that prior work experience in agriculture under British conditions could be applied practically to employment in the Colony. However, farming in Australia was radically different from Britain. Atchison may have been quite correct when he stated that the best the Company could obtain for a shepherd would have been someone who had never seen a sheep. Certainly, Aboriginal workers were not at a disadvantage to have had no experience as shepherds or stockworkers. The concept of time most appropriate for shepherds in the early nineteenth century in Australia referenced points in the landscape, an idea deeply rooted in preindustrial societies in Europe and in Australia. In a general sense Aborigines were pre-disposed to work in pastoralism. The operational managers of the Australian Agricultural Company may have tried to introduce modern concepts of time-thrift to monitor labour productivity, but they realised in practice that labour efficiency had to be assessed on more subjective criteria. The subjective interpretations made by overseers of the true relative value of the Aboriginal component of the labour supply were positive indeed. The policy of employing Aboriginal shepherds, which had been in operation for many years, was strongly supported at the highest levels of the Company in Britain from at least as early 1841. The Assistant General Superintendent of the Company, writing toward the end of my study period, stated that the Aboriginal workers at Gloucester were among the best employees in the Australian Agricultural Company. When viewed alongside other components of the labour supply, there is every reason to believe that the opinions espoused by Company officials about the value of Aboriginal workers were well founded.24	25
Remuneration
Broome remarked that Aboriginal rural labourers had an 'indifferent work record' due in part to the low rates of pay they received in remuneration. However, he effectively tied remuneration to productivity by claiming that, in the last instance, Aborigines were not 'European-like in motivation'.25	26
The first group of Aboriginal workers engaged by the Australian Agricultural Company contributed their labour in return for protection. Aborigines at Port Stephens had experienced violent conflict prior to the arrival of the Company. The precedent established by the first wave of colonists at Port Stephens would have alerted the Worimi people to the potential for violence in their contacts with all Europeans, irrespective of their stated motives. The Company did not engage in open hostility toward the indigenous people living on or adjacent to their grants, however, the offer of sanctuary was linked directly to work. Sanctuary was a form of remuneration, albeit somewhat perverse.26	27
In addition to protection, Aboriginal employees were paid token offerings of goods. Initially, the Company budgeted a nominal £100 for 'allowances to native blacks, for services performed and gratuities'. Most Aboriginal employees worked on particular tasks. They were paid out of the Company Store. The names of those employees, the duties they performed and the amounts and forms of payments made to them were recorded in a special ledger. A 'recapitulation' of disbursements indicated that Aboriginal workers were paid most often in flour, tea, sugar, tobacco and maize. The Company also used biscuits, blankets, clay smoking pipes, tape, trousers, shirts, frocks, plaid and beef to remunerate Aborigines for their work. Sometimes employees were paid on an individual basis. For example, Jem Bungary was given one blanket on 8 July 1826 for work described as 'going into the bush'. Frequently, disbursements were made to groups of workers. For example, the records indicated that four pieces of plaid were taken from the Store on 16 July 1827 for 'Black Gins'. There was no apparent formula for the remuneration of Aboriginal employees. There were inconsistencies in the forms and amounts of remuneration paid for the performance of identical tasks. For example, timber getters employed on 2 July 1827 were paid in biscuits only, whereas those engaged for the same purpose later that month received flour, tobacco and spirits for their efforts. In later years, when most Aborigines employed by the Company worked full time, it would have been impractical to pay them on a piece rate.27	28
The arbitrary distribution of goods from the Company Store was eventually replaced by a standard ration. The weekly ration allocated to Aboriginal workers consisted of ten pounds of meat, ten pounds of flour, quarter of a pound of sugar, a pound of tea and quarter of a pound of tobacco. The ration was doubled for Aboriginal men accompanied by a woman. For example, Alton, a 'woolwasher' employed at Stroud, was allocated a single ration, whereas, Tommy, a shepherd at Gloucester, received a double ration on account of his female companion. These employees are representative of the Aboriginal working population on the estates. The amount of rations allocated to Aboriginal workers was identical to the ration made available to all other workers in the same job designations.Although the ration allocated to indentured servants varied over time, after Aborigines were given a standard ration, there were no radical differences between the value of the rations supplied to convicts, indentured servants and Aboriginal workers. However, there were significant differences in the amount of wages paid to Aborigines as compared with other employees.28	29
Aboriginal workers received lower wages for the same jobs as all other non-convict components of the labour supply. In the mid-1850s Aboriginal shepherds were paid approximately half the full rate. For example, Cazey, an Aboriginal shepherd employed by the Company, was paid £12 per annum. George Perring, a shepherd hired by the Company in Britain in 1841, received payment of £25 per annum. Chinese shepherds were consistently paid the same rates as European shepherds. For example, Go What, originally hired as a labourer on a salary of seven pounds per annum in China in 1852, worked as a shepherd for £25 per annum.29 The wages differential was consistently applied to these categories of employees. The examples cited are representative of Aboriginal, European and Chinese workers.	30
Although Aborigines received the same ration as other 'free' workers, because of the wages differential, the overall cost of Aboriginal labour to the Company was much lower than other non-convict workers, but probably more than the cost of employing a convict. It was estimated that a convict worker employed by the Company during the assignment period cost between £16 and £23 per annum. In the 1820s and 1830s, indentured servants cost approximately £57 per annum to employ. If the monetary component paid to an indentured servant was £25 pounds, then the cost of the ration allocated to an indentured servant would have been somewhere between £20 and £27 per year. Thus, the cost of employing an Aboriginal worker could be calculated by adding the estimated value of the ration to the wages component paid to indigenous employees. If a ration cost £20 and if there was no significant shift in the value of the commodities used to comprise the ration, then the total cost of an Aboriginal employee in the 1840s and 1850s would have been about £32 pounds per year. Aboriginal workers were more expensive to employ than convicts, but considerably cheaper than other non-convict employees. However, the differences between the amounts paid to European and Chinese workers on the one hand and indigenous labour on the other, cannot be explained by varying degrees of competence.30	31
There was no positive relationship between the level of remuneration and productivity in the Australian Agricultural Company, which would explain the differences between the wages paid to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal components of the labour supply. There was an attempt to offer special incentives to Chinese workers to increase their productive output. Convict workers were paid an annual bonus of five pounds for productivity gains. In the 1830s, the Company tried to introduce a system to encourage productivity gains in shepherding. Shepherds were to be classed into three categories according to work performance. A scale of pay was to be applied to the categories, in anticipation that shepherds would pursue personal financial gain and thus derive benefits for the Company in excess of the marginal increase in wages as they were promoted from one class to another. However, those incentives were of little importance to the operation. The system was abandoned not long after it was started. By the 1840s all non-Aboriginal shepherds were paid at the same rate. Generally, the Australian Agricultural Company did not scale remuneration according to performance. Aboriginal workers were not paid less than other employees because they were less productive. Aboriginal workers were among the most favoured recruits for shepherding and stockwork. They were demanded principally because of their outstanding work performance. The low cost of Aboriginal labour was a secondary consideration. The differential system of wage determination must have been related to another variable other than productivity.31	32
The main variable in wage determination in the Australian Agricultural Company was difference in the propensity of workers to seek employment elsewhere. The best paid workers in the Company were poorly paid compared to the average rate of pay for similar job designations in the Colony. Consequently, there was a real incentive for employees to seek work with other employers. Non-convict European workers were frequently attracted to other places of work in the Colony. Chinese workers were on occasion inclined to leave the Company for better wages elsewhere. The market imperative did not operate across all sections of the labour supply. In some cases the economic determinants of remuneration were subverted by culture. Aboriginal workers had no incentives to leave the service of the Company, because they had not given up ownership of their land. Some Aborigines from Port Stephens had the opportunity to work in other parts of the Colony, but there was no evidence that Aboriginal employees participated in the wider colonial labour market. For example, Wallis, an Aboriginal in the service of the Company, went to Retreat Farm near Camden, but refused to leave a position on the verandah of the homestead and expressed a desire to return to his country. Corribah and McQuarie traveled to Sydney with Agent Dawson, but after only three days intimated that they wanted to return to their own country. Herein lies the explanation for the two-tiered wages regime. The Australian Agricultural Company exploited the fundamental conviction Aboriginals had to maintain contact with their country. Aboriginal workers could be prevailed upon to accept lower wage levels, because the wages market for Aboriginal workers was not tied to the wider colonial wages market.32	33
Conclusions
The management of the Australian Agricultural Company tried to impose upon workers an organisational regime modeled on the factory system. However, the policy could not be implemented uniformly, to the extent that most Aboriginal workers never came in contact with the factory model of labour relations. A pragmatic work culture developed in those parts of the Company involved directly in animal husbandry. In some respects there were similarities between the organisation of work in the Company and the work culture of Aborigines in subsistence economies. Aboriginal workers did have to adjust to the new economy, but those changes did not necessarily involve the adoption of contemporary European cultural values. Many features of the new organisational culture were peculiar to the situation. In circumstances where Aboriginal workers were expected to adopt distinctively European ideas about work, as with the demarcation of roles, there was a period of transition in which workers had time to make the adjustment. Even in those cases, the identity of Aboriginal workers was not transformed completely. Aboriginal workers retained customary understandings of the world in which they lived and worked. The Company abandoned 'modern' attitudes to labour when confronted with the realities of pastoral life in Australia. At about the same time, the owners and managers of the Australian Agricultural Company, both in Australia and in Britain, recognised that Aboriginal workers generally were among the most productive of all employees.	34
Endnotes 1. The Governor and the Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, Plan , 24 November 1824, in Annual Reports of the Australian Agricultural Company, Volume I: 1824-1849, London, 1850, p. 47; J. F. Atchison, Port Stephens and Goonoo Goonoo: A Review of the Early Period of the Australian Agricultural Company, PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1973, p. 36; D. Bairstow, 'With the Best Will in the World: Some Records of Early White Contact with the Gampignal on the Australian Agricultural Company's Estate at Port Stephens', Aboriginal History, vol. 17, part 1, 1993, p. 5. 2. A. Curthoys and C. Moore, 'Working for the White People: an Historiographic Essay on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Labour', Labour History, no. 69, 1995, pp. 9-10; C. D. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1970; R. Evans,'" Kings" in Brass Crescents: Defining Aboriginal Labour Patterns in Colonial Queensland' in K.. Saunders (ed.), Indentured Labour in the British Empire, 1834-1920, Croom Helm, London, 1984, pp. 189-209; H. Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia, Penguin, Ringwood, 1982; A. McGrath, 'Born in the Cattle': Aborigines in Cattle Country , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987; D. May, Aboriginal Labour and the Cattle Industry: Queensland From White Settlement to the Present, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994; see also P. Brock, 'Pastoral Stations and Reserves in South and Central Australia, 1850s-1950s', Labour History, no. 69, 1995, pp. 102-114; S. Hodson, 'Nyungars and Work: Aboriginal Experiences in the Rural Economy of the Great Southern Region of Western Australia', Aboriginal History, vol. 17, no. 1, 1993, p. 73. 3. See generally M. A. Hannah, Aboriginal Workers in the Australian Agricultural Company, 1824 to 1857, BA Honours thesis, University of New England, 2000; A. Pope, 'Aboriginal Adaptation to Early Colonial Labour Markets: The South Australian Experience', Labour History, no. 54, 1988, pp. 8-9. 4. R. Broome, 'Aboriginal Workers on Southeastern Frontiers', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 26, no. 103, 1994, pp. 203-207. 5. Broome, 'Aboriginal Workers on Southeastern Frontiers', pp. 209-220. 6. Hannah, Aboriginal Workers, p. 32; Probable Wages List After 30 June 185, Australian Agricultural Company series (hereafter ACC), 1/144 Bundle 1, Noel Butlin Archives Centre, ACT (hereafter NBAC ACT); List of Persons Rationed at Stroud, 1856, AAC 1/144, Bundle 1, NBAC ACT; Account of Issues in Rations and Slops to the Native Blacks at Port Stephens from May 1826 to May 1828, AAC 78/1/4, p. 933, NBAC ACT; R. Dawson, The Present State of Australia; A Description of the Country, Its Advantages and Prospects, With Reference to Emigration: And a Particular Account of the Manners, Customs and, Condition of Its Aboriginal Inhabitants, Smith Elder & Co, London, 1830, p. 38; P. P. King to the Governor and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, 24 August 1840, AAC 78/1/16, p. 488, NBAC ACT; Parry to the Governors and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, 11 September 1832, AAC 78/1/13, p. 181, NBAC ACT; Dumuresq to the Governors and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, 12 June 1835, AAC 78/1/15, pp. 289-290, NBAC ACT; Sydney Herald, 1 March 1839 and 12 April 1839 cited in H. Reynolds, 'The Other Side of the Frontier: Early Aboriginal Reactions to Pastoral Settlement in Queensland and New South Wales', Historical Studies, vol. 17, no. 66, 1976, p. 53; P. P. King to the Governors and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, 20 September 1843, AAC 78/1/17, p. 559, NBAC ACT; P. P. King to the Governors and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, 3 March 1849, AAC 78/1/19, p. 107, NBAC ACT. 7. Dawson, The Present State of Australia, pp. 9-22; Hall to Dawson, 31 March 1827, AAC 78/1/2, p. 113, NBAC ACT; Dawson to the Colonial Committee, 28 August 1826, AAC 78/1/1, p. 75, NBAC ACT; Statement of the Services of Mr Dawson, Formerly Chief Agent of the Australian Agricultural Company, 1828, AAC 78/1/4, pp. 361-362, NBAC ACT. 8. Atchison, Port Stephens and Goonoo Goonoo, p. 36; Bairstow, 'With the Best Will in the World', p. 10; Journal of a Journey Performed in the Bush in Search of the Australian Agricultural Company's Grant Near Port Stephens, 13 July 1826, AAC 78/1/9, pp. 16-17, NBAC ACT; Mr McLeod's Journal of a Journey to the Manning River, 4 November 1827, AAC 78/1/3, pp. 448-449, NBAC ACT; Dawson, The Present State of Australia, pp. 18-21 and 178-179; Letterbook of H. T. Ebsworth, 1826, MSS B852-2, pp. 43-45, Mitchell Library, NSW (hereafter ML NSW); Australian, 23 September 1826. 9. Hannah, Aboriginal Workers, p. 36; Dawson to the Colonial Committee, 1 August 1826, AAC 78/ 1/1, pp. 356-358, NBAC ACT; Annual Reports of the Australian Agricultural Company, 1846 and 1847, in Annual Reports of the Australian Agricultural Company, Volume I: 1824-1849, London, 1850. 10. W. Young to his brother, 23 July 1852, MS 1757, National Library of Australia, ACT (hereafter NLA ACT); Green to Hodgson, 20 March 1857, AAC 1/155, NBAC ACT. 11. Broome, 'Aboriginal Workers on Southeastern Frontiers', p. 203 and 220; E. P. Thompson, 'Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism', Past & Present, no. 38, 1967, p. 60. 12. An Account of Sawyers Work Done at Booral Station, 8 June 1828 to 31 August 1828, AAC 78/1/6, p. 167, NBAC ACT; Atchison, Port Stephens and Goonoo Goonoo, p. 248; P. A. Pemberton, Pure Merinos and Other: The 'Shipping' Lists of the Australian Agricultural Company, Archives of Business and Labour, Canberra, 1986, p. 21; List of Flocks of the Australian Agricultural Company's Sheep, 1856, AAC 1/144, Bundle 1, NBAC ACT. 13. Dawson, The Present State of Australia, p. 38 and 420; Standing Orders of the Australian Agricultural Company, 30 August 1830, AAC 78/1/10, p. 27, NBAC ACT; Report of Edward Parry, 28 June 1831, AAC 78/1/11, p. 62, NBAC ACT; S. Nicholas, 'The Care and Feeding of Convicts' in S. Nicholas (ed.), Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia's Past, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, p. 187; Thompson, 'Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism', pp. 56-97. 14. P. P. King to the Governor and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, AAC 78/1/16, pp. 196-197, NBAC ACT; Ebsworth to the Colonial Secretary, 3 September 1838, 4/2404.2, State Records of New South Wales, NSW (hereafter SRNSW NSW); Deposition of Thomas Chester, 17 July 1838, 4/2404.2, SRNSW NSW; J. Oppenheimer, 'Colonel Dumaresq, Captain Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Brigg (sic)', Push from the Bush, no. 16, 1985, pp. 18-23; M. A. Jebb and A. Haebich, 'Across the Great Divide: Gender Relations on Australian Frontiers' in R.. Evans and K. Saunders (eds), Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation, Harcourt Brace, Sydney, 1992, p. 25; List of Flocks of the Australian Agricultural Company's Sheep, October 1856, AAC 1/144, Bundle 1, NBAC ACT; Probable Wages List After 30 June 1857, AAC 1/144, Bundle 1, NBAC ACT; Account of Issues in Rations and Slops to the Native Blacks at Port Stephens from May 1826 to May 1828, AAC 78/1/4, p. 933, NBAC ACT; Probable Wages List After 30 June 1857, AAC 1/144, Bundle 1, NBAC ACT. 15. Journal of a Journey Performed in the Bush in Search of the Australian Agricultural Company's Grant Near Port Stephens, 15 November 1826, AAC 78/1/1, pp. 23-24, NBAC ACT; Australian Agricultural Company's Establishment at Port Stephens, 30 September 1856, AAC 78/1/27, p. 31, NBAC ACT; Probable Wages List After 30 June 1857, AAC 1/144, Bundle 1, NBAC ACT. 16. Broome, pp. 219-220; Weekly Return of Labour at No. 2 Farm, AAC 78/1/4, p. 825, NBAC ACT; W. Barton, Memorandum, 14 January 1828, AAC 78/1/3, p. 319, NBAC ACT; Weatherman to Parry, 29 June 1831, AAC 78/1/1, pp. 196-197, NBAC ACT; Brownrigg to the Assistant General Superintendent and Others, 18 February 1853, AAC 78/1/21, np, NBAC ACT; G. Davison, The Unforgiving Minute: How Australia Learned to Tell the Time, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993, p. 28. 17. S. Nicholas and P. R. Shergold, 'Convicts as Migrants' in S.. Nicholas (ed.), Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia's Past, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, p. 53 and 60; J. Bentham cited in A. Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia, A History: Volume 1 - The Beginning, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1997, p. 5; Brownrigg to the Governor and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, AAC 78/1/22, p. 303, NBAC ACT; Pemberton, Pure Merinos and Others, pp. 72-75; Dawson, The Present State of Australia, passim; List of Persons Rationed at Stroud, 1856, AAC 1/144, Bundle 1, NBAC ACT. 18. R. Samuel, Village Life and Labour, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1975, p. 10; Brownrigg to the Governor and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, 23 April 1856, AAC 78/ 1/25, p. 71, NBAC ACT; Journal of a Journey Performed in the Bush in Search of the Australian Agricultural Company's Grant Near Port Stephens, 13 July 1826, AAC 78/1/9, pp. 16-17, NBAC ACT; D. B. Rose, Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness, Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra, 1996, p. 7. 19. Dawson to the Colonial Committee, 24 April 1826, AAC 78/1/1, p. 305, NBAC ACT; Diary of W. E. Parry, 7 January 1830, MSS A630-2, ML NSW; General Orders of Edward Parry, 7 April 1830, AAC 78/1/9, pp. 219-220, NBAC ACT; General Orders of Edward Parry, 12 April 1830, AAC 78/1/9, pp. 269-272, NBAC ACT; William McLeod, Surgeon, Quarterly Return of Men, Women and Children at Port Stephens, 24 April 1826 to 24 July 1826, AAC 78/1/1, p. 377, NBAC ACT; James Stacey, Surgeon, Quarterly Medical Return Ending 31 July 1830, AAC 78/1/9, p. 689, NBAC ACT; Annual Report of the Australian Agricultural Company, 1832 in Annual Reports of the Australian Agricultural Company, Volume I: 1824-1849, London, 1850; Quarterly Return of Diseases at Stroud, 1 January 1834 to 31 March 1834, AAC 78/1/14, p. 85, NBAC ACT; S. Nicholas, The Care and Feeding of Convicts in S.. Nicholas (ed.), Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia's Past, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, p. 194; Parry to the Governor and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, 17 January 1833, AAC 78/1/13, p. 399, NBAC ACT; J. Perkins, 'Convict Workers and the Australian Agricultural Company' in S.. Nicholas (ed.), Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia's Past, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, p. 176; Return of Men, Women and Children Who Have Been on the Sick List at the Australian Agricultural Company Establishment at Port Stephens, 24 July 1826 to 30 April 1827, AAC 78/1/2, p. 128, NBAC ACT; John Macarthur to the Governor and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, 26 May 1828, AAC 78/1/6, p. 284, NBAC ACT; General Orders of John Macarthur, 15 May 1828, AAC 78/1/6, pp. 307-308, NBAC ACT; Quarterly Return of Diseases, Ending 31 October 1830, AAC 78/1/10, p. 132, NBAC ACT. <20. P.J. Dowling, 'A Great Deal of Sickness' : Introduced Diseases Among the Aboriginal People of Colonial Southeast Australia, 1788-1900, PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1997; J. Campbell, 'Smallpox in Aboriginal Australia: The Early 1830s', Historical Studies, vol. 21, no. 84, 1985, pp. 336-358; Account of Issues in Rations and Slops to the Native Blacks at Port Stephens, May 1826 to May 1828, AAC 78/1/4, p. 933, NBAC ACT. 21. List of Indentured and Other Free Servants of the Australian Agricultural Company with Their Respective Qualifications and Characters, January 1830, AAC 78/1/11, pp. 102-109, NBAC ACT; White to Brownrigg, 2 August 1855, AAC 78/1/22, p. 187, NBAC ACT; J. Oppenheimer, 'Colonel Dumarseq, Captain Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Brigg (sic)', Push from the Bush, no. 16, 1985, pp. 18-23; Dawson, The Present State of Australia, p. 112; Deposition of Thomas Chester, 17 July 1838, 4/ 2404.2, State Records of New South Wales NSW (hereafter SRNSW NSW); Deposition of William Rouse, 17 July 1838, 4/2404.2, SRNSW NSW. 22. Slade to Dutton, 18 October 1826, AACT 78/1/1, pp. 404-406, NBAC ACT; Dutton to Brickwood, 10 July 1827, AAC 78/1/1, pp. 445-448, NBAC ACT; Australian Agricultural Company v. Adams, Supreme Court of New South Wales at Sydney, before Stephen, J., 22 March 1827 reported in the Sydney Gazette, 24 March 1827; H. S. Townsend to W. Townsend, 24 June 1825, MS 112, NLA ACT; Diary of T. C. Harrington, 18 May 1826, AAC 1/13, NBAC ACT; A. Atkinson, 'Four Pattern of Convict Protest', Labour History, no. 37, 1979, pp. 28-51; J. Perkins, Convict Workers and the Australian Agricultural Company , p. 169-170; Dawson to the Colonial Committee, 1 August 1826, AAC 78/1/1, pp. 347-348, NBAC ACT; Dawson, The Present State of Australia, p. 178-179. 23. Account of Issues in Rations and Slops to the Native Blacks at Port Stephens, May 1826 to May 1828, AAC 78/1/4, p. 933, NBAC ACT; Dawson, The Present State of Australia, p. 30 and pp. 266-267; J. S. Brownrigg and Others to King, 26 March 1841, AAC 78/3/1, p. 109, NBAC ACT. 24. Nicholas and Shergold, 'Convicts as Migrants', p. 46; Atchison, Port Stephens and Goonoo Goonoo, p. 248; E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village, 1294-1324, trans. B. Bray, London, 1978, p. 277; Reynolds, 'The Other Side of the Frontier', pp. 50-57; Davison, The Unforgiving Minute, p. 9; J. S. Brownrigg and Others to King, 26 March 1841, AAC 78/3/1, p. 109, NBAC ACT; Green to Hodgson, 20 March 1857, AAC 1/155, NBAC ACT. 25. Broome, 'Aboriginal Workers on Southeastern Frontiers', p. 217 and 220. 26. Dawson, The Present State of Australia, pp. 18-19 and 178-179. 27. Estimate of Receipts and Payments, 1828-1829, AAC 78/1/3, p. 281, NBAC ACT; Account of Issues in Rations and Slops to the Native Blacks at Port Stephens from May 1826 to May 1828, AAC 78/ 1/4 p. 933, NBAC ACT. 28. List of Persons Rationed at Stroud, 1856, AAC 1/144, Bundle 1, NBAC ACT; Pemberton, Pure Merinos and Others, p. 73; Allocation of Ration to Employees, 1 January 1831, AAC 78/1/13, p. 166-167, NBAC ACT; Statement Showing the Weekly Issue of Provisions, 30 April 1827, AAC 78/1/2, p. 120, NBAC ACT. 29. Australian Agricultural Company's Establishment at Port Stephens, 30 September 1856, AAC 78/ 1/27, p. 31, NBAC ACT; Pemberton, Pure Mernios and Others, pp. 66-67. 30. Perkins, 'Convict Labour and the Australian Agricultural Company', pp. 174-175. 31. Brownrigg to the Assistant General Superintendent and Others, 18 February 1853, AAC 78/1/21, p. 124, NBAC ACT; Parry to the Governor and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, 26 August 1830, AAC 78/1/9, p. 722, NBAC ACT; Diary of W. E. Parry, 11 March 1830, MSS A630-2, ML NSW; Australian Agricultural Company's Establishment at Port Stephens, 30 September 1856, AAC 78/1/27, pp. 28-34, NBAC ACT; Green to Hodgson, 20 March 1857, AAC 1/ 155, NBAC ACT. 32. White to Brownrigg, 18 September 1855, AAC 78/1/22, p. 192, NBAC ACT; Annual Report of the Australian Agricultural Company, 1842 in Annual Reports of the Australian Agricultural Company, Volume I: 1824-1849, London, 1850, pp. 434-435; Brownrigg to the Governor and Court of Directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, AAC 78/1/22, p. 302, NBAC ACT; Dawson, The Present State of Australia, pp. 269-270.

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