Governor Bligh receives instructions to educate and settle surviving Aboriginal girls

Governor Bligh receives instructions to educate and settle surviving Aboriginal girls and hold out “encouragement by grants of land to those who marry them, but not suffering such grants of land to be alienated during the life of the female grantee”. Instructions remain in force during Macquarie’s administration when land grants are offered to Aboriginal people who were prepared to “reform” and become farmers on the same basis as convicts. (Proclamation to the Aborigines, 4 May 1816, Historical Records of NSW vol 6: King and Bligh, Ford p145).