Convict killing

A convict searching for a local herb known as ‘sweet tea’ in the Brickfields area is killed and his body mangled possibly by ‘Gomerigal’ (Camaraigal) or Cadigal people. Other brick-makers form a revenge party and march down what is today’s Oxford Street, armed with work tools and large clubs. They meet 50 Eora warriors who run away from them. The historian Karskens interprets the incident as the officer Collins realising that the attack was an attempt by the Cadigal at containment, trying to restrict the colonists to Sydney Cove. On the same day Phillip sends out two armed parties to march to Botany Bay and elsewhere. Collins writes ‘that the natives might see their late acts of violence would neither intimidate nor prevent us from moving beyond the settlement whenever occasion required.’ Karskens, pp. 356- 368.