As it happened, the name of the place on that bend was now Wiseman’s Ferry.

In addition to flowing in two directions and having two names, the river also had two distinct personalities. The part that lay west of Sydney ran through flat ground, a floodplain of fertile alluvial soil. The part that lay north of Sydney had cut down through a vast sandstone plateau, and ran through a cleft between towering cliffs and buttresses, with only small pockets of good land.

Nothing grew around Sydney itself. (It still doesn’t. That was why Mum needed all that cow manure.) The first good farms were on the river west of the township, on those fertile river-flats. Settlers cleared, fenced and planted. Pretty soon the farms were everywhere along the river.

It was these small farms—isolated and vulnerable—that were usually attacked. Soldiers were stationed in the area, but at harvest time the Aboriginal people swooped in, set fire to field after field of ripe grain, and were gone before the soldiers could get there. Settlers were speared, Aboriginal people were shot.

When roads were primitive, wagons slow, and the bush full of robbers, rivers made the best highways.

Sixteen years after Phillip smacked that old man, in December 1804, another governor, Philip Gidley King, tried to deal with the violence on the Hawkesbury:

One of the settlers recently fix’d below Portland Head, who was much annoyed by the natives in June last, delivered me a memorial, said to be signed by all the settlers in that district, requesting they might be allowed to shoot the natives frequenting their grounds, who had threatened to fire their wheat when ripe. On further enquiry I found that none of the settlers had authorised this man to put their signatures to the paper, and that his fears of what might be had operated with him more forcibly than any present or future probability of the natives again being inimical to him or his neighbours…

Wishing to be convinced myself what cause there was for these alarms, three of the natives from that part of the river readily came on being sent for. On questioning the cause of their disagreement with the new settlers they very ingenuously answered that they did not like to be driven from the few places that were left on the banks of the river, where alone they could procure food; that they had gone down the river as the white men took possession of the banks; if they went across white men’s grounds the settlers fired upon them and were angry; that if they could retain some places on the lower part of the river they should be satisfied and would not trouble the white men. The observation and request appear to be so just and so equitable that I assured them no more settlements should be made lower down the river.

This was two years before Wiseman arrived in Australia. I was getting warm: Portland Head is only a short distance upstream from Wiseman’s Ferry.