In spite of King’s promise, settlement on the lower river continued. As far as I could see, no one ever mentioned the governor’s promise to the Aboriginal men again. In April 1805, King noted:

I am much concerned to state that, within these Three Weeks past, the Natives have been very troublesome among the distant Settlements at the South Creek and the lower part of the Hawkesbury River…The house belonging to a Settler was set on Fire by…natives. After a search the mangled and burnt Limbs of the Settler and his Man were found, some in the Ashes and others scattered…I directed a party of Military to take post at the Branch and to drive the Natives from thence, first assuring them that if the Murderers were given up all further Resentment should cease.

A few months earlier, King had seemed to understand the Aboriginal point of view. Now he regarded them as a kind of pest and sounded genuinely puzzled that they weren’t happy to be dependent on charity: ‘Notwithstanding the liberality with which the Settlers supply these people with Corn…to keep on good Terms with them, yet at the period of Maize Harvest no consideration can restrain them from destroying a much greater quantity than they can consume by eating.’

Ten years later the situation had deteriorated. In June 1816 Governor Lachlan Macquarie reported that:

in consequence of various Subsequent Acts of Atrocity being Committed by the Natives in the remote parts of the Settlements, I found it Necessary to Order Three Detachments on the tenth of April to proceed to those Districts most infested and Annoyed by them giving them instructions to make as many Prisoners as possible; this Service Occupied a Period of 23 days, during which time the Military Parties very rarely met with any of the Hostile Tribes; the Occurrence of most importance which took place was under Captain Wallis’s direction, who, having surprized One of the Native Encampments and meeting with some resistance, killed 14 of them and made 5 Prisoners.

Macquarie admitted that ‘some few innocent Men, Women and Children may have fallen in these Conflicts’, but hoped that ‘this unavoidable Result, and the Severity which has attended it, will eventually strike Terror amongst the surviving Tribes, and deter them from the further Commission of such sanguinary Outrages and Barbarities’.

In the same month he proclaimed what amounted to martial law against the Aboriginal people:

on occasions of any Natives coming armed, or in a hostile Manner without Arms, or in unarmed Parties exceeding Six in Number, to any Farm belonging to or occupied by British Subjects in the Interior, such Natives are first to be desired in a civil Manner to depart from the said Farm, and if they persist in remaining thereon, or attempt to plunder, rob, or commit any kind of Depredation, they are then to be driven away by Force of Arms by the Settlers themselves.

In other words, for a period from June 1816, settlers could with impunity shoot Aboriginal people more or less on sight.