Twenty male convicts newly arrived from Ireland, along with one pregnant woman, vanished from the settlement at Rose Hill, near Parramatta, on this day in 1791, taking their tools, bedding and a week’s rations with them. Passing settlers who saw them pass asked where they were bound; the convicts answered that they were walking to China, certain that a great river lay only about a hundred miles to the north, beyond which a copper coloured people would receive and treat them kindly.
An officer and a detachment of troops were sent after them, tracing the group as far as the harbour before Sydney before losing the trail entirely. Within a week most had stumbled back starving and half naked, having survived on wild berries and shrubs, while one or two of the runaways were killed by spears from the people whose country they had wandered into.
Watkin Tench, recording the episode, could not resist a final barb: insisting he intended no “illiberal national reflection” on any people, he added that it was certain every one of the escapees was Irish.
