Saturday, 7 February 2026
NSW Masonic Club
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Thank you, Gillian.^[1]

I, too, acknowledge the Gadigal, Traditional Custodians of these lands and waterways, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging, as well as to the Elders of all parts from which you travel.

Today we commemorate foundational moments in the history and formation of our modern nation.

They are moments that connect all of us today, not only through our shared citizenship, but also our shared history.

As foundational moments, they do not, of course, occur without context and, as history, their details—the exact contours of what, where, and who—are not always perfectly clear. Perspectives differ, as, in turning the gem of the past, different facets are revealed.

But on which facet of the gem do we begin?

Is it back on the River Thames, where many of the convicts awaiting transportation had been sitting in batted out old hulks for many months before being transferred to one of the 11 ships of the First Fleet?

Or in Cape Town, where the Fleet anchored for some weeks doing essential repairs, but more importantly to replenish the significantly depleted stores, including grain and livestock, bolstering the number of animals—cows, bulls, pigs, horses, sheep, ducks, chickens, goats, and geese—to more than 500.^[2]

There was also the short sojourn in Botany Bay, where they were soon joined by La Perouse’s two French ships La Boussole and L’Astrolabe, and which it is thought provided the escape route for the first escapees from the Colony^[3]—but only as far as the Solomon Islands—where the ships sank.^[4] And, I assume that you all know that but for a failed maths exam, Napoleon would have sailed with La Perouse as a 14-year-old sea cadet, and the history of Europe may have taken a different course.^[5]

More immediately, of course, we associate the beginning of modern Australia with the evening of the 26th of January, when the ships of the First Fleet finally straggled into Port Jackson, an event recorded by one of the First Fleet surgeons in these terms: 

The Governor & a Number of the Officers assembled on Shore where they Displayed the British Flag and each Officer with a Heart, glowing with Loyalty drank his Majesty's Health and Success to the Colony.^[6]

Or perhaps the following day, when the first of the male convicts, with their grumpy overseers, set foot on shore for the first time, beginning to clear the ground of scrub and setting up tents.

For some the 28th was memorable, when the wives of the marines joined their husbands on land.

Or the 29th, when the Governor’s demountable canvas house^[7] and the series of “ramshackle” tents that would serve as a hospital were set up.^[8]

Or the days following, when the livestock—including a bull, five cows, a calf, 6 horses, and several sheep and pigs—were landed to forage in the strange vegetation.^[9]

Or the 3rd of February, when the first church service was held on Australian soil, delivered by the Reverend Richard Johnson, his chosen text the twelfth verse of Psalm 116, What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me?^[10] I am not sure whether aspiration or nostalgia drove the choice of that reading.

Or maybe the 6th, with the final disembarkation of the female convicts from the Lady Penrhyn and the notorious revelries that night, when, according to the surgeon, Arthur Bowes Smyth:

The men convicts got to them very soon after they landed, and it is beyond my abilities to give a just description of the scene of debauchery and riot that ensued during the night.^[11]

Until we get to 7th February, where with ragged solemnity, a ceremony was held in the stifling heat at what is now known as Dawes’ Point.^[12]

There, the marines under arms received the Governor with flying colours and a band of music, the convicts seated on the ground, and in the centre, a camp table with 2 red leather cases containing the Commissions and other documents.^[13]

Captain Collins, the Judge-Advocate then read the Commission:

…constituting Arthur Phillip, Esquire, Governor-General, Commander-in-Chief over all those territories belonging to his Britannic Majesty George, III, (King of Great Britain, France and Ireland) and called New South Wales and parts adjacent, with full power and authority to build forts, castles and towns, and to erect batteries etc. etc. as shall seem to him necessary, with full power also to appoint and: constitute officers of every kind as he shall judge proper.^[14]

Three musket volleys were fired into the blue of the sky.^[15]

In truth there was not much jollity on any of those days, except perhaps on the evening of the 6th, but nonetheless, a new colony had been proclaimed and with that came the laws of England and the institutions that would spring from them.

Indeed, Indigenous leader Noel Pearson characterises this as the beginning of the second phase of our country’s history, the first being the unique Indigenous period and the third being the period of significant migration, which has a number of touchstones—the gold rush, migration from Europe after the First World War and the much greater migration following the Second World War and in the years since.

But let me return to 7th February… The Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, thanked and commended the soldiers for their service before addressing the convicts, lecturing them—Bowes Smyth describes it as a haranguing^[16]—on the importance of morals and diligence in their labours.

All were then dispersed, the Governor granting them a holiday, before himself retiring to a marquee erected for the purpose to dine with a selected few of his officers.^[17]

In reading any account of the events of the first few weeks of the formation of the Colony of New South Wales, it is impossible not to be struck by the difficulties encountered by those in that first European encampment: the oppressive heat, the thunderstorms and torrential rains at night, the lightning flashes blazing across the sky and descending in bolts to split the trees. Indeed, in the account of one such night we are told that:

About 12 o'clock in the night one severe flash of lightning struck a very large tree in the centre of the camp, under which some places were constructed to keep the sheep and hogs in. It split the tree from top to bottom, killed 5 sheep belonging to Major Ross and a pig of one of the lieutenants. The severity of the lightning, this and the 2 preceding nights, leaves no room to doubt but many of the trees which appear burnt up to the tops of them were the effect of lightning.^[18]

The loss of the sheep and pig would have caused great consternation as the colony from the outset, and for most of the next 3 years, was on the point of starvation.^[19] To such an extent that, should any household have had the good fortune of catching a fish or shooting a bird, any invitation to dinner was accompanied by a note to ‘bring our own bread’. Indeed, Watkins Tench records that “even at the Governor’s table, every man when he sat down pulled his bread out of his pocket and laid it on his plate”.^[20]

Such was the physical misery of the colony in those early years that in one attempted escape the convicts had plotted to walk to China. When they forlornly walked back into the settlement over the following weeks, they explained that they had thought China was only 100 miles away, just to the north, over a large river.^[21] 

My own association to the early colony, aside from my role as Governor, which is the oldest public office in Australia, is through the convicts John Small and Mary Parker, who, like the ancestors of many of you, sat listening as Governor Phillip’s Commission was proclaimed, 238 years ago today.

John Small was born in 1761 in Birmingham. At 19, he enlisted in the Royal Navy, joining the 33rd Company of the Plymouth Division of the Marine Corps and serving on the HMS Lively in the Americas.^[22]

In 1782, his ship was overrun by the American prisoners it was carrying, and the crew was turned over to the Spanish. As a result, John spent the rest of the American Revolutionary War languishing in a Cuban prison.^[23] When peace was signed in 1783, he was released as part of a prisoner exchange with the Spanish, and, honourably discharged with 21 days’ pay, returned to England.^[24]

However, like many ex-marines, John found difficulty finding work and soon turned to crime.

In 1785, when he was 23,^[25] he was tried at Devon Lent Assizes, along with three others, for:

feloniously assaulting James Burt in the King’s Highway, feloniously putting him in corporal fear and danger of his life...and feloniously and violently taking from his person and against his will in the said highway, one metal watch and tortoiseshell case value 30 shillings, one pruning knife value 6 pence, and five shillings his goods.^[26]

All were sentenced to be hanged, but luckily for John, or perhaps more accurately his descendants, the Royal prerogative of mercy was extended to him on condition of transportation for seven years, possibly by virtue of his service in the Marines. He then spent two years on the prison hulk Dunkirk—where he was reportedly “troublesome at times”—before going aboard the Charlotte and departing with the First Fleet.^[27]

The next we hear of John, he was apparently employed in the laboratory tent. As the story goes, John and two other convicts had been stealing the hospital wine by placing a kettle under a leaking wine cask, their crime only discovered when they were found intoxicated one night—John so drunk he couldn’t walk.^[28]

At trial, however, it was impossible to establish the precise facts of the case: each of the accused claimed innocence of the crime, claiming their drunkenness was the result of being prevailed upon to drink by the others.^[29] As such, and after some good character references from their supervisors, all three were acquitted. They were, however, removed from working at the hospital!^[30]

On the 12th of October 1788, 260 days after the First Fleet’s arrival in Port Jackson, John Small was married to the convict Mary Parker by the colony’s Chaplain, the Rev. Richard Johnson.^[31]

Mary’s story is no less colourful than John’s.

Born in 1758, she was convicted in 1785 of stealing two tablecloths from her employer, who ran a laundry, and as a result spent 12 months in New Prison Clerkenwell, during which she worked as a prison nurse.^[32] Only a few weeks after being released, however, she was at it again and stealing from her old employer.

On the 26th of April 1786, Mary was tried and convicted at the Old Bailey for

...burglariously and feloniously breaking and entering the dwelling-house of John Hickman, about the hour of eleven in the night, on the 19th day of April last, and burglariously stealing therein, two muslin gowns and coats, value 40 s., a cotton gown, value 10 s., three cotton frocks, value 4 s., a callico bed-gown, value 2 s., four pair of cotton pockets, value 4 s., eleven shirts, value 3 l., one shift, value 2 s., and one diaper clout, value 6 d…^[33]

Given the size of this haul, and her previous crime, Mary was sentenced to 7 years transportation.

It seems that whilst sailing out on the Lady Penrhyn, Mary’s experience as a prison nurse was put to use helping her fellow convicts who’d fallen sick. As such, upon disembarking at Sydney Cove, she was put to work as a nurse’s attendant in the hospital tents.[34]

There are also stories she worked as a servant for Governor Phillip,[35] which would make sense, given other reports that the eldest child of the newlyweds, Rebecca, my direct ancestor was born at the First Government House, located on what is now the corner of Bridge and Phillip Streets on 22 September 1789.[36] 

John was given a land grant at Eastern Farms (as we know it today) in 1794 which he farmed successfully for many years.  In 1809 he was appointed a District Constable.

It is through Rebecca, who became an Oakes after marrying the free settler Francis Oakes on the 27th of January 1806, that my family draws its descent… And there are a lot of descendants. 

John and Mary had 7 children, and they had 80 children between them. Rebecca lived through 15 Governors: Phillip, Hunter, King, Bligh, Macquarie, Brisbane, Darling, Bourke, Gipps, Fitzroy, Denison, Young, Belmore, Robinson, and Loftus.

The website of the John & Mary Small Descendants Association states there are now “10s of thousands” of us.[37]

Rebecca Oakes had 14 children. She outlived 6 of them. Rebecca’s youngest child William also had 14 children. In more recent history, my grandmother, Lilias Oakes was one of 10 and my father was the eldest of Lilias Oakes and Henry Osborne Beazley’s 6 children, and I am one of 5 children. Rebecca lived to a ripe old age and almost made it to the celebrations of the centenary in 1888, having died 2 years before.

Her wedding dress is still part of the cultural heritage of the early colony in the collection of the Bathurst Museum, too fragile to have on display but beautifully photographed in the Museum’s 75th anniversary book.

I am but one of three Governors[38] who can trace our connections to the birth of the colony, something about which I am immensely proud.