Book 'Wild Colonial Greeks' pushes back date of Greek Settlement in Australia
BOOK 'WILD COLONIAL GREEKS' PUSHES BACK DATE OF GREEK SETTLEMENT IN AUSTRALIA
In my book 'Wild Colonial Greeks', published in early December 2020 by Australian Scholarly Publishing / Arcadia, I present evidence that a Greek from Corfu named George Manuel was living in Australia in 1823, and possibly earlier. This was well before the arrival of the seven pirate-convicts in 1829, considered Australia’s first Greeks.
It is hard to believe that no Greek – not even a sailor – set foot in Australia until four decades after the First Fleet, and not surprising that some time and effort has been expended in searching for an Hellene who came to our shores before the seven pirate-convicts of 1829.
Historian Hugh Gilchrist speculated about Greeks who may have come earlier. Effie Alexakis and Leonard Janiszewski kept the hope alive, noting that while the earliest Greek contact with Australia is unknown, there may be an issue of the ‘Sydney Gazette of 1817 or 1818’, warning of the dangers to Sydney children after dark from, ‘Irish, English and Greek convicts’.
Craig Turnbull and Chris Valiotis in 2001 also referred to accounts of Greeks ‘arriving in the late 1810s’, and mentioned the apocryphal report in The Sydney Gazette, but dismissed them as ‘conjecture’ and ‘fable’.
It seems to have been generally accepted that apart from the seven pirates, the only other person of Greek origin to come to Australia as a convict, was a man named Joseph Simmons or Simmonds. He is recorded in convict archives as a seaman aged 40, a single man, an illiterate, and in religion a Protestant, who gave his ‘native place’ as Greece. Gilchrist, however, describes him as an Ionian Islander and, ‘in fact a Greek Jew who landed in Sydney from the convict ship Isabella IV in March 1832’, after having been ‘convicted at the Dorsett Assizes and sentenced to transportation for life for stealing a handkerchief’.
It is surprising that another convict with the decidedly Greek name of Timoleon Vlasto has been overlooked by historians. It is even more surprising when one considers the infamy that Vlasto acquired in 1849 for stealing ancient Greek coins worth a small fortune from the British Museum in London. His trial was widely reported in the British press and ended with a sentence of transportation for a term of seven years to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), where he arrived near the end of May 1851. Timoleon Vlasto’s crime and his Greek identity – albeit that of a diaspora Greek – was also reported in Australian newspapers.
Among the candidates for ‘first Australian Greek’, the claim of George Papas at first seems plausible. He is said to have been a part-Aboriginal man, the child of an Aboriginal mother and a Greek sailor. It is known that he died in Sydney in 1849 at the age of 35, which would put his birth year at 1814, some 15 years before the arrival in Australia of the seven Greek pirates. However, the known facts about George Papas indicate that he was a Greek sailor who arrived in Sydney in August 1849 as a crewman aboard a British ship. According to a Coroner's determination reported in the press, he was seriously ill when he arrived and died just a week later. His progression to the status of ‘Aborigine’ seems to have begun when his body was mistakenly described in burial records at Camperdown Cemetery as that of a ‘coloured man’.
A more credible claim to the title of ‘Australia’s first Greek’ can be made for another sailor. On 28 June 1878 The Sydney Morning Herald reported the funeral at Castle Hill near Sydney of a ‘George Manuel or George Emanuel, on whose coffin was inscribed the age of 101 years’. The Herald was cautious in its reference to Manuel’s age, but was more definite in describing him as a sailor who ‘had fought under Nelson at the Nile and other places’. It was reported that ‘For the last twenty years he had resided in the locality where he died, and until recently had retained the possession of his faculties to a very great extent.’ His death notice published in the Herald the previous day stated: ‘June 22 at his residence, Castle Hill, George Emanuel, aged 101 years, after a long and painful illness.’ Another newspaper lionised Emanuel as ‘an old veteran’, who had ‘fought in several battles under our great hero Nelson’, and noted that he was familiarly known as George the Greek. The great age claimed for Emanuel attracted attention and his death was reported in at least five other newspapers. At his death he was said to have lived in the colony for 76 years and, if that is true, George Emanuel was Australia’s first Greek, arriving in 1802, some 27 years before the seven Greek pirates.
Newspaper reports may not be enough to establish historical facts beyond doubt. However, a further intriguing piece of information noted by Gilchrist is that a Greek monk known as Christophoros, who journeyed extensively in the Australian colonies in the 1860s, visited Sydney in October 1867 and later reported that one of the Greeks in Australia had settled there 70 years before.
We can rely on newspaper reports for the confirmation of George Emanuel’s Greek identity. The Sydney Morning Herald, in reporting a bushfire at Castle Hill in December 1875, noted that a house narrowly escaped destruction, ‘the usual occupant, styled Old George the Greek – a man of nearly 90 summers – being at the time in Sydney with a load of fruit’. The location of George Emanuel’s orchard was along the present route of the New Line Road in the vicinity of Davids Road and Pyes Creek; in 1897, nearly two decades after his death, a newspaper report noted that the locality where a small bridge crossed this creek was once known as ‘George the Greek’s’.
George Emanuel’s will, made in 1877, stated that he had no children or other relatives in the Colony and that his farm was 40 acres in extent. In signing the document with his mark he showed that he was illiterate.
Prior to 1862, George Manuel or Emanuel does not seem to figure in the newspapers. However, a man of that name is noted in government records from time to time: from 1859 to 1861 as a freeholder in the Dural area; in 1841 residing at Field of Mars; in February 1839 receiving a land grant of 30 acres at Field of Mars, Parramatta; and in September 1832 transacting the sale of a piece of land at Parramatta to William Parrington for the sum of £7.
It was reported in the press that in his younger days, ‘Old George the Greek’ had been a mariner and it is quite possible that he was the ‘George Emanuel’ who is recorded as a crewman on the brig Courier, a ship that first arrived in New South Wales waters in 1823. He might also have served – or attempted to serve – on the brig Belinda, a ship bound for the ‘South Sea fishery’ that listed in its muster roll in May 1824 a ‘George Manuel’ who was noted as having come to New South Wales ‘in the Brig Courier’.
A further record of interest is that of a criminal prosecution heard at Parramatta on 5 November 1832 in which George ‘Manual’ and his associate, John Long, were charged with ‘feloniously’ receiving 50 pounds weight of tobacco to the value of £5, knowing that the tobacco had been ‘feloniously stolen … by force of arms’. John Long was sentenced to a term of 12 calendar months in irons working on the public works of the colony, while George Manual was sentenced to 12 calendar months at hard labour in Her Majesty’s Gaol at Newcastle.
From an entry in the gaol entrance and description book for Newcastle we learn some important facts about George Manual (or Manuel or Emanuel). He began his term of imprisonment at the Sydney Gaol on 20 November 1832 and from there was taken to Newcastle Gaol where he gave his native place as ‘Corfu’, his occupation as ‘mariner’, and his legal status on arriving in the Colony and on entering gaol as ‘free’. Furthermore, he gave his year of arrival in the Colony as 1823. The ship on which he came was recorded as the ‘Carrier Brig’, but this appears to be a mistaken rendering of ‘Courier Brig’ as the Sydney and Hobart press of the 1820s and 1830s make more than 160 references to a brig named Courier, and none to any ship named Carrier. Furthermore, the Courier first arrived in 1823 at Hobart – at that time part of New South Wales – thereafter sailing regularly between London and Sydney until her later purchase by Sydney merchants Cooper and Levey who fitted the vessel out for whaling in the South Seas.
George Manual may well have been the same man as the old mariner, ‘George the Greek of Castle Hill’, but even if he was not, he was a native of Corfu who came to Australia before the seven Greek pirates, preceding them by six years.
Peter Prineas.
Sources for this article are cited in my book, 'Wild Colonial Greeks,' available from the publisher, Australian Scholarly Publishing / Arcadia at:
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