Left to Right: Captain John Hunter, second governor of NSW. Thomas Muir, Scottish activist and convict.
by Beverley Sherry
Recently the notion that the Municipality of Hunter’s Hill derived its name from Thomas Muir’s Huntershill has been resurrected, suggested by Don Beresford in an address to the Hunter’s Hill Historical Society.1 Thomas Muir (1765-1799) was one of the five so-called “Scottish Martyrs” transported to New South Wales in 1794 for sedition.2 He and his fellow prisoners brought money with them and were not treated as felons. Two convict servants were assigned to Muir and he was able to purchase land. In a letter to a friend in London of 13 December 1794, he describes his situation in Sydney, and this description, followed by the complete concluding text of the letter, was published in the London Morning Chronicle of 29 July 1795.3 Muir writes: “I have a neat little house here [in Sydney town], and another two miles distant, at a farm across the water, which I purchased.” He does not name the farm, but Peter Mackenzie, in his 1831 biography of Muir states, without documentary support, that he called it Huntershill after his home in Scotland. 4 This has been repeated. In a 1926 essay, Maybanke Anderson quotes Muir’s letter (inaccurately); a fact not noted before is that she adds a sentence of her own: “This house I have called after my father’s house in Glasgow, ‘Huntershill’.”5 This too has been repeated.
The precise location of “two miles distant,… across the water” has been disputed. An early researcher suggested Milsons Point, but no records exist for the purchase of a farm there by Thomas Muir. 6 The individual researches of James Jervis and James Scott, both in 1960, cast doubt on this location. Scott quotes a letter from one of the other Scottish Martyrs, the Rev. Thomas Fysshe Palmer, of 15 September 1795, which refers to the dwellings of Muir, William Skirving (another Martyr), and himself: “our houses at Sydney are contiguous, as also our farms in the country”, and Palmer’s farm was accessed via Rozelle Bay.7
There is some doubt, then, over the location of Muir’s farm house. More importantly for the present enquiry, and whether Muir called his farm Huntershill or not, the name Hunter’s Hill (as two words) was used in government documents before Muir arrived in Sydney. As early as 3 October 1794, three government grants were issued in “the district of Hunter’s Hill”, whereas Muir arrived on the transport Surprize on 25 October 1794, coming ashore with the other Scottish Martyrs in November.8 So, when Muir arrived, the name Hunter’s Hill was already in use, and designated the high ground on the north shore, around Gore Hill.
These historical facts were pointed out by James Jervis in 1945 and again in 1960.9 Don Beresford takes no account of them, or of the most recent histories of Hunter’s Hill. The claim for Muir’s Huntershill has been repeatedly rejected: by Isadore Brodsky, in Hunter’s Hill, New South Wales 1861-1961(1961); by R. Hamilton in Hunter’s Hill Pre- 1835 (1970); by the Hunter’s Hill Trust in all four editions of their Heritage of Hunter’s Hill (1969,1977, 1982, 2002); by P.R. Stephenson and Brian Kennedy in The History and Description of Sydney Harbour (1978); by Meredith Walker & Associates in the Hunter’s Hill Heritage Study (1984); and by myself in Hunter’s Hill: Australia’s Oldest Garden Suburb (1989).
Brodsky devotes a subsection of his book to “The Myth of Thomas Muir.” 10 Stephensen deals with the question at greater length, and concludes: “There has been no need to seek such an odd and unconvincing explanation of the name Hunter’s Hill, which was in official and popular use, as a well-deserved compliment to Captain John Hunter, of H.M.S. Sirius, before Thomas Muir was ever heard of at Sydney.”11 I will consider the case for Hunter shortly, but the faulty history about Muir was given impetus by Maybanke Anderson’s essay of 1926. She was evidently ignorant of the land grants in “the district of Hunter’s Hill” of 3 October 1794, before Muir’s arrival. Lacking this knowledge and calculating that Muir had a farm at Milsons Point called Huntershill, she deduced that the suburb of Hunter’s Hill derived its name from Muir.
Dates alone preclude this derivation. Moreover, any name for Muir’s farm was hardly public knowledge. No mention of it appears in the lengthy collection of contemporary documents on “The Scotch Martyrs” preserved in the Historical Records of New South Wales. 12 Nor do Lieutenant- Governor Grose, Governor Hunter, or Judge-Advocate David Collins, in their reports on Muir, refer to a Huntershill. In his Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (1798), Collins records that Muir “chiefly passed his time in literary ease and retirement, living out of the town at a little spot of ground which he had purchased for the purpose of seclusion.” 13
Prompted by Don Beresford’s address to the Hunter’s Hill Historical Society, a suggestion has been made to erect a commemorative plaque to Thomas Muir in Hunter’s Hill; readers in Scotland who have accessed Beresford’s paper on the internet have also expressed enthusiasm. 14 Does Muir deserve this? First, historical facts prove that the name Hunter’s Hill predates his arrival. Second, there are no moral or civic grounds to warrant a memorial for him. What did Muir do for Australia? Despite his privileged life style, he absconded as soon as an opportunity arose. Sixteen months after his arrival, he escaped on 18 February 1796 by the American ship, The Otter, as recorded by Collins and the shipping records. 15
This is not to deny Muir’s eminence as a champion of human rights in the era of the French revolution. He was a radical ahead of his time, and is deservedly commemorated at the village of Huntershill near Glasgow and in the imposing monuments to the Scottish Martyrs in Edinburgh and London. As the Scottish historian Michael Donnelly shows in his biography of Muir, he was “a man of principle” in his practice as a lawyer, “prepared to take on the most unrewarding and difficult cases and even occasionally foregoing a fee when petitioned by a destitute client”; and his trial in Glasgow in 1793 was “a classic example of the political abuse of the judicial process.” 16 Donnelly records Muir’s transportation and his “uneventful” term of confinement in Sydney:
Unlike his companions, or indeed his father, Muir had little or no taste for farming and with an eye to ultimate escape from the settlement, he purchased a small hut and several acres of land on the opposite side of the bay. by this means he was able to remove himself from the direct observation of the Governor and his soldiers and at the same time was provided with a legitimate excuse for keeping a small boat. (Donnelly, pp. 17-18).
It was by means of this boat that he and his two convict servants managed to row out through Sydney Heads on the night of 17 February 1796 and were picked up the next day, at a predetermined site offshore, by The Otter. After tremendous hardship, Muir reached France, where he died in 1799, far too young at the age of thirty-three.
In his work in Scotland, Ireland, and France, Muir was a hero of the dispossessed and the downtrodden, but there is no evidence that he identified with or provided inspiration for the shackled convicts of Port Jackson or that he aired his ideas on liberty. In fact, upon their arrival, Lieutenant- Governor Grose ordered the Scottish Martyrs “to avoid on all occasions a recital of those politicks” which had reduced them to their present “unfortunate situation.” 17 So Muir lived, as Collins notes, away from the public eye. He and his fellow Martyrs were “gentlemen of leisure”, “pampered prisoners” (Stephensen, p. 258); as the historian Christina Bewley writes, they “were separated by education and background from almost the entire community.” 18
The question remains, where did the name Hunter’s Hill come from? It is unlikely that it was named for hunting in “the district of Hunter’s Hill”, where farming was carried on. The most likely origin is another Scot, Captain John Hunter, later Governor Hunter. This is now the general consensus, and what follows is based on my history of Hunter’s Hill. 19
In contrast to Muir, Hunter did a great deal for Australia. As Beresford acknowledges, one of his enduring legacies is as an artist and naturalist, a shining example of his work being The Hunter Sketchbook. From the first days of the settlement, Hunter contributed to the making of the colony. On 28 January 1788, two days after the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove, he set off in a six-oared boat to survey the harbour, an undertaking which took several months, was meticulously done, and involved not only continual depth soundings but careful observation of the Aborigines; the latter is invaluable information recorded in Hunter’s Journal (1793). Parts of the harbour were named after Hunter’s officers and are so indicated on his chart – Bradley’s Head for Lieutenant Bradley, Ball’s Head for Lieutenant Ball; Hunter Bay is also marked, although this later became known as Balmoral Beach.
[Detail, Deputy Surveyor General’s Plan of the Settlements in New South Wales (1796). “Hunters Hill” then designated land north-east of Lane Cove. Thirty-three farms are marked, numbered 14 to 46. In the complete plan, their acreage (25 to 30 acres) and owners’ names are listed. Thomas Muir is not named anywhere on the plan nor does his supposed farm at Milsons Point, Huntershill, appear. Reproduced from Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. 3, fold-out following title page.]
The name Hunter’s Hill, however, went into permanent usage. The high ground which was known as “the district of Hunter’s Hill” before Thomas Muir arrived in Australia is clearly marked on Hunter’s map of the New South Wales settlements preserved in the Mitchell Library. 20 “Hunters Hill” is written in Hunter’s small, neat handwriting on the area of today’s Gore Hill, “Mount Hunter” in the area of Camden. When the County of Cumberland was divided into parishes in the 1830s, the name Hunter’s Hill shifted to designate the land between the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers and as far west as Ryde. When the Municipality of Hunter’s Hill was formed in 1861, the name moved eastwards, to define the municipality.
Hunter was less than successful in the difficult job of Governor of the colony (1795-1800), but he achieved much as a navigator, cartographer, and explorer, whether sounding the depths of the harbour, recording his observations about the Aborigines, tramping through bush and wading through swamps from Pittwater to Middle Harbour, or bringing back provisions from the Cape of Good Hope in 1789 to the starving colony. In 1788, he and his assistants, in that six-oared boat, were the first Europeans to lay eyes on the area now known as Hunter’s Hill, and his chart shows thirty depth soundings around the peninsula. 21
The Municipality of Hunter’s Hill did not derive its name from Thomas Muir; of that there is strong historical evidence. While there is no absolute evidence that it was named for Captain Hunter, the name did not come out of thin air, and Hunter is manifestly the most likely origin.
Dr Beverley Sherry is an Honorary Associate of the University of Sydney and author of Hunter’s Hill: Australia’s Oldest Garden Suburb, a history commissioned by the Hunter’s Hill Council for Australia’s bicentenary.
Notes
JRAHS: Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society
HRNSW: Historical Records of New South Wales
1. Don Beresford, “Was it Thomas Muir or John Hunter?” Bunk (Journal of the Hunter’s Hill Historical Society), vol.8, Issue 1 (February, 2008), pp. 2-5; this paper is a transcript of Beresford’s address to the Society on 3 December 2007.
2. On Muir’s life, see John Earnshaw, Thomas Muir Scottish Martyr. Studies in Australian and Pacific History No. 1 (Cremorne, NSW, 1959) and Earnshaw’s entry on Muir in the Australian Dictionary of Biography online; H.T. Dickinson’s entry on Thomas Muir in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online; Michael Donnelly, Thomas Muir of Huntershill (Bishopbriggs, Scotland, 1975) and Donnelly’s entry on Thomas Muir in Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals, ed. Joseph A. Bayllen and Norbert A. Gossman (Hassocks, Sussex, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 330-34; Christina Bewley, Muir of Huntershill (Oxford, 1981); and Jonathan Wantrup, The transportation, exile and escape of Thomas Muir (Melbourne, 1990), a translation, with Notes and Introduction, of Histoire de la Tyrannie du Gouvernement Anglais, exercee envers le celebre Thomas Muir, Ecossais (Paris, 1798).
3. Extracts of the letter were reprinted in HRNSW, vol. 2, p. 870. I am indebted to the University of Sydney Library for obtaining a copy of the Morning Chronicle letter of 29 July 1795.
4. Peter Mackenzie, The Life of Thomas Muir (Glasgow, 1831), p.33. Mackenzie’s biography has numerous mistakes and is generally regarded now as unreliable.
5. Maybanke Anderson, “The Story of Hunter’s Hill”, JRAHS 12 (1926): 142. This essay totally lacks references.
6. J.H. Watson, “Notes on Some Suburbs of Sydney”, JRAHS 13, Part 1 (1927): 25-27.
7. James Scott, “The Scottish Martyrs’ Farms,” JRAHS 46, Part 3 (1960): 166.
8. J.S.Cumpton, Shipping Arrivals and Departures Sydney 1788-1825 Parts I, II and II (Canberra, ACT, 1964), p. 29, where Muir is listed among the passengers; David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (London, 1798; repr. Adelaide, 1971), pp. 395, 399.
9. James Jervis, “The Origin of the Names in Port Jackson”, JRAHS 31 (1945), 397 and “Settlement in the Parish of Hunter’s Hill”, JRAHS 46, Part 4 (1960), 187-88.
10. Isadore Brodsky, Hunter’s Hill 1861-1961 (Sydney, 1961), pp. 9-11.
11. P.R. Stephensen and Brian Kennedy, The History and Description of Sydney Harbour (2nd ed., Sydney, 1980), p. 258; for the full account of the question, see pp. 255-59.
12. HRNSW, vol. 2, Appendix F pp. 821-86.
13. Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, p. 457.
14. Bunk, vol. 9, Issue 2 (April 2009), p. 1 and vol. 9, Issue 3 (June 2009), pp. 1, 3.
15. Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, p. 457; Cumpton, Shipping Arrivals and Departures, p. 31.
16. Donnelly, Thomas Muir, pp. 7, 13.
17. Letter from Grose to the Rev. T.F. Palmer, 26 October 1794, HRNSW, vol. 2, p. 868.
18. Bewley, Muir of Huntershill, p. 122.
19. Beverley Sherry, Hunter’s Hill: Australia’s Oldest Garden Suburb (Balmain, NSW, 1989), pp. 18-25.
20. [New South Wales sketch of the settlements 20th August 1796] [cartographic material] / [by Governor Hunter].
21. George Raper, Chart of Port Jackson . . . Survey’d by Capt.n Iohn Hunter. . . 1788 [Mitchell Library]
Thomas Muir and the naming of Hunter’s Hill
Left to Right: Captain John Hunter, second governor of NSW. Thomas Muir, Scottish activist and convict.
by Beverley Sherry
Recently the notion that the Municipality of Hunter’s Hill derived its name from Thomas Muir’s Huntershill has been resurrected, suggested by Don Beresford in an address to the Hunter’s Hill Historical Society.1 Thomas Muir (1765-1799) was one of the five so-called “Scottish Martyrs” transported to New South Wales in 1794 for sedition.2 He and his fellow prisoners brought money with them and were not treated as felons. Two convict servants were assigned to Muir and he was able to purchase land. In a letter to a friend in London of 13 December 1794, he describes his situation in Sydney, and this description, followed by the complete concluding text of the letter, was published in the London Morning Chronicle of 29 July 1795.3 Muir writes: “I have a neat little house here [in Sydney town], and another two miles distant, at a farm across the water, which I purchased.” He does not name the farm, but Peter Mackenzie, in his 1831 biography of Muir states, without documentary support, that he called it Huntershill after his home in Scotland. 4 This has been repeated. In a 1926 essay, Maybanke Anderson quotes Muir’s letter (inaccurately); a fact not noted before is that she adds a sentence of her own: “This house I have called after my father’s house in Glasgow, ‘Huntershill’.”5 This too has been repeated.
The precise location of “two miles distant,… across the water” has been disputed. An early researcher suggested Milsons Point, but no records exist for the purchase of a farm there by Thomas Muir. 6 The individual researches of James Jervis and James Scott, both in 1960, cast doubt on this location. Scott quotes a letter from one of the other Scottish Martyrs, the Rev. Thomas Fysshe Palmer, of 15 September 1795, which refers to the dwellings of Muir, William Skirving (another Martyr), and himself: “our houses at Sydney are contiguous, as also our farms in the country”, and Palmer’s farm was accessed via Rozelle Bay.7
There is some doubt, then, over the location of Muir’s farm house. More importantly for the present enquiry, and whether Muir called his farm Huntershill or not, the name Hunter’s Hill (as two words) was used in government documents before Muir arrived in Sydney. As early as 3 October 1794, three government grants were issued in “the district of Hunter’s Hill”, whereas Muir arrived on the transport Surprize on 25 October 1794, coming ashore with the other Scottish Martyrs in November.8 So, when Muir arrived, the name Hunter’s Hill was already in use, and designated the high ground on the north shore, around Gore Hill.
These historical facts were pointed out by James Jervis in 1945 and again in 1960.9 Don Beresford takes no account of them, or of the most recent histories of Hunter’s Hill. The claim for Muir’s Huntershill has been repeatedly rejected: by Isadore Brodsky, in Hunter’s Hill, New South Wales 1861-1961(1961); by R. Hamilton in Hunter’s Hill Pre- 1835 (1970); by the Hunter’s Hill Trust in all four editions of their Heritage of Hunter’s Hill (1969,1977, 1982, 2002); by P.R. Stephenson and Brian Kennedy in The History and Description of Sydney Harbour (1978); by Meredith Walker & Associates in the Hunter’s Hill Heritage Study (1984); and by myself in Hunter’s Hill: Australia’s Oldest Garden Suburb (1989).
Brodsky devotes a subsection of his book to “The Myth of Thomas Muir.” 10 Stephensen deals with the question at greater length, and concludes: “There has been no need to seek such an odd and unconvincing explanation of the name Hunter’s Hill, which was in official and popular use, as a well-deserved compliment to Captain John Hunter, of H.M.S. Sirius, before Thomas Muir was ever heard of at Sydney.”11 I will consider the case for Hunter shortly, but the faulty history about Muir was given impetus by Maybanke Anderson’s essay of 1926. She was evidently ignorant of the land grants in “the district of Hunter’s Hill” of 3 October 1794, before Muir’s arrival. Lacking this knowledge and calculating that Muir had a farm at Milsons Point called Huntershill, she deduced that the suburb of Hunter’s Hill derived its name from Muir.
Dates alone preclude this derivation. Moreover, any name for Muir’s farm was hardly public knowledge. No mention of it appears in the lengthy collection of contemporary documents on “The Scotch Martyrs” preserved in the Historical Records of New South Wales. 12 Nor do Lieutenant- Governor Grose, Governor Hunter, or Judge-Advocate David Collins, in their reports on Muir, refer to a Huntershill. In his Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (1798), Collins records that Muir “chiefly passed his time in literary ease and retirement, living out of the town at a little spot of ground which he had purchased for the purpose of seclusion.” 13
Prompted by Don Beresford’s address to the Hunter’s Hill Historical Society, a suggestion has been made to erect a commemorative plaque to Thomas Muir in Hunter’s Hill; readers in Scotland who have accessed Beresford’s paper on the internet have also expressed enthusiasm. 14 Does Muir deserve this? First, historical facts prove that the name Hunter’s Hill predates his arrival. Second, there are no moral or civic grounds to warrant a memorial for him. What did Muir do for Australia? Despite his privileged life style, he absconded as soon as an opportunity arose. Sixteen months after his arrival, he escaped on 18 February 1796 by the American ship, The Otter, as recorded by Collins and the shipping records. 15
This is not to deny Muir’s eminence as a champion of human rights in the era of the French revolution. He was a radical ahead of his time, and is deservedly commemorated at the village of Huntershill near Glasgow and in the imposing monuments to the Scottish Martyrs in Edinburgh and London. As the Scottish historian Michael Donnelly shows in his biography of Muir, he was “a man of principle” in his practice as a lawyer, “prepared to take on the most unrewarding and difficult cases and even occasionally foregoing a fee when petitioned by a destitute client”; and his trial in Glasgow in 1793 was “a classic example of the political abuse of the judicial process.” 16 Donnelly records Muir’s transportation and his “uneventful” term of confinement in Sydney:
It was by means of this boat that he and his two convict servants managed to row out through Sydney Heads on the night of 17 February 1796 and were picked up the next day, at a predetermined site offshore, by The Otter. After tremendous hardship, Muir reached France, where he died in 1799, far too young at the age of thirty-three.
In his work in Scotland, Ireland, and France, Muir was a hero of the dispossessed and the downtrodden, but there is no evidence that he identified with or provided inspiration for the shackled convicts of Port Jackson or that he aired his ideas on liberty. In fact, upon their arrival, Lieutenant- Governor Grose ordered the Scottish Martyrs “to avoid on all occasions a recital of those politicks” which had reduced them to their present “unfortunate situation.” 17 So Muir lived, as Collins notes, away from the public eye. He and his fellow Martyrs were “gentlemen of leisure”, “pampered prisoners” (Stephensen, p. 258); as the historian Christina Bewley writes, they “were separated by education and background from almost the entire community.” 18
The question remains, where did the name Hunter’s Hill come from? It is unlikely that it was named for hunting in “the district of Hunter’s Hill”, where farming was carried on. The most likely origin is another Scot, Captain John Hunter, later Governor Hunter. This is now the general consensus, and what follows is based on my history of Hunter’s Hill. 19
In contrast to Muir, Hunter did a great deal for Australia. As Beresford acknowledges, one of his enduring legacies is as an artist and naturalist, a shining example of his work being The Hunter Sketchbook. From the first days of the settlement, Hunter contributed to the making of the colony. On 28 January 1788, two days after the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove, he set off in a six-oared boat to survey the harbour, an undertaking which took several months, was meticulously done, and involved not only continual depth soundings but careful observation of the Aborigines; the latter is invaluable information recorded in Hunter’s Journal (1793). Parts of the harbour were named after Hunter’s officers and are so indicated on his chart – Bradley’s Head for Lieutenant Bradley, Ball’s Head for Lieutenant Ball; Hunter Bay is also marked, although this later became known as Balmoral Beach.
[Detail, Deputy Surveyor General’s Plan of the Settlements in New South Wales (1796). “Hunters Hill” then designated land north-east of Lane Cove. Thirty-three farms are marked, numbered 14 to 46. In the complete plan, their acreage (25 to 30 acres) and owners’ names are listed. Thomas Muir is not named anywhere on the plan nor does his supposed farm at Milsons Point, Huntershill, appear. Reproduced from Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. 3, fold-out following title page.]
The name Hunter’s Hill, however, went into permanent usage. The high ground which was known as “the district of Hunter’s Hill” before Thomas Muir arrived in Australia is clearly marked on Hunter’s map of the New South Wales settlements preserved in the Mitchell Library. 20 “Hunters Hill” is written in Hunter’s small, neat handwriting on the area of today’s Gore Hill, “Mount Hunter” in the area of Camden. When the County of Cumberland was divided into parishes in the 1830s, the name Hunter’s Hill shifted to designate the land between the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers and as far west as Ryde. When the Municipality of Hunter’s Hill was formed in 1861, the name moved eastwards, to define the municipality.
Hunter was less than successful in the difficult job of Governor of the colony (1795-1800), but he achieved much as a navigator, cartographer, and explorer, whether sounding the depths of the harbour, recording his observations about the Aborigines, tramping through bush and wading through swamps from Pittwater to Middle Harbour, or bringing back provisions from the Cape of Good Hope in 1789 to the starving colony. In 1788, he and his assistants, in that six-oared boat, were the first Europeans to lay eyes on the area now known as Hunter’s Hill, and his chart shows thirty depth soundings around the peninsula. 21
The Municipality of Hunter’s Hill did not derive its name from Thomas Muir; of that there is strong historical evidence. While there is no absolute evidence that it was named for Captain Hunter, the name did not come out of thin air, and Hunter is manifestly the most likely origin.
Dr Beverley Sherry is an Honorary Associate of the University of Sydney and author of Hunter’s Hill: Australia’s Oldest Garden Suburb, a history commissioned by the Hunter’s Hill Council for Australia’s bicentenary.
Notes
JRAHS: Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society
HRNSW: Historical Records of New South Wales
1. Don Beresford, “Was it Thomas Muir or John Hunter?” Bunk (Journal of the Hunter’s Hill Historical Society), vol.8, Issue 1 (February, 2008), pp. 2-5; this paper is a transcript of Beresford’s address to the Society on 3 December 2007.
2. On Muir’s life, see John Earnshaw, Thomas Muir Scottish Martyr. Studies in Australian and Pacific History No. 1 (Cremorne, NSW, 1959) and Earnshaw’s entry on Muir in the Australian Dictionary of Biography online; H.T. Dickinson’s entry on Thomas Muir in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online; Michael Donnelly, Thomas Muir of Huntershill (Bishopbriggs, Scotland, 1975) and Donnelly’s entry on Thomas Muir in Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals, ed. Joseph A. Bayllen and Norbert A. Gossman (Hassocks, Sussex, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 330-34; Christina Bewley, Muir of Huntershill (Oxford, 1981); and Jonathan Wantrup, The transportation, exile and escape of Thomas Muir (Melbourne, 1990), a translation, with Notes and Introduction, of Histoire de la Tyrannie du Gouvernement Anglais, exercee envers le celebre Thomas Muir, Ecossais (Paris, 1798).
3. Extracts of the letter were reprinted in HRNSW, vol. 2, p. 870. I am indebted to the University of Sydney Library for obtaining a copy of the Morning Chronicle letter of 29 July 1795.
4. Peter Mackenzie, The Life of Thomas Muir (Glasgow, 1831), p.33. Mackenzie’s biography has numerous mistakes and is generally regarded now as unreliable.
5. Maybanke Anderson, “The Story of Hunter’s Hill”, JRAHS 12 (1926): 142. This essay totally lacks references.
6. J.H. Watson, “Notes on Some Suburbs of Sydney”, JRAHS 13, Part 1 (1927): 25-27.
7. James Scott, “The Scottish Martyrs’ Farms,” JRAHS 46, Part 3 (1960): 166.
8. J.S.Cumpton, Shipping Arrivals and Departures Sydney 1788-1825 Parts I, II and II (Canberra, ACT, 1964), p. 29, where Muir is listed among the passengers; David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (London, 1798; repr. Adelaide, 1971), pp. 395, 399.
9. James Jervis, “The Origin of the Names in Port Jackson”, JRAHS 31 (1945), 397 and “Settlement in the Parish of Hunter’s Hill”, JRAHS 46, Part 4 (1960), 187-88.
10. Isadore Brodsky, Hunter’s Hill 1861-1961 (Sydney, 1961), pp. 9-11.
11. P.R. Stephensen and Brian Kennedy, The History and Description of Sydney Harbour (2nd ed., Sydney, 1980), p. 258; for the full account of the question, see pp. 255-59.
12. HRNSW, vol. 2, Appendix F pp. 821-86.
13. Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, p. 457.
14. Bunk, vol. 9, Issue 2 (April 2009), p. 1 and vol. 9, Issue 3 (June 2009), pp. 1, 3.
15. Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, p. 457; Cumpton, Shipping Arrivals and Departures, p. 31.
16. Donnelly, Thomas Muir, pp. 7, 13.
17. Letter from Grose to the Rev. T.F. Palmer, 26 October 1794, HRNSW, vol. 2, p. 868.
18. Bewley, Muir of Huntershill, p. 122.
19. Beverley Sherry, Hunter’s Hill: Australia’s Oldest Garden Suburb (Balmain, NSW, 1989), pp. 18-25.
20. [New South Wales sketch of the settlements 20th August 1796] [cartographic material] / [by Governor Hunter].
21. George Raper, Chart of Port Jackson . . . Survey’d by Capt.n Iohn Hunter. . . 1788 [Mitchell Library]