ABC News: Teresa Tan
)In 1789, a disease tore through communities around Sydney Cove, leaving dead bodies scattered along the shorelines. Some think this outbreak was a fire deliberately lit.
In the Sydney suburb of La Perouse, there is a little cove tucked away between a national park and the shipping containers of the city's industrial coast.
In the summertime, Frenchman's Bay, or Kamay, is usually swarming with kids in the water, the smell of hot chips, and the sound of planes taking off in the distance.
But hidden at the southern tip of the bay is a shallow cave, nestled under the road above.
"You wouldn't even know it's there, would you?" says local Aboriginal elder Aunty Barbara Simms, who grew up on a mission nearby.
"How much history is in there, how many stories [are] in there."
Today, the cave is littered with broken bottles, old roof tiles, and other scraps of rubbish. But it carries an important story.
For hundreds of years, caves like this were used by local Indigenous communities to quarantine people who became sick.
"[People] probably would've died here," says Aunty Barbara, a Bidjigal, Gweagal and Wandi Wandian elder.
"My father's ancestors would've been witness to it all."
And there's one disease outbreak that Aboriginal people will never forget — an outbreak so catastrophic it's thought to have killed at least half of the First Nations people living in the Sydney region.
"Where we're sitting, there would be spirits here … in the cave, the land, the ground.
ABC News: Teresa Tan
)The outbreak of 1789
The horror witnessed in caves like the one at La Perouse dates back to April 1789, 16 months after the First Fleet arrived in Australia.
Having first docked in Botany Bay, or Kamay, 1,500 British colonists and convicts moved around to Sydney Cove, or Warrane, where they established the first European settlement in Australia.
"We're aware through traditional knowledge that 11 boats arrived and were deemed similar to ‘floating islands'," says Nathan Moran, a Biripi Thungatti man and the CEO of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council.
Supplied: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
)In the early months of 1789, the bodies of Aboriginal people began to appear floating in Sydney Harbour.
"We've got several different accounts that said Aboriginal bodies were littering every crevice and cove of the harbour," says Worimi man John Maynard, Emeritus professor of Aboriginal History at the University of Newcastle.
Often, they were found in caves like the one Aunty Barbara showed us, alongside the remains of a small fire and some water.
Vice Admiral John Hunter, who would go on to succeed Arthur Phillip as New South Wales's second governor, spent much of his time surveying the coast and wrote about the outbreak.
"It was truly shocking to go round the coves of this harbour, which were formerly so much frequented by the natives, where in the caves of the rocks which used to shelter whole families in bad weather, were now to be seen, men, women and children laying dead …
… immediately deserted by their friends and left to perish in their helpless situation for want of sustenance."
Supplied: State Library of New South Wales
)At the time, Governor Phillip estimated that around half of the Aboriginal people living around Sydney Cove were killed during the outbreak. Estimates since have been much higher.
Today, enduring oral testimonies of Indigenous people tell of a catastrophe.
"The Aboriginal people called it ‘devil devil'," says Dharawal elder Uncle Shayne Williams.
Other names for the disease and its symptoms can be found in local languages, according to Professor Jakelin Troy, Ngarigo woman and director for Indigenous research at the University of Sydney.
"Aboriginal people came up with names for fevers and cold sweats, the marks that people who recovered ended up with on their bodies, and these words went all the way through into south-eastern Australia," Professor Troy says.
The mystery illness
The illness devastating Australia's First Nations people wasn't a mystery to the British, Professor Maynard says.
Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, was raging across the world. It was incredibly contagious and highly lethal.
Several accounts from colonists say it was smallpox affecting Aboriginal people during the outbreak.
Marines Officer Watkin Tench, for example, wrote of seeing pustules "similar to those occasioned by the smallpox".
Still, there's been debate about whether the disease was actually smallpox.
Dr John Carmody, then at the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Sydney, argued on the ABC in 2010 that the illness was actually chickenpox.
But Kabi Kabi man and public health expert Dr Mark Wenitong is one of many to insist that the evidence for smallpox is compelling.
"It looked like smallpox and acted like smallpox and the outcomes were high mortality rates like smallpox," he says.
Professor Maynard says the outbreak spread quickly as Aboriginal people tried to flee.
"It spread rapidly because [of] the incredibly rich trade, family and cultural networks that crisscross the country.
"Even decades later, the explorers going down the Murray came across all these bones of Aboriginal people.
"That's why a lot of the settlers were moving into areas with extremely low or no populations of Aboriginal people, because they were completely swept off with the impact of such a disease."
Supplied: National Museum of Australia
)Where did it come from?
How exactly smallpox came to be in Australia in 1789 has long been a source of contention, with only patchy historical records to draw from.
Some people on board the First Fleet were reported to have visible pockmark scars — a sign of previous infection.
But there are no reports that anyone was infected with smallpox on the way over.
"If you've got it, you have symptoms," Dr Wenitong says.
"So basically, you can't be an unknown carrier of smallpox."
Others have contended that smallpox may have arrived with two French ships in 1788, led by naval officer and explorer, La Perouse.
But the French left Botany Bay shortly after arriving in 1788, leaving a 12-month window between when they left and when the outbreak was first observed.
"There's potential that the French brought it, but the timelines don't fit well," Dr Wenitong says.
Some have even suggested smallpox came from Aboriginal trade with the Makassar tribes from the island of Sulawesi, now in Indonesia.
Supplied: Campbell Macknight
)But Dr Wenitong and Professor Maynard say there's no oral history of the outbreak originating in northern Australia, and low population density would have made it difficult for the virus to travel that far.
"It's hard to believe that after hundreds of years of trade with the Makassans, that [smallpox] suddenly travelled down from northern Australia to arrive in Sydney at that exact moment in time," Professor Maynard says.
They're even more sceptical of the theory that smallpox was already here before the British arrived.
"The British had experienced smallpox for hundreds of years," Professor Maynard says.
"They would clearly have recognised smallpox when they first arrived through pock marking on the population. They didn't recognise it until that outbreak."
Traditional knowledge and colonial accounts suggest Aboriginal Australians were in good health before April 1789.
Nathan Moran heard the stories passed down through his own family; everything changed with the First Fleet.
"My grandmother would always say, ‘Before they came, we did not have one ailment that we could not actually address, fix or remedy'.
Inside the vials
While there's no record of anyone on the First Fleet being infected with smallpox, there was something else onboard: bottles of smallpox variola matter.
The bottles belonged to First Fleet surgeon Dr John White, according to an account from Watkin Tench.
At the time, variola matter — essentially the pus and scabs of people who'd been infected with smallpox — was commonly used as a form of immunisation.
"They'd crush up that scabby, pus-y stuff and either inoculate it into the skin or up your nose," Dr Wenitong says .
Whether this kind of biological material could have survived the 250-day journey across the world's oceans has been long debated.
Some historians have argued it's unlikely the vials of smallpox remained viable because the First Fleet travelled through the tropics.
"There's been studies done on this … and [it] very much depends on temperature, humidity, and whatever the scabs … were brought in," Dr Wenitong says.
Even if warmer weather had destroyed some of the viral material, that wouldn't have necessarily rendered all of it useless, he says.
So, what happened to those bottles once the ships landed?
"We don't know," Professor Maynard says. "There's no further mention of it at all."
But some have a disturbing theory: the variola matter was used to deliberately introduce the virus to decimate the Indigenous population.
Supplied: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
)'It will never be solved'
Some historians disagree that smallpox was deliberately introduced.
It wouldn't, however, be the first instance of the British attempting biological warfare.
In 1763, British soldiers were thought to have been involved in giving blankets and a handkerchief contaminated with smallpox to Native Americans during an extended military campaign to quash an uprising against colonial rule.
Shortly after, the British General in charge of those troops, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, concocted a similar plan in a letter to a colleague:
Supplied: Public Domain
)For Dr Wenitong, the historical proximity of the North American incidents to the arrival in Australia is suspect.
"There were soldiers — or a soldier at least — who'd been involved in the wars in North America, who would have seen the Indians getting blankets with smallpox, which was well-documented biological warfare," he says.
The fact that no convicts or colonists were documented as having smallpox during the 1789 outbreak raises his suspicions further.
He says the use of biological warfare against Aboriginal people would not be inconsistent with the violence inflicted during the Frontier Wars.
"People may say, 'Oh, that's conjecture' — but it's not that much different from what they were doing by poisoning water holes or shooting people," he says.
"And when you think back to what some of the people were thinking at the time … whether we were human or not, some people thought everything was justified because we weren't part of the human race back then."
Professor Maynard similarly feels the fact that some First Fleet marines had served in North America during Pontiac's War, when considered in conjunction with the vials of variola matter, makes for a suspicious set of circumstances.
"There was the opportunity and there were people there who certainly had the experience," he says.
"Did that leave the opportunity to open up Pandora's box? It will never be solved … but certainly, with me, it fits with the catastrophe that happened."
Supplied: Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales
)Truth can build trust
Mr Moran's belief that smallpox could have been deliberately introduced is held by many Indigenous Australians today.
He says the introduction of diseases enabled the British to colonise many of its territories around the world — "take your muskets, your arsenic and don't forget your smallpox."
Uncle Shayne says it's important for Australians to look more closely at the 1789 outbreak.
Supplied: State Library of NSW
)Acknowledging the outbreak isn't just about better understanding Australia's past, Dr Wenitong says.
Transparency is an important step towards building trust now, especially in public health.
"If a lot of our people understand what happened back then as biological warfare, when health services now push things like vaccinations, there's going to be a relative degree of mistrust.
"This carry-over of historical mistrust … is actually significant."
Smallpox just the beginning
Regardless of where the disease came from — a question that may never be answered — the impact on Australia's First Nations people was devastating.
"One way or another, a pandemic occurred from a virus that was almost certainly introduced … and the results were disastrous for our people," Dr Wenitong says.
From 1789, a wave of diseases swept out from Australia's British settlements.
Influenza, measles, tuberculosis, and a raft of sexually transmitted diseases eventually made their way here too.
It's not known how many Aboriginal people lived in Australia prior to 1788, but early estimates were in the hundreds of thousands.
Economic historian Noel Butlin put it at around 1 million people — but it seems that number quickly fell.
"Butlin estimated that only 60 years after the British arrival, the Aboriginal population of Australia was decimated by somewhere between 60 to 90 per cent," Professor Maynard says.
ABC News: Teresa Tan
)A 'testament to resilience'
The fact that First Nations Australians have survived "such an onslaught" is a testament to their resilience, Professor Maynard says.
"We're still here. We still retain who we are, where we come from … and certainly [we] carry our pride.
"We are connected to this country. Always was, always will be."
But alongside the survival of First Nations people is an ongoing legacy of suffering.
Historical disease outbreaks have had a lasting impact, Professor Troy says.
"Whether people were deliberately infected, or whether it happened incidentally … in the end, the effect has been the same: our changed living circumstances, our inability to continue much healthier lifestyles."
Supplied: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW
)Today, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians face lower life expectancies, higher infant mortality rates, and higher rates of physical illness and psychological distress.
"As an Aboriginal man — I'm 67 this year — I'm a long-liver," Professor Maynard says.
"That's the reality … we all have lost so many friends and family members far too young."
Australia's progress on closing this health gap has been very slow.
"We continue to wallow in the worst health statistics carried in this country. And it all leads back to that initial moment," Professor Maynard says.
‘You'll never break us'
Aunty Barbara hopes to learn more about what happened to her ancestors.
She believes understanding the pain of her ancestors, and their resilience, can help her people begin to heal.
"We are still fighting as Aboriginal people to be treated as equals.
"You will never take the Aboriginality or the blackness out of me. You will never take my spirit away from me.
"We, the people, you won't break us. You might bend us, but you'll never break us."
ABC News: Teresa Tan
)This story comes from Patient Zero, an eight-part series about disease outbreaks. Listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.
Credits:
Editor and digital producer: Annika Blau
Executive producer: Joel Werner
Photography: Teresa Tan
Videography: Dayvis Heyne
Archival material: National Museum of Australia/New South Wales State Library
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2021-06-06 19:00:00Z
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