The Colony: A History of Early Sydney

by Grace Karskens

The Colony is the story of the marvelously contrary, endlessly energetic early years of Sydney. It is an intimate account of the transformation of a campsite in a beautiful cove to the town that later became Australia's largest and best-known city. From the sparkling beaches to the foothills of the Blue Mountains, Grace Karskens skillfully reveals how landscape shaped both the lives of the original Aboriginal inhabitants and newcomers alike. She traces the ways in which relationships between the colonial authorities and ordinary men and women broke with old patterns, and the ways that settler and Aboriginal histories became entwined. She uncovers the ties between the burgeoning township and its rural hinterland expanding along the river systems of the Cumberland Plain. This is a landmark account of the birthplace of modern Australia, and a fascinating and richly textured narrative of people and place.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Australia, Research

540 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Grace Karskens is Professor of History at the University of New South Wales. Her book The Colony: A History of Early Sydney won the 2010 Prime Minister’s Award for Non-fiction and the US Urban History Association’s 2010 prize for Best Book.

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

For three glorious weeks with this book, I was immersed in the world of early Sydney. It's not the shortest book, but I still wasn't ready for it to end.

Which is not to say it was a pleasant read. In particular, Karskens well researched and empathetic account of the war on the Cumberland plain is a very tough read. Karskens eschews the more common historical approaches of either denying the extent of the devastation caused to local communities by white settlement, or by blaming that devastation on individuals or isolated racist actions. Instead, she portrays a struggle over resources, by entwined communities based on very different understandings of law (and morality), and driven forward by a hunger for profitable land. Having just finished a Phryne Fisher before reading this, it was perhaps starker to me that that common fantasy, of the enlightened wealthy person adjusting history slightly so no-one suffers, bears little relationship to actual history.

Karskens people come alive, she finds that rare balance between implying people of a different time and culture were just like us, and making them so foreign as to be inexplicable. Most importantly, her early Sydneysiders, the powerful and the powerless, women and men, convicts, officers and civilians, indigenous and foreign, don't come across as naive or stupid. Karskens goes looking for the logic in their decisions, based on the information they had available to them, and the culture they reflected. her approach allows for diversity, between groups and within them, and in doing so presents a more coherent narrative.

The biggest joy of the book is the sense of place and location. Written by someone who has clearly wandered down George Street thinking "what did people in this place before me think?", Karskens brings Sydney locations - the Rocks, Windsor and the Hawksbury, Hyde Park, Botany Bay, Paramatta an ad many, many more to life as living histories. Through constructing how these places were experienced, she has created a compelling and in put-down-able history.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book. I always loved Sydney, for all its problems, and lived there for 12 years. It is where most of my best friends are, and where all my extended family came from. I grew up in a newer city, an almost but not quite post-colonial capital, and longed for terrace houses and trains and sandstone and swimming coves. This book is so sad, really. It must have been a paradise before the English arrived. I wondered through the first two thirds at the lack of detail in each chapter about the original inhabitants, the Eora, but the last third of the book is all about Aboriginal people so she does get there in the end.

I started this n 2018, then had to return it unfinished to its owner. Three years later I finally finished over a 2.5 month lockdown, just a little bit at a time. You’d think lockdown would be great for reading, but that doesn’t factor in parenting and schooling young children while working supposedly full time. So for me finishing this book has been a big commitment. It’s been worth it.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karskens brings the past alive with her lyrical writing. I love how she makes connections between primary evidence and draws conclusions or paints pictures as to how the largely voiceless lived. My only quibble: there are footnotes to nearly every point except that claiming Manning Clark recanted his claim of the drunken licentious behaviour when the female convicts landed. Where did he recant?

Karskens opens our eyes to the history of contact and dispossession. And gives names and identities to First Nation peoples.

[hayls 🐴 · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite pastimes is imagining and reconstructing aboriginal/early colonial Sydney in my head using books like this which paint such a vivid and intricate picture of that time. It’s done a lot for deepening my connection to this place and understanding my position in it, and is especially interesting as I am involved in restoration of bushland and am learning the different ecologies of the Cumberland Plain. Really immersive read.

[Talei · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book made me incredibly emotional. Lived in Sydney my whole life and there is so much I didn't know about this city and its history. Idk I'm honestly speechless at the level of detail of this book and how totally engrossing it is. It's a must read for any Sydneysider.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a stupendous book. It's also massive. On the cover, a professor praises Karskens' 'meticulous scholarship' and 'literary flair'. Those phrases sum up the book's key virtues. Karskens is a brilliant scholar because of her careful analysis of the evidence. When she describes a part of Sydney, or makes an argument about its history and meaning, she quotes extensively from the primary sources and carefully explains what they mean. Her scholarship is never bothersome or intrusive. She is a sane and common-sensical writer. And her prose his crisp and clear.

Her aim is to tell a multi-perspectival history of Sydney. Each chapter tells a different part of the story, and has different characters. One chapter tells the geological history of Sydney, for example, while another describes the experiences of early convict women and another the escalation of the frontier wars between 1804 and 1817.

It is this bottom-up approach that makes The Colony so marvellous. Each chapter introduces a new Sydney. For this Sydneysider the book was revelatory. Karskens reveals how many layers of history lie on every scrap of earth in our city. I particularly like her focus on different suburbs and villages, that are rarely part of the big epic stories we tell about the invasion and settlement of Australia. I now know how Mamre Road got its name, for example, how aboriginal art began to include cattle around modern Campbelltown, and why Windsor was once known as 'Green Hills'.

Karskens has walked or driven all over Sydney, and many of the illustrations in The Colony are her own photos. It is thus more than a history—it is also a memoir, a love-letter written by a longtime resident to her hometown.

It is a terribly sad story. The history of aboriginal dispossession in Sydney went on far longer than I realised. It is also miserable to discover how the settler elite tried, normally successfully, to extinguish the convict heritage. But The Colony as a whole is optimistic. Karskens shows how adaptable and dynamic aboriginal culture was (and is). Aboriginal people developed new 'lifeways' and aspirations and were important citizens of Sydney from the start. She also retells many of the old forgotten stories about convicts and women and the Sydney environment, and has herself done much to bring them back into circulation.

[Jackson Capper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carefully balanced between thorough detail and broad comprehensiveness. Karskens didn't force modern political ideals where they don't belong. It would do wonders for the Australian conscience if it were part of the national curriculum. If it were due for another edition, I would recommend the inclusion of relevant paintings where they were discussed.

This was a much needed recognition of the struggles of the British convicts and the Naval Officers who battled the natural elements in isolation, and suffered tremendously to establish a nation taken for granted.

[Johnthorpe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Letting my history geek side run free but I really enjoyed this - well written, beautifully illustrated and adds a different dimension to how I look at Australia.

[Cedric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading history but it is very rare that I encounter a history book that is a like a page turner novel. I powered through this book, wanting to know what happens next; not in the sense of events and outcomes - I knew those - but in the sense of what new insights and angles the author could unveil on a well known historical period. Karskens tells the history of Sydney in the first 30 years of the colony, from the arrival of the First Fleet to the governorship of Lachlan MacQuarie. A story that pays deep attention to the environment - how it shaped and conditioned the early settlement, how the settlers responded to it (far more positively than the received wisdom), how it nurtured indigenous resistance and resilience and plebian 'cultures of resistance"; that places the agency of the convicts and emancipists at the centre of the settlement story and fully incorporates the indigenous peoples as actors within the history of a shared space. Karsken's writing has changed my perceptions of the early colony substantially, and I can see how her narrative can be made even more sense of with the incorporation of a world-systems perspective. Highly recommended. I want to find her book on The Rocks to read.

[Patricia]

I couldn’t rate a book I found wonderful but didn’t finish. The early chapters about Pre-European Sydney Cove were wonderful. I have never found such a compelling description about the way the different Indigenous societies around the place where the Europeans settled were organised, their land boundaries, their differences and how they adapted and didn’t adapt to to the invaders. Grace Karskens describes Sydney Cove as a European and Indigenous town. Europeans made use of Indigenous paths for their roads, Indigenous people continued living alongside the new settlers and shared some of the structures and supplies. And then there came a time when they didn’t. European settlement expanded and didn’t work with Indigenous needs and agreements. I found it fascinating.

But the book then moved on to the distribution of land to European settlers and I have recently read this in other books covering this subject so I lost interest.

[Michael Lever · Rating 4 out of 5]

A magisterial work, but curiously bifurcated. Although the first and final four chapters focus on Aboriginal peoples, the bulk of the book seems wholly emic to the white colonist experience. The nuances of colonial life and achievements are examined in detail, yet with no sense that each new venture described takes place on appropriated land. I doubt one could ever get away with writing even just chapters in this manner, regarding a western country that had been invaded, whose population was dispossessed and whose colonists depicted themselves as starting from scratch.

[Jeannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comprehensive review of the first 50 years of Sydney's history. Much more balanced than many previous attempts based in part on the author's willingness to look very broadly for evidence of what was really happening.
Apparently she has been criticised for the amount of attention she gives to the Aboriginal experience of the establishment of the new colony - which I find bizarre, since they were the pre-existing residents.
Not a light read, but an incredibly valuable addition to the genre.

[Julia Gilchrist · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rare 5 stars from me. This book is the absolute #1 to read to understand Australia's colonial Sydney settlement and first contact. Grace Karskens is an historian/archaeologist/anthropologist with a fine eye for social history. Smooth, confident narrative, clear explanations and detail, with excellent image plates. I loved this book because it felt immediate, vernacular with intelligence and insight and I came away understanding just so much more about our shared history.

[Henrietta Cheshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book for it’s an incredibly in-depth look into the history of early Sydney.

[Dulcie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very special work of monumental scholarship. Thank you Professor Karskens for your most emphatic contribution to our history.

[Greg Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best histories of early Sydney I've read. Looking forward to her history of the Hawkesbury

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply excellent…A wonderfully nuanced analysis of early Sydney that goes way beyond the accounts of the big ‘names’ from that time.

I will be moving swiftly onto her book on the Hawkesbury.

[Mark Cully · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishingly beautiful, vividly captures the porous and fluid boundaries between two utterly different cultures, and the ensuing pain inflicted by one upon the other.

[world boo · Rating 5 out of 5]

All history needs to be written like this. Grace Karskens’ braiding of poetry and rigorous historical research is unmatched.

[Tanya Tyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read bits and pieces of this as required for work over the last couple of years but decided to do the cover to cover approach to get a better sense of the overall story...and apart from having to lug the huge tome around (I had a hard cover version) I am so very glad I did. Grace Karskens depicts the people of early Sydney with a real humanity, not just as historical figures or dry 'facts'...although you will find many scholarly pieces of information in there as well. I loved the landscape approach to talking about Sydney. I loved the inclusion of a perspective of Aboriginal people, women and convicts. I was entertained by the way the personalities of the various officers were drawn out of the writings they had left behind. She asks many pertinent questions and even imagines what might have been which made reading so much information interesting and engaging. Being personally quite familiar with many of the places she wrote about I found a renewed zest for getting out into country and walking around...methinks there are many historic houses, tours and landscape wanderings coming up over this Christmas break:)

I believe this will be one of those books that I will read gain and again throughout my life.

[Jaqui Lane · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a terrific book.
If you think you know about the interaction between Indigenous people and early settlers in Sydney and surrounds, think again. Read this book.
Beautifully written with strong academic and thorough research.
It will be especially interesting for those of you who live in and around Sydney, the Hawkesbury River, Parramatta and Blue Mountains. This is your story, your history perhaps not the one you thought you knew.
Can highly recommend it, and have already shared it. This post has reminded me that I must get my copy back!

[Doug Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent treatise of early Sydney, Karskens descriptions of the relationship between the early settlers / convicts and the indigenous people is very sensitive and helps to provide a better understanding of them, would have been better with coloured illustrations.

reviewed Weekend Australian 26/7/2009 by Cassandra Pybus

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intelligent and thoughtful