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Portrait (signed "W.W.") thought to depict Bennelong.

Bennelong (c. 1764 - 3 January 1813) was a senior man of the Eora, an Aboriginal (Koori) people of the Port Jackson area, at the time of the first British settlement in Australia, in 1788. He subsequently served as an interlocutor between the two cultures, both in Sydney and in the United Kingdom, later marginalised and died in obscurity.

Bennelong (married at the time to Barangaroo) was captured with Colbee (married to Daringa) in November 1789 as part of Governor of New South Wales Arthur Phillip's plan to learn the language and customs of the local people. Like another captive, Arabanoo, Bennelong soon adopted European dress and ways, learning to speak English. Bennelong is also known to have taught George Bass the language of the Sydney Aborigines, and, in a gesture of kinship, gave Phillip the Aboriginal name Wolawaree.

Although a captive, Bennelong served the British colonisers well in an (ultimately vain) attempt to aid relations between the two groups. In 1790, Bennelong asked the Governor to build him a hut on what became known as Bennelong Point, now the site of the Sydney Opera House. This site is still named for him, as is the Division of Bennelong seat in the Federal parliament.

Although Bennelong appears to have had an ambivalent relationship with both the settlement and Governor Phillip, Bennelong and another Aborigine named Yemmerrawanie travelled with Phillip to England in 1792, and were presented to King George III on 24 May 1793. Yemmerrawanie died while in Britain, and Bennelong's health deteriorated. He returned to Sydney in February 1795 on the same ship that took surgeon George Bass to the colony for the first time. He taught Bass some of his language on the voyage.^[1] Increasingly overwhelmed by European culture, Bennelong quickly became alienated from his own people after this return.

Bennelong was long troubled by the consumption of alcohol. He frequented Sydney less often and eventually died at Kissing Point (now known as Ryde, in Sydney’s North West) on 3 January 1813. His obituary in the Sydney Gazette^[2] was unflattering, referring to him as a thorough savage unable to be warped from that form, which presumably reflected where he had sunk to in the esteem of white society in his last years.

1. ^ Miriam Estensen, The Life of George Bass, Allen and Unwin, 2005, ISBN 1-74114-130-3.
2. ^ Sydney Gazette, 9 January 1813, quoted in More Pig Bites Baby! Stories from Australia's First Newspaper, volume 2, ed. Micahel Connor, Duffy and Snellgrove, 2004, ISBN 1-876631-91-0