By Louise Schwartzkoff
SOME call him the ''father of Australia,'' but to Glenda Chalker and her family, Governor Lachlan Macquarie is the man who ordered the slaughter and imprisonment of her ancestors 200 years ago.
History came full circle when Ms Chalker, from Pheasants Nest, met the NSW Governor, Marie Bashir, last week at a bicentennial commemoration of Macquarie's governorship. At Barragal Lagoon near Menangle, the place where Ms Chalker's forebears once danced for Macquarie and his men, the two women spoke of Macquarie's mixed legacy.
Ancestors welcomed Macquarie but were later murdered . . . three generations of the Chalker family at the Barrigal Lagoon, near Menangle, where the early colonial meeting occurred.Credit: Dallas Kilponen
In 1816, after a series of violent incidents between the settlers and her ancestors, Macquarie sent soldiers to drive the Dharawal people from their land.
He recorded his orders in his diary: ''I therefore, tho, very unwillingly felt myself compelled, from a paramount sense of public duty, to come to the painful resolution of chastising these hostile tribes.
''In the event of the natives making the smallest show of resistance … the officers commanding the military parties have been authorised to fire on them to compel them to surrender; hanging up on trees the bodies of such natives …. in order to strike the greater terror into the survivors.''
Men, women and children were shot, while others were driven to their deaths over cliffs.
Later, Ms Chalker's great-great-great-grandmother, Giribunger, was taken from her family and placed in the Parramatta Native Institution, built by Macquarie. ''People praise him for building a school for Aboriginal children, but really he put policies in place to take children away from families,'' she said. ''Policies that were perpetuated by [later] governments.''
Professor Bashir said bicentennial events should acknowledge all aspects of his legacy. ''We admire the way Macquarie turned history around and set a direction for the colony, but we also need to take into account what it meant for the Aboriginal people.''
DEADLY ENCOUNTERS
1810 Governor Lachlan Macquarie and his men camped at Barragal Lagoon. They gave the local Dharawal people alcohol and watched them dance and sing.
1814 Macquarie opened the Native Institution at Parramatta to ''civilise, educate and foster habits of industry and decency in the Aborigines''.
1816 On Macquarie's orders, soldiers slaughtered men, women and children of the Dharawal people. Official figures say 14 people died. Some historians believe the death toll was far higher.
1819 Giribunger, or Nanny, was taken from her family and placed in the Native Institution. Later, her father brought her home.