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Mr. Bingham, Murrumbidgee
The Sydney Herald 19 August 1840
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The weather during the winter has not been very wet, occasional rains
with moist, foggy and damp nights. The growing wheat crops look healthy and vigorous; and to this period,
promise well; indeed, with truth, it may be aserted,
that it would be impossible for growing crops to look better. The frosts have been very severe and sharp during (at intervals) the
two last months. The catarrh has been very destructive in the flocks of
several sheep proprietors in this quarter lately; so much so, indeed, as to
be almost certain ruin to the parties travelling with sheep, if the greatest
care be not taken. Sad and numerous are the complaints made by many against the Border
Police, for pressing (as it is ludicrously called) any horses they may
require; to hunt the bushrangers? O, no to hunt the blacks? No, why so
stupid, the Border Police, like the 10th don't fight. Now I guess it, to hunt
up assessments. We have a Commissioner with a salary taken out of our pockets of £450
per annum; the greater part of whose time is taken up at "Head Quarters,
Tumut," filling up assessment notices, and three or four louts from Hyde
Park Barracks, ycleped police, to serve them; riding Government horses which
we pay for while they last; and when they are knocked up they go to Mr.
Barber's station in the vicinity of the Hume River, and press a horse, the
property of the late Mr. John Hume, which is likewise knocked up and left at the
Oven's River; -and pray what is going on at the "Oven's," all this,
assessment serving and writing time ? That shall be answered from an extract
of a letter lately received from that quarter – "The blacks have played
the very devil with the whites on the Ovens, particularly at Doctor Mackey's;
they were twice at my place, but the only actual harm they have done has been
the scattering of my cattle. I only saw two head of the lot that went up. I
now sincerely wish that I had kept my cattle nearer home. It is a miserable
situation men are placed in that quarter - not certain when they may be
murdered and cut up by these savages. Dr. Mackey's loss is not much short of £400." And pray what were
Major Nunns's peelers at the Hume and Broken Rivers
about all this time. They were left without a Commissioned Officer for
months, perhaps years together, 360 miles from Sydney; they might as well,
nay better be at Gibraltar, the Colonists would save
their expense at any rate. Mr. Bingham is generally considered by the squatters and settlers to
be a man of good intentions, but certainly by no means qualified for his
present situation. It requires firm behaviour and
decision of character, even to settle the almost continual bickerings and encroachments, more to prevent ligitation than otherwise. Indeed the Colonial Treasury
ought to almost groan beneath the burden of the £5 fee system, required by
the Act of Council, which this officer is bound to exact of the parties
against whom he decides. His quarterly returns must be large on this score.
Why was this gentleman removed from "Cassilis"
in the name of wonder? The three or four aborigines he committed for trial could not be
identified by the witnesses, at Yass, and after the additional trouble and
expense of sending them to Sydney, they were of course discharged by
proclamation in the Supreme Court, and all this useless ceremony, required
three or four mounted policemen and that too at the very period that Whitton's desperate gang were robbing and plundering all
before them, and this very circumstance was made an excuse at the time for
not going after them while they were drunk, carousing and fighting among
themselves at Papps's public-house. It is very much
to be wished, that when the estimates for the year are before the Council
that Messrs. Jones and H. and J. Macarthur will ask the Government before
they vote one farthing more, what earthly protection such a force is to the
tax-paying people among whom the two latter gentlemen are included, one fault
certainly is that the district is by far too large for any one man properly
to manage. If two commissioners were appointed at £225 each, it would be much
better for the inhabitants residing in the district called and described by
the Governor's proclamation, as the Murrumbidgee, one here and another at the
"Ovens," the expense would not be greater. Annexed is a rough
calculation, the Government cannot surely complain of the want of money;
clearly there is a credit due to us of £2,480.
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