Pemulwuy, The Rainbow Warrior – Eric Willmot

September 20, 2023 at 20:12 | Posted in books | Leave a comment
Tags: eric willmot, pemulwuy, willmot

The company I work for recently opened a new logistics centre in Pemulwuy, a suburb west of Sydney. Hence ‘I’m just heading over to Pemulwuy’ is an often heard refrain around the office, as well as people asking how to spell it. There was some discussion about the name, and we learned that Pemulwuy was the name of an Aboriginal leader and warrior who fought against the British colonisers who arrived on the First Fleet. Intrigued to know more, I bought this book by scholar and academic Eric Willmot. It is a novelisation of Pemulwuy’s life; based on a well researched history but retold as a narrative.

It is truly an extraordinary story about an extraordinary man. Pemulwuy was a leader of the Eora nation, from the Sydney region, but over his life he united many neighbouring Aboriginal groups in the fight against the British.

If you are ever tempted into that sanitised, revisionist version of Australian history that pretends there was never a war between the British and the First Nation people, this book will remind you of just how bloody and brutal that period of our history was. As the colonists remorselessly spread out from Sydney, killing Indigenous people and appropriating and clearing their land for livestock or crops, Pemulwuy led a fierce resistance, fighting back by burning crops, killing livestock and evading the many search parties and soldiers who were sent to capture or kill him. He was thought to have almost supernatural abilities, and on many occasions evaded capture or survived injuries that should surely have been the end of him.

His luck finally ran out in 1802 when he was shot by a British fighter, Henry Hacking.

I found the first quarter of this book a little hard going, to be honest – the writing style is a bit pedestrian and it took a while to get into. But as the story unfolds it becomes quite gripping. It certainly offers a very personal and different perspective on those early years of the colony.

One thing I also did was look up Eric Willmot. He died quite recently in 2019, and was a truly remarkable man. As an inventor he held a string of patents; he was a great education leader, a broadcaster and writer as well as an Aboriginal leader. I could find very little to read about his life – surely someone can see fit to write his biography?