Johnny and Rachael Baswick

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Sources

Johnny and Rachael Baswick c1820s to 1880s

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website contains images and names of deceased persons.

A plaque commemorating Johnny and Rachael Baswick was placed on 2 June 2026 on the frontage of Rose Bay Park. The guest speaker was Dr Paul Irish; a transcript of his speech(PDF, 132KB) is available. Well-known in the emergent eastern suburbs of nineteenth century Sydney, Johnny and Rachael were Aboriginal custodians through their cultural practice and connection to Country, and central figures to the group of men and women who looked to them for leadership. 

View of Rose Bay on 2nd June 2026, the day of the plaque unveiling.

Plaque location

The plaque is located on the frontage of Rose Bay Park on New South Head Road, Rose Bay.

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In the second half of the nineteenth century, as the European population of New South Wales underwent a steep and relentless surge, Aboriginal people faced new pressures posed by the alienation and development of the land. The trend was especially marked in the emergent coastal suburbs of metropolitan Sydney. During this period, Johnny and Rachael Baswick emerged as leaders of a group of Aboriginal people who continued to be part of Eastern Sydney, interacting with European settlers and demonstrating their determination to preserve key aspects of traditional Aboriginal life.

Rose Bay and environs by the late 1880s - extract from the Municipal Map of Woollahra, Higginbotham and Robinson c1889. Woollahra Libraries Digital Archive M000002

Johnny Baswick - also known as Bankie - was an Aboriginal man of the coastal belt south of Port Jackson and Botany. His birth date has not been ascertained, and nor have the birth and death dates of his wife, Rachael. However, historian and archaeologist Paul Irish has estimated their lives spanned the period from the 1820s to 1880s, and since Johnny’s death was registered in 1880 with the note that he was aged 56,[1] his year of birth can be estimated as 1824.

Paul Irish’s research has confirmed that Johnny and Rachael’s son Freddy attended school in the Shoalhaven district in the early 1870s, and the family travelled the coastal belt between Sydney and the Shoalhaven throughout their lives.[2]

In Sydney, a number of locations in the east held especial significance for Rachael and Johnny Baswick. Rose Bay, a place of traditional ceremony and practice, was also for Johnny and Rachael a place to fish – as was Rushcutters Bay, where an established Aboriginal settlement remained in place in the 1870s.

A Herald contributor of 1930, recalling the Eastern suburbs of sixty years before, described the skilled fishing of Aboriginal men on the harbour foreshores, in the instance related using a variation on the traditional four-pronged fishing spear, which were customarily equipped with spikes of sharpened animal bone or marine shell fragments. The writer, a W H East, describes a resourceful adaptation, a hybrid of two worlds – a spear that was ‘about ten feet long [with] three prongs made of umbrella wires, barbed at the points, and tightly bound to the end of the spear.’ East observed,

The aboriginals were amazingly expert spearmen, standing on rocks above the water, and with spear poised to strike, they seldom failed in their unerring aim. ("Sixty years ago." Sydney Morning Herald 15 February 1930 p. 13)

Since elsewhere in this memoir East twice mentions Baswick by name, as ‘Pankey’, there is every chance that the expert spearmen he remembered were Baswick and his group. Baswick was also likely to have been among the Aboriginal fishermen noted by East to have supplied the household at Woollahra House with fish and oysters.[3]

What East described was part of an 1870s continuum of Colonial and Aboriginal relations, as European settlers had, from the first, recognised and deferred to the superior knowledge and methods of the Aboriginal community when fishing the local waters.

Image from a postcard view of the swampland connecting Rose Bay and Bondi, c1905. Woollahra Libraries Digital Archive PF006256

Across the reed swamp that stretched from the head of Rose Bay to the sea lay Bondi – another locality associated with Johnny and Rachael. Here their prowess in the surf was noted by a local Bondi resident of the 1870s who, because of their example, was encouraged to ‘pioneer’ surfing as a boy. In 1924 he would state: 

I suppose if proof was required, surfing and bathing in the open sea could be put down as the healthiest recreation known to man ... And yet, as far as 'Bondi the Beautiful' is concerned, it was almost unknown to the white people till about fifty years ago [1874]). Yes, it was about fifty years ago on a bright summer's day, that a party of we boys stood on the Bondi Beach, watching the blacks, who were camped at Ben Buckler, enjoying the ocean waves, with their wives and children. Bankey, Timmy, Sandfly, Tilly, Rachael and others. And how we made them laugh when we would join in a corroboree with them. Said one of the boys 'If the sharks do not touch them, what about us?' 'So you may say that was the start of surging at Bondi. (A R Stone recorded in 1924, quoted in 'The Centenary of the Municipality of Waverly', pp 138-139.)

As well as relationships like these, formed incidentally through shared experiences, and informal trading or gifting of seafood supplies, Johnny Baswick created other intentional relationships with European residents of the Eastern suburbs area, paying calls on households such as William Bede Dalley’s at Clairvaux in Vaucluse and the Clarke family at North Bondi.[4] It was an important part of his leadership, forging connections that might be hoped to weather uncertain times and support the group he led.  This was a strategy used in the colonial environment by Aboriginal leaders of earlier years, such as Bungaree and Karoo (Cora Gooseberry).

View north-eastwards across Rose Bay from New South Head Road. Clairvaux, with its distinctive three-storey square tower, is visible on the horizon. Woollahra Libraries Digital Archive PF004786

Attempts to pinpoint exact locations associated with the lives of Aboriginal people can be misguided, with misrepresentation easily occuring, especially with the passage of time. Notwithstanding this, is it worth cautiously noting the accounts of some writers of the 1920s and 1930s.

A R Stone’s account of Rachael and Johnny Baswick at Bondi refers to them camping at Ben Buckler, at the northern end of Bondi Bay.[5] W H East’s memoirs, published 1930, relate that there were two locations in the 'Bellevue Hill bush' that were known for Aboriginal occupancy: ‘one on the side overlooking Edgecliff and Double Bay tennis courts, and the other the intersection of South Head-road at Victoria-street [sic].'[6] There has been some conjecture in more recent times that East was confusing Victoria Road Bellevue Hill with Victoria Street in Kings Cross, given Johnny and Rachael Baswick's known connection with the nearby Rushcutters Bay settlement.

However, if we interpret East's account as referring to two camps on Bellevue Hill, one on either side of the Victoria Road ridgeline, then the Baswick family's connection to this locality can be viewed through the prism of East's understanding. 

Elsewhere in his memoir, East refers specifically to the Cranbrook property, which is located at the intersection of New South Head Road and Victoria Road and writes of Johnny and Rachael:

In those days Cranbrook grounds were partly scrub, and surrounded by a dilapidated paling fence. Look at Bellevue Hill to-day and try to vision a typical Australian bush that sheltered a small tribe of aboriginals, who were its only inhabitants, and absolutely loyal to their king Pankey and his queen Rachael. ("Sixty years ago." Sydney Morning Herald 15 February 1930 p. 13)

The other significant leadership role that fell to Johnny and Rachael Baswick was to keep cultural practice alive for family and extended family. It is notable in this regard that the Baswick’s son Freddy has been credited as responsible for certain rock engravings at Point Piper.[7] While this claim should be acknowledged with caution in the absence of further detail, the fact that this has been suggested supports the possibility that Freddy Baswick had an interest in tradition and the creation or preservation of artefacts.

Part of the rocky shoreline at Woollahra Point, 1985. Woollahra Libraries Digital Archive PF000774

While details of Rachael’s last years have not been traced, and the circumstances of Johnny’s death are unknown, he appears to have died in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, with his death registered at Waverley in 1880. 

In maintaining their connection with the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, Rachael and Johnny Baswick asserted their natural rights to fish the waters and occupy the land by their continuing presence and their demonstration of their culture. 

Sources

Australian Dictionary of Biography 

East, W H The Sydney Morning Herald 15 February 1930 p. 13. 

Dictionary of Sydney

The History of the Waverley Municipal District: published by the Council of the Municipality of Waverley (New South Wales) to commemorate its Centenary of Municipal Government (1859-1959)/comp. and ed. by B T Dowd. Syd., WMC, 1959.

Irish, Paul, Hidden in plain view, New South Publishing, 2017

Irish, Paul, Coast History & Heritage, Woollahra LGA Aboriginal Heritage Study, 2021

Smith, Keith, King Bungaree, Kangaroo Press, 1992