Escaped convict William Buckley spent three decades living with the Wathaurong before becoming a colonial mediator
Convict William Buckley survived thirty years among the Wathaurong after escaping in 1804, later returning to the British and acting as an uneasy go-between before dying in Hobart.
Born in Cheshire in 1780, William Buckley was convicted of burglary and transported to Australia, joining the 1803 Port Phillip settlement. When the colony collapsed, he escaped alone and was rescued by two Wathaurong women, entering their community on the Bellarine Peninsula. Over the next thirty years he learned their language, married a Wathaurong woman, fathered a child, and survived two smallpox epidemics while providing the tribe with intelligence about the growing British presence.
In 1835 he resurfaced among settlers, disclosed a planned Indigenous attack on John Wedge’s camp, and attempted to serve as a mediator, though colonists doubted his loyalty and the Wathaurong regarded him as an outsider. After receiving a pardon, he tried to ease frontier tensions, later relocating to Hobart, marrying a widow in 1840, and publishing his story with journalist John Morgan. His grave was later destroyed, yet his name endures in the expression “Buck’s chance.”
Why it matters
The story illustrates early Indigenous-colonial interactions and the ambiguous role of a convict who bridged two cultures in Australia’s frontier era.
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