Читать книгу Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott - Страница 83

John Hunter, originally so enthused, found his inspiration waning as he became embroiled in a power struggle with the hustler-in-chief of the officers of the NSW Corps, John Macarthur.

Having arrived in 1790 with a young family as part of the main body of the NSW Corps on the notorious Second Fleet, and highly ambitious with it, John Macarthur did much of the work under Grose, and later Paterson, to expand cultivation and make things highly lucrative for the officer cartel. Stationed at Parramatta in the rural hinterland, he had repeated run-ins with Reverend Marsden on policing convicts’ morality and other matters of order, decorum and discipline, and they cordially despised each other.

When Hunter first arrived on the scene he had been highly impressed with Macarthur’s capacities, but as time went on his doubts began to grow. Macarthur was an individual who was so intensely driven as to occasionally border on the sociopathic. He had a tendency to take any snub or rebuff as a good excuse to launch furious vendettas. He did exactly this when Hunter questioned some of his practices. Hunter and the NSW officers (the ones who sided with Macarthur at least — others continued to remain very close to Hunter) were soon at each other’s throats.

Hunter looked around for allies and found that the angry Evangelicals, Johnson and Marsden, were ready to step into the new feud. Hunter invited them to send examples of monstrous excess that the NSW Corps officers’ regime had committed to the Colonial Office. The reverends were more than happy to oblige. More outraged reports about the corrupt, debased and much abused state of the colony of NSW followed.

In 1800, Hunter was recalled to Britain in mild ignominy — his administration had proved largely inept. Worst of all, he hadn’t cut expenses. Getting approval from the reverends didn’t alter the impression of a governor with no real control and with many of the NSW officers against him.