Читать книгу Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott - Страница 99

Governors in this period of British colonial rule generally turned up at the various tin-pot little outposts they’d been assigned to, imposed His Majesty’s will as much as they reasonably could, then got out (with hopefully a promotion), and headed off to the next assignment. The list of governors who began to identify with the interests of the colonists, against the British Government’s orders, is about as short as your little finger. Shorter even.

To start with, Macquarie seemed to have had no intention of varying this pattern. Having spent 30 years with the military, and seen postings that took him from New York and Charleston in the American Revolution through Jamaica to various battles and cities in India, his chief concern when being assigned to NSW was that such a distant and unimportant posting would mean he’d be overlooked for any upcoming promotions. But then, after arriving, the bizarre happened. He fell in love with the place, with the new kind of world that people were making in NSW.