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The Editors of this narrative, some months since, received from Mr. W. J. Dew the journals of his grandfather, Sergeant Dew, with the request that if they were likely to be of interest to the public, the Editors would put them into the form of a book and have them published.

The papers were submitted to the Editors, whose names appear with this work, on the ground that one of them is a personal friend of the present Dew family, and both of them are well acquainted with the localities and the events referred to by the Sergeant.

Sergeant Dew, before his death, left instructions that should his descendants at any time determine to make public his remarkable narrative, everything that could possibly cause pain to any person living might be withheld from the printer.

As a matter of fact, the Editors found nothing in the papers the publication of which could cause anyone a moment’s feeling of annoyance; but any attempt made now to disguise the principal characters in the story would be futile, for the New South Wales Government has published, in a work called The Historical Records of New South Wales, nearly every fact here related.

In fact, a short account of the Bryants’ escape so far as the official knowledge of it goes — is to be found in most of the so-called histories of the Colony.

This being the case, the Editors determined to give the narrative as it stood, with only one reservation, and that is in the case of the name of Fairfax, which name is a fictitious one; for the family whose ancestor was the officer who is known in the book under this name, might possibly object to being thus brought before the public. Some slight alterations have also been made in the English portion of the narrative in order to disguise the exact locality of the early scenes in Mr. Dew’s life.

It is only fair to the Editors to reproduce here a part of Mr. Dew’s letter, written by him, after reading the MS. of the work: —

“You have performed your task in a manner very gratifying to me. I quite agree with your change of—’s name to Fairfax, and with your change of locality. I see you have corrected some of my grandfather’s English and spelling. He was a little weak in the last particular, and some of his English would, of course, be too much out of date in these days of foreign words.

“I am, yours gratefully, W. J. Dew.”

The Editors express their indebtedness to the Historical Records above mentioned, and to Mr. Barton’s volumes in particular, for much information which enabled them to verify facts and dates in this narrative. The conspicuous ability of Mr. Barton’s work has enabled them to gain a knowledge of Phillip and his principal officers that, taken with Sergeant Dew’s papers, has portrayed to their minds a vivid picture of the men. The necessity for curtailment, and the lack of ability on the part of the Editors, are the excuses offered to the reader, if he, when he has read this book, has not a fair idea of what manner of men they were. The Historical Records of New South Wales are largely indebted to Philip Gidley King, Esq., M.L.C., of New South Wales, for much of what is published in them relating to King. The present Mr. King is a grandson of Lieutenant King, and he very generously presented his country with many of his grandfather’s papers. These documents have been of great use in preparing Mr. Dew’s narrative. Much that is purely history in Sergeant Dew’s journal has been of necessity omitted from this narrative; but if sufficient interest is taken by the public in what is here printed, plenty of material is contained in the Dew papers to make another book of the Sergeant’s early adventures, in which the matters related would bring to light many things never before published.

Sir Henry Parkes, while this was being prepared for the press, was severely attacked by certain “patriotic” members of the New South Wales Assembly for having ordered from England a statue of Phillip, to be erected in Sydney.

It may appear strange to English readers that while there is more than one statue of Cook in Sydney, it is scarcely known to the majority of the Australian people that Phillip was the man who founded their country and that Cook was never inside the Heads of Port Jackson.

The school histories of the Colony are beneath notice, and the few men who have written anything of the country’s early days, such as Bonwick, Bennett, or Barton, are never read. It is safe to say that not one man in a thousand has the remotest idea of the early history of New South Wales, beyond the fact that a number of convicts were transported to it something over a hundred years ago. Great injustice has been done to the early founders of the Colony by forgetting them; greater injustice still is too often done to them when they are remembered. For what has hitherto been written and read about the very early days has been, with few exceptions, stories depicting the cruelties of the punishments inflicted upon the convicts. The felons have always been the heroes and the authorities the villains of the piece. Nearly everyone who has written has followed the lead of Marcus Clarke. The result is that his powerful novel, and true enough picture of one side of the case — His Natural Life—has been the only point of view most readers are acquainted with. As a consequence, the men have been mistakenly blamed for the errors of the system, and no allowance has been made for the times in which the events described took place. A maudlin sympathy with the convicts has become the only impression too many people have of the times; they have no thought for such men as Phillip and King, whose great hearts conquered the prejudices of their times and strove to look upon their duties as less those of gaolers than reformers. And, above all, everyone seems nowadays to have overlooked the fact that the men who came prisoners to this country in the very early days were, for the most part, criminals who had forfeited their lives to their country’s laws. In a word, they had, as they put it among the class from which they were drawn, “got into trouble,” and we are apt, so great is our sympathy for these prisoners, to forget that no one asked them to do so. For it was only the ancestors of persons now living who were sent out for poaching and political crimes and such like trifles. Everyone who knows Australia must have learned that all the convicts who are remembered by people at this end of the century were really quite decent people; the records show that those who came in the last century were generally the worst of felons.

If this narrative of a man who lived among these people, and saw them as it were from two points of view, does not enable readers to look at both sides, as Sergeant Dew did, and if the story lacks interest, it is not the fault of Sergeant Dew’s journal.

The Editors

Sydney, June, 1895.