A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson

In 1788, a young Marine captain named Watkin Tench stepped ashore at Botany Bay and witnessed the birth of a nation. His account, republished here with Tim Flannery's introduction, is the first classic of Australian literature, a work that transforms dry colonial records into something approaching literature. Tench possessed what Les Murray called "the classic contemporary witness of our beginnings": an Enlightenment mind unburdened by the arrogance that blinded so many of his contemporaries. He documented the daily struggles, starvation, disease, and the brutal labor of carving civilization from bush with curiosity and surprising humor. But what elevates this account beyond mere historical record is Tench's genuine fascination with the Indigenous people he encountered. He recognized their intelligence, observed their customs with respect, and questioned the assumptions that would underpin centuries of colonization. This is history written by someone who was there, who looked closely, and who refused to simply damn the place. Two centuries later, his voice still crackles with life.