A note before you read: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names and images of people who have died.
If you walked down to the water at Sydney Cove in the 1820s and a ship had just come through the Heads, there was a good chance you would see a fishing boat pulling out to meet it, rowed by two women, with a tall man in an old red military coat and a cocked hat standing up in it. That was Bungaree, also written Boongaree or Boongarie, a Broken Bay man who was probably the best-known person on the streets of early Sydney. Long before he became the town's famous greeter, though, he had done something nobody else born on this continent had done: he sailed all the way around it with Matthew Flinders in the Investigator, and the Dictionary of Sydney calls him the first Australian to circumnavigate Australia.
He sailed with Flinders twice, with Phillip Parker King once, worked as a go-between at the new Newcastle settlement, was handed a farm at Georges Head and a brass plate by Governor Macquarie, and had more portraits painted of him than Macquarie himself. He died at Garden Island in November 1830 and was buried at Rose Bay. This is his story, as far as the records let us tell it.
Early Life – From Broken Bay to Sydney
Bungaree was born around 1775. The sources agree he came from Broken Bay, north of Sydney, but they describe his people a little differently. The Dictionary of Sydney, written by historian Keith Vincent Smith, calls his group the Brisbane Water people and says they brought their Garigal or Karegal language with them when they settled on the north shore of Port Jackson. Wikipedia, drawing on Smith's book Mari Nawi and on Paul Irish, says his father was possibly of the Garigal clan and his mother likely an Awabakal woman from the lower Hunter River. That Hunter River link turns out to matter later in his life.
Sometime in the 1790s he moved down to the growing settlement at Sydney. The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) describes him as an "Aboriginal leader, guide, explorer, and cultural mediator", and the BBC put it simply: he became a central figure in the new colony, able to move between his own people and the newcomers.
To Sea with Matthew Flinders
Norfolk Island, 1798
The first written trace of Bungaree at sea is a line in the muster book of HMS Reliance: "Nanbarry, Wingal, Bongary, Port Jackson for a Passage to Norfolk Island, 29 May 1798". The Dictionary of Sydney says it was a 60-day round trip, and that on it the young naval lieutenant Matthew Flinders met Bungaree and came to respect him. Nanbaree, the Cadigal youth listed beside him, was another keen Aboriginal sailor.
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The Norfolk – Bribie Island and Hervey Bay, 1799
In 1799 Flinders took Bungaree on a six-week survey up the coast to Bribie Island and Hervey Bay in the Norfolk, which the Dictionary of Sydney describes as a 25-ton decked longboat. Flinders relied on Bungaree's knowledge of Aboriginal protocol and his skill as a go-between with the coastal people they met.
Wikipedia, quoting historian Bronwen Douglas, says the people they met kept seeking Bungaree out rather than Flinders, and that the Moreton Bay people probably took Bungaree for the leader of the expedition and the white men for his followers. At one meeting he gave them a spear and spear thrower and showed them how to use them, which Douglas calls a gesture of give-and-take between equals rather than one of rank.
Not every meeting went well. On Bribie Island a dispute over a hat ended with the sailors firing on the local Djindubari people, and Bungaree later reported two men were wounded. The spot became known as Point Skirmish. The settlement that grew up nearby was named Bongaree after him, and the ADB also notes the town on Bribie Island that carries his name.
Fifteen years later, in A Voyage to Terra Australis, Flinders wrote that Bungaree's "good disposition and open and manly conduct had attracted my esteem."
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Around Australia in the Investigator
When Flinders set out to chart the whole coast in HMS Investigator, he took Bungaree again. Nanbaree came too, but according to Wikipedia he got homesick at the Cumberland Islands and went back to Sydney on a supply ship. Bungaree stayed.
Historian Keith Vincent Smith told the ABC, as quoted by the BBC, that "He chose the role of a go-between" and that by "taking off his clothes and speaking to people in the very top end of Australia, could mollify the indigenous people who were about to attack the sailors." Dr Gillian Dooley of Flinders University pointed out that it was brave of him, because he was in uncharted country too. The BBC also notes Bungaree was the only person on board who had been born in Australia (even Trim, the famous ship's cat, was born at sea), and that Flinders mentioned his kindness to Trim in his memoirs.
Wikipedia says Bungaree helped arrange peaceful meetings at places such as K'gari, Shoalwater Bay and Caledon Bay, and that he was on board when the expedition met Pobasso and his Makassan fleet of trepang (sea cucumber) fishermen off Arnhem Land. With the crew falling sick with scurvy, Flinders put into Dutch Timor, then hurried round the rest of the coast, back to Port Jackson. The BBC says the ship arrived home in June 1803.
Newcastle and the Hunter River
Between the voyages Bungaree was tied up with the convict settlement at the mouth of the Hunter River. The Dictionary of Sydney says he was there when the first settlement was set up in 1801, and Surgeon John Harris wrote to Governor Philip Gidley King that "Bonjary ran off ... and has since not returned". Wikipedia reads that as Bungaree leaving the British to be with his mother's people.
In May 1804 he escorted six Aboriginal men back home to the Hunter from Sydney in the ship Resource. The commandant, Lieutenant Charles Menzies, valued his help in catching runaway convicts and called him "the most Intelligent of that race I have as yet Seen". It came at a terrible price. In October 1804 Menzies reported that convicts had taken revenge by killing Bungaree's father "in the most brutal manner". Wikipedia notes that many of the convicts at Newcastle that year had been sent there after the Castle Hill rebellion. It says he probably stayed in the Newcastle area until around 1808.
About this time he took his first wife, Matora. The missionary Lancelot Threlkeld recorded that mut-tau-ra meant "small snapper" in the Newcastle–Lake Macquarie language, which she probably spoke.
Macquarie, Georges Head and the Brass Plate
Bungaree found his great patron in Governor Lachlan Macquarie. In 1814 Macquarie wrote to Earl Bathurst outlining what he called an "Experiment towards the Civilization of these Natives", and the Dictionary of Sydney says Bungaree was a key figure in it.
On 31 January 1815 Macquarie reserved land and put up huts at Georges Head, on the north shore near today's Mosman, for Bungaree and his people to "Settle and Cultivate". The Aboriginal name for the headland is given as Gurrugal. They were given a fishing boat, clothes, seeds and farm tools, and convict instructors according to the ADB. Elizabeth Macquarie added a sow and pigs, a pair of Muscovy ducks and outfits for Matora and their daughter. The ADB counts fifteen people in the group and says they were installed with a feast, but adds plainly that "the group did not take to farming and the venture failed."
What was a "king plate"?
At the feast Macquarie hung a crescent-shaped brass plate around Bungaree's neck. The Dictionary of Sydney calls it a "breastplate or gorget", and plates like this are often known today as "king plates". Put simply, it was a badge handed out by the colonial government. The name and title engraved on it were chosen by the governor, not by Bungaree's own people, which is why the ADB is so blunt about the wording.
Bungaree's plate read "Boongaree, Chief of the Broken Bay Tribe, 1815", according to the Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia (citing archaeologist Val Attenbrow). The ADB doesn't mince words and calls it "a completely fictitious title". He was also called "King of Port Jackson" and "King of the Blacks", and that is where the common name "King Bungaree" comes from. You can see the plate on his chest in Earle's portrait.
He wasn't just playing along, though. When the Russian navigator Bellingshausen visited in 1820, Bungaree told him: "These are my people … This is my shore". The Dictionary of Sydney suggests this can be read as a claim to the land on the north shore of Port Jackson.
One More Voyage – With Phillip Parker King, 1817
In his forties Bungaree went to sea again, this time with Phillip Parker King, son of the old governor, who had orders to survey the north and west coasts. King wrote that Bungaree was "about forty-five years of age, of a sharp, intelligent and unassuming disposition, and promised to be of much service to us in our intercourse with the natives."
The little cutter Mermaid left Port Jackson on 22 December 1817, called at Twofold Bay, went through Bass Strait and followed the Great Australian Bight to King George Sound at Albany. The ADB says he helped make contact with Aboriginal people in north-western Australia, was quick to read their intentions and was good at spearing fish. The botanist Allan Cunningham, also on board, called him "our worthy native chief" and praised "the character of this enterprising Australian", which the Dictionary of Sydney points out is a very early use of the word "Australian".
John Paul Janke of the National NAIDOC committee told the ABC that King's journals record the crew asking Bungaree whether they could eat a plant, and Bungaree saying he didn't know it, so maybe they shouldn't. There is a good yarn too. When the Mermaid called at Timor, Wikipedia says Bungaree jokingly demanded the change he had never got for a glass of gin he had bought there back in 1803.
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The Greeter of Sydney Harbour
Back home, Bungaree became the face of Sydney. The Dictionary of Sydney paints the scene: as soon as a ship came through the Heads he would arrive in his fishing boat, rowed by two of his wives, climb aboard in an old military jacket, tattered trousers and his trademark hat, and welcome the newcomers to "his" country. He would doff his hat, bow deeply, ask to drink the captain's health in rum or brandy, then look over the ship's pantry and collect his "tribute" in the form of presents or "loans".
Governors and officers gave him their cast-off uniforms and he lived and slept in them, the ADB says. He spoke English well, had a sharp sense of humour and could take off the walk and mannerisms of every governor from Hunter to Brisbane. Historian Geoffrey Dutton summed it up nicely: "He mocked the white men by mocking himself." The Sydney Gazette had called him back in 1804 "a native distinguished by his remarkable courtesy".
He met the great explorers of the day, including Bellingshausen and the French navigators Dumont d'Urville, Lesson and de Bougainville. Bellingshausen wrote that Bungaree "has always been noted for his kindness of heart, gentleness and other excellent qualities and has been of great service to the colony", and that he "often endangered his life in his efforts to keep the peace within his tribe". The BBC, quoting Sydney Barani, says he also took part in corroborees and ritual battles and traded fish to look after his own community.
When Macquarie left in February 1822, he went out to the Georges Head farm on his last day to say goodbye and introduce Bungaree to the new governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, who promised a new fishing boat and nets.
Eighteen Portraits
Bungaree was painted and drawn more than almost anyone in the early colony. The Dictionary of Sydney counts 18 portraits and other images, against only two or three of Macquarie. The artists included Augustus Earle, Pavel Mikhailov, Jules Lejeune, Charles Rodius, Phillip Parker King, John Carmichael and William Henry Fernyhough. Art historian David Hansen, quoted on Wikipedia, says his were among the first full-length oil portraits painted in the colony and the first to be published as a lithograph.
The most famous is Earle's 1826 oil at the top of this page. Smith describes "an air of genuine nobility" in it, with Bungaree standing on the heights of The Rocks above Fort Macquarie and the ships of the Royal Navy's China Squadron off Bennelong Point.
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His Wives and Children
Bungaree had several wives. Matora was his first, and the Dictionary of Sydney says that when he died he was buried "beside his dead Queen", meaning Matora. The ADB and the BBC both name Cora Gooseberry as his principal wife, given the title of queen. Born Carra or Kaaroo, she was the daughter of Moorooboora, leader of the Murro-Ore clan, and after Bungaree's death she became a well-known figure in the Sydney streets herself, until she died in 1852. She has a page of her own on this blog, linked at the bottom.
Watch out for one popular story. The wife names "Onion, Boatman, Broomstick, Askabout and Pincher" come from fiction writer John Lang, in an 1859 piece in Charles Dickens's magazine All the Year Round. Smith points out that in the same article Lang has Bungaree imitating Governors Darling and Gipps, and Gipps didn't arrive until after Bungaree was dead.
His eldest son was Bowen or Boin, then Toby (also Toubi or Joe), plus a daughter and a son named Boio, nicknamed Long Dick, described as "a son of Bungaree and Queen Gooseberry". Bowen succeeded his father, wore his gorget, and, according to Wikipedia, sailed to San Francisco during the California gold rush. He died in Sydney in 1853.
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His Last Years and Death
In 1828 Bungaree and his people moved their camp to the Government Domain, where a writer saw him "in the last stages of human infirmity" and commented that "Bungaree is identified with Sydney and something ought to be done to make his few remaining days easier". Age, alcohol and poor food had taken their toll. He was ill for months during 1830, was admitted to the General Hospital and put on rations.
He died at Garden Island on Wednesday 24 November 1830, "in the midst of his own tribe and that of Darling Harbour, by all of whom he was greatly beloved". He was buried in a wooden coffin at Rose Bay, beside Matora. The Sydney Gazette reported his death, and the BBC quotes its tone, praising "the facetiousness of the sable chief" and his gifts "over those of the generality of his race", which shows how even the praise carried the attitudes of the day.
A few months later a painted portrait of him went up on the sign of the King Bungaree public house in Clarence Street, and the Gazette reported that many Aboriginal people gathered to point at their old leader.
The missing skull
There is a sad postscript. In 1824 the French naturalist Lesson wrote that Bungaree had shown him his skull, badly scarred by club blows. In December 1857 the Sydney Morning Herald listed "skull of 'King Bungaree'" among donations received by the Australian Museum. The Museum has told Smith it has no record of receiving it and doesn't hold it. If it was his, his grave at Rose Bay must have been dug up 27 years after he was buried. Smith suggests it may instead have been Bowen's, and that it could have ended up in Vienna through the Austrian Novara expedition, which collected remains in Sydney in 1858. Nobody knows for sure. Wikipedia adds that a box containing an Aboriginal man's skull was dug up on Rose Bay beach in 1919, and that Rose Bay was an important Aboriginal burial ground.
Remembering Bungaree
- Bongaree on Bribie Island, Queensland, is named after him.
- Boongaree Island off the Kimberley coast was named for him by Phillip Parker King.
- Norah Head on the Central Coast was first called Bungaree's Norah, and Bungary Road there is named after him.
- Bungaree Road in Toongabbie carries his name.
- HMAS Bungaree, a cargo ship turned minelayer, was commissioned at Garden Island in 1941, where he had died 111 years earlier.
- A Sydney Ferries Emerald-class ferry was named Bungaree in 2017.
- In 2019 the BBC noted that there were statues of Flinders and even Trim the cat but none of Bungaree. Wikipedia reports that a sculpture honouring him, together with Flinders and Trim, was unveiled at Bongaree on Bribie Island on 28 November 2023.
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Timeline
- c.1775 – Bungaree born around Broken Bay, north of Sydney.
- 1790s – Moves to the settlement at Sydney.
- 29 May 1798 – Listed in HMS Reliance muster for a passage to Norfolk Island; meets Matthew Flinders.
- 1799 – Sails with Flinders in the Norfolk to Bribie Island and Hervey Bay.
- 1801 – At the founding of the Hunter River settlement; leaves the party.
- 1802–03 – Circumnavigates Australia with Flinders in HMS Investigator; back in Port Jackson June 1803.
- May 1804 – Escorts six Aboriginal men home to the Hunter in the Resource; works for Menzies at Newcastle.
- Oct 1804 – His father is killed by runaway convicts.
- c.1804–08 – Takes his first wife, Matora; stays in the Newcastle area until about 1808.
- 8 Oct 1814 – Macquarie outlines his 'Experiment' to Earl Bathurst.
- 31 Jan 1815 – Macquarie sets aside land at Georges Head; Bungaree receives his brass plate.
- 22 Dec 1817 – Sails with Phillip Parker King in the Mermaid.
- 1820 – Welcomes Bellingshausen's Russian ships; 'This is my shore'.
- 1822 – Macquarie says goodbye at Georges Head and introduces Governor Brisbane.
- 1826 – Augustus Earle paints his famous portrait.
- 1828 – Moves his camp to the Government Domain.
- 24 Nov 1830 – Dies at Garden Island; buried at Rose Bay.
- 1836 – Fernyhough publishes profile portraits of Bungaree and Cora Gooseberry.
- 1852 – Cora Gooseberry dies.
- 1857 – A skull said to be his is listed as donated to the Australian Museum.
- 1941 – HMAS Bungaree commissioned.
- 2017 – Sydney ferry Bungaree named.
- 28 Nov 2023 – Sculpture unveiled at Bongaree, Bribie Island.
Where the Sources Disagree
- His people. The Dictionary of Sydney calls him one of the Brisbane Water people with a Garigal or Karegal language. Wikipedia describes him as an Awabakal man, with a father possibly of the Garigal clan and an Awabakal mother from the Hunter. You will also see him called Guringai, but none of the sources I used for this page use that name.
- The Investigator dates. The ADB says he sailed in 1801–02. The Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia say 1802–03, and the BBC says he was recruited in May 1802 and the ship came home in June 1803.
- First to circumnavigate. The Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia say he was the first Australian-born person to sail around the continent. The ADB is more careful and says he "may have been".
- The voyage with Phillip Parker King. The ADB says 1817. Wikipedia says 1818. The Dictionary of Sydney gives the departure as 22 December 1817, so it started in 1817 and ran into 1818.
- His age. The Dictionary of Sydney says he was 42 when he sailed with King, but King himself guessed "about forty-five".
- The plate's wording. The plate says "Chief", not "King". "King Bungaree" was a popular name, and the ADB calls the title on the plate fictitious.
- His 'queen'. The ADB and BBC name Cora Gooseberry as his principal wife and queen. The Dictionary of Sydney says he was buried beside "his dead Queen", Matora.
- Where he died. The ADB just says he died after a long illness. The Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia name Garden Island.
- The skull. The 1857 Herald notice says the Australian Museum received it, the Museum says it has no record of it, and Smith suggests it may have been Bowen's.
My Earlier Posts
- Cora Gooseberry – Queen Gooseberry – Widow of Bungaree – Sydney 1777–1852
- Australian Explorers – Matthew Flinders
- Matthew Flinders – Famed Adventurer Died A Pauper After Years At Sea
- The Castle Hill Rebellion – Battle of Vinegar Hill – 5 March 1804
- Devonshire Street Cemetery – The Burial Ground Under Central Station
- The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point to Fort Macquarie
- Manly – From Kai'ymay and Phillip's 'Manly Cove' of 1788
- Governors Of New South Wales From 1788 To 2016
- Assorted Drawings Of Old Colonial Sydney Town
Sources
- F.D. McCarthy, "Bungaree (c. 1775–1830)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, revised 11 July 2025 – adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bungaree-1848
- Keith Vincent Smith, "Bungaree", Dictionary of Sydney, 2011 – dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/bungaree (citing the HMS Reliance muster, Flinders' A Voyage to Terra Australis 1814, Historical Records of Australia, Threlkeld 1834, Barratt 1981, P.P. King's Narrative, Macquarie's journal and others)
- "Bungaree: Indigenous man who helped Flinders explore Australia", BBC News, 25 January 2019 – bbc.com/news/world-australia-47000518
- "Bungaree", Wikipedia, accessed 15 October 2026 (citing K.V. Smith, Mari Nawi 2010 and King Bungaree 1992; B. Douglas 2014; V. Attenbrow 2010; D. Hansen 2007) – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungaree
- Keith Vincent Smith, King Bungaree: A Sydney Aborigine meets the great South Pacific Explorers, 1799–1830, Kangaroo Press, 1992 (as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney)
- Image details from the Wikimedia Commons file pages linked under each picture
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