Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names and images of people who have died.
Colbee (Colebee, Coleby or Coalby) was a senior Cadigal man from the south side of Sydney Harbour. On a November day in 1789 he was grabbed off the beach at Manly with Bennelong and dragged to Sydney on Governor Phillip's orders. Within weeks he'd slipped his shackle and got away, still wearing an iron ring round his leg. He was there at the whale feast at Manly in 1790 when Phillip was speared. He made his own peace with the Governor, went exploring with the officers out to the Hawkesbury, and turns up again and again in the journals of Watkin Tench and David Collins until he fades from the record after 1806. He's often lost in Bennelong's shadow, and he's often mixed up with two other men of the same name, including the Colebee of Richmond who was given land at Blacktown in 1816. This page tells what the sources say about Colbee himself, and where they're thin I'll say so.
Who Was Colbee?
Colbee was Cadigal (Gadigal). The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) says his Country "ran along the eastern shores of Port Jackson, from South Head to Darling Harbour", and Keith Vincent Smith in the Dictionary of Sydney puts it in "the present eastern suburbs of Sydney". Colbee said it himself. On an expedition in 1791 Tench heard him call out to strangers in the bush, "I am Colbee, of the tribe of Cadigal."
Tench liked the sound of the name. He wrote that it was "pronounced exactly as Colby is with us", and the convict artist Thomas Watling said it was a common name around Sydney. Midshipman Newton Fowell of HMS Sirius wrote his full names down as "Gringerry Kibba Coleby". Smith explains that "Gringerry" referred to the cuts across a man's chest, and that "Kibba", meaning a rock or stone, marked a man who'd had a front tooth knocked out at initiation. Daniel Southwell called him "Kebada Colby". Smith thinks his totem was probably the white-bellied sea eagle, which Watling recorded in a caption as goo-le-be.
He was a man of standing. Fowell called him "the principal one of the two" captives. The ADB says Bennelong, who was about ten years younger, treated him "with deference", and historian Keith Vincent Smith describes him as a "chief" of the Gadigal.
Tench guessed he was "perhaps near thirty" in 1789, "considerably shorter" than Bennelong and "not so robustly framed, though better fitted for purposes of activity". Both men had survived the smallpox epidemic of 1789, but "Colbee's face was very thickly imprinted with the marks of it."
Kidnapped at Manly – November 1789
By late 1789 Governor Phillip still hadn't managed to open proper contact with the Eora. He'd already tried kidnapping one man, Arabanoo, and now he decided to take two more. Lieutenant William Bradley's boat crew went down to Manly Cove and, as Tench put it, "completely succeeded in trepanning and carrying off, without opposition, two fine young men". Bradley painted the scene himself.
Back at Sydney two Aboriginal children already living in the settlement, Nanbaree and Abaroo, recognised the men straight away and called them by name: "Baneelon, and Colbee". Neither of the captives was much comforted. Tench described "the same scenes of awkward wonder and impatient constraint" he'd seen with Arabanoo. Phillip ordered that they be treated kindly "and guard them strictly". Wikipedia's article says they were shackled in a guarded hut near the Governor's house.
The Escape
Colbee didn't hang about. Tench says he "contrived to effect his escape in about a week, with a small iron ring round his leg". Bennelong nearly went with him: "Had those appointed to watch them been a moment later, his companion would have contrived to accompany him." Smith gives a more exact date, the night of 12 December 1789, and says Colbee "pulled the rope from his leg shackle and ran off into the bush". Bennelong stayed behind and charmed his captors until he escaped too, months later.
Tench also noticed that, unlike Bennelong, "Colbee would not at first touch" spirits.
The Whale Feast at Manly – September 1790
The next time the British saw Colbee he was back at Manly. In early September 1790 a dead whale had washed up and a big crowd had gathered for the feast. Officers who landed there found Bennelong, thin and bearded, and "soon after Colbee came up, pointing to his leg, to show that he had freed himself from the fetter which was upon him". Tench says Colbee gestured at the stinking whale and made signs that "it was common among them to eat until the stomach was so overladen as to occasion sickness".
Governor Phillip hurried down to Manly on 7 September 1790 to meet them. Tench says Bennelong and Colbee talked with him for some time. Then a stranger, a man "seemingly a stranger, and but little acquainted with Baneelon and Colbee", threw a spear that hit the Governor in the right shoulder. Smith's Dictionary of Sydney entry names him Willemering, a carradhy (healer or clever man) from Broken Bay. The ADB says plainly that Colbee "took part in the whale feast at Manly in September 1790 when Governor Phillip was speared". Afterwards the boat crew reported that "Baneelon and Colbee had just departed, after a friendly intercourse", and that they "pretended highly to disapprove the conduct of the man who had thrown the spear".
Whatever was really behind the spearing, it opened the door. Within weeks Bennelong came in to Sydney, and on 18 October 1790, Smith writes, Colbee met Phillip "at the next cove" (probably Farm Cove) "to conclude a separate peace agreement and to receive a metal hatchet."
Living Between Two Worlds
From late 1790 Colbee was one of the two leading Aboriginal men in the life of the settlement. The ADB lists what he did. He went as guide and go-between on Phillip's journeys inland, helped recover gear from an overturned fishing boat in the harbour, and led a lost soldier back to the settlement, and he was rewarded for it. He sometimes dined at Government House, and Wikipedia, citing historians Jakelin Troy and Keith Vincent Smith, says he was living in the settlement three or four days a week.
He wasn't everyone's idea of a loyal helper, though. In December 1790 Phillip's gamekeeper John McEntire was speared near Botany Bay. Colbee came to the hospital with others, and they named the spearman as "Pimelwi", that is Pemulwuy. The ADB says he later promised to bring Pemulwuy in and didn't. Phillip, in a passage Tench printed, was openly annoyed: "Colbee, in the room of fulfilling his engagement, is loitering about the lookout house."
Tench kept a few lighter moments too. When Colbee saw the cows that came out on the Gorgon, he asked whether they were kangaroos. The first time he saw a monkey he called it wurra, a rat. Then he looked at its paws and cried out in alarm, mulla, a man.
Out to the Hawkesbury – April 1791
In April 1791 Phillip set out to work out whether the Hawkesbury and the Nepean were the same river. The party was twenty-one strong, among them the Governor, Collins, Surgeon White, Lieutenant Dawes, Tench himself, and "our friends Colbee and Boladeree". Bennelong wanted to go, "but his wife would not permit it", a nice glimpse of Barangaroo. Colbee "would listen to no objections". His only condition, Tench says, "with great care and consideration", was that his wife and child stay at Sydney under British protection and be given food while he was away.
Out west Colbee was a long way from home and knew it. Asked who lived inland, he named the Boorooberongal and said they were bad, and that they lived on birds and animals, "having no fish". When the party heard voices in the night, it was Colbee who gave "a loud hollow cry" of invitation. A man with a lit stick came forward and the introductions were made. "I am Colbee, of the tribe of Cadigal." "I am Bereewan, of the tribe of Boorooberongal." Colbee took Bereewan by the hand and led him in to the fire.
Later, on the river, they met a man named Gombeeree and a man and boy from a canoe, Yellomundee and Deeimba. Tench watched a healing ceremony in which Yellomundee sucked at Colbee's chest and seemed to draw something out. Colbee assured the officers that "two splinters of a spear by which he had been formerly wounded" had been taken out, and that he felt much better for it. Tench couldn't see any wound and put it down to imagination.
Anyone who knows the Hawkesbury story will notice those names. The ADB says Maria Lock's father was Yarramundi and her grandfather was Gomebeeree, and Maria's brother was the other Colebee I come to below. Whether Tench's Gombeeree and Yellomundee were the same men, I can't say from the sources I've read.
Daringa and Their Children
Colbee's first wife was Daringa. Smith says she was a half-sister of Moorooboora, leader of the clan whose lands covered present-day Maroubra. Aiesha Saunders of Museums of History NSW writes that her name may come from daringyan, stingray, and that she was a fisherwoman, like her friend and namesake Barangaroo.
In December 1790, Smith writes, Daringa walked out to the Botany Bay area to have her baby, a girl called Panieboolong (Paniebollong). A couple of days later she and Colbee brought the baby, wrapped in paperbark, to show Phillip, and the family slept the night in the Governor's house. Elizabeth Macarthur wrote to a friend in England in March 1791: "Mrs. Coleby, whose name is Daringa, brought in a new born female infant of hers, for me to see … The child thrives remarkably well and I discover a softness and gentleness of manners in Daringa truly interesting."
Smith also tells two hard stories about that baby. One night she rolled out of her mother's arms into the fire and two of her toes were burnt. And at Phillip's request Colbee and Daringa showed him the malgun custom, in which the top of a girl's little finger was bound until it came away. Tench saw the baby at about a month old: "The little wretch seemed in pain, and her hand was greatly swelled." Panieboolong died at about five months old.
In May 1791 a convict was caught stealing Daringa's fishing tackle, and Phillip had him flogged in front of the Eora. Tench wrote that "Daringa shed tears", while Barangaroo grabbed a stick and threatened the flogger.
In 1795 Daringa had another child and died a few months later, most likely of tuberculosis according to Saunders. Collins describes what happened at her grave: "When the body was placed in the grave, the bye-standers were amazed to see the father himself place the living child in it with the mother. Having laid the child down, he threw upon it a large stone, and the grave was instantly filled in by the other natives." Colbee explained that without Daringa, there was no one to feed the baby and it would starve.
Before she died, Daringa had a hand in one of the great ceremonies of early Sydney. At the 1795 initiation at Farm Cove, Smith says, she gave Collins the front teeth taken from three boys, and asked that the tooth of Nanbarry, Colbee's nephew, be sent to Surgeon White, who had been the boy's guardian.
Later Wives
Wikipedia, drawing on Collins, says Colbee's second wife was Boorea, "Colebee's favourite". His third was Kurubarabulu, who had been Bennelong's wife. In July 1805 the ADB says Colbee and Bennelong, "who were usually allies, fought a duel over Bennelong's wife Kurubarabulu". The State Library of NSW guide quoted by Wikipedia says she afterwards became Colbee's wife.
The Hard Side
The same writers who liked Colbee recorded his violence, and it's only fair to include it. Tench called him "a good tempered merry fellow" in most things but said he "made no scruple" of hitting Daringa over the head. The ADB records that he was said to have badly beaten Boorong (Abaroo), who was living with the chaplain Richard Johnson's family, in October 1790. He tried to carry off a young woman from Government House in May 1791. And in 1797, with Yeranibe, he killed Yeranibe's young wife, and later killed Yeranibe himself. The ADB suggests these "may have been part of ritual revenge battles". Soldiers saved his life after a ritual fight in December 1797.
Two Colbees of the Harbour
Here's where it gets confusing. There was another Colbee from Botany Bay, a Gweagal man whose names William Dawes wrote down as Wárungin Wángubile Kólbi. Smith writes that he exchanged names with our Colbee, a mark of friendship, and the colonists called him "Botany Bay Colebee". According to Smith, his own people called our man "Cadi Colebee" to tell the two apart. Wikipedia adds that Kólbi's sister was Kurubarabulu, so the two men were brothers-in-law in the end.
There's a Port Jackson Painter watercolour captioned "Mr White, Harris and Laing with a party of Soldiers visiting Botany Bay Colebee at that place, when wounded". Grace Karskens, cited by Wikipedia, identifies the man sitting on the log nearby as our Colbee.
The End of the Record
Smith notes there are no written references to Colbee between 1793 and January 1805. After the 1805 duel with Bennelong he soon drops out of sight. "There is no record of his life after 1806," says the ADB. Smith thinks he "probably died in a payback battle in 1806 or not long after, but his death was not officially recorded." So we don't know when or where he died, or where he's buried.
The Other Colebee – Richmond and Blacktown
You'll often read that Colebee was given one of the first land grants to an Aboriginal person. That was a different man, and it's worth keeping the two apart.
This Colebee was a Boorooberongal man of the Dharug people from the Hawkesbury. Wikipedia gives his dates as c.1800 to 1830 and names his father as Yarramundi, "Chief of the Richmond Tribe". His sister was Maria Lock. Smith's Dictionary of Sydney entry says he was a guide who helped William Cox survey the road over the Blue Mountains, and that with Nurragingy (Creek Jemmy) he tried to bring peace along the Hawkesbury, Nepean and Colo rivers and South Creek. Wikipedia adds the harder part: in 1816 he and Nurragingy acted as guides for the military in Governor Macquarie's punitive expeditions against the Gandangara and Darkinjung, though it says Colebee does not seem to have guided the party that carried out the Appin massacre.
Macquarie wrote in his diary on 25 May 1816, as Smith quotes, that he'd given Nurragingy a brass breastplate as "chief of the South Creek Tribe", and "I also promised him and his friend Colebee a grant of 30 acres of land on the South Creek between them". That land became Blacktown.
Maria Lock's ADB entry picks up the story. In March 1831 she petitioned Governor Darling for her "deceased brother Coley's (Colebee) grant at Blacktown". It took years, but "she received Colebee's thirty-acre (12.1 ha) grant in 1843", and her descendants lived on the family's land until about 1920.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Timeline
- c.1754–55 – Colbee born (Wikipedia gives c.1754, the ADB c.1755). Tench thought him "perhaps near thirty" in 1789.
- 1789 – Survives the smallpox epidemic, his face heavily scarred.
- 25 November 1789 – Captured at Manly Cove with Bennelong by Lt William Bradley's boat crew (the Dictionary of Sydney says 23 November).
- 12 December 1789 – Escapes from Sydney with part of his leg shackle still on.
- Early September 1790 – Meets the British again at the Manly whale feast and shows them his freed leg.
- 7 September 1790 – Present when Governor Phillip is speared by Willemering at Manly Cove.
- 18 October 1790 – Makes a separate peace with Phillip, probably at Farm Cove, and receives a hatchet.
- December 1790 – Daughter Panieboolong born. Colbee names Pemulwuy as the man who speared McEntire.
- April 1791 – Guide with Boladeree on Phillip's expedition to the Hawkesbury.
- May 1791 – A convict is flogged for stealing Daringa's fishing tackle.
- 1791 – Panieboolong dies at about five months old.
- 1795 – Daringa dies after the birth of a second child. Initiation ceremony at Farm Cove for Nanbarry and other boys.
- 1797 – Kills Yeranibe; his own life is saved by soldiers after a ritual fight in December.
- July 1805 – Duel with Bennelong over Kurubarabulu.
- After 1806 – Disappears from the records.
- The other Colebee: 25 May 1816 – Macquarie promises Nurragingy and Colebee of the Richmond people 30 acres at South Creek. 1831 – Maria Lock petitions for her late brother's grant. 1843 – She receives it.
Where the Sources Disagree
- The date of the capture. The ADB and Wikipedia say 25 November 1789, the date on Bradley's painting. Smith in the Dictionary of Sydney says 23 November.
- How long he was held. Tench, who was there, says Colbee escaped "in about a week". The ADB says "after three weeks", and Smith gives the night of 12 December 1789. Smith says he pulled the rope from his shackle; Wikipedia says he cut it.
- When Bennelong got free. The ADB says Bennelong "was freed in April 1790". Smith says he "ran away some six months later, in May 1790".
- His age. Tench guessed "perhaps near thirty" in 1789. Wikipedia says the estimate in 1789 was 35 and gives a birth year of c.1754; the ADB says c.1755.
- When the families came in. The ADB says Colbee and Bennelong brought their families into town "in September 1790". Smith's Willemering entry gives the peaceful "coming in" as 8 October 1790.
- When Panieboolong was born. Smith and Saunders say December 1790. The ADB says 1791.
- Daringa's family. Smith says her mother was Tàdyera and Pundah was her brother. Saunders says Pundah was her mother.
- Who led the lost soldier home? The ADB credits our Colbee. Wikipedia's article on Botany Bay Colebee, citing Phillip, credits Kólbi, the Botany Bay man.
- One Colebee or several? The revised ADB entry lists "Botany Bay Colebe" as one of our Colbee's other names, and its family links show Maria Lock as his sister. Wikipedia, Smith and Maria Lock's own ADB entry treat Botany Bay Colebee as a separate Gweagal man, and Maria Lock's brother as the Richmond Colebee of the 1816 grant. I've followed the second view.
- "First land grant". Smith says the Richmond Colebee and Nurragingy received "the first grant of land made by the British to an Aboriginal person". Wikipedia puts it more carefully, as the first grants to Aboriginal people in the area that became Blacktown.
My Earlier Posts
- Barangaroo – Cammeraygal Fisherwoman, Wife of Bennelong – c.1750 to 1791
- Woolaware Bennelong
- Manly – From Kai'ymay and Phillip's 'Manly Cove' of 1788 to the Ferries, the Quarantine Station and the Surf
- The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point to Fort Macquarie and Utzon's Sails
- Bennelong Point – Circular Quay East
- First Government House – Corner of Bridge Street & Phillip Street
- Sydney Cove – 1788
- Bungaree – The Broken Bay Man Who Sailed Around Australia with Flinders
- Cora Gooseberry – Queen Gooseberry – Widow of Bungaree
- Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales
Sources
- F. D. McCarthy, "Colebee (c.1755–c.1806)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 1, 1966 (revised 18 July 2025) – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/colebee-1909
- Keith Vincent Smith, "Colebee", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/colebee
- Keith Vincent Smith, "Daringa", Dictionary of Sydney, 2011 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/daringa
- Keith Vincent Smith, "Willemering", Dictionary of Sydney, 2016 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/willemering
- Grace Karskens, "Barangaroo and the Eora Fisherwomen", Dictionary of Sydney, 2014 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/barangaroo_and_the_eora_fisherwomen
- Aiesha Saunders, "A fisher woman of Warrane", Museums of History NSW, 2020 – https://mhnsw.au/stories/first-nations/a-fisher-woman-of-warrane/
- Naomi Parry, "Lock, Maria (1805–1878)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2005 – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lock-maria-13050
- "Colebee", Sydney Barani (City of Sydney) – https://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/colebee/
- Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (1793), Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3534
- David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 1 (1798), Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12565
- "Colebe", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colebe
- "Botany Bay Colebee", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botany_Bay_Colebee
- "Colebee (Boorooberongal)", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colebee_(Boorooberongal)
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, as credited under each picture.