1849 - Vocabulary of Words used by the Aborigines about Sydney Recorded by Richard Binnie Binnie Family Papers, 1846-1882 MSS 7326, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney. Transcribed by Keith V. Smith 2005 Richard Binnie was a passenger on the 119 ton brig William Hill, a merchant vessel which left Sydney on 19 November 1849 for San Francisco. Binnie kept a journal of the voyage and his adventures on the California Goldfields, including the famous San Francisco fire. In his journal, Binnie mentions four Aborigines who belonged to the ship’s crew: Dick or Stockkeeper, Cranky, Billy and Callaghan or Calagan. One, some or all of these men might be the informant of the Sydney words, although it seems likely that they came originally from Broken Bay. There is no mention of Bowen Bungaree who was said to be a pasenger on this voyage. He might have accompanied Hill on the William Hill’s voyage to San Francisco about six months earlier. Binnie’s vocabulary is written in a separate notebook to his journal, but can be linked to the journal, which refers to the Australian ’black fellows’ rowing ashore at Tongatabu on 30 November 1849, ’cheered on now and then by a drop of Bejalico, they stretched out in good Style’. translated in the vocabulary as ’Grog’. The Sydney butchers and businessmen Edward Smith Hill, Richard Hill and William Hill were all on board William Hill, which carried a speculative cargo to North America. Binnie also wrote down five words from the Brisbane area, indicating that one of the Aborigines might have come from there. Binnie’s main journal, but not the vocabularies, can be dowloaded as a pdf file from PICMAN, on the State Library of NSW website. -------------- ABOVE INFORMATION FROM KEITH SMITH, April 2005 ------------------------- JS LIST LOCATION: Word List Ringbinder A-L