[4] Threlkeld was well educated, and on 8 November 1815 sailed for Tahiti, but the illness and subsequent death of a child of his detained him for a year in Rio de Janeiro, where he started a Protestant church.

[5] He left for Sydney on 22 January 1817, arrived on 11 May, and after a short stay went to the South Sea Islands, where he reached Eimeo (now Mo'orea in French Polynesia) in November.

[2] Here Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, travelling LMS deputies, appointed Threlkeld as missionary to the Aboriginal people of Lake Macquarie.

Situated on land allocated by Governor Brisbane, Threlkeld was instructed to teach Aboriginal people agriculture, carpentry and establish a children's school.

[8] Threlkeld, who was paying Aboriginal workers on site with fishing hooks, food and clothing, wrote in 1825, "[It] is my intention to act here upon the same plan we found so successful at Raiatea namely, give nothing to any individual but in return for some labour for common good!

Threlkeld wrote of this period as one being filled with mornings in which he worked with Biraban, "who speaks very good English, in writing the language.... Our conversations vary, and cruise from enquiries into their customs and habits.

[13] In 1834 Threlkeld published An Australian Grammar: comprehending the principles and natural rules of the language, as spoken by the Aborigines, in the vicinity of Hunter's River, Lake Macquarie, New South Wales.

[16] In 1828 the LMS, dissatisfied with Threkeld's evangelical work, directed him to abandon the Bahtahbah mission, and offered to pay for his return to London.

[17] Declining the LMS invitation, Threlkeld was subsequently appointed by Governor Darling, on behalf of the colonial government, to continue his "Christianisation and civilisation" work with a salary of £150 a year and four convict servants, with rations.

[21] The official closure of the Ebenezer Mission occurred on 31 December 1841, with the precarious financial position of Threlkeld leading to the establishment of grazing stock and mining of coal seams on the property.

[23] However, the LMS, having received a letter from the Quakers James Backhouse and George Washington Walker, detailing the specific nature of missionary work in the Australian colonies, acknowledged Threlkeld's "vigilance, activity and devotedness to the welfare of the Aboriginal race.

[36] Norman Tindale (1974) wrote that there was such a "literary need for major groupings that [Fraser] set out to provide them for New South Wales, coining entirely artificial terms for his 'Great tribes'.

[37] From the late 1970s, Threlkeld's accounts were utilised in the regions of the Hunter Valley and Watagan Mountains in Land Rights claims and the determination of Aboriginal sites of significance.

[40] John Harris, on the other hand, argues, "We have few enough sources of Aboriginal eyewitness accounts as it is and those we do have, we owe to the concern and courage of missionaries like Lancelot Threlkeld.