Nanbaree

While still a child, he was the first Aboriginal Australian to acquire a functional level of English and became an important interpreter as he had very close kinship ties with prominent figures such as Bennelong and Colebe.

[1] In 1788, Nanbaree witnessed the arrival of Arthur Phillip in Sydney Harbour with the First Fleet to establish a penal colony consisting of British military personnel and transported convicts.

[1] In April 1789, a major smallpox epidemic broke out amongst the Dharug people living around the harbour, killing approximately half of the population.

[4] Soon after Nanbaree's arrival at the British settlement, another young smallpox survivor, a twelve-year-old girl named Boorong, was brought in.

Despite his young age, he acted as an important interlocutor when a group of officers encountered Bennelong and Colebe at Manly, a situation that later developed into the incident where Phillip was speared and wounded by the warrior Willemering.

The British were allowed to observe and document the event, in which Nanbaree and the other initiates had one of their upper incisor teeth ritually evulsed.

In 1802, Nanbaree was assigned to the crew of HMS Investigator under the command of Captain Matthew Flinders, who was tasked with circumnavigating the Australian continent.

Nanbaree sailed north on Investigator, but at the Whitsunday Islands he returned to Sydney on board the damaged HMS Lady Nelson after becoming homesick.

Nanbaree died in August 1821 and previously had asked that Squire bury him alongside Bennelong and Boorong, a request which the brewer fulfilled.

[4][10] The location of the grave of Bennelong, Boorong and Nanbaree was lost until rediscovered in 2011 as being under a residential property at 25 Watson Street in the riverside suburb of Putney.