Thomas Pamphlett
He is best known for his time as a castaway in the Moreton Bay area, halfway up the eastern coast of Australia, in 1823.
On 28 May 1814, Pamphlett was charged with two others of stealing the windows from Birch Grove House, the first and only building on the Balmain Peninsula, on 13 May.
[5] Finally, on 29 March 1815, he was sent to Newcastle,[6] a place of secondary punishment 100 miles (160 km) north of Sydney and now the second largest city in New South Wales.
[9] On 31 January 1820, Pamphlett successfully applied to the Governor for commutation of sentence,[10] receiving a conditional pardon.
He was sentenced to seven years at Port Macquarie penal settlement for stealing from a house at Pitt Town in early 1822 but was let off due to "unsound mind".
[13] Pamphlett and fellow "ticket of leave" convicts Richard Parsons and John Thompson, along with full convict John Finnegan, were hired by settler William Cox to fetch cedar from the Illawarra District, or the Five Islands, now known as Wollongong, 50 miles (80 km) south of Sydney.
They spent the next seven and a half months walking around Moreton Bay, island hopping, and following river and creek banks until they could find a way of crossing them.
They lived for periods with several Aboriginal tribes who fed them fish and fernroot and thought they were the ghosts of dead kinsmen due to their pale colour.
While Pamphlett attended a series of organised fights with an Aboriginal friend,[18] Parsons and Finnegan headed further north.
[19] On 29 November 1823, Pamphlett and some Aboriginal people were on the beach at Bribie Island cooking the day's catch when he saw a cutter in the bay.
He showed Oxley the Brisbane River while Pamphlett assisted Uniacke and others with aspects of Aboriginal culture.
A year and a half later, as a labourer at Portland Head west of Sydney, Pamphlett committed another crime.
In a further irony, he was sentenced to seven years’ transportation to the new Moreton Bay penal colony,[22] which had been set up after a favourable report on the area by Oxley,[23] thanks to Pamphlett and Finnegan.
