William Charles Wentworth (August 1790 – 20 March 1872)[1] was an Australian statesman, pastoralist, explorer, newspaper editor, lawyer, politician and author, who became one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in colonial New South Wales.

Catherine was a convict while his father, D'Arcy, was a member of the aristocratic Anglo-Irish Wentworth family, who had avoided prosecution for highway robbery by accepting the position of assistant surgeon in the colony of New South Wales.

[10] Wentworth failed to gain entry into both the East India Company College and the Royal Military Academy and with his career prospects blunted, he returned to Sydney in 1810.

[11][1] In 1811, he was appointed acting Provost Marshal by Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and given a grant of 1,750 acres (710 ha) of prime land along the Nepean River which Wentworth named Vermont.

[1] In 1813 Wentworth, along with Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson, led the expedition which found a route across the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and opened up the grazing lands of inland New South Wales.

[1] In 1814 Wentworth continued his adventurous lifestyle by joining a sandalwood-getting voyage to the South Pacific aboard the Cumberland under Captain Philip Goodenough.

In 1819 he published a book entitled: A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and Its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land.

[1][15] It served as the source material for the first theatrical play set in Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania), the bushranging melodrama Michael Howe the Terror!

Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane realised there was little point in continuing to censor The Sydney Gazette when The Australian was uncensored and so government censorship of newspapers was abandoned in 1824 and the freedom of the press began in Australia.

[1] In 1827, Wentworth's father died and William inherited much of his highly valuable assets and property, becoming one of the wealthiest men in the colony and growing his land holdings to over 7,000 acres.

[33][34][35][36] In 1839, Wentworth led a consortium of Sydney speculators in an attempt to acquire large amounts of land in New Zealand from the resident Ngāi Tahu people.

While it began as a broad church, division soon grew over the rights of emancipists, augmented by Wentworth drafting two bills for the association proposing not just representative government but also the repeal of all restrictions on trial by jury.

Although these changes seemed to democratise governance in New South Wales, it in fact markedly increased the influence of the wealthy land-holding squatters due to the prerequisite of owning at least £2,000 worth of land in order to be a candidate.

He vehemently opposed any reforms that threatened the status of this "squattocracy" class and was one of the chief opponents of Governor Gipps in 1846 who wanted to fund free emigration to the colony through additional tariffs on squatting licences.

With other members of the "squattocracy" such as James Macarthur, Wentworth advocated for the introduction of indentured Chinese coolie labour and procured them as servants at his Vaucluse mansion and on his grazing properties.

"[51]Thirty years’ intercourse with Europeans has not effected the slightest change in their habit; and those even, who have the most intermixed with the colonists, have never been prevailed upon to practise any of the arts of civilized life ...

He argued that Englishmen were justified in punitively killing Aboriginal people as the law had an "inability" to punish them and therefore did not exist to protect them, whom he described as being "one degree just above the beasts of the field — possessing no understanding beyond a confused notion of right and wrong, and that is all.

Wentworth was vociferous in his opposition, claiming that the evidence given by "this savage race" would be comparative to the "chatterings of the ourang-outang," and would enable them to "wreak their revenge on the unfortunate white man".

[55]In 1849, Wentworth supported the establishment of a Native Police force, believing "it would be the most powerful, perhaps, the only means, of averting those collisions between the blacks and the border settlers which had hitherto unfortunately existed.

"[56] The first Commandant of the Native Police for the northern districts, Frederick Walker, was a personal friend of Wentworth's who also managed his immense property at Tala on the Murrumbidgee.

Wentworth argued that a state secular university was imperative for the growth of a society aspiring towards self-government, and that it would provide the opportunity for "the child of every class, to become great and useful in the destinies of his country".

I trust that, from the pregnant womb of this institution will arise a long list of illustrious names—of statesmen—of patriots—of philanthropists—of philosophers—of poets and of heroes, who will shed a deathless halo, not only on their country, but upon the University which called them into being.

[67]Wentworth was vociferous on the university's secular mandate, declaring that clergy "ought to be excluded altogether from ... [its] management ... its gates must be open to all whether they were disciples of Moses, of Jesus, of Brahmin, of Mohammed, of Vishnu or of Buddha.

The paper saw in it a kind of atonement, perceiving "in some of his recent actions evidence of a latent consciousness of not having discharged, his duty to his country, and of a desire to make some expiation for his culpable neglect, not to use a stronger term.

In his 1819 book, Wentworth wrote:Every community which has not a free government is devoid of that security of person and property which has been found to be the chief stimulus to individual exertion and the only basis on which social edifice can repose in a solid and durable tranquility.

This draft aroused the bitter opposition of the democrats and radicals such as Daniel Deniehy, who ridiculed Wentworth's plans for what he called a "bunyip aristocracy".

[1] Wentworth's constitution committee also proposed a General Assembly of the Australian Colonies to legislate on intercolonial matters, including tariffs, railways, lighthouses, penal settlements, gold and the mail.

While there was in-principle support for a union of the colonies, the matter was ultimately deferred while NSW Premier Charles Cowper and Henry Parkes preferred to focus on liberalising Wentworth's squatter-friendly constitution.

Sarah, the daughter of two convicts, Francis Cox and Frances Morton, had been represented by Wentworth in her successful 1825 breach of promise lawsuit against a certain Captain John Payne.

[97] In 1963 he was honoured, together with Blaxland and Lawson, on a postage stamp issued by Australia Post depicting the Blue Mountains crossing,[98] and again in 1974 on the anniversary of the first newspaper publication.