BOOK REVIEW: Pemulwuy The Rainbow Warrior (by Eric Willmot) – By Wimal Kannangara

Source: Brisbane Sri Lankan Newsletter – Dæhæna – June 2022

The story of Pemulwuy is both a part of the Aboriginal belief system and oral history as well as a part of history of modern Australia. Pemulwuy led a war against the British for 12 years until he was killed in 1802.

The name Pemulwuy means earth: man of the earth. Born around 1756 to a people who believed that their world was brought into being by a creator to the form of a rainbow. Hence, he was the rainbow warrior.

In 1788, the British landed on the shores of the bay of Kamey, now called Botany Bay. The area surrounded by that
bay and the great harbour of Tubbowgule, around which the city of Sydney is now built, was inhabited by indigenous people who called themselves Eora. The Eora land extended along the coast from the Hawksbury River in the north to the Georges River in the south and to inland towns of presentday Campbelltown and Camden

The Eora people comprised of many subgroups who occupied different areas of the Eora land and has somewhat different economies. The Kamergel, for example, concentrated on fishing while the Bidjigal were concerned with
hunting animals in the forests of the region. Pemulwuy belonged to the Bidjigal.

The conflicts arose when the settlers started expanding the occupied areas with farming crops and livestock encroaching the Eora land and it particularly affected the lands occupied by the Bidjigal. Pemulwuy united the neighbouring people, runaway convicts, bushrangers and an escaped African known as Black Caesar, and led a guerrilla war for twelve years that pushed the invading English to the brink until his death in 1802.

There are two things that set Pemulwuy apart from others. The first is that he was the first to launch a major response against British invasion. The second is the attitude of his enemies towards him. The British not only wanted to destroy him physically but attempted to destroy the evidence of his existence. Until recently, Pemulwuy’s name has never appeared in any white Australian history, yet lives on in the unpublished records of his enemies and in the minds of Aboriginal Australians.

The Author

Dr Eric Willmot AM was an authority on the life and times of Pemulwuy. He wrote the novel, Pemulwuy: The Rainbow Warrior, which was a landmark publication, a best seller, and has been included in secondary and tertiary education curricula across Australia.

A visionary and a dreamer, a scholar, educator, inventor and engineer, Eric was born in Queensland and spent his childhood on an island (Crib Island) which no longer exists. He spent his youth as a drover (one who drives cattle
and sheep), working in Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. At the age of 20, Eric was seriously injured in a rodeo accident and spent a year in hospital. During that period, he studied for his
matriculation, won a scholarship, and attended the University of Newcastle, where he took his first degree in science.

Eric was also an engineer and prolific inventor. During his lifetime, Eric held over 90 international patents. In 1981 Eric was named Australian Inventor of the Year, and twice won the Medaille d’Or Genève of the Salon des Inventions in Geneva, Switzerland.

He died in 2019.

(Author Note: Courtesy Booktopia)

Wimal Kannangara