The Ghost and the Bounty Hunter: William Buckley, John Batman and the Theft of Bunjil Country

Book excerpt: By the bestselling author of The Ship That Never Was Just after Christmas 1803, a convict called William Buckley fled an embryonic settlement in the land of the Kulin nation (now the Port Phillip area), to take his chances in the wilderness. A few months later, the local Aboriginal people found the six-foot-five former soldier cold and starving. Perhaps thinking he was a lost kinsman returned from the dead, they took him in, and for thirty-two years Buckley lived as a Wadawurrung man, learning his adopted tribe's language, skills and methods to survive. Colonists finally caught up with Buckley in 1835, the same year the former bounty hunter John Batman arrived in the area, looking to acquire the rolling grasslands around the bay. What happened next saw the Wadawurrung betrayed and Buckley eventually broken. The theft of Kulin country would end in the birth of a city. The frontier wars had begun. By the bestselling author of The Ship That Never Was, The Ghost and the Bounty Hunter is a fascinating and poignant true story from Australian colonial history.