This cache is hidden in a colourful, little-known and untouched location with significant historical links to Australia’s earliest colonial and British naval maritime history.
Bligh Point is named after William Bligh who was a pivotal in shaping Australia’s early colonial history. Bligh visited Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) at least four times. His life was complex and influential to say the least. Bligh Point, originally Blyth’s is so named because William Bligh after the NSW Rum Rebellion ran a blockade on Hobart’s Harbour in 1809. He often sheltered at Bligh Point and obtained wood and water there.
On Bligh Point there is a large rock which has fallen from the cliff next to a feature known as Hanging Rock. This rock fell soon after the 1942 Japanese flight over Hobart. When it fell it caused crockery to rattle on shelves, raising fears that it was the start of the Japanese invasion. Before dawn on 1 March 1942, the Japanese had launched a reconnaissance sea plane from a large Japanese I-25 submarine (108 metres length) in Great Oyster Bay on Tasmania’s east coast. The plane surveyed the East Coast, Tasman Peninsular, the River Derwent estuary and Hobart (from a southerly direction).
The creek which empties into Nebraska Beach (beach that you will walk along to access the cache) is known as Stiffy’s Creek after Henry Hill who had a bad leg and was known as Stiffy. The longest a signpost has lasted there is two days!
Bligh came to “Bligh Point” after he was deposed from his position as Governor of New South Wales in 1808. With his daughter Mary he departed Sydney on the HMS Porpoise on 13 March 1809, with instructions to sail direct to England without touching any part of the territory. Instead Bligh ordered Captain Kent to go to Hobart Town, arriving there on 29 March 1809.
On arrival at Hobart Town, Bligh and his daughter Mary and members of his party took up residence at Government House, which he described as being “a miserable shell of three rooms with walls a brick thick, neither wind or water proof and without conveniences”. Bligh decided to remain on board the Porpoise. Mary continued to stay at Government House until she too went on the Porpoise with her father, claiming she had been insulted by Governor Collins parading around with his mistress on his arm.
As things became worse between the two men, Bligh moved the Porpoise down river and established a blockade, stopping all shipping in and out of Hobart Town (the Porpoise carried ten – nine-pound guns). He first stood off Sandy Bay but later moved down near a point off Bruny Island (now called Bligh Point). Settlers in Hobart Town were warned not to supply the Porpoise with stores, but some of the Norfolk Islanders who were loyal to Bligh, disobeyed and were caught and punished.
It was about this time that Bligh had cause to have one of his midshipmen receive two dozen lashes. The problem was that he was the natural son of Governor Collins. This did not help the already strained relationship between Governor Collins and Commodore Bligh.
The 300-ton ship Union arrived in the Derwent from Calcutta in late 1809 with a shipment of rice and other merchandise for Governor Collins for relief of the colony in a near starvation situation. Bligh intercepted the vessel before it reached Hobart Town and bought 3 tons of rice, 8 casts of meat, 3 hundredweight of sugar and 200 gallons of sprits - no doubt with an IOU intending that the Government would repay it.
Local farmers and merchants who assisted Bligh whilst on the Porpoise did so at great personal risk as the military class officers who run both Sydney and Hobart settlements also dictated the economic terms of life in the new colonies. In 1809, Richard Morgan a farmer at Kangaroo Bay supplied Bligh with fresh provisions aboard the Porpoise. James Belbin another Norfolk Islander like Richard Morgan supported Bligh by boarding the Porpoise whilst it was anchored in the Derwent and was sentenced to 500 lashes by Governor Collins for doing so. Another supporter of Bligh was merchant Roland Loane who supplied Bligh when his ship was anchored off Bligh Point, Bruny Island.
William Bligh’s early visits to Southern Tasmania
William Bligh was only a young Lieutenant aged 21 when he was made sailing master of the Resolution. Cook was captain of the Adventure and together they were on their way to collect breadfruit from Tahiti in the Pacific and take it to plantations in the West Indies. On the way to Tahiti they stopped in at Adventure Bay on the east coast of Bruny Island. The search for breadfruit in Tahiti came to nothing, as Captain Cook was killed before they could finish their task. From Adventure Bay, Bligh couldn’t see Mount Wellington due to cloud cover, but years later – in August 1788 – he came back via Adventure Bay as captain of the Bounty on his way – again – heading to Tahiti for breadfruit plants. The sky was clear that day and while the crew were on Bruny Island collecting timber and water he spotted a high flat mountain to the north and made a record of it in his log book. This was the same trip which turned out so disastrously, when the crew mutinied on their way to the Pacific. Luckily Bligh had the sense to hang on to his log book when he was evicted from the Bounty so we know about his sighting of Mt Wellington. Bligh survived, and came back AGAIN in February 1792 – on his way to Tahiti once again in hopes of collecting breadfruit there – and stopped at Adventure Bay again and gave Mt Wellington its first name: Table Hill. He then set off for Tahiti. Two weeks later the French arrived in Adventure Bay and they set about naming land forms and rivers – from which we get Bruny Island, Recherche Bay, and D’Entrecasteaux Channel.
From there, it took another 12 years before the British sent a contingent of government officers, military, settlers and convicts to set up a settlement at the foot of Mount Wellington.
Some detailed history of William Bligh
Vice-Admiral William Bligh FRS (9 September 1754 – 7 December 1817) was an officer of the British Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. He first went to sea at age seven as a cabin boy. It could easily be said "he had salt water in his veins". The mutiny on the Bounty occurred during his command of the Bounty in 1789; after being set adrift in Bounty's launch by the mutineers, Bligh and his loyal men reached Kupang, West Timor, Indonesia a journey of 6,700 km.
Seventeen years after the Bounty mutiny - on 13 August 1806 he was appointed Governor of New South Wales with orders to clean up the corrupt rum trade of the New South Wales Corps. His actions directed against the trade resulted in the so-called Rum Rebellion, during which Bligh was placed under arrest on 26 January 1808 by the New South Wales Corps and deposed from his command, an act which the British Foreign Office later declared to be illegal. He died in Lambeth, London on 7 December 1817.
In 1776, Bligh was selected by Captain James Cook (1728–1779), for the position of sailing master of Resolution and accompanied Cook in July 1776 on Cook's third voyage to the Pacific Ocean, during which Cook was killed. Bligh was instrumental in the hostile interaction with those that murdered Cook. Bligh returned to England at the end of 1780 and was able to give details of Cook's last voyage.
The mutiny on the Royal Navy vessel Bounty occurred in the South Pacific Ocean on 28 April 1789. Led by Master's Mate / Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, disaffected crewmen seized control of the ship, and set Bligh and 18 loyalists adrift in the ship's open launch. The mutineers variously settled on Tahiti or on Pitcairn Island. Meanwhile, Bligh completed a voyage of 6,700 km to the west in the launch to reach safety north of Australia in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) and began the process of bringing the mutineers to justice.
Because the vessel was rated only as a cutter, Bounty had no officers other than Bligh (who was then only a commissioned lieutenant), a very small crew, and no Marines to provide protection from hostile natives during stops or to enforce security on board ship. To allow longer uninterrupted sleep, Bligh divided his crew into three watches instead of two, placing his protégé Fletcher Christian—rated as a Master's Mate—in charge of one of the watches. The mutiny, which took place on 28 April 1789 during the return voyage, was led by Christian and supported by eighteen of the crew. They had seized firearms during Christian's night watch and surprised and bound Bligh in his cabin.
Bligh had gained the reputation of being a firm disciplinarian. Accordingly, he was offered the position of Governor of New South Wales on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks (President of the Royal Society and a main sponsor of the breadfruit expeditions) and appointed in March 1805, at £2,000 per annum, twice the pay of the retiring Governor Philip Gidley King. It is likely that he was selected by the British Government as governor because of his reputation as a hard man. He stood a good chance of reining in the maverick New South Wales Corps, something that his predecessors had not been able to do. He arrived in Sydney on 6 August 1806, to become the fourth governor. As his wife Elizabeth had been unwilling to undertake a long sea voyage, Bligh was accompanied by his daughter Mary Putland who would be the Lady of Government House; Mary's husband John Putland was appointed as William Bligh's aide-de-camp. During his time in Sydney, his confrontational administrative style provoked the wrath of a number of influential settlers and officials. They included the wealthy landowner and businessman John Macarthur and prominent Crown representatives such as the colony's principal surgeon, Thomas Jamison, and senior officers of the New South Wales Corps. Jamison and his military associates were defying government regulations by engaging in private trading ventures for profit. Bligh was determined to put a stop to this practice.
The conflict between Bligh and the entrenched colonists culminated in another mutiny, the Rum Rebellion, when on 26 January 1808, 400 soldiers of the New South Wales Corps under the command of Major George Johnston marched on Government House in Sydney to arrest Bligh. This is the only time in Australia’s history that the legally constituted government has been overthrown by armed rebellion (interestingly this was on Australia Day 1808 - 20 years to the day after the arrival of the first fleet). A petition written by John Macarthur and addressed to George Johnston was written the day of the arrest but most of the 151 signatures were gathered in the days after Bligh's overthrow. A rebel government was subsequently installed and Bligh, now deposed, made for Hobart in Tasmania aboard HMS Porpoise. Bligh failed to gain support from the authorities in Hobart to retake control of New South Wales, and remained effectively imprisoned on the Porpoise from 1808 until January 1810.
Bligh received a letter in January 1810, advising him that the rebellion had been declared illegal, and that the British Foreign Office had declared it to be a mutiny. Lachlan Macquarie had been appointed to replace him as governor. At this news Bligh sailed from Hobart. He arrived in Sydney on 17 January 1810 only two weeks into Macquarie's tenure. There he would collect evidence for the coming court martial in England of Major Johnston. He departed to attend the trial on 12 May 1810, arriving on 25 October 1810. In the days immediately prior to their departure, his daughter, Mary Putland (widowed in 1808), was hastily married to the new Lieutenant-Governor Maurice Charles O'Connell and remained in Sydney. The following year, the trial's presiding officers sentenced Johnston to be cashiered, a form of disgraceful dismissal that entailed surrendering his commission in the Royal Marines without compensation. This was a comparatively mild punishment which enabled Johnston to return, a free man, to New South Wales, where he could continue to enjoy the benefits of his accumulated private wealth. Bligh was court martialled twice again during his career, being acquitted both times.
Soon after Johnston's trial had concluded, Bligh received a backdated promotion to rear admiral. Bligh's promotion to rear admiral was held up until the end of Johnston's trial. Afterward it was backdated to 31 July 1810. In 1814 he was promoted again, to vice admiral of the blue without command, and died of cancer in 1817.
A good read if interested in knowing more about William Bligh
Peter Fitzsimons excellent recently published book “Mutiny on the Bounty” (published 2018) tells the fascinating story of William Bligh, the mutiny and its repercussions. It paints him as a brilliant navigator but seriously flawed leader of men. It presents a harsher (and probably more accurate) picture of Bligh than what I have written above. It is very well worth reading.
The cache
The cache is hidden part way along Bligh Point, North Bruny Island in a rocky enclosure close to the shoreline. Try imagining Bligh’s ship the Porpoise lying at anchor off the point. The cache location is best accessed with car parking behind Nebraska Beach near where Stiffy’s Creek reaches the beach.