Dr Bland was transported to Australia as a convict following a pistol duel fatality, though he was soon pardoned and was active as a medical practitioner and helped found Sydney Grammar School and the University of Sydney.

As the big week approached, advertisements appeared offering, ‘Silk for Banners and Ribbons for Election Favors.’ The Wentworth-Bland coalition announced that their colors were to be ‘Currency Blue and True Blue United.’ 

Major Wentworth and his brother, attended by their friends, then left the hustings, and proceeded to Mr. Mayo's, whose carriage had been splendidly fitted up by Mr. Ikin, the cabinet maker, with blue and green ribbons, evergreens, and flowers, with a motto in gilt letters upon a blue silk tablet or shield, "The Choice of the People." The Major and Mr. W. C. Wentworth having seated themselves in this carriage, about fifty men harnessed themselves to it with ropes, and a procession having been formed which reached nearly a quarter of a mile in length, attended by two bands of music, several banners, and a number of youths carrying cornstalks decorated with flowers and ribbons, they moved on towards West Maitland, amidst the cheers of the people. The procession passed through the town at a slow pace, to Mr. Yeomans's, the Northumberland Hotel, where some refreshment was given to the men who had drawn the carriage; and soon after the crowd dispersed, every thing having been conducted with the greatest harmony and good humour.

Ballooning in Australia began in theory rather than practice when Dr William Bland (1789–1868) produced designs for a powered airship:

In March 1851 Dr William Bland designed an ‘atmotic ship’, drawings of which he sent to England for the Great Exhibition of that year; they arrived too late, but a model of the machine was shown in 1852 at the Crystal Palace. This ‘ship’ consisted of an elongated balloon, capable of lifting five tons, with an attached car containing a steam-engine actuating two screws by which the ship could be driven against the wind. As the weight of the car when fully loaded with fuel was 3^1/2 tons, there was theoretically a surplus lifting power of 1^1/2 tons available for passengers, etc. Bland’s estimate of the possible speed was only 50 miles per hour, but he was sanguine enough to prognosticate the reduction of the passage between England and Australia to four or five days. In 1866 he announced his invention to the world in a broadsheet, but it attracted little notice, and his death in 1868 cancelled its last chance of being tried. 

NEITHER eggs nor tomatoes were thrown at the candidates when the first legislative elections in Australian history were held in Sydney on June 15, 1843. Both were too scarce, in a year marked by a run on the Bank (of N.S.W.).

It is on record, however, that Sydney knew cudgels, harpoons, sticks and palings, and the freedom to use them in that distant year. A man was killed on Brickfield Hill. A number of people were injured. Homes were entered and pillaged. A mob ruled the city.

Up to that time legislation had been a matter for the Governor, who sat and debated and voted with a Council appointed by him. The June, 1843, elections were to bring some representatives among the appointees in the Legislative Council. The Governor would no longer sit or vote. It was a small but important step toward self-government.

THE candidates for the Cumberland seat were W. C.   Wentworth, Dr. William Bland, Captain O'Connell, Robert Cooper, and Mr. Hustler. On the ticket, the first four were paired in the order named.

The candidates were publicly nominated at the hustings in Macquarie Place on June 13.

Among the five thousand people gathered there to hear the Mayor of Sydney, the candidates, and their nominators speak, were more than a hundred almost fanatic supporters of Captain O'Connell and Mr. Cooper.

These supporters, wearing green silk streamers, crowded the hustings, tore down the Wentworth Bland banner, assaulted whoever they found wearing a "true blue, currency blue" rosette, and other- wise drowned out the voices of the speakers with shouts and chanting.

There was worse to come on the great day of the election.

On the advice of their candidates, the Wentworth-Bland sup- porters began to record their votes as soon as polling began at the six booths in the city.

In the absence of both police and soldiers, Captain O'Connell's supporters were able to obstruct the booths and suborn the voters from that hour onwards.

Had the limited franchise been extended to all men, the mob in command of the city would have elected the captain with a large majority.

THE first serious battle took place near the polling booth on Flag Staff Hill, when the wearers of the green made a vicious attack on Councillor Jones, who was also a whaler.

While mounted police came to the rescue from one direction, up from the wharves came a band of the councillor's crewmen, armed with handspikes and harpoons. The three forces met, tangled, and overran the booth. Heads were broken and blood was drawn. Jones and his crew retired to their boats and fled across harbour.

A man named Daniel Finnie was bludgeoned to death in a mob fight on Brickfield Hill.

The rioters smashed all the windows of the Australian Hotel in Lower George Street and did the same for Sam Lyons, merchant.

The wife and children of a Jewish trader had to run for sanctuary when the house was invaded and looted.

The small parties of mounted police were too few to be effective.

As to the size of the mob, we have the story of Captain Innes, a justice of the peace, who met and was overrun by a fast moving force of between four and five hundred men led by one John Mooney, who wore a long blue frock-coat, carried a green flag on a pole, and was mounted on a black horse.

The mob went through Macquarie Place, up Bent Street, and along Phillip Street to Hyde Park.

Captain Innes took a short cut to try again to head them off, and again they swept him along with them.

On his third attempt to head the rioters, someone struck the captain's horse, which bolted and knocked down a woman. Innes stopped the horse at last and cantered back to see if the woman had been hurt. He was surrounded by the mob and his life was threatened.

"THE Mounted Police endeavoured to protect me," he said later, at the trial of John Mooney. "I wished them to attempt to disperse the mob, but the sergeant-major told me not to think of such a thing but to get away as quickly as I could." Captain Innes took the advice and put his horse to the nearest fence.

"Such a scene of violent out- rage, riot, and disorder I never before witnessed in my life," he testified.

The disorder became worse in the late afternoon, when the polling figures showed Wentworth and Bland, with some 1,200 votes, to be at least 500 ahead of Captain O'Connell.

Wentworth later declared that none of his supporters dared record a vote during the last two hours of the day.

As darkness fell on Sydney town, two parties of the 80th Regiment were ordered out to assist the Mounted Police. The soldiers seem to have done very little to stop the wrecking and looting that night.

The strange thing is that only seven men were arrested for all of this.

One of them, John Mooney, was discharged at an inquest into the death of Daniel Finnie, who died at the hands of "some person or persons unknown." The other six were not even brought to trial.

Australia's first free election had ended.

Wentworth was prominent in NSW politics from his return from England in 1824 until his retirement in 1856.  He founded the Australian, the colony's first privately owned newspaper and was one of the colony's wealthiest citizens. He is most famous for being part of the expedition of Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth – the first officially recognised European attempt to find a route across the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney in 1813.