Packing for Sydney

The colonisation of Australia was an epic undertaking that required the drafting of an extensive shopping list. Pondering over his packing, 20-year-old Midshipman Newton Fowell wrote to his father: ‘I have now, I believe, got every thing I want ... as I suppose I shall not be able to get any of these things in Botany.’

Subsequent letters to his family describe the colony’s early years and its shortages. In April 1790 Fowell sailed to Batavia aboard the Supply, on a mission to procure provisions for the starving colony. While there, he contracted fever and died at sea on 25 August.