Musquito

Naomi Parry Duncan has uncovered the dramatic and tragic story of one of the best-known First Nations resistance warriors of the early colonies. Astonishingly, she also discovers her own convict ancestors are entangled in his story.

Musquito was just a boy when a convoy of eleven British ships assembled in the waters of Port Jackson in January 1788. Seventeen years later, he was a warrior fighting for Country west of Sydney, hunted by white colonists.

Exiled to Van Diemen's Land he joined with local Aboriginal people as they began the resistance that ignited the colonists' Black War. Wrongly accused of being the ringleader, he was executed in 1825.

Musquito is one of the best-known First Nations resistance fighters of the early colonies but even while he was alive, his story was shrouded in misinformation and myth. Historian Naomi Parry Duncan has uncovered the real story of this remarkable man. Searching the archives for the smallest fragments of evidence, she realised the lives of convicts in her family tree intersected with Musquito in disturbing ways.

Musquito's remarkable life offers new insights into how Aboriginal people navigated ways of living alongside the new arrivals.