Willliam Buckley, the ‘wild white man’ who lived with the local Aboriginals in our area for more than thirty years, died this day in 1856 due to falling from his carriage at Greenpond near Hobart.
Buckley was transported to Australia onboard HMS Calcutta after being convicted of theft. He arrived in 1803 and escaped from the Sorrento convict settlement just before it was abandoned, and the convicts relocated to Tasmania. Buckley spent a lot of his time along the banks of the Barwon River and locally around the mouth of Bream Creek/Thompsons Creek. On 6 July 1835, dressed in kangaroo skin and armed with Aboriginal weapons, he walked into the camp of John Batman’s party at Indented Head. Buckley became an interpreter before he left to settle in Van Diemen’s Land in 1837.
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