Lines in the sand: The personal and historical story of an exhibition

My great-great-great-great-grandfather Philip Gidley King, Second Lieutenant to Captain Arthur Phillip had arrived in Botany Bay on HMS Supply, landing at Yarra Bay. On the 19th January 1788, both Phillip and King walked across the hot sand, in uniforms most unsuitable for the January heat. As they searched for water, they had the first encounters with Aborigines. On the first evening in Port Jackson on the beach with Aborigines at Manly Cove, Captain Arthur Phillip wrote: ‘As their curiosity made them very troublesome when we were preparing our Dinner, I made a circle round us; there was little difficulty in making them understand that they were not to come within it, and they then sat down very quiet’ (qtd in Smith 16).