Koori people are “beginning to annoy the settlers” on the Hawkesbury, John Lacy operating a passenger boat from Sydney to the Hawkesbury is killed. Governor Hunter asks settlers to “mutually afford assistance to each other by assembling when ever any numerous body of the natives are known to be lurking about”. (HRNSW vol 3, p. 26)
“The settlers of the northern farms have frequently lost clothing and provisions as a result of the Aborigines. The settlers armed themselves and in the fight, five Aborigines were killed.” (Collins 1971 vol 2, p. 27). “The Aboriginal people were no longer the object of pity or cruel amusement … the murder of Aboriginal men was justified on the grounds that the Aborigines were treacherous, evil minded, blood thirsty set of men”. (Clark 1962, p. 145 quoted in Morris 1978). By the end of the first Hawkesbury conflict it is unofficially not always regarded as murder to carry out indiscriminate killing of Aboriginal men, women or children by settlers or by government punitive expeditions. Many colonists believe that they should not be prosecuted for protecting their crops.