Timbery - an Australian Indigenous family
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| Timbéré, engraving, Paris, 1822. |
Contents
- French connection
- Facebook post
- Origin & meaning
- Family history
- Chronology
- References
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Abstract: One of the earliest Illawarra (Five Islands - an area on the coast of New South Wales, Australia, located approximately 50 miles south of Sydney) and Shoalhaven Indigenous individuals to be identified in the non-Indigenous historical record during Australia's early colonial period was a man identified by a French artist as Timbéré. This naming took place during November 1819 in association with the visit to Sydney of a French exploring expedition. The man was subsequently listed in family history records as Timbery, born at Charcoal Creek, near Wollongong, in 1784 and died at Wollongong in 1840. During the latter part of the 1800s a member of the Timbery family was declared "King of the Five Islands" and given a breast plate, which was later unearth during 1929. Another Shoalhaven man Breton [Broughton] (1798 - c.1850) was also identified and sketched by the French visitors during 1819. Moving through to the present day, the Timbery family remains well-known within the Illawarra and South Coast First Nations community. This article aims to reveal elements of the use of the name in association with the French explorers and subsequent adaptions. It was a common practice during the early to mid' 1800 for Indigenous families to have non-Indigenous (mostly English) names applied to them to facilitate their survival in an increasingly hostile, post European invasion environment where assimilation and genocide were practiced, and also align them with specific families, perhaps for protection. As a result, many of the Indigenous names were lost to history. The Timbery name is one of the very few where this did not occur in those areas of eastern Australia where European settlement occurred during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
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1. A French connection
In November 1819 a French scientific exploring expedition aboard the corvette l'Uranie arrived in Sydney under the command of Louis-Claude Desaulses de Freycinet (1779-1842). According to the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, in a recent note accompanying one of the works in its collection:
In New South Wales, Freycinet and other officers met the Dharawal senior men Timbery (1784-1840) (centre) and Broughton (1798-c. 1850) (bottom left) and others associated with explorers such as Charles Throsby and Alexander Berry. Broughton was the name given by Europeans to Toodood (also Toodwick and Toodwit), who acted as a guide and interpreter to Throsby and Berry in their explorations of Dharawal, Gundungurra and Yuin Country in the 1810s and 1820s. Members of the Timbery family are said to have been present when James Cook – and later Arthur Phillip – dropped anchor in Kamay (Botany Bay). The Timbery family have lived in the area for countless generations, preserving their stories of the arrival of the colonisers and continuing to practice Dharawal craft traditions (National Portrait Gallery, circa 2010).
Amongst the crew of l'Uranie was the artist Jacques Etienne Victor Arago (1790-1855). During the visit he produced five small pencil sketches of Aboriginal males, as mentioned above. He identified two Illawarra and Shoalhaven men as Timbéré (then aged 41) and Broten (aka Broughton, then aged 27). Both original pencil sketches are illustrated below.
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| Jacques Arago, Timbéré, Nlle. Hollander, 1819, charcoal on paper, 6 x 8.5 cm. Signed J.A. l.r. Collection: State Library of New South Wales. |
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| Jacques Arago, Broten, Nlle. Hollander, 1819, charcoal on paper, 6 x 8.5 cm. Signed J.A. l.r. Collection: State Library of New South Wales. |
A highly detailed engraved version of the Timbéré drawing was published in France in 1822.
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| Pierre Langlume (engraver) after Jacques Etienne Victor Arago, Timbere sauvage de la nouvelle galles du sud en grand costume (Relache au Port Jackson)', engraving, Paris, 1822. |
It varies slightly from the pencil sketch, wherein Timbéré is dressed in a cap and coat; in the engraving the coat is missing and scares on the face are clearly seen.
A third variant was published during 1825 in the official Atlas of the Freycinet expedition, being a line engraving on paper featuring all five heads - Nani, Taran, Abinghou, Broten and Timbere - with the latter in the centre and the largest of the five, plus Broten on the lower left.
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| Jean Coutant (engraver) after Jacques Etienne Victor Arago, Nlle. Holland Port Jackson: Sauvages des environs de Sydney: Nani, Taran, Abinghou, Broten, Timbere, 1825, line engraving on paper, sheet: 33.5 cm x 50.0 cm. Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. |
It appears from these images that Arago recorded in French the Indigenous or common names of the five men. There is no evidence at this stage that he specifically allocated names to them.
As with the later 1826 visit to Jervis Bay in the Shoalhaven by a French exploring expedition, it is interesting to be able to compare linguistically the records of the French as opposed to the more common English ones. A good example is how Arago records one of Shoalhaven man's name which in English is Broughton, but in French is noted Breton, which is actually the name of a region in France, though there is no connection. It is therefore understandable that what Arago records as Timbéré in 1819 is subsequently recorded as Timbery / Timberry / Timboree in various English recordings of the time, such as the blanket distribution lists and census of the 1830s.
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2. Facebook posting
The portraits and story of Timbéré have been previously written about following the appearance of published accounts of the Freycinet expedition in the 1820s and more recent material relating to the Illawarra and Shoalhaven Indigenous community by Australian historians, both local and academic. One example is the following anonymous 3 July 2017 Facebook posting on the Kembla Jottings community site, accompanying the 1822 Timbéré engraved portrait. It brings together various known facts about the Elder in question:
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Paying respects to Elders past...
Dharawal Elder Timbéré or Timbery (1784-1840) from the Five Islands (Illawarra). Image titled 'Timbere sauvage de la nouvelle galles du sud en grand costume (Relache au Port Jackson)', 1822 by Jacques Etienne Victor Arago and P. Langlume (engraver).
Timbery was sketched by French artist Jacques Arago in late 1819, while the vessel l'Uranie, captained by Louis-Claude Freycinet, was in Sydney. Timbery would have been in his 30s when this portrait was made.
The Reverend and geologist W.B. Clarke, freshly arrived in New South Wales and visiting the Illawarra for the first time in 1840, wrote in his diary that Timbery was born under the ancient fig tree at Figtree, New South Wales, a tree the Aboriginal people venerated:
Monday, January 6 Rose at 6. Breakfasted with Mr Meares at 7, with Mr Hancock, Dana, Drayton and Burnet. Off at 9. Hancock and Meares accompanying Dana and me and the guide (Biggs) to Dapto. The road leaves that over Keira to the right, then descends to country much like the coal district of England - through a woody region to Charcoal Creek, which is bridged by palm trees, passing an enormous fig-tree, at the foot of which old Timbery, a black, was born, and which [p245] his people venerate. There is another tree which the blacks say contains the names of their tribe and its history, by some hieroglyphical interpretation of its branches: a real genealogical tree.
The following information is from the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, http://www.portrait.gov.au/.../timbere-sauvage-de-la...:
"Members of the Timbery family are said to have been present when James Cook - and later Arthur Phillip - dropped anchor in Botany Bay, and are said to have directed both captains to fresh water sources and fishing spots... In 1816 Governor Lachlan Macquarie named him King of the Five Islands at a gathering of Aboriginal people in Parramatta. His breastplate was lost for ninety years before turning up in an excavation site at La Perouse in 1929; it is now in the Australian Museum. The Timbery family has lived continuously in the La Perouse area, perpetuating its craft traditions. Joe Timbery was a noted boomerang and shield maker; his boomerangs were presented to the Queen in 1954 and he was called upon to show members of Abba how to throw the boomerang. Esme Timbery is a highly-regarded shell artist, and Laddie Timbery continues the family tradition of boomerang making and sales in the area. The family has carefully preserved their stories of the arrival of the colonisers."
lllawarra Breastplate at La Perouse
14 September 1929: According to reminiscences published in La Perouse (1988, p.27): At the time the old reserve was to be removed off the sand hills to where we are today a breastplate was dug up by a white man, Mr Walker when excavating. This was on 14 September 1929. The breastplate belonged to "Joe Timbery, Chief of the Five Islands", which is an area around Port Kembla."
[NB: This could refer to one of the Joe Timbery's who lived the latter part of the 1800s, as a number of breast plates were given to Illawarra Aboriginal men during this period. It is possible that it does not refer to the Timbere who died in 1840, as no record of him receiving a breast plate from Governor Lachlan Macquarie has been located by the present writer.]
Timbery is also recorded in the Government blanket returns in 1834 and 1836 published in Michael Organ 1990, Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines 1770-1850 http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007...
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This Facebook posting is useful as it brings together a number of elements of the diverse Timbery family history, and also points to the problem of differentiating between various members of the family and allocating accurate dates to events in their lives. Some of this will be addressed below.
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3. Origin & meaning
Was the word Timbéré / Timbery / Timboree used to identify this Aboriginal man prior to November 1819? And was the word associated with a family group, or simply the man in question? No historic reference has to date been found by the present writer to the term prior to 1819, and it seems likely that a "family name" in the English context was not used by Indigenous Australians prior to the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. That is, people were allocated a single name, and whether a group / tribe / clan was given a specific name is unclear. It is clear, however, that the British immediately began applying their individual, family and group names to Australian Aborigines upon arrival.
The 1834 Blanket List for Wollongong lists Timbery as both the English and Aboriginal name. He was then listed as aged 50. In the 1830s blanket listings references to Timbery (and its spelling variants) the names are always listed as Native names, with no specific English variants. This is significant and implies the precedence of the name. Perhaps the English overlords were okay with this, as the name was similar to the English word timber, and in their racial arrogance they saw no need in this instance to change it.
Linguistically there is an argument to support the Indigenous origin of the word Timbery / Timboree. A number of Illawarra and South Coast Indigenous words possess root elements related to the word. For example: Timelong (Aboriginal man, 1818), Tibbery (old man, 1836), and corroboree. The presence of the phonemes such as timb and boree supports an Indigenous origin.
According to the methodology developed by Dr. Chris Illert, the meaning of the word timbery and its variants can be assessed as follows (Illert 2013):
Indigenous word variants (as recorded): timbery / timboree / timbéré
Phonetically (Illert): .......
Meanings: .......
The present writer cannot see any reason to allocate the name a French origin, especially as there was no known close association between the man Timbéré and the expedition personal such as Arago or Freycinet. This is unlike the case with Toodwick, wherein the names aka Broughton / Breton derive from an early English settler that Toodwick was associated with. As noted above, such a linkage was a common occurrence throughout the nineteenth century. We still see this happen in Asian countries such as Taiwan, where English Christian names are commonly allocated alongside the indigenous Taiwanese names. Identification of a pre November 1819 reference to the name Timbery would clarify this situation.
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4. Family history
On 17 January 2005 an article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald which discussed aspects of Timbery family history as follows:
A tale of two histories
"You whitefellas have gotta have your own Dreamtime stories. If you bury 'em, you'll have no past, won't know where you have come from and won't know how to find your way into the future." Aboriginal activist, the late Charlie Perkins, in 1988.
Until the 1980s, the arrival of the First Fleet was re-enacted every Australia Day by white Australians. A square-rigged tall ship would anchor in Farm Cove. Spectators lined the shore cheering as actors in 18th-century style uniforms and three-pointed tricorn hats rowed ashore. The annual event was organised by historical societies and enthusiasts (including this writer), but there was moral support and financial backing from the Festival of Sydney and the Australia Day Council. The aim was to remind people that European settlement was founded on January 26, 1788. But this Australia Day there will be no official mention of this First Fleet - let alone first European settlement - by the Festival of Sydney or the Australia Day Council.
Once heralded as Australia's "founding father", the hapless First Fleet leader, Captain Arthur Phillip - through no apparent fault of his own - has also fallen from grace. Phillip hardly rates a mention in some Australian school history courses, especially in NSW. The State Government was not involved in any historical events to celebrate Australia Day, said a spokesman for the Premier's Department, which partly funds the Australia Day Council. "The Premier is a well-established historian who personally appreciates the significance of Australia Day, but he also lives in the modern world," the spokesman said. A spokesman for the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, said "historical re-enactments went out of vogue a few years ago".
There is no mention of any such activities in the 2005 Australia Day Council program. "If it's an entertaining day in the park you're after on Australia Day, then you've got it all," the program says. The Hyde Park schedule boasts family activities, a jazz concert, a festival of food stalls, barbecues and a series of sponsored events including a tyre-changing competition. There are ferry races in the harbour, country music in The Rocks and an RAAF display by the Roulettes. But there is only one historical event: an Indigenous welcome ceremony called Woggan-ma-gule, performed by the Garrabarra dance company at Farm Cove.
When asked why these fun-filled events were still held to mark January 26 - despite the absence of any reference to the First Fleet - the council's publicity officer, Lyndel Molloy, pauses. "That's a good question. I do know that, but I will have to get back to you once I have consulted my documents." Molloy was unavailable for subsequent comment.
Ironically, the only people who will still be publicly discussing the First Fleet on Australia Day are Aboriginal people at La Perouse on the northern shore of Botany Bay, where Cook visited in 1770 and where Phillip arrived 217 years ago tomorrow, in 1788. These include members of the Timbery family who were there when Cook - and later Phillip - dropped anchor. (La Perouse was named after the French navigator Comte de la Perouse who led a scientific expedition to New Holland, landing at Botany Bay on January 26, 1788.)
Timberys still live in the area. Their ancestors talked about the arrival of the colonialists so their descendants might remember in decades to come. One of their ancestors, known only as Timbere, King of the Five Islands, was sketched in 1819 by the Louis de Freycinet expedition artist Jacques Arago. (Arago spelt the Aboriginal leader's name "Timbere".)
Every year on Australia Day, storytellers such as Laddie Timbery show tourists where events took place at La Perouse, in between demonstrating and selling homemade boomerangs. Another descendant, amateur historian Joanne Timbery, is writing a book, The Survivors: The Timbery Family from Captain Cook to Today. "You see, we've got all that stuff in our blood because our Timbery ancestors helped Captain Cook," says Joanne Timbery, a teacher's aide at Matraville Soldiers Settlement primary school and a mother of four. "They showed him freshwater creeks and the best fishing spots. Timberys are naturally friendly and want to share everything."
Timbery said her ancestors also welcomed Captain Arthur Phillip, showing him the best fresh water sources and fishing spots and even offering his crew their women. Although the Aborigines were friendly from the start, her grandfather and father had always told her the whites responded badly and that "Captain Arthur Phillip's men later raped our women and murdered our men and were not even punished for that - even though they definitely raped our women repeatedly. "But it all happened - it would be wrong to deny it. You cannot sweep it under the carpet, even though I feel very sad about that. The whites put us down and never gave us any reward for helping Cook and Phillip, yet we've gotta keep telling the story to teach the younger ones. It's our story of survival. I don't feel any anger now because at least we are still alive."
Had her ancestors fought back, Timbery believes "we would not be here today. We compromised so they did not wipe us out. We are still on the same land and we survived. That is what my book is all about." The Timbery family survives and managed to preserve the family's name and story with generational retelling of the story of Cook and Phillip to anyone who asked.
In [December] 1816 Governor Lachlan Macquarie crowned Joanne Timbery's ancestor Joe Timbere King of the Five Islands at a gathering of Aborigines in Parramatta. Colonial governors presented engraved breastplates to each king so the government could sort the different Aboriginal groups. Timbere was given five islands, clustered off Wollongong. His breastplate was lost for 90 years before turning up in an excavation site at La Perouse in 1929. It is now stored at the Mitchell Library. In 1819 Timbere posed for the portrait by Arago. It is now owned by the Mitchell Library. Joanne Timbery's grandfather, Joe, presented his handmade boomerangs to the Queen on her 1954 royal tour. A world-champion boomerang thrower, Joe taught visitors, including the rock group Abba, how to throw them. A storyteller who helped keep the Botany Bay stories alive, Joe also wrote poetry, some of which was published.
Joanne's grandmother, Hazel, spoke seven dialects and taught traditional language and culture. Her father, also called Joe, made boomerangs as well paintings and wooden carvings that depicted traditional landscapes. He also kept the stories alive, visiting schools where he taught children about the arrival of Captain Cook and Captain Phillip from the Aboriginal point of view. Members of the extended family continue to tell their version of the European arrivals, paint, make boomerangs and demonstrate how to throw them - especially on Australia Day.
"Our name Timbery comes from the word timber because we have always worked so closely with wood," Joanne Timbery says. She has also told traditional stories at Matraville primary school where she says "the kids loved it and they want me to do it again". Such stories of survival are now critical to our understanding of Botany Bay, believes Monash University historian Dr Maria Nugent. "By telling the stories of early contacts with Europeans for their own purposes as survival stories, they enable us to look at history through a new lens."
Nugent, a lecturer in Monash University's School of Historical Studies, has been studying the La Perouse Aboriginal communities since 1985 and this year plans to publish a book Botany Bay - where histories meet. Nugent says the stories of dispossession and survival against the odds are needed to compensate for "a blind spot in white history". Aboriginal recall of events provides "a counterpoint to whites forgetting", she says. "There has been a sense of denial about certain aspects of our history since the 1988 Bicentenary, which is a backward step as you can't make political points with history that belongs to Aborigines." Though we might forget - or choose to erase aspects of our past - "the Aborigines won't forget what happened.
"History is as important to Aborigines as to whites. They are very active storytellers and even though it must have been a big burden for the La Perouse people to be constantly reminded of the white arrival by the geographical presence of Botany Bay itself, Captain Cook is now incorporated into their history. "Captain Cook is a useful symbol as he confirms their rightful possession of Botany Bay and their survival against great odds. "As the Aborigines of La Perouse have always been in such a marginal position, La Perouse itself has become a symbol of this survival as they are still there, despite repeated efforts to expel them." If the history of Botany Bay is to be representative, Australians need to blend both stories, black and white, rather than expunge one version or another, says Nugent. "They should not be pitted against each other." Both should be told to each generation, Nugent says.
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5. Chronology
The following is a brief chronology bringing together dates referred to above concerning the Timbery family and Timbéré.
1794
* Timbéré born under the big old figtree at Figtree (Charcoal Creek, Unanderra), south of Wollongong.
1816
* December 1816 - Governor Lachlan Macquarie hands out breastplates at Parramatta. Some family accounts state that one was given to Timbéré at the time.
1819
* November 1819 - Jacques Arago sketches a portrait of Timbéré at Sydney.
1822
* Engraved portrait of Timbéré published in France.
1825
* Engraved portrait of Timbéré published in the Atlas of the Freycinet expedition.
1834
* Timbéré listed in Wollongong blanket list.
1836
* Timbéré listed in Wollongong blanket list.
1840
* 6 January 1840 - the Reverend W.B. Clarke records that Timbéré was born under the figtree at Charcoal Creek.
* Timbéré dies at Wollongong.
1929
* 14 September 1929 - Breastplate "Joe Timbery, Chief of the Five Islands" uncovered at La Perouse.
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6. References
Kembla Jottings, Paying respect to Elders past... Timbere, Facebook, 3 July 2017.
Organ, Michael, Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines 1770-1850, Aboriginal Education Unit, University of Wollongong, 1990, 640p.
Wikipedia, The Timbery Family, in Bidjigal, Wikipedia, accessed 11 June 2025.
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Last updated: 4 July 2025
Michael Organ, Australia
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