MUSQUITO

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. 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.