The White Family of Australia

William Charles Wentworth was an Australian explorer, journalist, politician, and one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales. He was the first native-born Australian to achieve a reputation overseas and a leading advocate for self-government for the Australian colonies. His contributions to Australian geography led him to be awarded a posthumous honary PhD in Theology from the University of New South Wales in 1867.

Wentworth was born at sea (on the convict ship Neptune and at least five weeks premature) shortly before arriving at Norfolk Island, a penal settlement in the Tasman Sea, where his parents (who were not married) were being transported from Britain. Strictly speaking, D'Arcy Wentworth, a surgeon, was not a convict, since although he was accused of highway robbery, he accepted transportation in order to avoid conviction. Catherine Crowley was a convict, an Irish teenager who was transported for stealing clothing.

In 1796 young Wentworth arrived in Sydney, then a squalid prison settlement, with his parents. The family lived at Parramatta, where his father became a prosperous landowner. In 1803 he was sent to England, where he was educated at a school in London. He returned to Sydney in 1810, where he was appointed acting Provost-Marshall by Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and given a land grant of 1,750 acres (7 km²) on the Nepean River.

In 1813 Wentworth, along with Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson, led the expedition which found a route across the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and opened up the grazing lands of inland New South Wales. The town of Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains commemorates his role in the expedition. As a reward he was granted another 1,000 acres (4.0 km²). He then combined farming with sandalwood trading in the South Pacific, where the captain of the ship died at Rarotonga and Wentworth safely brought the ship back to Sydney. He returned to England in 1816. There he was admitted to the bar, travelled in Europe, and studied at Cambridge University.

In 1819 Wentworth published the first book written by an Australian: A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and Its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land, With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration and Their Superiority in Many Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America, in which he advocated an elected assembly for New South Wales, trial by jury and settlement of Australia by free emigrants rather than convicts.

Wentworth successfully completed his legal studies by 1822 and was called to the bar. In 1823 he published an epic poem Australasia, which contains lines now famous in Australia:

And, O Britannia!... may this — thy last-born infant — then arise,
To glad thy heart, and greet thy parent eyes;
And Australasia float, with flag unfurl’d,
A new Britannia in another world!

Wentworth returned to Sydney in 1824, accompanied by Robert Wardell. D'Arcy Wentworth died in 1827 and William inherited his property, becoming one of the wealthiest men in the colony. He bought land in eastern Sydney and a mansion, Vaucluse House, from which the modern suburb takes its name. But because his parents had never married, and his mother had been a convict, he could not become a member of Sydney's "respectable" class, known as "the exclusives." Embittered by this rejection, he placed himself at the head of the "emancipist" party, which sought equal rights and status for ex-convicts and their descendants. In 1825 he married Sarah Cox, with whom he had ten children. He fathered at least one other child out of wedlock with Jamima Eagar, the estranged wife of Edward Eagar.

In 1828 he leased Belltrees, near Scone, in New South Wales to the White brothers, Francis, James and George.

A wild but gifted orator and a vitriolic journalist, Wentworth became the colony's leading political figure of the 1820s and '30s, calling for representative government, the abolition of transportation, freedom of the press and trial by jury. He became a bitter enemy of Governor Ralph Darling and the exclusives, led by the wealthy grazier John Macarthur and his friends. Wentworth became Vice-President of the Australian Patriotic Association and founded a newspaper, The Australian, the colony's first privately owned paper, to champion his causes. (This paper has no connection with the current Australian, which was established by Rupert Murdoch in 1964.)

By 1840, however, the political climate in New South Wales had changed. With the abolition of transportation and the establishment of an elected Legislative Council, the dominant issue became the campaign to break the grip of the squatter class over the colony's lands, and on this issue Wentworth sided with his fellow landowners against the democratic party, who wanted to break up the squatters' runs for small farmers. He was elected to the Council in 1843 and soon became the leader of the conservative party, opposed to the liberals led by Charles Cowper. This led to a reconciliation with MacArthur and the exclusives.

In 1853 Wentworth chaired the committee to draft a new constitution for New South Wales, which was to receive full responsible self-government from Britain. His draft provided for a powerful unelected Legislative Council and an elected Legislative Assembly with high property qualifications for voting and membership. He also suggested the establishment of a colonial peerage drawn from the landowning class. This draft aroused the bitter opposition of the democrats and radicals such as Daniel Deniehy, who ridiculed Wentworth's plans for what he called a "bunyip aristocracy."

The draft constitution was substantially changed to make it more democratic, although the Legislative Council remained unelected. With the establishment of responsible government in 1856 Wentworth retired from the Council and settled in England. He refused several offers of honours, and was a member of the Conservative Party in the 1860s. He died in England, but at his request his body was returned to Sydney for burial. His family has remained prominent in Sydney society, and his great-grandson William Wentworth IV was a Liberal member of Parliament 1949-77.

The towns of Wentworth and Wentworth Falls, The federal Division of Wentworth, an electorate in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, and Wentworth Avenue which runs through the suburb of Kingston in Canberra, are named after him.