Musquito: The real story of a legendary colonial warrior

Naomi Parry Duncan has uncovered the powerful story of one of the best-known First Nations resistance fighters of the early colonies. To her surprise, she discovers her own convict ancestors are part of his story.

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, confronting a roving party of white settlers.

Exiled to Van Diemen's Land, Musquito was caught up in a series of violent incidents of Palawa resistance that sparked the infamous Black War. Wrongly accused of inciting the violence, he was executed in 1825.

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. Searching for the smallest fragments of evidence in the archives, Naomi is shocked to discover the lives of her convict ancestors intersected with Musquito, and that one of them, gunpowder thief William Mobbs, was probably in that roving party that captured Musquito in 1805.