A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson

Watkin Tench served as a Marine officer on one of the vessels of the First Fleet and recorded his observations of the voyage in A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay. Tench also wrote of the subsequent settlement in New South Wales in A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson. These accounts are among the most important documents of early settlement in Australia, giving an insight into the early colonial settlement, as told through the keen eyes of a curious young man.

Watkin Tench (1758?-1833) was a novelist, writing about the early European settlement of Sydney and its surrounds. Before arriving in Sydney Tench was an English marine during the American War of Independence.

To Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, Bart
Preface

1. A retrospect of the state of the colony of Port Jackson on the date of my former narrative, in July, 1788
2. Transactions of the colony from the sailing of the First Fleet in July, 1788 to the close of that year
3. Transactions of the colony from the commencement of the year 1789 until the end of March
4. Transactions of the colony in April and May, 1789
5. Transactions of the colony until the close of the year 1789
6. Transactions of the colony from the beginning of the year 1790 until the end of May following
7. Transactions of the colony in June, July and August, 1790
8. Transactions of the colony in the beginning of September, 1790
9. Transactions of the colony in part of September and October, 1790
10. The arrival of the supply from Batavia – the state of the colony in November, 1790
11. Farther transactions of the colony in November, 1790
12. Transactions of the colony in part of December, 1790
13. The transactions of the colony continued to the end of May, 1791
14. Travelling diaries in New South Wales
15. Transactions of the colony to the end of November, 1791
16. Transactions of the colony until the 18th of December, 1791, when I quitted it – with an account of its state at that time
17. Miscellaneous remarks on the country – on its vegetable productions, on its climate, on its animal productions, on its natives, &c
18. Observations on the convicts
19. Facts relating to the probability of establishing a whale fishery on the coast of New South Wales – with thoughts on the same