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Biriban or Johnny McGill was born circa 1800 at Bahtahbah (now Belmont), NSW into the Awabagal language group centred on Newcastle and Lake Macquarie. He acquired his name from an army officer, Captain John McGill who brought him up at the Military Barracks in Sydney where he learnt to speak English.

By 1819 Johnny was in Newcastle, where he was caricatured as 'Magill’ with his body 'painted-up’ for ceremony, in a watercolour portrait by the convict artist Richard Browne . According to the Rev. L.E. Threlkeld in a report to the London Missionary Society, it is likely that Johnny acquired his totem name Biriban (Eaglehawk in Awaba) when he completed his initiation rites at the age of about 26 during 1826. In 1821 McGill and two other Aborigines, Boatman (also known as Boardman or Jemmy Jackass) and Mongoul or Bob Barratt, were taken to Port Macquarie on the northern coast on NSW by Captain Francis Allman of the 48th Regiment, who commanded the convict settlement. As 'bush constables’ they tracked and captured runaway convicts.

At the 1830 Parramatta Conference, Biriban was presented with a brass breastplate or gorget by governor Sir Ralph Darling. As reported in the Sydney Gazette on the 12th January, 1830 the breastplate was engraved with the inscription: Barabahn, or Mac.Gill, Chief of the Tribe of Bartabah, on Lake Macquarie; a Reward for his assistance in reducing his Native Tongue to a written Language. James Backhouse wrote in A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies published in London in 1843 that Biriban wore the gorget with his “red-striped shirt, not very clean, a pair of ragged trowsers, and an old hat” when he and Boardman guided the Quakers James Backhouse and George Washington Walker through the bush from Newcastle to Lake Macquarie in April 1836.

Biriban joined the Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld, a Congregational Minister and linguist, who in 1824 established a mission to the Aborigines at 'Ebenezer’, (Toronto), at the entrance to Lake Macquarie as an interpreter when Aborigines appeared in court and a language informant. Biriban accompanied Threlkeld to Brisbane Water five times for the annual distribution of blankets to the Walkeloa or Brisbane Water 'Tribe’ which Threlkeld supervised and recorded. In 1836 'Beerabahr’ was described by the Colonial Secretary in 'Return of Aboriginal Natives’ as “Chief of the Lake Macquarie Tribes”. In Threlkeld’s Preface to the Gospel of St. Luke (1857), which Biriban and Threlkeld translated into Awabagal, Threlkeld wrote 'McGill spoke the English language fluently’. He also described Biriban as 'a noble specimen of his race, my companion and teacher in the language for many years’.

According to Threlkeld, Biriban was also a clever artist. “When the first steamboat arrived in the colony, the 'Sophia Jane’, I requested him to give me a description of it. This he did verbally, and when I required of him a representation, he drew with a pencil on a sheet of paper an excellent sketch of the vessel.” Threlkeld sent Biriban’s drawing to the Bishop of Sydney, Reverend W. G. Broughton, who sent it to 'one of the [religious] societies in London’. Biriban’s drawing has not been located, but it could turn up one day in a British archive. It might have resembled the image of the 'Sophia Jane’ a woodblock print now in the collection of the Wollongong City Library. The 250 ton 'Sophia Jane’, a sea-going paddle-wheel steamship rigged with sails as a schooner, arrived in Sydney on 15th May, 1831 and went into service as a passenger ship between Sydney, Newcastle and Morpeth on the Hunter River. Biriban probably saw the steamer when it arrived at Newcastle in June that year. Alfred T. Agate, a botanical artist in the United States scientific expedition commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, made a portrait of Biriban at Lake Macquarie in 1839 and recalled that “it was very evident that McGill was accustomed to teaching his native language, for when he was asked the name of anything, he pronounced the world very distinctly, syllable by syllable, so that it was impossible to mistake it. “Threlkeld recorded the name of Biriban’s wife as Patty or Ti-pa-mah-ah and their son Francis or Ye-rou-wa (born in 1823).

Biriban died in Newcastle on 14th April, 1846.

Writers:

Smith, Keith

Date written:

2007

Last updated:

2011