watercolourist, sketcher, naval officer and governor, was one of the less successful governors of New South Wales. A naval officer, he had accompanied the First Fleet to Port Jackson and later returned to England. Appointed in succession to Arthur Phillip, he reached the colony in September 1795 to find the officers of the New South Wales Corps in an ascendant position. Their activities as farmers and traders created serious problems, as did the development of the liquor trade in what was primarily a penal settlement. That Hunter never overcame these problems was not surprising given his isolated situation, but he made matters worse by failing to act forcibly. A pleasant, honest man, he was, at the age of fifty-eight, lacking in energy and drive and was recalled in 1800. His period in office was marked by considerable economic development which placed the settlement on a more secure footing. His own contribution to these developments, however, was not particularly great. He was not given another appointment but did eventually rise to the rank of admiral.
Like many of his fellow First Fleet officers, Hunter kept a journal, published in 1793 as An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island . It is of considerable historical value. He also preserved a visual record of natural history features that he saw around him. A substantial number of watercolours 'drawn on the spot’, depicting the birds, animals and flowers of New South Wales, have survived, the majority in an album containing 100 watercolours (NLA). Most are by Hunter (who had a 'pretty turn for drawing’ according to surgeon John White ) although the more sophisticated natural history drawings on paper watermarked 1794 tipped into The Hunter Sketchbook are almost certainly by John Lewin . Hunter sketched some Aboriginal figures and drew a portrait of A Man of the Island of Kadiak . View of the Settlement of Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, 20 August 1788 (possibly after William Bradley ) was engraved for his Journal along with other presumed drawings by him, including View at Rose Hill , Man and Canoe of Lord Howe’s Group and Canoe of Admiralty Island .
One of Hunter’s drawings was the basis of the first published illustration of a wombat, his sketch made in 1798 being engraved in London in 1800 by Thomas Bewick for Bewick’s A General History of Quadrupeds . An engraving of a platypus after a sketch by Hunter appeared in David Collins’s Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (London 1802), the same year that a platypus after a drawing by Hunter’s successor, William Bligh , was published. Although an artist of somewhat restricted ability, Hunter’s drawings are varied, often lively, and reasonably accurate. The Hunter Sketchbook was published in facsimile by the National Library of Australia in 1989.
