 Macquarie ordered the 46th Regiment under Captain James Wallis to round up all Aborigines from the Hawkesbury down to the these southern areas.These punitive expeditions aimed to strike terror into anyone surviving them.Wallis often found settlers unwilling to hand over the Darawal people who lived on their stations, but eventually, executing what he later recalled was a "melancholy but necessary duty", tracked down a group camping under the Cataract River near Appin.