But Aboriginal numbers began dropping almost immediately: violent encounters were reported in the Hobart region, while at Port Dalrymple in the colony's north, Lieutenant-Governor William Paterson is thought to have ordered soldiers to shoot at Aboriginal people wherever they were found, leading to the virtual disappearance of North Midlands clans in that region after 1806. In 1809 New South Wales surveyor-general John Oxley reported that kangaroo hunting by whites had led to a "considerable loss of life among the natives" throughout the colony. One settler, the convict adventurer Jørgen Jørgensen, also claimed that Aboriginal numbers were "much reduced during the first six or seven years of the colony" as whites "harassed them with impunity".