Captain Arthur Phillip’s instructions on landing in January 1788
were to found a settlement and to cultivate the land using
convict labour. Early food production by convict labour however
was generally a failure and Phillip had realised by July that he
needed experienced farmers. He wrote on 9th July 1788 to Evan
Nepean, Under Secretary of the Home Department:‘If fifty farmers
were sent out with their families, they would do more in one
year in rendering this colony independent of the mother country,
as to provisions, than a thousand convicts.’ Finally, four years
later, the British Government sent out a small group of settlers
with their families, numbering fifteen. Thomas and Jane Rose and
their then family of four, Thomas, Mary, Joshua and Richard,
were amoung this group who had sailed from England in the
Bellona on 8 August 1792 and disembarked at Port Jackson on 16
Wednesday 16 January 1793. This family was the first family of
free settlers to arrive in the colony, hence the area where
their grants were