Windradyne

Windradyne
A Wiradjuri warrior, thought to be Windradyne
Born	c. 1800 Northern Wiradjuri nation (central-western NSW)
Died	21 March 1829(1829-03-21) (aged 29) Bathurst, New South Wales
Cause of death	Battle injuries
Resting place	Brucedale Station, Peel, NSW 33°19′38″S 149°36′36″E / 33.32722°S 149.61000°E / -33.32722; 149.61000
Nationality	Wiradjuri,  Australia
Other names	Saturday, Windrodine, Windradene
Occupation	Warrior
Years active	1822–1829
Known for	Fighting British colonials

Windradyne (c. 1800 – 21 March 1829) was an Aboriginal warrior and resistance leader of the Wiradjuri nation, in what is now central-western New South Wales, Australia; he was also known to the British settlers as Saturday. Windradyne led his people in the Bathurst War, a frontier war between his clan and British settlers.

Although only limited information about Windradyne is available, mainly from the contemporary British accounts, it is possible to put together an approximate description of the man.

Windradyne's date of birth is unknown, but on his death in 1829 his obituary in the The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser—thought to be by his settler friend George Suttor from 'Brucedale Station' north of Bathurst—stated "His age did not, I think, exceed 30 years", thus putting his year of birth at approximately 1800.

Coe's biography of Windradyne from 1989 states that he was handsome and well built, with broad shoulders and muscular limbs. He had dark brown skin, thick black curly hair, and a long beard. He typically wore a headband, and had his beard plaited into three sections. However, Coe's description does not fully correlate with a drawing of a Wiradjuri warrior that is thought to depict Windradyne.

When Windradyne visited Parramatta to meet with Governor Thomas Brisbane in December 1824, the Sydney Gazette (using the British appellation for him of Saturday) wrote that:

At the same event, another observer wrote that he was "a very fine figure , very muscular ... a good model for the figure of Apollo".

Writing in his obituary, George Suttor described Windrodyne's appearance and character as:

Hostilities between the Indigenous Australians and the British settlers began just a few months after the First Fleet arrived in January 1788, with casualties on both sides occurring as early as May 1788. While the early confrontations generally involved few combatants and were relatively rare, as the British population increased and spread further out from Sydney, they came into contact with increasingly large numbers of Aborigines of different tribes and nations, and the frequency and intensity of the conflicts increased. These conflicts would come to be known as the Australian frontier wars.