Australia rarely tops anyone's list of earthquake countries, but the continent's first recorded tremor produced one of the strangest casualty stories in colonial history — a starving convict who gave himself up because the ground moved, and was hanged for it.
The tale comes from the first months of the Sydney Cove penal settlement. In June 1788, just months after Captain Arthur Phillip's First Fleet arrived, the colony was a scattering of tents and huts ringed by unknown bush. Escaping was easy in theory; surviving was another matter. Runaways risked starvation, unfamiliar wildlife and brutal punishment if caught — flogging, double chains, even the noose.
Edward Corbett (recorded as Cormick in some later accounts) took his chances anyway. Convicted at Hertford in 1786 for stealing a scarlet cloth cardinal — hardly a grand crime — he had been sentenced to seven years' transportation. On 5 June 1788 he bolted into the bush, reportedly taking several cattle with him. For nearly three weeks search parties found nothing, though a string of thefts hinted he was lurking at the settlement's edge.
Then, on 22 June, a short earthquake rattled Sydney Cove. David Blackburn, master of the HMAT Supply, described a boom like a distant cannon, the ground rolling like a wave of the sea, and treetops shaking on a still afternoon. Phillip assumed it was distant gunfire. The whole event lasted two or three seconds — long enough to unsettle a settlement that had no concept of seismic activity.
A day later, Corbett walked back into camp. Surgeon John White recorded that the runaway's eyes were sunken and he looked half starved, but the timing speaks for itself: alone in the wilderness on the far side of the world, he apparently decided the trembling earth was a sign he should surrender. In an era when natural oddities were read as omens, a rumbling from below must have felt ominous to a man with no food and no map.
His fate was swift. Tried on 24 June, he was hanged the next day at Sydney Cove — making him, by an arguable technicality, Australia's first earthquake-related fatality. Not crushed by falling masonry, but spooked into the gallows. For comparison, the country's deadliest quake, at Newcastle in 1989, killed 13 people and hospitalised 160.
For travellers, this is a reminder of how layered Sydney's history is beyond the postcard views. The area around Circular Quay and The Rocks — the modern footprint of Sydney Cove — is where all of this played out, and walking it with this kind of story in mind beats any generic sightseeing loop. Early colonial Sydney was a precarious place: unfamiliar bush, scarce food, and settlers who had never felt the ground shake before. The 1788 tremor was the first recorded by Europeans in Australia, and the start of a long tradition of quakes unnerving newcomers. Corbett's three weeks of freedom, ending in a two-second rumble, is one of the quirkiest footnotes you can carry on a stroll through the city's oldest streets.
Original story: Australian Geographic
