Murdered after a swim

Sometimes when we find a story about an interesting person, they have no final resting place. Their last known location is not known and all that is left is an echo of a memory of the person or a plaque.

This is the case for Captain Collet Barker.

A monument in memory of the exploration work Captain Collet Barker did before being killed. Courtesy Monument Australia.

He was seen as a gallant and enterprising officer, who died before his time at the mouth of the Murray River in 1831. The first European to cross the Adelaide Plains and the mountain ranges between Mounty Lofty and Cape Jervis via Encounter Bay.

He was born in Hackney in Middlesex, England on 31 December, 1784, son of William Barker and Sarah Collet. Eventually coming to Australia in 1828 after being in the army since 1806 and serving across Europe.

He faced all his posts with energy and courage, winning the confidence of the local Aboriginal tribes. While he was in charge of a penal colony in King George Sound, on the south coast of Western Australia, he had to deal with the objections of colonials and the governor and so, with his convicts on board, he travelled with them on the Isabella, after his post was closed.

As he travelled back to Sydney he was asked to explore the mouth of the River Murray. It was while he examined the eastern shore of Gulf St Vincent from Cape Jervis northward and climbed Mount Lofty that he found Adelaide's future port and named the Sturt River. It was from Yankalilla Bay he went overland to Encounter Bay. While there he decided to swim on his own at the Murray mouth. This was where he was speared to death by Aboriginals on 30 April 1831.

It seems a great irony that the man who had a seemingly good relationship with the Indigenous population would meet his end at their hands. If he had lived, he was to go to the North Island of New Zealand to conciliate in the Maori unrest.

Mount Barker in Western Australia was named after him as is Barker Inlet near Port Adelaide.

References

• 'Captain Collet Barker', South Australian Register, Thursday, 30 April 1885, Page 6

• J. Bach, 'Barker, Collet (1784–1831)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barker-collet-1740/text1923, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 21 June 2025.

• 'Collet Barker', Wikipedia, accessed 23rd June, 2025, Collet Barker - Wikipedia