An African convict was among the very first to make landfall in New South Wales, as one of a small group of convicts sent ashore to cut grass for the horses on 20 January 1788. The officer who accompanied the group was aware of the watching Aborigines and he later wrote a rather fanciful account of the behaviour of these curious natives. They were 'much pleased' to see a 'man of their own complexion', he wrote, and appeared to be puzzled that the black man failed to understand when they called out to him in their language (Bradley, 1969, p. 62). This was hardly likely. What the Aborigines were calling out was later translated as 'go away' and was addressed to all the invaders. For the indigenous people of Australia, someone from Africa who had suddenly appeared on their shores dressed in a convict uniform would have appeared no less alien than those with pale faces dressed in the same strange clothes. On more than one occasion the Aborigines showed keen interest in the fact that the invaders came in different skin colours, but they gave no sign of cultural identification with anyone. None of the First Fleet diarists record which African man it was who first stepped ashore, but he would have been one of eleven African convicts aboard the First Fleet, less than two per cent of the convict cargo.