A certain merchant, who bought the plant of a bankrupt station for L225 at a Sydney auction, took away therefrom L1,500 worth of oil in the next season.

But then he was an uncommon merchant.

He had been a sealer himself, and finally abandoned mercantile life in Sydney to return to his old haunts, where he managed his own establishment, joined farming to whaling, endowed a mission station,[1] and amazed the land by importing a black-coated tutor and a piano for his children.

Moreover, the harpooners and oarsmen were not paid wages or paid in cash, but merely had a percentage of the value of a catch, and were given that chiefly in goods and rum.

For this their employers charged them, perhaps, five times the prices current in Sydney, and Sydney prices in convict times were not low.