Robert Menli Lyon (1789-1874)

Robert Milne Lyon was born in Scotland in 1789.

Robert arrived in the Swan River colony in August 1829 on the Marquis of Anglesea. Despite having attained the military rank of Captain in his youth he made no claim to military rank in the Colony, initially preferring to be known simply as Robert Milne. Shortly after his arrival, he adopted the name Robert Menli Lyon. The reasons for adopting a pseudonym and hiding his military background remain unclear to this day.

He was one of the earliest colonists to arrive and took up a 2,200 acre grant somewhere closer to Fremantle, as well as town lots in Fremantle and Guildford.

From the beginning of his days in the colony he was interested in the fate of the Aboriginal people, He wrote letters to the colony’s earliest newspaper, the Perth Gazette and Western Australian journal, lamenting the treatment of Aboriginal groups, “a people whom we have despoiled of their country”.

He argued passionately against violent reprisals for Aboriginal behaviour, saying that they “were guilty of no crime but that of fighting for their country... they had a right to make war after their own manner”. At a meeting of an early Agricultural Society in 1834, he described the need for a treaty with Aboriginal people: “The sooner the national rights of the Aboriginal inhabitants are recognised by some regular deed or charter, the better it will be for them ”.

In 1832 he offered to accompany Yagan, Donmera and Ningina for their imprisonment on Carnac island so as to prevent them being executed by colonial powers and to record their language and stories.

In March and April 1833, Lyon published a series of long articles in the Gazette including the following passage:

“They not only abstained from all acts of hostility, when we took possession; but showed us every kindness in their power. Though we were invaders of their country, and they had therefore a right to treat us as enemies, when any of us lost ourselves in the bush, and were thus completely in their power; these noble minded people shared with us their scanty and precarious meal; suffered us to rest for the night in their camp; and, in the morning directed us on our way to headquarters, or to some other part of the settlement. ”

In another passage he calls Yagan “the Wallace of the age” who “greatly distinguished himself as a patriot and a warrior”. He refers here to William Wallace, the Scottish warrior who rebelled against unjust occupation by an English king.

Lyon was an advocate of Aboriginal land rights. His actions and letters alienated him from his contemporaries, who were often fiercely jealous of their newly-granted land, and put him at odds with the government of the day. He left the colony in 1834, and after a period of years in Mauritius he returned to Australia, living in various parts of South Australia, New South Wales, and Victoria until he returned to England, where he died 1874.