Local Interest
The Youth of Yesterday
By Webmaster
Mar 27, 2007, 10:51

Macclesfield has never been short of disillusioned yet adventurous youths, even hundreds of years ago! Yet not many of these teenage tearaways lead a life of excitement as achieved by young Macclesfield man William Buckley, at the turn of the 19th century.

Twenty year old Buckley was most likely to have been very recognisable around the small town of Macclesfield – at an astounding six foot and six inches high he was certainly head and shoulders above the rest! The same could be said for his ambition; desperate for some adventure in his life he volunteered for the army, resulting in him being shipped off to the foreign shores of faraway Gibraltar. Yet even this wasn’t enough of an escapade for Macc’s jolly giant – ever the lad’s lad, Buckley found himself entangled in a plot to break out of the army barracks in which he and other members of his troop were confined, and murder the commanding officer! The motivations behind the dastardly plot were never known, but one thing is for sure – if Buckley and his partners in crime had succeeded in their cunning plan the history of Britain and most certainly the rest of the world would have been distinguishably different! And why is that? Well, the commanding officer happened to be a man of important status – he was Edward, Duke of Kent – who, after surviving the malicious murder attempt later went on to father a young daughter, a daughter who would grow up to inherit an empire, a daughter who people the world over would later know as Queen Victoria, her Royal Highness. And what do we think she would have made of Buckley’s revolt against her father? One would imagine she would certainly NOT be amused!

Yet Buckley’s adventures did not stop there. All men involved in the scheme were tried for mutiny, and whilst the main ringleaders were sentenced to death and shot for their attempted crime, those who played a lesser role – Buckley included – were shipped off to the other side of the world, Australia in fact! In a very small space of time William Buckley had gone from the little silk town of Macclesfield to a remote island on the other side of the world, branded a convict and facing a life of imprisonment – I wonder if this was the kind of adventure he had in mind?!

In 1803 Buckley arrived on the shores of Australia, yet even the journey across the world had not extinguished the rebel that raged inside him. Along with a couple of other convicts he broke free of the guards and escaped into the unknown Aussie outback. Boys will be boys however, and an argument quickly ensued within the group, resulting in poor William being deserted and left all alone, with no food to help him on his dangerous journey. Buckley’s mission quickly changed from escape to survival – desperate for something to eat, he wandered blindly around the outback before stumbling across what the more superstitious of us may consider to be a very grave discovery – in fact, it was exactly that, an old tombstone! Yet for William this was the signpost to his lucky break…

For this was not just any grave the unsuspecting escapee had found. Protruding from the nearby earth was a large metal spear – always useful when you’re on the hunt for food in uninhabited bush land! Taking the spear from the grave, Buckley’s continued on with his hunt. In Buckley’s mind, the finding of the spear probably increased his chance of survival somewhat, but it most likely never occurred to him that the weapon would lift him to new heights of power. For as Buckley wandered aimlessly through the bush, he encountered a tribe of Aborigines – who took one look at the spear, which Buckley had stolen from the grave of their chief – and instantly dropped to their knees in awe! For instead of being angered at Buckley taking the weapon, they believed him to be their chief reincarnated, and hoisted him up on to a pedestal before the Macclesfield lad knew what had hit him! All in all it wasn’t really a bad day for William, going from convict to tribal chief in the space of a few hours!

For the next two years, Buckley never encountered another British face, and had no contact with civilisation, until one afternoon, when all this changed. Two of his tribesman returned to the camp with hankies, a very British accessory indeed! Buckley became overwhelmed by curiosity, and demanded he be taken to the site where the hankies had been discovered. What he found there certainly gave him a shock, for he was led to the camp of a man named John Batman, who had descended on Australia from nearby Van Dieman’s Land – better known in this day and age as Tasmania! John Batman had come to Australia with a mission – to found the city that we now all know as Melbourne. In Buckley John Batman had certainly found his Robin, as William took on the role of Batman’s bodyguard, and when the news travelled across the oceans and finally reached Britain William Buckley was given a formal pardon!

 Sadly even this was not enough to persuade Buckley to return to his home town of Macclesfield. At the ripe old age of 76 Buckley died in the town of Hobart, after a life that most definitely satisfied his desire for adventure!