More then eighteen months had passed since the arrival of the First Fleet at Botany Bay, and the settlement of 900 people was still dependent on the stores that the ships had carried from England. The first crops in and around Farm Cove had not been successful, and the new farm at Rose Hill had only just been cultivated. The one storeship sent from England in two years was the Guardian, she struck an iceberg near the Cape of Good Hope, and only a small quality of her provisions eventually arrived in the colony. Shr reached Cape Colony by throwing most of her cargo overboard. The Sirius has returned to Port Jackson from the Cape Colony with provisions in May 1789, after circumnavigating the world, but by November 1789 Governor Phillip was seriously worried about the situation. The home government had taken no steps to safeguard the colony from starvation in the twenty-eight months between the departure of the First Fleet in May 1787 and the dispatch of the Guardian in September 1789. Collins noted in November:

This month opened with a serious, but prudent and necessary alteration in our provisions. The ration which had hitherto been issued was, on the first of the month, reduced to two thirds of every species, spirits excepted, which continued as usual. this measure was calculated to guard against accidents; and the necessity of it was obvious to every one, from the great uncertainly as to the time when a supply might arrive from England, and from the losses which had been and still were occasioned by rats in the provision store. Two years provisions were landed with us in the colony: we had been within two months of that time disembarked, and the public store had been aided only by a small surplus of the provisions which remained of what had been furnished by the contractor for the passage, and the supply of four months flour which had been received by the Sirius from the Cape of Good Hope. All this did not produce such an abundance as would justify any longer continuance of the full ration; and although it was reasonable to suppose, as we had not hitherto received and supplies, that ships would arrive before our present stock was exhausted; yet, if the period of distress should ever arrive, the consciousness that we had early foreseen and strove to guard against its arrival would certainly soften the bitterness of our reflections; and, guarding thus against the worst, that worst providentially might never happen. The governor, whose humanity was at all times conspicuous, directed that no alteration should be made in the ration to be issued to the woman. They were already upon three thirds of the man’s allowance; and many of the mother’s ration, or they had children at the breast; and although they did not labour, yet their appetites were never so delicate as to have found the full ration too much, had it been issued to them. The like reduction was enforced afloat as well as on shore, the ships’ companies of the Sirius and Supply being part put to thirds of the allowance usually issued to the king’s ships. This, as a deduction of the eighths allowed by custom to the purser was made from their ration, was somewhat less than what was to be issued in the settlement. . . .

It was soon observed, that of the provisions issued at this ration on the Saturday the major part of the convicts had none left on the Tuesday night; it was therefore ordered, that the provision should be served in future on the Saturdays and Wednesdays. By these means, the days which would otherwise pass in hunger, or in thieving from the few who were more provident, would be divided, and the people themselves be more able to perform the labour which was required from them. Overseers and married men were not included in this order.

-D. Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wakes: with Remarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Manners, &c. of the Native Inhabitants of that Country, London, 1798, vol. 1, pp.83-5