JOHNNY MULLAGH: WESTERN DISTRICT HERO OR the BLACK GRACE? Bernard Whimpress
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JOHNNY MULLAGH: WESTERN DISTRICT HERO OR THE BLACK GRACE? Bernard Whimpress The town of Harrow was established on the banks of the Glenelg River around the time of Johnny Mullagh's birth in the early 1840s and grew in response to the needs of major grazing properties. The first squatter in the area was Thomas Norris who took up Kout Narin in 1840. When this station was subdivided in 1849 several well known properties such as Longlands, Clunie, Pine Hills, Mullagh, Miga Lake, Mount Talbot and Chetwynd were formed. The first police district in western Victoria (then south-west New South Wales) had its headquarters in Harrow and covered an area from Hamilton to the Murray River. By 1890 the town contained two hotels, three general stores, a drapery business, a blacksmith, a saddlery shop, a bakery, a shoe maker, a flour mill, Chinese market gardens and a brickworks.1 Today Harrow is marked by a sign, 'Historic Harrow', pointing to a sleepy little town 150 metres off the Edenhope-Hamilton road. It has one hotel, a general store and a service station/garage. Before reaching that sign from the west, however, there is another much larger one advertising the Johnny Mullagh Caravan and Camping Reserve. Johnny Mullagh's story as the dominant cricketer of the 1868 Aboriginal tour of England has been told elsewhere by John Mulvaney.2 My concern here is to concentrate on the years from 1868 until his death. Johnny Mullagh died seven miles from Harrow in 1891. His body was discovered by James Edgar of Pine Hills station, where he spent much of his working life. His obituary in the Hamilton Spectator on 15 August, headed 'Death of Mullagh, the Cricketer', contains a number of revealing comments. It proclaimed him the 'Grace' of Aboriginal cricketers3 and lauded him as a finished, graceful, scientific batsman, a clean hitter who was most adept at playing pace bowling. It praised his long and loyal service to Harrow, adding that any club in Victoria would have readily availed themselves of his services. But it also noted some weaknesses which it generalised in racial terms. As a bowler he was criticised for falling under the influence of Tom Wills and developing a tendency to throw; and as a batsman it was said that like many of his 'sable compeers' he had a 'wholesome horror' of delusive slow bowling. Thus, he was respected but with reservations, the latter comments perhaps implying that he was a 'natural' who did not think enough about his game. It is plain, however, why Mullagh was already a folk hero. According to his obituarist: We may have another Grace, but never will Mullagh's reputation be surpassed by any of his race, for none in a few years will remain to show that... once they were monarchs of all they surveyed.4 Bernard Whimpress is a sports historian working on a Ph.D on Aboriginal cricket at Flinders University. 1 Harrow Historical Society records. 2 Mulvaney and Harcourt 1988, Mulvaney 1989. 3 W.G. Grace and Don Bradman are generally recognised as the greatest figures in cricket history. 4 Hamilton Spectator (hereafter HS), 15 August 1891, p. 3. 95 ABORIGINAL HISTORY 1994 18:2 His deeds on the cricket fields of western Victoria made him a regional hero and had Mullagh had the advantages of Grace it seems certain his own career would have been outstanding. Writing in support of a Mullagh monument Mr A.A. Cowell described Mullagh as an object lesson in maximising limited opportunities.5 Johnny Mullagh. Courtesy Harrow Historical Society. After his death, praise flowed richly both in prose and in one poem, 'Mullagh', penned by a Harrow resident. In this poem the following verse appeared: And Mullagh's dead! Let us lay him down With honours due to his true right hand, Remember lads, he deserves the crown For the smartest eye, and the bravest stand He made when the fight was fierce, an th' cry Was 'Mullagh's' strength is our victory. The poet suggests that Mullagh's cricket entitled him to be placed on a pedestal. However, ideas of 'ancient pedigree', 'ancestral fame' and 'nobility' which appear in the first stanza of the same poem are fanciful. What the poem demonstrates perhaps even more succinctly than other tributes is that heroism can work on several planes. Western Victorians took vicarious pleasure in his success in England in 1868 ('Ten thousand voices in Kensington/ Acknowledged his power with their loud "Well done"') and against Lord Harris's English team in 1879: 5 HS, 27 August 1891, p. 3. 96 JOHNNY MULLAGH Of his powers in the cricket field, Victoria knows, and shall surely say How he strove for her, nor did he yield, Until his score on one famous day Stood highest of all, when England's might Knew Mullagh's strength in that well fought fight. But the poet stresses that western Victorians were also favoured to witness Mullagh's deeds in local matches.6 No doubt the poem was well intentioned but the romanticised view it offers is of a noble but modest conquering hero rather than a poor rabbiter who lived alone in the scrub with a pack of dogs and had to be rooted out when there was a cricket match to be played.7 It was not only his cricketing skills which led people in the western district to romanticise Mullagh. He excelled not only at cricket but on horseback and in other 'manly' sports, and was said to have surpassed all these accomplishments by his gentlemanly conduct.8 It was remarked that he was a credit to his race: that he was the most 'unassuming and retiring of men'; that he liked the simple life of fishing and shooting;9 that he was 'humble, upright, quiet, retiring and civil';10 that, as the Reverend J. Kirkland said at his funeral, he was 'a noble type of an almost extinct race' and thus he received a respectable interment.11 Respectability was an important consideration in colonial Victoria. The Harrow Cricket Club paid for his funeral and his team-mates placed the favourite bat he used so successfully and a set of stumps on his coffin, and interred them with him. In addition to several wreaths, each member of the club also put a sprig of black berries and yellow flowers on it as emblems of the Harrow colours which he had so often carried to victory.12 But honours could not be complete. Although the service was performed by an Anglican clergyman he could not be buried in a consecrated area of the cemetery. On his death certificate his name appears as 'John Mullah' and both his denomination and rank are recorded as 'Aboriginal'. This may explain why his grave was set fifty metres away from his contemporaries.1-7 As Reverend Kirkland suggested, it was in large part because Johnny Mullagh was one of the few remaining Aboriginal people in his district that his death was seen as so significant. Fourteen years before, according to the 1877 census, there were only 340 Aborigines in the western district and 227 lived on reserves. This means that 113 lived off stations in a vast area of 28 000 square miles. In the substantial area where Mullagh played most of his cricket there were 46 Aborigines and he was probably the only one in the immediate Harrow district.14 Thus, his comrades probably felt that they were burying not 6 HS, 3 September 1891, p. 3. 7 Written reminiscence of J.C. Fitzgerald, Portland, 5 August 1945, letter kept by Mr David Edgar, Nerrinyerie. 8 'E.G.' of Harrow, letter to the editor, HS, 27 August 1891. 9 HS, 15 August 1891, p. 3. 10 A.A. Cowell, letter to HS, 27 August 1891. 11 HS, 20 August 1891, p. 3. 12 HS, 20 August 1891, p. 3. 13 1 measured this distance by stepping it out. Only in recent years have other graves appeared nearby. 14 The population figures for the western district are quoted in Cole 1984, p. 21. The area takes 143 degrees east as the eastern boundary in accordance with the proposal for separation of the western district as a separate colony in the 1860s. The further breakdown of population figures are taken from the Census Return of Aboriginal Natives taken in 1877. The total of 97 ABORIGINAL HISTORY 1994 18:2 just a man but a symbol, and it is not surprising that they proposed a tribute to his memory. A committee of management and trust was formed to raise money for a monumental memorial with collectors in the major western district centres where he had played plus Mount Gambier, Adelaide and Melbourne.15 Mullagh's fame was also due to the fact that his position in society was unusual for an Aboriginal person of the time. The Government of Victoria remained inactive in Aboriginal affairs until 1859 when a select committee of the Victorian Legislative Council recommended that reserved land be set aside for Aborigines in their tribal areas. Increasingly Aborigines on reserves became segregated from the white communities but were taught self-sufficiency especially in agriculture. Aborigines' lives became more restricted after the Aborigines Protection Act was passed in 1869 and they were told where they could live and work, how to dress and take care of their children, and how to spend the money they earned.16 Mullagh, however, did not live on a reserve but was likely helped by settlers such as A.A. Cowell who, as a local guardian under the Act, may have been instrumental in helping him to obtain work certificates on pastoral properties.