This file is part of the following reference:
Loos, Noel (1976) Aboriginal-European relations in North Queensland, 1861-1897. PhD thesis, James Cook University.
Access to this file is available from:
http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/10414
125
FRONTIER C01~FLICT 126
TIle Colo:aizatioIl of IJortll .,::;ue811.s1o.Jlldll
'rIle \'Ie a)ltil of' l'J ol'tIl i{.uee~nsl'1,11(1' s grassl[:,11(18, Eli:n.eruls, fisl1eries, alld r.tti:nforests prod-aced fO'ur fro:ntiers of ra.cial COlltCt,ct ·Wl1icb. trill -be tIle C011ce:C.rl of' Part II of tllis tllesis ..
Oilly by tile lLtck of effective goverl1l11elrGu.l COlltrol allCt tIle ctttitu(les of t11e colol1.ists b'ut a,lso J:rJr tile el1ViroYllH811t tile v{Gultll occurrecL ill, tIle abil i t~/ or the .tLborigin.es to 'use tl1eir 11£Lbi tat as a slliel\l i:Lgai:nst tl1e iIllraclers, 2~Ild tXle 11a/(/ur(~ of tIle illvaciers' i:nd-astries e:~l)loiti~t1g tIle resources of' tIIG ./i.borig'i:nes' la:nd 41 Inevitably the J&storal in.dustr:;'" -vrilic!l causecl tllC COlOIlizetio:n of slic11 "'1t.:l,St arot:0S so C1:::1 Jr tJrovicled. ~lborigi11:2,1 l~~r ortll .;;,:llleells 1 a:ncl 'w'i tIl its greatest ellall GlllJ:;es CLl1.cl TTrcalrecl 11avoc L!.;~JOll tIle 1 i:1.rgest
11ULlher of i1.1JorigiJJ.d.. l tri'Des. It if:; \'titIl tllis fron.tier
itfter Leicll11ct.rdt t s O"\TiIlg re:.:;,orts of tIle ~),~:;..storD... l opport~nities in North e:nsl settleLiell"'0 {.iiil 110t
211 kJ out~.:e:Cll ori)~t, i OIlS
d discoveries in New South Wales and Victoria after
1851 also nl£~de l1111)"llbl i cised rec ollne..i EJ t),llC es ... t11c SCrlli.:1tters' f10Id 011 tIle la,llld.s i:rl l'J01:,'" Sou.th.liu-,les [LI1U -victoria Tif;"S beiIlg Cll0.,11ellged u~rH1 their lea... ses Q'u.e to e:::::pire ill 1861 so it \TaB predictc:1~Jle tllD-,t" SOI~le of a i:1C1T colo~n:i" -vrllich tIle squatter il1.terest to dOE.l.il1.0..;t,e. 127 11ad fOrnled a. SYl1(lico~te ;~111(L Bet o"lrt, 011 16 .liugust 1859 to aus frustruted by the first "'{das ,riti.J/l1;/ cOllcerD.ed v,ritb. tl:1e i)robleli1 of 12,11C~ legislatiol1 e to be of tile COtll1.tr:;/, £111.c1 i:n COE11)ellsD/c,ioll for 11is snecessf·ul ill tIle ICel111Gdy District" He set out in the Spitfire, 011 14 .A.llgUSt 1860, to e::;:plOl'e tile EJ.outll of 1.:.. 11e Bl].rdel(i11 a:nd to e~xaTnille tIle sl,litD.. bilit:l of tIle rece11tl)'" discovered OX1 f'ort De11iso::~?_1) Gn bot11 11is 1860 C1Xld llis 1859 0:;:::peclitio:ns, Bal e reported 21..11.U str.e8sed tlleir 11'ill:1bers a..:n.d aggre8siv811.ess. It is used fireLj"n~lS freely~ ~rllel1ever /l.boriginl:1..1 resistiJ..llCe "was 2 e :nc Ol111t e red. 1. li/J'i!lu·te, I\i:i:nister for Lallds, Ii,.rtJ. r\'iacl';:e~nzie, 18 Decern.ber 1859, 1860 V. L.: IJ~, PI). 5T7-8. See also J. 111arnfielcl, Fron.ti e rSruan: a I3i oC'~1"'a'!J11": of Ge or0 'e ElTJ11illst one D;3... 11~:Y1111)1 e (l;.le l'bour118, 1968 j, lip. 12-25 for Dal r 3rnII) 1e t s plan Gnd expeditionS4 2. t lleport of tile J?roceediIlgs of tIle 81181 Govern.lU011t ~'Jcb.OOl1.er t1S1)itf'ire tl ill Sesrch. of tIle 1;.io1..1tb. of ~Glle ELi ver llurdel(in, on tIle l-Jortll-Easterll Coast of ~1ustrG;..lia; and of tIle 3J{ploro.ltioll of a :L"ortiol1 of tllat Coast B:;:.Jc.,el1ui11g froEl Gloucester Isla11d to IIalifax D~~yr, 1860 TV. ~r, P., PI). 5-7;; g, 21-2, 36-7. Dalr:J'111I)le referred tlaclc~ to l1is 1859 eJ~l)editioll. See ctlso 11is evidellce tllat 0.: chain of police outposts would be necessary to allow SE1fe, 'w'hite settle!l1e11t ill t Fin,al I~po-rt froID. ..Jc..118 ;Select COEiElittee of Police to:.=etller Tiitl1 f'rocee,dirLgs of tile t Cornclittee c1u.d I~..Iillutes of Bvii..:lellCe , 1860 'T. tr J.)., D. 562. THE PASTORAL FRONTIER PASTORAL DIVISIONS GULF ..... YORKE =i OF PENINSULA~ t:J~_...... <~ -A O~ -~ CARPENTARIA "Z.~ 0;:: --"'>- ,.~~~ ssmon .Hughenden ~ammermoor HS. 6 200 miles 12~ By this tiiJ.1e, tIle QueellS1gJ11Cl Goverrunent 11ad passed its 1 a11cl 1 egislation \'/I'1i ell it h.oped 1voulcl en.coure..g e a.. q-ui ck t£t,L:illg Ul) of land 1vitll0Ut slJeculatiolll' TIle Governill811t advertisec.l its illtelltion of aCCeI)til1g aiJplications for pastoral rtlnS ill tIle ICellIledy frotH 1 JOJl1"Uar:r 1861 alld stressed that settlers wou.ld. have e Native Police protection.:3 Jl...S illilicc1ted ill the 111ap, 1). 128 tIle I(ell11ed~jT District cOluprised tb.at ellorElOllS areadrai:ned by tIle Burdeici:n and I-Ierbert lLivers 8..11U tl1eir tributaries. 'l'11e port of 13o,\{ell Vtllicll DalrJ111ple estrdJlislled on Port Deniso11 Tras t11Lts in the ce:ntre of tb.e 11e1!{ pastore,l district £111d t,vo lrtllldr10d Iniles 4 beyond the then outer limit of settlement at Broaclsound. l1.S a res'lllt, as 1"rill l)e noted later in t:his cl1apter, -t.Jle settleulent of tIle Bovlell District )'las in.itiaJ_ y differel1t f1"·0111 tile pastoral oCCllpation. of an:;,T other in the ICerilled:;r District or, indeed, ill 1_;~ue011s1a:ndo The goverrul1eni:t sc1100ner JeallIlie I)ove D..nd the Ji:etcll Santa Barbarc~ sailed franl 1)t,{}ck11illuptOl1 011 15 Ivla"rc11 1861 carry-illg officiv.. ls, settlers, tlleir fcunilies a:nd stores. il. l1.lW1ber of squatters ~.ioined tlle land J?art:y led 1J)'" Dalry1UI)le to enjoy the security provided by a Native Police detacillilent of eleven troopers "tll1.cler tIle connnancl of aLto "Williru.n.s. U l1 3. Bit lCillgStOl'l, 1 TIle Origil1s of [Juee11s1G..llU t s ItCoIlll)relle:nsive Land Policy', Queensland Heritage, 1, no. 2, (1965), I)P. 3-8. See also Goverl1me!lt Gazette, 20 l'JoveralJer 1860. 4. l'~.it. Loos, J!'rol!:tier COl1flict ill the Bo·vlen District 1861-1874 (lvI.i\'. ~~Ut11if~rin.g thesis, t.T~l.ines Coot~ 'U:rriversit:r of It~ortll $2ueenslt111d, July 1970), Chalr'Ger III. See also BoltOIl, 1 :Pl18 Exr)lora.;tj i OIl of !~ ortil rtuee:as1 \?:.11.d.: SOllle l'ro1Jlelns t, p. 353, al1d Lil1g 11otll, 1.'118 Discovisr;y al1tl Settle:uellt of Port 1iacli:a:r~ tQueells1alld (I-Ialifax, El1g1 a:ncl , 1908), po 38, for tIle o·uter liulit of settle1l1ent .. 5. G. Dalr)11l1)le, COEr.:iissioner for Cro'Nll Land, ICe~n:nedJr District, to Col. Sec., 24 April 1861, Q.B.A. CGL/A16, 1261 of 1861; DalrYi11ple to Col. Sec., 28 J?el1rucl,r:f 1861, ~.S.A. CuL/A13, 660 of 1861; G. Bolton, A Thousand Miles itvray: J.1. IIistorYa .f~"f. r{ortll f-jueen.sla..:ncl to 1920 (Brisban.. e, 1963), p. 20 rnentions tnlor~ tllal1. a dozent squatters. DalrY..ll1Jle sta,ted t11a/0 11e 11i:hU succeeded in s"\'lillliui:ng a... cross tIle floodeit Fitzroy 1 t116 ·w-rlo1e of the C&i1I) eCluipages ancl 1)e01)le to the nwnber of 24, not il1Cludil1.g t11e 110rses a:ncl 13arties of severcJ..l squatters aCCOnllJal1~{illg tile eJr:~)ed.. i tio:n t • 130 beacl1 at Port ]Jenisoll friglltel1ing off a large nrunber of ,- ,. ..l" 1 -6 ~borlglnes c near ~he ~2rbour. Within six weeks of Dalr:YHlple t s arri"tlal r-UllS l1a.d bee!l ta1r.en. up ill arl unbr~ol~en 1 ine 350 Hliles alollg tIle BurdelciIl al1cl its trib12.taries [Lila 7 about 130 miles inland despite the fact that there was intense conflict with the Aborigines by the third week of 8 settlenlent. By tl1e mid.dle of 1862, 45i l: rll11.S and 31,50Ll 9 squc"re miles hud been applied for and, by 1863, almost the 10 ·whole of the Kennedy District he,d been settled. III the sout11srll eJ,;:trel:lityo of tIl.is district, 1',iacJ:;:a~1, 011 tIle I?iol1eer lliver, h.ad bee!'l ga.zetted a IJort of e:n.tr:y- 011 2 October 1862 as a result of an. eJcpeditiOl1 setting o·at frora ilr~nidf11e even 1J81'ore D~~itlr:YTJ.nple lla(L returlled frolll Ilis 1vitl1 stock to tIle Piol1.eer District 13:l 26 February'" 1862 a:ncl;J by J~ug'ust 1862, otl1er sql18Jtters 'w"ere .J(;tt.~~ing up r'L111S ..J.l 11 111 vile Qrea. Nee..r toue nortb.er:n linlit of tIle I~enIledJ-' Iwpressed by the possibilities of the Valley of Lagoons, 11e l1ad i:rlterestecl the }'reiaier, rLolJert Ilerbert, 1/r110 in 1862 had t11e:n eillisted tIle support of :his frie11ds, tIle \vealt11Y 6. DalryillI-)le to Col. Sec., 24 illJril 1861, Icc. cit. 7. DalryillI)le to Col. Sec.,. 20 1\1ay 1861, JJ.S •.A.• 'CltL/l\..17, 1527 of 1861. 8. DalrY1nple to Lt. IJol'iell, ill che..rge of }Jative ljolice detacllll1erlt, BOTTen, 27 il1}ril 1861, e:n.cl. f~. F.o COL/...4.17, 1527 of 1861; De..lr:rllll)le to Col. Sec., 28 l~pril 1861, Q.S.A. COL/A16, 1262 of 1861. 9. Far~nfiel(i, FrolltierSIi.l£t:n., p. 38. i~~llotecl frOll1 :'lU8GllSlfl.11d ~;.egislative CO·U!lcil JOllrI~~1.1s, Vol. IV, 1862, ']vlin.utes of Evide!lCe tal(811. before Select COllllllit-tee 011 tIle CrO'IV]l L[t!ld.S .itct r • Y 10. DoltOll, it lJ.'110ll"J alld Id.i 1es ltTtLt:):r, 1J. 2 lo 11. I-l~ Lil1g Itot11, TIle Discovery £111d Settlenle:nt of :Port ... - ". l"t f •• 'r 1 . n ""1 1 d 1 90 0 \ 0 2 n L1 l~lach:f.1Y ,s)U8Gl1S ..... allu \1112 .... 11 c1X, ,£!.,11g all, ,-. 1 0 ), I]P. U -0.1:, 42, 45, 50, 54:. J01111 1.1evclca:r' s jour:nC'iil is reI)rod'llced. TIle Ji.llingllELE1S [~lso set out frOlll J\..rruidale in July 1859 "litil a flocl£ of' SlleeI) arl'iVi11g at tIle ·j·ust estaObl i slled BOTrell settleHie:at in ilpril 1861. See Bolto!l, ITlle EXI)lor t atioll of J>Tort11 $2ue,~;n.slarld: SOlne ProblelHs , p. 353. 131 ~pastor[~l clevelolJrnent. Tile Scott Brotlv~rs a~nd e, ied for EL!l oc iOll licence for eighty square miles of the UPJer Burdekin at tIle begill11i:ng of 1863; 'by 1864, tlle:y 11ad leased 1,270 square lniles belio·v·ing t118Y ·\'iOllld be able to sell SOlne later at c", IJrofit to tile ::(OUllger SOIlS of "\\Tealtl13T E:nglisll frierlds. il.ltlloug11 tIle scllel11e "~jas a disastrous fail-ure, itl 1'l'as :not 12 abandoned for over thirty yoars. Attention had been turned & '\1ills expedition.. \Vall(er agreed Yiith Gregor:,' tlla.t, 011 tIle Tras li;.uited to stril)S LJ5 IHil{~s ill deptb, 011 tIle Flin.cLers and the Leichhcl,rdt Hiverso 13 However, I'lcKinlay and, 1£1 eSIJecially, L,.>..:nasboroug"ll \;rere uracIl E'kOreelltllusiastric. - ~ LL?.llclsborough declared to c:", l)ublic lueeting in Ivielbo"llrne, atterlded 'b:r over 3,000 peol)le, that 'lle Ilc1d :never s(-;erl better country for stock than he found on the shores of ~ ~ n • t 15 the aull 01 Carpentarla • :I.'11us, t·w·enty yea... rs after Stol£2s discovered tIle Plaills as 1-:ras the ne1'{1~f discovered Flill(lers C111d Leicllho... rclt COlJ.l1.try. .tIl 1863, a route from tIle Cape Iiiver to tile }illil1ders ,vas discovered 1,v11ich l'{as lilliell rllore suita,ble for the squat'Ler bril1ging 1.11) l1is flocl£s alIa 11erds tllall tIle Burdel::in ct!ld Gulf rivers li111:;: Leicllll\":l,rclt £Llld Gregor:y httd il1dicated. O~n 1 Jall"Uar:v 1864, tile l)[!"storal districts of Cook aliu 13ur"1:ee Viel"'e tllrOl711 0lJe11 alld r'UllS 'were talcen UIJ alraost iITlluediatel)'''', 12. Go Bolton., 'TIle "llalleJi" of Lagoolls: /1. Stud)' in. .E}~ile', Bll.sil18SS ..A.rcllives o.Jl1d I-listor:l'", IV, (1964), PI). 102, l04~-5, 109. See [J.,lso Fa.rllfield, }lro~ntiersn~al1., l)P. 54-57. 13. Walker, 1861-2 Journal, p. 69. 14. Landsborough, 1861-2 Journal, pp. 8, 22, 62; McKinlay, 1861-2 Journal, pp. 99-101, 115. 15., Landsborough, opo cit., p. 65. 132 16 b-;l I~erllle(l:I Distr i ct. s ers. Pioneer )astoralist 1'110 3'ear InB'l llHJ..~l be st:)tled tile :;.rear OI l.:'.egirn.. or fligh.t of stocl~ out1vartLs to set-t,le :ne~~r coa.:rltry~; tlle~/ ccu:.le frOiD. u.lll ,parts, u..I1U llelij,ad to fill tIle ID~11d ever:Y~i'rllere v,-itll tIle 1)egiIln.illg of civilizatioIl. _.... boom had set in for pastorGl occup~~ion; the reports of recent explor~tion8 told of enO~bOUS tracts of grand 0lJell COllXlt l':sr '\~rrl,i t i rig for stocl:: t onti 1 i ze it,U..11U 8P;.,cl1 0118 ·Vlas a~n:x:iou.s to be tIle first to secure SOLle of it for llis Sl18 ep cvIla cattle. 1'i tIle Ol1.eer t s 'greed of COulltr:Tt tile IJ,~-,stor[~list, 18 of. \'/itIl unco:l1scious irony I·iall:1er COILiLie:ntecl: anG so they advanced into t 19 rest to fortune • j?alnler 11i!llfJelf tool: ULJ Callobie on. tile Clollcllrry i:n 186<1: arlc.l stocl:.:ecl it 'w-i,JtjI1 C(.l,t 1 e frolll tl18 Y/icle (ii fJ"t/ri ct .. ~:20 of th.e :first to tC1Ji.(e up COulltr~t o:n tile Fli:n(lers ;'\1.. 21 estcd)l i 8118C1 Ilugl1e:ndell ~J1j a..t 1. on.. III tIle S [;1LiG cattle l'lere overlCLlld.ed fronl £OV:'811 DOYtllS in CGlltra,l to Be81iles Braol::. G..l)out Si:~t.d::811 lLliles above tile 'orese:nt 22 site of Burketo1fllo 1:Lll110st inllnediutely afteryrards, a :r'tls11 to 't,118 Gulf C01111try TlCLS triggered off by J-.G. l'iacdollu,.,ld l s 16. Baltoll,./1. 11110l1sa:nu 1\,liles ...4...~vra;l, 1). 2/7. -1 ". • i~. ~t1rl:T ...,( - 1 CJ t't u·~~)\ , i PallHer, D£':..y'"s ill. rJort.t1 {tueerlsl3..11d. t8::/d.:ile:r, tVV 1). 118~ 18. 8. L111CL G. de Satge, f'ages frvE"l tIle Jo-u.rn.al of a L~Ue(~llS- '!, n:;-'_J r1 .:.:1., i '1"1 .:' (T 0"'; .,:, 011 Ii 1 Ll·7 t l·~n~+. _r-_l P l~":::::" ...>;. '"""'" '-"- IJi.; .....:..-u..·;·.t·e,.....v .L ,L..J' ,:,~U .... , 19 \.,.1 1 \(J'J? i...... h.J ~-..... +..... ~ ...... is Q., L::.in.cl of l1 g reGcl of COllfltry.. n th.D..t COlJi0S O""'10r t/lle piolleer, vrllic11 s~J"urs J.1inl 1J.1) to great effor't/s if TJ118 re-YIardbefore 11 iLl is D.. good slice of' ricll s11eelJ cO'u:ntr:rt " 19 ~ l)alLlcr, .~~a,rl;t Da:f8 in. N·or't11 ;:'.::ueellfJ 1 ;,;..n.(l, 1). 1310 206 i lJid. 0' I)" 1 OL1. C~nllli lIS aIld Cc:lJ:iiJ be11 Iviag U:', i 11e, J 111 ~l 1951. 21. l.it:1..1nl-8 r? o-p. cit,., 1J1). 1 :24, 125 ~ 22~ ibid., p. 1204 133 I;lost o:f tl18Se SC;ll,cl,tters ~)Li. CGl:1e f r 01:1 tile I~~e :nn.euJ/ :0 i f.:i t rict. ~ ~ ~::;et tIer s IlC:.CL t ITUG the Gulf of Carpentaria. n ~VlC1..ve or pCLstOr'Ll1 coast to be 110t i11(lu.ced to SCOl:tr tile COulltry 2...11e8:c1 of settlel:'-lel1t Do'S .ils the editor tIt 11a2 ::..lso ho\'/ little, of tIle "York lJeili:nsulo... 1f is d/J::Ll/ted for po.,storal 25 occupation. t • as a dCLllgerolls dis other region still to be opened up vas the r~inforest-covered plGteaus of the Great vividing TiL:lb{:;I" , lB.illern.l attrLLct tIle it v{as 23. ]301tol1, li '11110"\.18 [111d Ir~.i 1e S l1..-'\·;a;i', :pp. 25, i27; J. G. t~.aciJo:no.. l cl, J oclrllal of ;J. G·. l;lC:vcDo:nD.. ld OIl C~ll .L~:;::;;edi-tiOll fr'GEt Port i~~~)~l\':~m:;: ~;;iyo~a~_~r~~n~~~~~ ~~~,~~~~~~nd~r~~b~~~: f>~/.} .. Bolton, i1. TtL. liS 0..1'1(1 I:ji 1es ..f1.1la:y, :p. 27. 25~ Byerley, The Jurdines t Journals, p. V. 13~ ·2111"8 111 tb.is to tIle ecol1oLt:!.es of botll r\J"ces" In December 1861, after Q, ro'U.ti:.ne lJatrol, L-t. l-'o"\'rell, tlle!'l ill cllD:.rge of l'"[G.ti've but tllat t iLi,L:.e:nse r :nUlL10erS still oc ed .J(J~le Do'//ell l~i ver ies of si}~t:l t,o eigll-t,:/ ralists were Gctively 0l1go..gecl i:n the process of disl)OSSess t11G }i.bori{~i!les. ~Pllas ') C'.. sCfuo..tter 011 tile 130TteIl :ho..d f orn.led. a vigilG3Jl.te to set lerf:$ 011 t118 BOT;e11 allCl. tIle Burdelci11 ':;/et otl1ers "rrere alre 011 tb.e Sllttor In.deecl, ~~"llile t118 settlers y,"e1"'e establ i tl1GLlfJellreS, tb.e37 co:nstL~11t s Native ~olice aSslst~nceo eaJrly l~erll.led::l 1362, tLlcre y{ere tTro CC1Ll j)S ill tb.e District, OlE at ------26. Lt. I)oTfell -'(;0 .Dal e, 9 DeCGElber l:~\Gl, ellcl. in. Dal e to ColD Sec., 9 December 1361, oS.A. CGL/A2S, 3151 of 1861. See also Dul e to Lt, Povell, in cllD.;rg·e of l~a';,. iva ~L>ol ic e d.etLl.cb.:illeIlt, I3o""i~'lel1., 27 iL,i,)ril ~J. .1~l.l 1861 ,811C1. $2 0 ,A.e '1, 1527 of 1d 61; aI1J. Dal e to Col. Sec~, 23 April 1861, .G.A. C0L/AIG, 1262 of 1861. 135 squatters to tQ.l::c tIle lo.;vl iJJ.to tlleir llCi..llG.S') tile go-vc:;r:n.- l' 27 }:lGllt v{o1.11d :not i:ncreuse tI1G force at TJ lE1C. In. L'ia:v resiciGllts re~~:llestillg greater ;.;;olice ~protectiOl1. beca·use C);-} of tIl,.:; te:::tl-'erile hostilit~l of ..10 118 .iilJorigi:rH:~st.~O Yet ill ers to be ~ctive partners in dispos essing the .LLborigil1es C111CL pro..J0octil1g iJl'0I)ert3iJj; Burdekin from the pacified Wide 1:11 tl1e ICel1110cty District ill Jul:;?" 1863 to t,~renty-tllre0 olrt~ of seven troo~ers deserted 'ville11 . .; 30 uns1.l1)G rVlsea. Pro·babl:~r, 110 frOl1.t,ierregioll COIlsiclerecl itself, Ilor l::J..:nd t S ic:r est~blishing effective COIltrol o"\rer SlLCll ,;li~TtJricts as tIle r:'eYi:leaJr befor'o tl"lloTri:ng settlers to talco I)osseszioIl of llosti1e L1GcU3tLt"eS J '< for "(1.1_18 _~)res er"vat i all of b.is lit'e fl~o-El U. 11llL18 ric a1 I)repolld.erD...1:lCe 2'7. Dalr:llHI)le to Col. >Sec., 22 Elel)ruc~r~l 1862, l1. .J:.. CGL/l1.2~6, 817 of 186~; 1Jalr~11.. ~;)le to COl.. ;Jec., LL Fetjr'-'d:-:~r:y 186~2, .S•.A.• CLL/i\.26, 821 of 1862; DCtlr"JlH1l)le to Col~ Sec., 9 December 1861, loco cito rIel ., . ., "' J {'t" ('"' 1 c' ., 'f.'C' C' > rt{ ....L· ,/ ["'" oq c~o. Da..lrYiH1J..le GO •...,/010 l:)eC., L-.k J.UO~,. ~j.ll. v\../· I ~;>.~'-"', lL128 Or 1862. 29. J'o1111 Bligh, COHUaal1.ctarit of }{C1,tive Police, to COl. ;~:)ec., (~'. '1:"····.' -:< ("' t 1 (1 at:.' (). .i.~l (,";\ .('} fyr /;\ (~ () n (lLJJJ~ O' In J.' C) G' to' ...... :).',- b 'l\;. J:.:) UbI,,;;~. },J • -,"1.. v 'U.LJI ...~,.,U hoi , c:.. v .... J. 0 w • 30. COl'kL~',r1;'1.dcL.:nt TIl t s 130Iltl11:y· }1etllrl1 of ]:-:Jati've Ij'olice Force, 1 July 1863, to Col. Sec~, D.S.A. CGL/l~2, 1057 of 1363. 11118 1~~e:(LnectJ'( District's l"G..te of ctesertion ·WC1.S 3J.ot cal. 136 e l1UE:dJers 1 It 31 11 118 J?astore"l Frolltier 1861-1870. eto UIlifOX"L:it:;r ill tIle proced:nres blacl::s North Que8lls1and, not to criticise the process but to urge tl18:y- reali~ed the signific~nce of the alien presence) the o:noers Ttere forced lto keep the~ out!: Ltllat is.,] 11.eVer to c;~11o\1~ tb.eDl IlGtJ.. rs;.2 ccu:~~p, Gut-statiOl'l, 11ead.-statioll, or to·\~:.nsllip; co:nseC{U811tl)' tlu3y '1{ere 11ulltecL ·b::l t111.JTolle if S H8Il i:n o,pe:n C Gun.t ry, f:Lncl clri'V'el1 ;:}~~\r[).;:l or Sllot dO\'lll ~.tlleIl C3..Ugl1t out of trJ.e scru'b 2i.tllCl brol~ell gl~Ol111.d~ rrllis course ed b~l tIle e set-'e,lers ELIlu. IJiol1.eers "Yn.1,S "llIlaVoiclDJJle a..uc.t (~:.lli·tJe 11GCeS8£trJl un.der tIle existing circumst~nces. 32 .L-\..box·igiJ:10S if tlleJ/ 11aa beeTl t let inr CLI1U realized tIle 1recJ~11ess of the squatters. Tllis s:;rste:Lll of l£eel)il1.g theH~ cut, 11 OVleve 1-- lias 1ec1 to clrea,dful results everJr busllluan 11&(1 to toJ:e t11e 1 a;yt i lxt:.. 0 IIi s o\~rn. llL111C.is ill Se 1f - d.e f eriC e , c.1,:nd i" 0 r a tiI:.18 ever:;? ]ilall t s ~lB..llcl ViD;.2S [};J6'o..il1St tIle hlti"cl;:s, Ctlld.. tl1eir 11a:ncls aga.i11st every nle~ll - as JCJllose 1rho llad beel1 pel1ceful1~y· i:nclillecl --'GovlctrcLs tXle fJettlers B;.2t first ------...-.---'----~------.~'-'---..- 31., Dalr}'H11)le to Col. Sec., 20 1861, J~o;:3.11.. CGL/l\..17, 1527 of 1861& 3~~~ }'.TI.T., 20 1\fov81uber 1869. 11110 article is GIititlecl fA Black Protector!. 137 beCD...Ele re1r eIlgefu.l, s:..:ncl COE1Lli.J0ted seilex·al :nost llorril)le Erurcters, ••• DJlld LkilleY Sll~:;el), cat.tle, e;..11(~ 110rses. 33 DeSIJite t,118 fact tb,e~t it T.:"a,s 21J violo/vioIl of 0:::1:3 of tile CUD.cli tiOI1S of leo..se to deI1Y tIle j:dJoriG:i}~1eS free access Under-Colonial Secret~ry even rejected a request by a . 34 squatter tllD.;tJ tIle ilJJorigirlGS be let in. L1.:tj tllc;.,t tllue. Dllri:n.g t11is :.'period of t lceepillg tl18IH O"Llt t, COiilLll..lllicatiollS of Card\vell a.s a )ort for tIle ,Jer 13urdelc:i:n ill 1864. l)relaier I-Ierbert t s illfluellc0, decided to establisll {1 l.)ort at rsocI::ill:~·11C:..1n Ba,:/. and hostility would be ~voided. For tIlls IYUI'l)ose, 118 tooL::. f:;~5 J tLLles J~iorri 11 as in.ter-prater. v 1'1Tro CQ.:noes CcLL:e Ovvrtty b)r L~orrill ·W-110 cOllVer"sed lNitll S01.-18 difficu.lty·. Th.e ral1ges to tIle B1.1rdel:in, tlle~T lied. ..Jel1c:/(; 110118 ex:isted ihIld., 33. ibid. k~ch less restrained descriptions had been IY1J.blis11ed ill tllis ]ileTrspt1..1)or ·by OlJpOl1.ents of tIle s:J'stenlo 34. _.D.r~eo, 13 ~~l)ril 1867 0 .t~.L. I.'1'cDougall referred ..100 tIle regula..tion ~.'(-llell replying -IGO tile Ullder COIOl1iu,l L'eCl'e./cf:.ry-o TIle letters 1'lere l~eprod.uced ill tIle :ne'\fsl)2..i)er. 35. 1!"arl1field, lilro:ntierSlllC1..11, I}I) 0 67-69. froin (1 •.8. Da.. lr-:;lluple, t I~81)Ort all JOtlrl1ey fr01:.1 I~ocl~illg11aEl Bay to Valley of Lagoons', Jrrurnal of the Royal C~e o£;"r CL})lli c u,l Soci et:l, :'C.Ci."'V. 138 .. ... "VIe COlne as friellds .... I tl1911 to10~ tI18£11 tlle:;l llll"tst clear out and tell others to do so as we vished to oc Cl1I)J! tile 1 0,,11C1, an.cl TlOll1cL Slloot (J.,117Y 'CllO E~I)i.J ·bet1'leell t11e t'i'lO rnces \'i'r1S ul1.alnbiguOl.1S. llu.. lry1nr)let s inE;-'0rtlctiollS 1'110 .iLborigillGS 11ad to surren..cler SOiilG of tlleir tribal la;11{.1 to tIle illtruders. according to Morrill, 'they were set upon suddenly by 37 I\'.~r. Dal rj1:"lIJl e t S Ele:n ft.ll(l ratl18r cut IIp 1 .. Dalr J'1ll131 e 1 s Aborigines to accept passively the loss of their lands A general pattern of conflict can be observed in the part t~?ical of Aboriginal response to ulien il~rusion, COllS8CJU.:311.t 111J011 tIle n.a..tllre of tIle cllc.'lle:nge oralists oJfered. 36. J-a.Li8s Idorrill, tt.Jourl1.G.. l of' all .~::'::1)editio11 to ItocL:in.gllct.ru ~;Y~~meI;O~~~r;~1~~2i~:p!U~~~~i, i:r:2J~~~;.~~~~si~w~h~i~;;ry 1101V· ill tile I) ossessi 011 of' tlrs" D. J ach: Sellior, Bran.doll, ': ""'c~r 7,T ..nt1 .,", -1"'\ ~y. • • ~lj' .' J..:i~.1. 11 ~~ue0:18 Ul1~. iloy,reVer SOEte I)Ct,ges o...re IUlSS111g lD.cluUlllg tIle dtJove 111.terestlllg illfor;:i1atio:n" :I~lle rest of tIle j OUl'llc:.-l \lras discoverecl in tIle COtll"'Se of this researcll ill tIle l:'ort Delli S 011. (riLleS, 26 lu.arcl1 1864 8..11U,2 .A.pril 18-64 Trh.ere tIle cOluplete jOllrll[~l is iJublisl1ecl. 3'1. L~orrill, 'JollI"llal of [t,11 EJ~I)edit,iol1 to 11ocl;:illg'11C!.J!.1 Bu,Jlt, }?J).T., 26 IJarcll 1864: 0 Ol11Jt I>art of ttlis in.. foI"'i:.LJ,tioll D..I)l)Gr:.r's ill TIle St or~{ of J CU:les rljorI~i11, p_ 30._ 139 Perhaps the pastor~l oc i 011 of tIle Divicli:ng in the east to the Queensland-Northern l'erri·tJor:v border tIle :3e 11;r:;l11 38 t11e sottt11 to tIle Gilbert River in the 11ortll. It of two stE~ions in the Burke District clearly described Olltrages lJJ" t118 "blacl(s t:1re sel(lor~l COlILJitted in t11e Gu,rli est st~J",ges of t11e settleE~e:nt of t1, lleT,- district, and this has bGeil purticul~rly the case in this clistric.Je of B"u.rl:;:e, 1v-rlere for the first t1\ro::,;-ears tile e,.l(J ~3I10l.lgl1 to ilH:tl(e El£L:ny settlc~rs believe t110lil i:nc '·violence [1,Ild.. t.O COllsider tlleEl 11 C,l rI:.l1 es s. 39 38. See 11lo{J, I). 128. 39. )_lit'~Jle 0r. IIetzer, D"rillo,l ;3tc.,tion b;ear tile jUllCtioIl of J.·;'ln ('i r .. .., l ..r - ~-.~1(1 ';"J.·ver~~J '-'I""'-".! .'1/1ood~:e ·,~l·,·O+·;'J ~rp:, 'Vi \,;; hJ (J.../:: ~JJ! c;...l L Fi-ll·",-r'erc.<,H\.::.. - ~"'!,.o };;J , UJ.l.U,;U~ J. ~ .,iJ";' v:"","; .:::.. DOllors ]jill Statioll_1nettr tIle jU.llction of t(10 Clollc~urry and Flinders Rive~~~o the Col. Sec., 18 i~ril 18G8, Q.S.A. C0L/AI06,172G of 1868. 140 Gl.llf lo~rlD./n.cls L:..12d ~tlle CIOI1Ctlrry Itiver 40 C;.;re very· cll1iett., ;SOHle settlers 011 t,lle ..;-:...1 bert lli'ver eVGll 11LLd e:n.ol}~gll co:nfi(le:nce -to go illto tlleir ~ Lll to tllel[i. 'l'lle Burl(eto'lrn CorresIJOlldellt to tIle Port DeIlisoll TilHGS reElarlced ill liJ,:tJe .l>:"'1.1gUSt 1866, illt..ll0l1g11 tllGre 11:,_tJd ;J8o:n s OL~e SL1L.~,L;est i OllS of is por~):Aii c L; C) c03J.flict ill 1865,'=u t11G first in.dicatio11S of seriou.s trollhle on the Flinders road. bore:. CereL.lOllies" ... _ ,tiLJ: reall zeCL. Conflict "becillue ver:7l TlidesiJreo..cl tllereafter , L:"S 1 i...'.:te BS December 1874, the Aborigines were still regu.. rded Cl..S LL6 not yet been 'let int.~ a:ClU diei en.o"Ll§;ll In 1"867, 0118 trCtveller 1ras l;:illed 40. P.D.T., 9 September 1865. Referred specifically to the Q'"ulf Lo",~,tl;:111Cls lr:j.t ii1tcIlded as [1.. gelleral CO~:-"Ll8Ilt. See also Ii.D.To 'J ~~O Septeraber 1865, gilrillg .8cl-rrarcl -J.,l~_.ler of Callobie 011 tlle CI011CllrrJT r~i ver O.. S tile SO"iJ.rce. 41. 1?.D.T., 18 October 1865" l~ote tllat tllis 'Vtas tll0l1g11t to lJe 11GTlSyrOrt11y" LJ:l~. 1) .D:. T.? 29 itUgust 1866. 43. P.D.T., 25 October lU65. 44. P.D.T., 27 February 1867. 45. CoC.L., Burke Town, to Cola SeC9' 6 September 1867, ,~; (l -~ n r-1- /14'Gl """'-.j 1 nil 1 ()t'l ~ ">')01 {'f 0"" tort01 C'ec ;;;.; • 0 0 ii... tJ v L ~'1.1 1..,1. O.J:- (J',.l. • v lU., . \.J • U ., 12 June 1868, with enclosures, Q.S.A. COL/AI 06 , 1788 of 1868; Brodie Bros. & Little & Hetzer to Col. Sec., 18 1tl:Jril 1868, lac. cit., Col. tSec' So Eiillute, 9 JUl10 1868; koD.T., 4 July 1868. 460 rrelegrOLIu, .oA.cting; C. C.L., B"url:e T01V11, to }:,lillister for Lfl.lllds, 17 DeceElober 18{l4, ~Q.S •.lt. CCL!lLl-G2. 141 81J.ber 1867, tlH~ l~l.borigilles tl,tttl..cl;:ed fot.1r L.;,ell :nea1" Call01)ie Statio:n 011 J - {'i ~ t""'l'; 0 ""_;'1 f,'~ 1-' .~,":,~" ... tjl1e v 1.... 01J.curr:y .,.....lSl.. var, 1;:::1.."'"i 1l11g'. 0118 GJI1CL",·V/'OUIl.Cll:ng. ; J:;+..;' ...... ' .:.;. ~ .. £1: r; ~.':.e ~+, vr>_,,-_~ rYl"'; ~'_l "I,n J C~ 1-' "'"'.:-=_',,, + ~:.il' _'1:1 f-": 1 (,'h...l_~ ·- o·? -'lv' i. "-' ...., ""'" ...:..-i. • " .. 48 'I .n e ell '1'; e.,t. e (, r -ve J.. e r s c .....'-'__ '" ;.;. 'oJ ..-. _ u _. r--...... b u ...... n.t l:n. lete 186'1 or earlj?" 1868, fo'ur ..;~JJorigillG.. l elaplo:rees froill ,i 1. {joe oyed by various settlGrs l;:illed by llostile 1 ~" Ll9 ""'GO tl181r i10n.~eE:. Olle of tIle j~uropef1:i1S T.~ere h::illed Thus, in the first year of conflict in the Burke District tell of tIle C010llists or tb.eir :\.borigillo.Jl en':lJlo~le0S yrere reported l;:illecl bJ' .il.borigilles. There were aluost certainly others killed but unreported or unUlscovereu."r' .. 52 It is obvio1.1S tllat tIle d.etc'..ils of ol1.1y ~ si~~all percentage of Aboriginal attacks and European acts of H&;gressioll or retaliatio:n 11n..ve beell cliscovered ill th.is 47. Brodie Dros~ ,2: Little [{; IIetzel-' to Col~ Sec., 18 i1.I)lnil 1868, loco citl~ Ll·8~ C.C.L., Burketo1~:-11., JtiO Col. Sec., G Sel)~eIl1be;c 1867, Q.S.A. CCL/14Gl, p. 187. See also 2.M., Durketown, {"'1 1:' "1. ~~'l 1 .. .-) ...... 11 ,~'\ ,,\ f'iC-L/'~ lA6 .{ 11Q() t o ~O • dec., ~b lbOO, ~.0.~. 00 A ~ , LiOO of 1868. 4·9. B:eod.ie Bros!I Little &. IIetzer, 18 l\.pril 1868, loco cit. See also Queenslander, 23 1868, letter 'The Poor Dlacl~s t, cL~Lted 20 L'lc.. rc11 1868. 50. ibid. 51. ibicl. ISee also J~.i;:-.;J JJurl!:e.Jvo'\'l11, to Col. Sec., 18 ./LI)ril 1868, .S.A. eGL/Al06, 1788 of ISBa. 52. ~.D.T., 27 February 1867,for discovery of belongings of Sl1C11 peor)le in. itborigiI1.3Jl CZtlif;.)S. TIle i}roba1)ilit~y- of s1.1c11 UIllf:llOTll1 or ullreported l::.illirlgs b:r .ii.borigirlGS "w-as r'urtller illllstrated ftt 11 01\t.11sville ill f,Tove;.l'lber 18'l2 T/'h.en tl1e five ye\:1r old s~_eletoI1S of t1'rO I:LieIl, I:.icDuff u..nd I~oss, vrere :f'oullCl (1t I;,it. Ste-rrart. TIle Clevelo.,:;].d Ba..y 3J~1)resS rep,orted tllD..t the:y- 11t:;.,d olJviouslJT bee~n L::illed by blaclcs. See .C1ueejJ.s1 D..llcler, 19 1<; OVe22}ber 18fl' 2. See also 1:.1). TIl. , 28 },l.rvrcll 1874·, for tIle acciden.tcLl 4liscover::l of c,:n ul1idelltified victinl of ELll .t\.borig'i:n.cJ.,l D/0tacls.:· 011. tIle Pa,lrtler. 142 study. I:ndeed, gBllerally oilly tIle rilost blatallt c1ctivities activities of the i-~borigi11es 'tIore recorded f1:nd it -vtould. be foolisl1 to lJeliev& all of tl18se 11(1;\,-e 'been ul1.eartlled irl tllis researcll. rrile Conm.:issioller for Cro'c~'11 L~Ll1.ds ill tIle lJu.rlre District had requested increased police protection in Septe~ber !.,.,... n. VU ~0., 1'6f''1i so, upon th·-e rece1p~-L o~ft·a pe"lt lon. ue~al'1,. 1lng . mos"t of ~011e .A.borigin.D.ll a,ttacl{s descrilJed a'bove, tt.llotl1er det[tclll~le:n..Ju 4 -t' J .,' ... • "t 0 1 of 1,JD.:\:jlve i:'ollce ,vas despatcllea. :fllle officer ill charge of botll t11e l1u,tive and ordi11ary~ lJolice, Sub-I:nspector Ullr, 11Cl,d previousl:}' earned t,11e reSl)ect of tIle reside11ts;iitIl "' ",..;. 55 tIle linlited force 11e l1aa at IllS U1.SI)Osal. \'fitll "tIle increase ill COllflict bet"$'/een. tIle settlers al1d th,e ..A.borigines l1e 1 e}~e~11t III 011e of the fe1 { cletailed aCCOul1ts of a J:Tutive Police dispersal, the Burketown correspondel~ to the Brisbane Courier exulted at Uhrts success in killing fiftJ~ :nil1e ..tA.. borigilles ill retalia..tioll for tile slaugl1ter of f several l\'ir., C8..inero:n :near th.e I~Jonllz'-'11 Ii.iver: I Illuc11 regret to K::tate tllc1..t, tIle 1jlacl::s 11D",ve beCODJ.e 1rer:y trotdJles01l1e abO"llt 11cre lL1tel:y. \'iit11i:n.. ten. Iniles of tllis cttce tl1ey SI)0c;;,red Q..n.d c'ut stee:...lrs frolH t11e 1~11nlps of several 110rses. il.S soon as it 1ra.s l-;;:1101~rll, tIle l'IL1.tive ~Police, uIHler Sub-In.spector Ullr, ·"'tGIlt out, 2!.rlld laIn il1foriued, sllcceeded i:n Sllootillg urnrards of tllirty hlaclcs. £'Jo soo:ner VIas t11is done tllan a a report caIne ill -Lllat klr. Ccuiieron 11ad beCll lllurdered f at Licldle El."l1.d Ifetzer s statioll, l1ear the l'To rii':e"n III 53. C.C.L. Burli:e 1J1o1'i:n, to Col. bee., 6 SelJternber 186'1, O.S.A. CCL/14Gl, pp. 184-187; Pol. Com. to Col. Sec. "(vlith en.closures),"'12 JUl18 1868, Q.8.i\.. COLI/ii-lOG, 1788 of 1868. Brodie Bros. and Little and Hetzer to Col. Sec., 18 .l~tl)ril 1868, loco cit. See Col. Sects illin1.1te, 9 June 1868. ibid. 143 Idro Ul1r 'werlt off iLliuedio.Jtely ill tlli:t.t directioll, allQ 11is s~uccess I Ileal' Tlas COHli31e.)0e. On.e EiOb of fo:.lrteell IlG rOll11ued lI1); al10trler lilO b of l1il1G, alld a last lilO13 of eigllt, lie s'ucceeded 'witll llis troopers ill Sl100tillg. III the latter lot ·tJ11ere lras one 1Jlttcl;: \'{110 ·would.. 210t die after receivillg eig'rl.JGeell or tTle:nt~{ bu.llets, but a trooper sl)eedil)' lYllt all end to l1is e:x:ist811ce lJ3r s~:.':asll i :n.g 11i s slrl.lli. 56 acellt to:ne of t11is report C111cl tIle absence of UI1J7 110stile reactioll allcl of all official illr:ftliry delU011{3tra~te -tile cl1anged at.."Litude tOTrarcls Jlborigi:nes ill tile Burke district evct of rev011ge a:nd bloouslled. Tile Bllrh:etO'1ill1. correspo:nde11t COllcluded: 1Ever:Tboct:r ill tile district is deligllted TlitIl tl18 'w1101eSttle sla'ugllter dealt out 'by ..!c,11e l1t.:l,tive police, and thank Mr. Uhr for his energy in ridding the district 57 of fift;r-nil1.e (59) nr~lalls!. Q.,Ild tllcir alliulals, tIle ~:i.borigilles of tile Barl.:;:e District appropriated their goods and possessions and destroyed Iirac11 propert:l_ Illueed rob'ber3T seeHH3 to 11a.ve bee:n a stro:n.g Hlotiva for in:.:tuy attacks. ~borigines t00k great risks to obtain food as their own resources becw2e limited by the increasing nmuber of stock. The .looting of shepherd's 11uts 1:taS so frecluellt tllat SOBle sCj'natters b~lilt irOYl lluts oclcs 'vlllic11 still did 110t stol) tIie il.borigil1es. i ve:n.ess of tIle i'!lwborigines ·wh.o toolc eV'8rJ(,lli~:'lg, eve:n ar.lc,icles th[~ could be of no use to them. It is clear that the need for food al1{1 tlledesi're to :have EUl"'opean. goods ",vas II01~" 56. P.j).T., Ll Jul:l 1868. Fro1il n"url:cetoTill corres:)o:ndell.t to tIle Brisban.e Courier" Otller rle·w·sl?2.,~pers reiJrillted tllis t article e.g. Q~eenslander, 13 June 1868, tCarpentaria • The n&~e 'Liddle' seems to be 'Little' in a letter vrllicl1 lIas bee11 I)revio'dsl~y referred to. 57. ibid. ruiJrea y{itll a cleterl.ni11[ttioll to resist al1.a 11El.. rJiJ. t~he in.vaders. I11deecl, tl18re is a strollg s'u;~gestioll of deslJcr£i...tion ill tIle ~ Aborlglual""". •• "I uarlng_:4 • the seG01ersJ..l. aescr1oeu."' .":l 58 The flare-up of illJOl/tiginal resist£111ce over SUCll a 1~lid.e a.rea... of t11e Bllrl~e District vrc1S lillked b3T t11e sett.lers Tritll 'bora' cerel~lollies. In February 1867, the Native Police had 'dispersed' estiuID...ted at B..10re tllQ,ll t1'tO 11Ullclred 011 tIle Flillclers lload where travellers had been menaced and so@e, whose bodies ". ~ '~_. ... ,,59 an.d ide:ntities 'ytere 110ver dif.::covered, rOGGeu CLxHl lei-llea. m~ • ..J" f 1 ' b . . 1 .4 • 60 1.111 s ,,;{e... s a. C O1.L'J11 0 11 crJ.01Clsnl O' D.. rge it orlgl:na... · gau}1.erl1.1gf?, and although they would have resulted from traditional religious a11d socio-ecol1.oraic cBJuses, it is incollceivable tllat, a..t sl..lch ID.eoti:ngs, grievallces agttin.st tIle ilivaders ~w-ere :n.ot disc·ussed. Tllis 1\tould rei:n.force tIle l1at/urD.l desire to strike bacl:;: 'w'11icll coulcl, in part, aCCOulTt, for suddeJ:l outbrea}~s of' resistan.ce over a 1fide area~ The initial pattern. of C011flict e:;~e\lLli:ned ill tIle Burh:e District could 1)8 illtlstrated as 1rell bZl refere:nce to o·t,ller Thus,speaking of t:',:ie ICe:nlled'y Pastoral District as a lIll01e, one of tile first COLll}1el1.ta"t,ors 011 its llistory of co:nflict poi:nt.ecl 01It tlle..t' earlier years had even }rrnnised a peaceful dispossession 61 i:n so:ae are&... s. Tl1is clo... ilH is s~pported by evidence from Sl.1.Cll \.)oJrts of t11e ICe".J.ledj'" as t11e l'o··wl1.sville alld Id.8..clca,y ~ .. 62 Cllstrlcts. TIle e:;;r-I:.en.ded })eriod. of i1.1Jorigillal avoiclallce of tIle pastoralists is not difficult to explain. TIle 11.0rfual i1.1Jorigil1al reactioll of fear a:nd f1Void.. cLllce \\'as reillforced 58. Brodie Bros. an..d Little £111{1 11etzer to Col. Sec., 18 iLIJril 1868, 1 oc. c it. 59. P.D.T., 27 February 1861. 60. '!':,iinutes of Evidellce', 1861 V. G: P., i j • 43 for A.C. Gregory's opinion. f 61. l? .D.rr., 20 }>Jo\Tenlber 1869: Ii\. Blc:.,cl£ IJrotector • 62. See Jl:~]:[Je11di)~ C., 145 firstl}' 1J)"- tIle relJuta..tion t118 aliellS ·broug11t Ti'itll tl1elll froill tile BOyrel1 district and tIle ,settled regions -tGO tIle SOUtll; a:n.cl, secoIlcll:y, lJy tIle claslles tlla..t frequer.d:;l:y occurred -"~;.'-it11 .. ..- .. 63 tIle 111J.tlCtl ~ilrOI)eall 111.tr'us 1. on. its tIle feared illvaders did :no·ti t1.t first seeril to offer a11 ul1.ei1durable -Ic,h.reat to tl18 l-~bo:r"igi:nes1 "way of life ClJ~nd Hlad.e clear t11eir cleter.. ;"i:na.tion clear evide:nce i:n I\Tortfl distr1Ilces £~11d, no tloubt, Trllere fJ..ctua.. l C011flict (lid ~not OCCllr, 1::11.oY(leclge of tIle 2uropeo..l1 destJrJ.ctive lJoten.tial ~ _ ., 64~ \'tas 1//e11 lIll01111. .iLS tIle liiilitecl bloods11ed irlvol"\Ted in. in greater caution. I-Io"~rever, Ol1.Ce tIle ii.borigines CCf..,lile to l111Uerstal1.£1 tIle 11.Ll,ture alHl i)erfJarlel1ce of EtlrOpe£'~ll occupation, conflict was bound to occur unless the pastoralist took with the Aborigines and provided the Aborigines with the econOi~lic resources of y/11icll llis activities Trere depriVi11g 65 Tllis ha:Pl)8Tled 011 a very fe1'l runs Ol1.1y. 63. See, for exo...;HI)le, C.S. It.o"\rels 1 1';.lelnoralldal ill .J. Dol'1ert~l, Tile 1'oTiJ:lsville 13001(: ';'l. CO}:ll}lete Sl;.etcl1 of the IIistor-:{2rr01Jogra~J11r alld I/r0111illG!lt ~arl--r.T Il.eside11ts ~'W11s"'viile (BrislJE111e, 1920), PIJ. 103, 109; \VE~ll(er, 1861-2 Journal, pp. 28, 33, 52, 10, 94 for initial violellt COllflict 118ar tIle G'ulf of CD~rpelltaria. OQil...... T11e Star;1 of Ja.l~les l.:iorrill, 1)1). 16, 17~: Iilorrill repor-t,ed ltborigilles COU1L1Ul1.icatiIlg over cO!lsiderable distances precise details of the arrival of the first settlers and their subsequent actions. See also Byerley, Ja.!'"'dilles t J·olJ.rIlals, ]p. T8. i'LIJorigi:nes la,ter irltel'"vie1'red l)~l t11e Ja,rdines at SOlnerset could. cLescri·be ill precise detail t.Ile clec...tll of t/fle e:?.c.f)editiol'll S HIule tllL1;tJ 11tl..d occurred alLost five hundred miles south had articles ill ..Jc,lleir lJossessiol1. frofl1 tIle Inule t s po..cl$: sacld.le. Otller deta.. ils :narrated Llacle ]:'ranJr J·ardin.e believe tilGSe .1il)orisines 11ad follo~~v-ed tllenl tllis d.il~:d.JD..Ilce. It is iZlore lil::.ely, 11o-wever, tllD..t tJlll3 i11foY'L~f3 ..tiol'l an.a tIle articles were transmitted from tribe to tribe. 65. Lcul.ll:lerlllOOr \,{[,1"S OXle of ..JulIe fe1'{ in I-Jor·t,ll Z)Ueells1a.:nd. :3ee jJ~Qe-''''·l'1 n,j.~lrl· ~:>;"!'>l'e~""n"o o~."dO-'l 9/ :\:l~;' 7,';·.1.:~. c.+_+ stl' ~'...C< 01" 0..01.- ""'L l~l.J..;..I. 0 1'" "'('W"'L+ '7 or • 1 ... .\I...... , \.I v, \.J J,.';' .L ...,J..... -'-.l:- _, [19_ boo< • 1 92§]J, 1J11. 56-60, 6'1, 81. L a.nL.Herl~10or 1'las rerio1'il1ed "bee ause it was the exception to the rule. 1~6 TI'1e lilost notable excer~tion to tl1epatterl1. of' cOl1.flict ol:u.tlil1.ed above occurred in tIle settleHlellt of t:heBo\\Tel1 11interland. DalrymI,le had give:n. sl)ecific il1Lstru.ctiollS that t118 set-i~lers ·w"ere 110t to disembark 011 the Iuai:nland if they arrived before ,&.118'1 • land party but to can:q) ·on ·a:n islallcl ill tIle bay. DeSl)ite his I)revious eXl>sriences ,he 'was 110~pef-ul tl"lat lIe coul~::l establish a pattern of co:ntact differe:ntj frOH.1 tllat 1(no1~-n on ·the. pastoral frontier il1. tl'1e soutl1. The 1)reSel1ce of the rilounted l£t.nd IJar"ty, 118 110IJed, ·vlould d.eter Al)origi:n.al 0loPosition or rout it if· absolutelJ' 66 :necessary. Unique wnong the pastoral districts of Queensland, tl1e 11interland of Port Den.ison ,vas separated by lIloret11aJl· 200 miles from the; nearest settled district, Broadsound. Jln OlJl)Ortul1ity e:Kisted for Inal{i:ng a fresh start il1. esta.blisll i:ng relations '\vitI1 tIle local Jl..borigiJ.:ie~, one Wllic~l rnigll~' avoid the br~taOil dis130ssession vllQicl1 had occurred e.lsetvllere. jll~t.l1.ough tl1e goverrunent sllovred no i:n.terest in these Ijossi~":;,· bilities, Dalryulple 'fas eager to seizetheIll and 0lJtilnistic of su.ccess" Iiis intel1tio:ns 1'{ere bel1evolent, but lie llacl 110 real conlprel1ellsion of tb.e -"Nays in 1vllicll "~,\rllite" illtruders injured Aborig~illal i:nterests. Otller settlers did:not "evert · 1· 67 -gIl,are llis il1.te,J.ltio.ns, all"d iNere 1rholly beyo:nd .hlS contro • Despite the fact that, inter alia, he had deliberately approl')r~at'ed BOHle Aboriginal 'vells large ell0ugh to SUPl)ly 68 'tIle requil~enlel1ts of the IJort for SOlne jrears to come 1 , Dalrymr;)lebelieved the· ll'borigines lrould q"uietly resign 66. G. DalrYil1lJle, C.C.L., ~C.e11:riedy District, to Col. Sec .. , 24 .A-l)ril 1861, Q.S ....4... CQL/'A16, 1261 of, 1861. 67 • fiT. i\.. Loos , Fr:o~n.tier Conflict in the BO'we:n District 1861-1874 .(tvIc.l\". j2ualifJrir1g tIlesis, JarnesCD,oIi U:ni·varsity of North Queensland, July 1970), chapter III. See also Bolton, I TIle ~Exj?loration of Nort11 QueenslaIld~ So].ne . ProblelIls', 1:>. 353, a:ncl Lin.g P~Otll, Ttie Discover)'"" a:n.d Settlernen.t of .Port, Ivlaclcay, Quee:nslal1d, p. 38, for the --;/ outerl',ilnits of settlell1ent. . 1 68. Dalr'jT]llple, tllurdeh:i:n E~~l)edition l{el)ort , ~860 v. & P., p. 33; Dalrj'1u111e to Col~ Sec., 25 [~,Iajr 1861, Q. S~jt. COL/A17, 1526 of 1861. 1~7 themselves to the presence of 'an irresistable!jii! force'. 69 Such naive optimism was short lived. 1fJlithillt'hree ,weeks, three' squatters were driven back -to the settlemeIlt by an estimated ~20 Aborigines. l\4:oreover the Native Police had already begun far-reaching t dislJersals' and ,'{ere soon emulated by th.e squ8.1tters Inoving Qutto claim runs. Dalrymple feared the~own would be attacked and assumed the role of 70 commander-in-chief. The infant colony met with intense Aboriginal opposition and. retaliated vigorously.71 Eight years later, a resident of Bowen wrote: 'We know that our 72 tovffi at least had its foundations cemented in blood, • The same could be said for muc~ of ~he early settlement of, the Bo,ven District. One year after Dalrymple's arrival at Port Denison, he ,vas still complainiltg of the t extrelne host 1-l-t1y O'f theor1g1nes.Ab · - ,73 There are several factors which probably acc~unt fpr the 4ifference between the early contact experienced in the Bowen District and that experienced in more remote areas. Fi·rstly, the exceptionally ,rapid spread of settleinent from Bowen must have appeared from the first an invasi'on of menacing proportions, in contrast to the~more gradual infiltration of grazi,ers elsewhere. Secondly, in the 69.. Dalrymple to Col. Sec., 24 April 1861 ,-Q.S.A. COLIAl6, 1261'of 1861. 70. Dalrymple, to Lt. Powell, in charge of the Native Police Detachment, Bo·w"en, 27 April 1861, encl. ~.S.A. COL/AI7 , 1527 of 1861; Dalrymple to Col. Sec., 28 April 1861, Q.S.A. COL/AI 6, 1262 of 1861. 71. I\1.1V. Cunningham, 'The Pioneel--ing .of the River Burdekin'. Original' :l.n the possession of' Mr.... E. ,Cunningham, Strathmore Station,Collinsville, Queensland. Type script copy at History DelJartluellt, James Cook University of North Queensland. 72. P.D.T., 1 May 1869, 'Shall 'va A.dmit the Blacks'. No one d'isagreeddespite the fact that tIle author was then involved in a controversy on the, .subject. 73. Dalrymple to Col. Sec., 14 May 1862, $l.S.A. COL/A29, 1428 of 1862. 148 early yee"rs the district dra.ined bytlie Burdekin and its tributaries was constantly distllr:.bed by travelling settlers with their flocks and herds l()o~ing for or going -to runs further out. Thirdly, in the Bowen District the Native Police were provocatively used in the first weeks of 'settle ment and subsequently aggressively scoured the river valleys attacking assemblages of Aborigines. Inmost areas, because tIle demand for Native Police exceeded their supply, they patrolled districts intensively only after conflict had occurred or was th.ought imminent. Fourthly, in SOll1e district's', early clashes demonstrated the pO'w"er of the invaders so strikingly that the Aborigines avoided further contact as long as possible. Finally, in yet other areas, the Aborigines probably avoided contact during the early stages of pastoral occ~upation because of knowledge of the invaderst destructive potential· communicated from the B<)"vlen District. The initial reckless daring of the Bowen Aborigines in attempting to 0PIJose "\vhat was apparently perceived as· an inescapable threat ,vas repeated in remote Cape York Peninsula in OPIJosition to the Jardine 74. Byerley, Jardines' Journals, pp. 19, 22, 23, 25, 34-40, 48. 1'~ 9 The coast country all alOllg from Townsville to ftiackay is inhabited by blacks ,of the most hostile character. On some of the stations north of Bo'\ven,such as \Voodstock, Salisbury; Plains, and some:others, i,tis almosti~possible to keep any cattle on the runs; and SOUtl1 of BOl§ren some stations are or 1vere about to beabandone:d,in~on sequence oftha destruction ofp,roperty by ,the blacks. 75 D.T. Seymour, who ,vas: Police C"ommissioner from 1864 to 1895, was not one to e.xaggerate A.boriginal hostility. It lvas more typical of him to blame the settlers for not taking adequate precautions to protect their own lives and property or to accuse the local newspapers of exaggeration. 76 Even though the number of Native Police at Seymour's disposal was reduced greatly as a result ofec'onomy measures 77 associa1ied with 1ihe 1866-1870 commercial depression and 78 the use of the Native .Police as gold, escort, he went to extraordinary measures too pacify the ,TOYlllSville -to Mac'kay coast. At a time lv-hen he 1\TaS giving ea.,ch detachment a_, larger area to patrol, he- pointed out that he was unable to reduce ,the Native Police on the Townsville to }Aackay coast and that he had established two 'flying detachments'. These would have no settled cw~ps but would patrol constantly, one between Townsville and Bowen and the other be1iween Bowen and Mackay.79 75. 'Report of COimuissioller of Police UIJOn Tour of Inspect,iont , 1868 V. & P., pp.51, 52. 76. tPolice COrIDnissioner i S Report for 1875', 1876 V. & P., Vob. I, p.. 903. 77. Bol~on, ,A Thousand Itiiles Away, pp. 38-42,for~n account of" the cOI11J.i1ereifi,l depression. 78. R. Stewart, J.,'P., Southwick S~ation, Dalrymple, to Police Commis~ioner, 20 Ociiober 1868, enclosed !l.S.A. COL/AIle, 100 of 1869. ~ 79. 'Police Commissioner's Report t , 1868V. & P., pp. 51, 52. 150 TABLE I STRENGTH OF QUEEJ.ISLANDPOLICE FORCE, 1864-1872 DEPART WHITE NATIVE YEAR ~mNTS POLICE POLICE TOTAL EXPENDITURE POPULATION : IBM 3 178 1M 345 £t13,397 14,036 1865 3 239 124 366 £44,_972' 87,,804 1866 4 267 151 422 £02,297 96,201 1867 4 297 112 ~13 £03,888 99,849 1868 4 3()~~ ,1:,111 417 £{)O,223 107,427 1869 4 288 114 406 £57,045 109,$7 1870 3 299 114 416 £57,716 115,567 1871 '3 309 118 430 £58,326 125,146 1872 8 337 145 485 £64,267 135,,497 From 'Report from the Acting Commissioner of Police for the Year 18721, 1873 V. & F., p. 918. In '1868, tl'letotal should be 411'. The Cost, of Frontier Conflict ,to the Aborigines. The conflict described in this chapter persisted unabated for mote than seven years during which time most· of North nueensland was colonised> ,by European pastoralists. The cost of such protract.ed struggle, measured in the broadest seDse, must have been very-great for ,both races, bntespecial1y for the Aborigines. Rarely, of course, was the cost, of "the European invasion of Aboriginal land chronicled with an Aboriginal _perspective. It is therefore fortunate in North Siueensland that-there was a European who had lived with-the Aborigines for seve~teen"yea,rs and had--heard the descriptions of, the first e:ncounters from his black. friends. On ,25 January·1863, when James Morrill made contact 1vith - the advancing ,~h,i·te settlers atlnke~an Station, he was able ,to desc~'"i.be.·'j.t;s,omething of how the Native Police and 'keeping them' out' affected the Aborigines. He told of misunderstanding, fea~, and malice. In 1.86,0, a. ship, which l-iorrill believed to be the 'spitfire' engaged in Da,lr~ple'ls Burdekin expl'oration hove to at Cape Cleveland. The Aborigines tried to make the Europeans understand that there was a white :man living with them' in accordance with ,Morrill's request. The Europeans grew alarmed and fired upon the apparently menacing 's·avages', killing one of Morrill's friends and wounding ane"ther.80 The next encounter 110rrill heard of "occurred about three years lat'er. Some Aborigines were lamenting the death of an oldman when an unnoticed ,settler fired upon them killing the oldman's son. Presumably, this was the opening gambit of 'keeping the blacks out'. Later the Aborigines induced' this settlel· to dismount andslelV' him. Thinking the horse was also rational and malevolent, they 81 tr~ed to kill it too. Report.s of the encroaching whites increased, each one bringing fresh evidence of their rut.hlessness. A party of white and black men, possibly the Nat.ive Police with squaiiter volunteers, shot down the Aborigines Morrill had 82 lived with at Port Denison. . Next, fift.een members of t.he tribe Morrill was then living with v'ere shot d.ead while S3 on a fishing expedition. By 1863, 'keep~ngt.hem out.' meant that the-- Aborigines could not' safely win their liveli hood. from thai,I- own country. They.also realized,that ,'their tribal lands were being changed by the mere presence of the white men. Some.had 80. The Story-of James Morrill, pp. 15, 16. 81. ibid., p. 16. 82'. ibid., .pp. 16, 17. 83. ibid., p. 11 152 watched while a, herd of cattle dra.nka. >wtl.ile~hDledry, temptlng'ly exposing the fish which th.ey were afraid to come 84 forward and "take. Morrill had comrn.enftedon the great variety of' edible plant life utilised 'llythe Aborigines, much of which would have been "conswnedordestroyed by the vast numbers of voracious, hard-hoofed c'attle pouring . 85 into the reg1on. At a simple economic level, the food and water resources which.were justsnfficientto support the tribes in a dry, season were being limited and free access to ~hem denied. Eventually, Morrill persuaded the Aborigines to let. him go. as an emissary to attempt ~A t o come t0 t·erms WJ."th th,e J.nvQAl.ers.· 80 Morrill made it clear to the Aborigines that the Europeans would dispossess them of their land, a prospect which caused great distress. They requested Morrill to a~k the Europeans to let them keep someof'"-their tribal lands, even if only the coastal SW8Ii1pS which were 87 valueless to the inva.ders. Morrill probably helped fonD ulate f,11e proposal and gave it much emphasis in ~ispamphlet published in 1863. The Queellslandg0"V"ernment,ho,vever, madena response and a unique opportunity in Aboriginal European relations in Queensland was lost. It was not because Morrill was held in low esteem. ~overnor Bowen conversed wi~hhim on several occasions nd,tfinding him to be a very re.~ectable and intelligent, man1 , obtained a job fO.r him a.t Bowen where one of his rrincipal duties would be to act as interpreter in communications between .the Buropeans ancl the Natives, and so (it was ~oped) to prevent s~me'of those misunderstandings between the two races, which often lead to unfortunate circumstances. At, Bowen Morrill married an emigrant girl 'and was universally 84. ibid. 85. ibid,~, pp. 20-22. 86. ibid., p. 17. 87. ibid., pp. 18, 26. 153 liked and respected' ; the chief j"ournals af the Australian colonies were much mnterested in his experiences, as was the Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle.S8 Morrill's eagerness to act as mediator was deemed a failure before the close of 1863. Bonwick had heard -that the squatters were dangerously hos-tile to him because they 'beli'eved him in league with the Aborigines ~o ,destroy their flocks while, it was alleged, the Aborigines had come to 89 mistrust him becaus,e of his association ~ith the settlers. In his obituary in the Port Denison Times, mention was made of the government's fear that he would rejoin t,he Aborigines 90 and cause mischief. It was unlikely 'that a squatter-dominated government would legislate to give land rights to a race it regarded as nomadic savages. Even the sympathetic Governor Bowen had claimed the Aborigines only 'wandered' over the count~. Europeans would only accept the land rights of nomadic hunters and food ga:there,rs if they were forced to do so. Like Dalrymple, Morrill did not understand the bas'ic conflict of cultures which required more than goodwill to 'provide - 92 a, so1U·l.OD.t As early' as 1863, Morrill was able to describe the depopulat-ion in the Bowen District, resu.lting from frontier conflict, which was stillcontinuing:' 'The work of extinction is gradually but surely going on. among t~e Aboriginals. The . tribe I was· living ~ith is far less numerous now than when I went among them'. Morrill indicted the settlers a.nd the 88. D.S.A. Governor's correspondence, outward despatch, 77 of 1865, :Qowento Sec. of State, Cardlrell, 4 De'cember 1860. 89. J. Bonwick,The ,\Yild'Yhite Man and the Blacks. of Victoria (Melbourne, 1863, 2nd edition), p. 17. Bonwick has .abriefcomment onMo,rrill inserted in his monograph just~forepublication.," 90. P.D.T., 1 November .1865. 91. g. S.A~ Governor' sco,rrE!spondence, out'\vard despatch, 74 of·1861'-16 December 1861. 92. P.D.T.,' 10 Ju~e' 1865. Native Police but also blamed I ••• the wars, fights, ••• and 9a the natura.l deteriora.tion of the.people themselves , • Yet Morrill had previously acknowledged that tradi.tional AboriginaJ 'wars' caused little loss of life, an observation supported 94 by modern a.uthorities. Similarly Morrill spoke of the 1 natural deteriora-tion of the people " presumably implying their decline in heal~h and numbers. It seems clear-that Morrill was indicating the increased inter-tribal warfare and an unnatural deterioration in. __ the physical and, possibly,_ mental health of the p~ople consequent upon the chaos into which Aboriginal life was thrown by the- EuroIJean intrusion. The very basis af the Aborigines' economic-, social, and religious life was disrupted, na~ural resources restricted, alien land trespassed upon, dietary habits changed, and the security of their sacred life shattered. In their dete~ination to break Aboriginal- resistance, the settlers often provoked it. Thus they deliberately d~stroyed or appropriated such important Aboriginal equipment as spears, fish nets, wallaby nets, rugs, and tomahawks which the Aborigines had been forced to aband5g,. More provocative, of course, was the indiscriminate sl~aughter of unoffending,Aborigines which was inherent in the policy of 'keeping the blp.cks out' and -the assoc,iated Native Police 96 pol'icy of I dispersal' •A brief report of what, ",as probably a routine Native Police reprisal will reinforce these con clusions. In retaliation -for heavy stock losses, Inspector Isley and si~ troopers 'swept sout,bfronl Bowen I dispersing' two 'mobs' of Aborigines on the Don River, through the 93. The Story of James Morrill , p. 26. 94. A.A. Abbie, The Original Australians (Sydney, 1969), pp. -191, 199. 95. P.D.T., 21 July 1866; 1875 V.&P., p. 624. 96. P.D.T., 24 August 1872. An ,article: 'The Blacks - A' Suggestiont commented on the-Native Pol.ice 1rho 'wreak their vengeance on t-he .first blackfell()ws they me.et and thus punish the innocent for the' guilty1. 15·5 Proserpine District:to the ,Mackay District "\vher.e Isley attacked at least five more, 'mobs t several of which were ter:ned, 'very large'. In the are,a he had passed through, the Aborigines had re-commenced .kill·ing cattle so, on his re~urn north, he a~tacked ~hem driving them over the raRles. Even frontiersmell well--disposed towards the Aborigines believed this was unavoidable, justifying it on the ground'S of tribal, and often, it seems racialreslJOnsibility for particular offences' against the settlers. Thus one comraented: '• •• each tribe is fully a'w'are tllat it is responsible. not onlyto.th·e whites but to other tribes of blackfello'Ws for ~he ac~s ofi~s members' .98 Aboriginal social and political organization rendered ,this exp~ctation unreal and Aborigines must have often concluded that· the invaders: were inexplicably and irrationally murderous. Another common source of great pr_ovoc~tion during: this period of frontier conflict ,ras the. kidnapping o~ Aboriginal women and children. As will be seen, this practice ,vas COInill0n throughout th~ whole Nortl1,Queensland frontier• . It lv-as also ,a. feature of life in the pacified areas 1-'{here it will be discussed in more detail. However, even while frontier conflict raged, squatters took Aboriginal women, or allovled them to be t,aken, from their tribes to provide concubines for themselves, for whit.e employees, and for the 99 Aboriginal employees they brought from ~he south. These women soon became usef~ul sources of labour. In the predom inantl:¥, male soc.i'ety of the frontier, it,ras predictable t~hat at least some ·squatters and their ,vhite employees 'liould t'urn to Aborigillal \vomen to satisfy their sexual needs eitlleron a cas'·ual basis or through some morepermallent relationship. However, it is obvious that when Aboriginal 97. P.D.T., 16 June 1866. 98. ibid. 99. M.M.,7 September,· 1867; Eden, My Wife a.nd I in Queensland, p. lOB. Jmen were kidnapped or taken froID their tri,beswi~hout the sanction of their kin this would be extremely provAgRtive. Children too, wereeommonly talcen from their p&Jrents or kin to wo'rk on tIle statiolls- during this period of frontier conflict. Thus Charles Eden, a Police Magistrate at Cardwell, recorded in his reminisce:nces his kidnapping of a twalva..-year oldboybeeanse he thou.ght the boy vio'uld 101 be useful; while Riche.lrd Anningdescribed how his father, who had taKen up Re:edy Springs on the Upper Flinders in May 1862, had captured a j-oung lad to work on the station - 102 'catchem young' he recorded. Even in the Burketown district before hostilities developed, settlers were insensitively exploiting the Aborigines for their labour and their women. 103 Often the Aboriginal women and children either accepted their'fate or came to prefer. it to their tribal life. TItus, in tIle Burketo1m District before the outbreak of hostilities, an Aboriginal paren-treclaimed his son only to have the boy run away to return to the station~104 Some old Aborigines interviewed in the course of this research have also indica.ted their great reluctance to return to tribal life after being taken into stations I05 as children. However, it is clear that the removal of Aborigin.al women and children from 1iheirkin was;.:"a8 destructive of t,raditional Aboriginal life as the massacre of the men and often no more humane. Yet, the full cost or 100. See Eden, My Wife and lin llueensland, pp. 211, 212 for an example of- t'fO' squatters 1rho 'took a fancy to a certai'n gin'. 101. ibid.,pp. 308, 309. 102. R.H. Anning, Sun OIl the Ri.,hii (Unpublished typed manuscript, viritten 19601s~ p. ,12. A draft in t_he His'tory Department library, James Cook University. 103. A1.M., 7 September 1867. 104. ibid. ' 105. Interview with lYlr. Dick Hoolihan at To'\vnsville on 8. April and .14 April 1972. Interviewlvith !.lr. Harry Gertz at Valley of Lagoons-'Station on 14 October 1972. Interview with Mr. Alf Palmer -at; Palm Island on 19 Dec.ember1972. '\Vhenintervie"w's"w'ere luade,Mr. Hoolihan wasappro:x;il11ately 65 yearsold,~Ir.Gertz84 ye:ars old, and lvir. Palmer 82 years old. The above ,were -not, kidnapped-. 157 frontier conflict was not alJparent to the Aborigines until "the Europeans '1et them in f • Except in a very few circumstances, the ADorigines had not been allowed to reach an accommodation with the colonists until after the invaders had assel~ed their dominance. The Aborigines were engaged, generally for a number of years, in a bitter and bloody conflic~ which not only damag~d their way of life but also must have caused great personal stress and produced a fierce resentmen~ against those inflicting the Buffering. Basic to the conflict was land usage and' lando1mership. ACCOlnInodation could only mean dis130ssession. The Cost 'of Frontier Conflict to t.he Pastoralists. Dispossessing the Aborigines elltailed many obvious costs for th.e Europeans. Conflict, was almost un'iv,ersal in the process of pastoral occupation and it was not until 1868, or 1869 that pastoralists in parts of ~he Kennedy thought it sa.fa to let the Aborigines i.n. Even then som.e t hong· ht, l.·t premaure.t 106 Before the Aborigines were allowed in, an important cost to the squatter was the tension of life on the frontier. W.R.O. Hill, manager of a station west of Bowen and later a r~spected publicservant,wrote: I can only say that life ",vas never safe, and the only wise thing to do on seeing a black was to shoot, and shoot straight, otherwise he would certainly sp·e'ar" yo~. 107 106. Edel'l, My Wife and! 'in Queensland, p. 211. Charles Eden,,referril'lgto a st,o,tion.near,Bowen, probably F. Bode's Strathd·on,where this had occurred in 1869, considered i'tt a very 'bad plan indeedtbecausehe thoughti't ended in 'wholesale massacre' .He was no doubtthinking,back to the Wills and Fraser massacres in southern Queensland. He· thought conflict first arose over Aborigil1al'women. At the time he ·w'rote, many squatters were beginning t'oadopt the practice<. 107. Vi.R.O.Hill, Fort-five Years'Exierience in North ueens land 1861-1905' Brisban'e, l'901:i:P.31. Hill'spast:i.me was conductingthe,c11urc·h,'choir wherev~.r he went. There was a very real fear that death could come to a s'ettler out of a clear blue sky, suddenly wi'thouii warning and, it appeared to most settlers, without provocation. Each local newspaper reported Aboriginal a.ttacks and European deaths from allover North Queensland often in horrifying detail and in a period of almost univers'al frontierc,onflict tllismust have klelped reinforce the belief that a sudden 'treacherous' attack was (al,vays .. b"l 108 POSS1 '.e. Contemporaries believed that the loss of life on the frontier during "the 1860 t S was ve,ry large. Robert Gray of Hughenden, Station estimated that, (10-20)% of 'the white population were killed by the Aborigines "hila a police officer said (20-30)%. 109 They were probably -taking in-to account the killing of shepherds and travellers,othenrise unrecorded, 'but possibly over-compensated. In the course of this researcb,:$':$ deaths "lrere discovered which coul"d reliably be attributed to Aboriginal resistance on the pastoral frontierlcl~~fDg":,tlJ.e18,6(rt:~s,wit.hi.ndicatioD.s that tllere may have been;t,"t!il:,".;,~,,·::,;more.· Because of th~ paucity of the records in'~his early period, these figures are probably misleadingly low.: Hovlever, if one considers t·he extremely limited population on the frontier where Aboriginal resistance could be expected, a death rate of between six and, say, twelve a,' year would be significa.nt and frightening, especially as this was combined wi~h a much larger number of unsuccessful attacks, woundings, and threatened and feared attacks.' Indeed, there wa~ also the fear, perhaps expectation, that the numerous attacks on cattle ,and sheep were 'as suggestive of dangert9the human as to the animal 110 invader. Indeed the number of lives thought to have 108•. See.App~ndix,D. 109. !!uotedinJ.Black, (compiled) North Oueensland Pioneers (.C,~artersT~wers,iJ.93117;~·,,p.48. ,:; 110. £:..£.,5 A.pril<1876.' t. It is not because they have res trictedtheiroutragesas yet,to,:'horses, and an See Appe'ndix B for an 'assessment of deaths attributable to Aboriginal resistance. 112. Black, North Queensland Pioneers, p. 27, article on Curr. SeealsoC.S. Rowe's 'Memoranda', in W.J.Doherty, The Townsvil'le Book: ,A Com lete'Skelichof the Hist'o , TOPO~;;ehY, and Prominent Early Residents Brisbane, 2).920 p.105.·,' ., . ' 113. Byerley, The Jardines' Journal, pp. V, VI, 36. 114. P.D.T., 4 Octo~er 1865. 2u~ted from the ~pire. In this instance no one was hurt on' either side. Yet, inNor1ih!1ueens'land,. Aboriginalresis1iancewas often a, very:important obstacle facing the pas-toralis-ts. There has been a popular tendellcy, -to see Aboriginal resistance as spasmodic, as almost a non-intelligent'relles response to periodic irritations. As has been previously indic,ated, in North$lueensland at least, and probably more ,.often else where than' has b.een realized, there is ample ~vidence that Aborigines communicated the nature of the threat the: invaders offered over long distances and. that they reacted in a variety of ways aecording t'o the .nature of' such information. In areas where the n.ature of European firepower was apparently not uBdefsiiood such as at first l15 in the Bo'\ven district andl,ater with "the Jardines in Cape York Penirlsula, 'the Aborigine,s sometimes responded to what they must have regarded as a hostile intrusion with direct anddete~lined confrontation. As the Aborigines came to understand better their enemy, they began to .adopt more appropriat.e respo~ses I~~" wherever possible. In the Kennedy District where conflict was almost universal,Aborigines responded to the settlers and the Native Police, by generally attacking isolated shepherds, unsuspect,ing travellers, and station homesteads· ,they thought lverepoorly defended. Often, 'the inability of the settlers to retaliate effectively produced more determi~ed Aboriginal resistance. Thus "w'here the terrain was suitable their attacks were of-ten prolonge'ddespite the fact that constantly ret,reating toinhospitableh.i.lls, scrubs, and islands must have meant~ery great .readjustment.s 115. 'Minutes ofEviden~e', 1861 V. & P." p.51.D'.Fraser had heard that Aborigines .in the Port Denison District were quite unacquainted with firearms and the power the settlers possessed over them. ll6 to their traditional life. This aspect of Aboriginal resistance will be discussed later. Wheniihe runs were heavily stocked, Aboriginal food resources 'decreased or b,ecame less accessible, and Aborigina,l raids on -the set-tlers" herds and flocks increased. Thus in June 1866, one ,siiation in the Mackay District"reported twenty-five cattle killed, while ten other stations in t~at area, had all suffere.d lo~ses. On one st~t,ion, thepastor-alist cihj,imed 1ihe Aborigines had. killed two hundred cattle in "one year.117 Attacks on th~ settlers' cattle in the TOlnlsville District became so frequent that the local 'newspapers remarked- ll8 more t.hanonce that they were tired. of the SUbject. However, the -deliberate destructiveness of A.boriginal ra.ids noted in the Burke Distric!l~eems to have been char8.cteristic of the, later s-tage of resistance -when the Aborigines were ret,alia,ting against, thesett'lers' pres~nce or aggressive actions and, often, it. seems, attempting lIS. 'Report of Acting Commissioner of Police' ,"'1872-V. & P., p.1494; M.M.,:ll Js,nuary1868; 7 March 1868; 28 March 1868; 8 July 1868. The above refe;rences refer to the region between Bowen and Mackay where resistance was prolonged because of favourable terrain. Much of. it was mountainous and cQvered'withdense, even impe_e11:~able, scrub. There ~ere also ',the numerous Whitsund~yand Cumberland Islands to provide refuge. Another area w~ere favourable terrain allowed pro~jDged resistance was- \Voodstock Station, twenty miles south of Townsville where the scrub and mountain fastnesses around Morrill's Mt. Elliott provided, refuge. See Md!., 14 Sep,tember, 1867,extract from'Cleveland Bay Express,; P.D.T.,31AugUst1867. See ~l~o F.D.T., 18 March 1871, for prolonged resistance in. the lO'w~er Bllrdekinwhere the particular locality a,nd terrain i~s not' s,pecified, possibly mangrove swamps. 117. P.D.T.,1,6 June 1866~ 118. P.D.T.:::28 Sep-fjember 1867; -5 October 1867. Extract.s from Cleveland Ba,y Express. ~.,: 14 September 1867, fromClevel,and Bay Express• 119. Brodie Bros. and Little and Hetzer, to Col. Sec., . 18 April' 1868,loc. cit. 162 to drive them from the land. An Aboriginal woman t,old Christison of Lwmmermoor that the Aborigines understood the 'value the whites placed on their horses and cattle and realized what their reactions would be to Aboriginal l20 raids but -were still determined to kill stock. There are nwnerous examples of the driving off of large numbers of animals and the wholesale slaughter of beasts, wi~h little or no attempt to 'use them for food, to attest to the widespread nature of this determination. From Alackay infuriated squatters reported that the Aborigines had killed three to four hnndredsheep and taken nothing but l2l kidney fat. A Bowen resident recorded flocks of two thousand sheep scattered and up to four hundred killed at l22 a time. In possibly the most destructive ra.id reported in North Queensland, John Yeates, the mayor of Bowen, whose property'was only fifteen miles from that town lost 1,aOOsheepwhich hevalu~d at 10/- each and 36 rams at i!;2./10/- each. In addit,ion,his huts were pillaged, and 123 damaged to an estimated _value of £55. Headsta;tions and outstations were sometimes attacked and att~mpts -made to 124 loot and destroy them. In March 1868, the Europeans a.t Crystalbrook Station had to flee for their lives,125 while Meri 1vleri,vah Station-was attacked byab_outthirty 120. Bennett, Christi-s:()n-, of Lammermoor, p./:".9~. 121-. M:M., 10 August~8_67. See also P.D.T. ,,6 February 18~9. A shepherd was killed and 1,800 sheep driven off. 122. R.T. Wood (tFrederick>Smythe'),Bushand Town'or twelve lttonths in Northern ueensland ,'(Unpublished novel, c. 1868 ,pp.93-,95. At Mitchell Library in 1 R.T. Wood Pape,rs, '1857-1879'. R.,T. 'VJood, 1845 1895, married Catherine Stockwell, 1879, daughter ofJamesSt,ockwell, a solicitor of Bowen, Queensland. Much of ,this,is obviously non fiction. ,See also' P .D.T. , 19 November 1864, editorial: two shep_herds murdered and 2-3,00,0 sh'eep .sCti,ttered.. 123. ·Petition from John ,S. Yeates to the Legislative Assembly', 1867 V. & P., p.997. _ 124. P.D.T., 16 June 1866; P.D.T., 26 September 1866; M.M., 14 March 1868; M.M., 21 March 1868; M.M.,28 March 1868. 125. ~M., 14 March 186S.--Crystalbrook Sta~io~as in the ~serpine District 'and Meri Meriwah Station,adjacent to Ravel1.swood St.ation. Aborigines and the occupants rescued just in time.126 Yet the animals killed l;>y"Aborigilles were only 'part of the loss inflicted upon squatters, and sometimes the least serious. The loss of condition by herds repeatedly disturbed by Aborigines could be much more important. It is not cle'ar ho,v far this was deliberately intended and haw far it was a consequence of attempts to kill'-solue or to drive herds ,from lvaterholes. This ,ras eSIJecially SeriOl1.S lrhenthey 1vere to be boiled downior tallo"V1 for, until the gold rushes of tile late 1860' s ,there was very little market 127 for beef. At the'much raided Balnagowan Station in the Mackay Districf" orilyone beast was killed when four hUlldred cattle were gal-loped nearly eight miles. The Mackay !'feI'cury complained: If the blacks merely 'killed a beas'tno"\v and again without indulging their propensities fora~general onslaught upon the rer.lairuie,r' of any mob they may .choose to select· one from, the 1:088 toa squattel" would be comparatively trifling; but this has never been ·blle case, and outrages are invariably accompanied 'with great injury, especially to th~se 1fhohaves'tations borderingulJOllthe,sea coast,. The Mackay l\,iercul2.inaintained that >the cattle. would not fatten because they :lvere sodisiiurbed by the Aborigines and ~hat this had delayed the progress of Mackay's boiling 28 down works.l Against this sort of assault the only 129 a.nswer seemed to be more Native Police. In this early period of open conflict, there is very little detai,led European comment -on the me~hod.s used by the Aborigines in their resistance of the settlers and, of course, 126. P. Pinnock, P.M. Bowen, to,Col. Sec., 2 February 1865, encl. Q.S.A., COLIA.64,~4990t1865. Ede1'1, Aiy Wife and IinQu.eensland,:pp. 135-138. 127• M.M., 24 Augllst 18{)7; Ai.M.,ll Jalluary 1868; M.M., 3, April 1867; Bolton, AThousand Miles Away,. p.• 37. 128. if.M., 3 April 1867; l\~oM.,6 July 1867. ' 129. M!!.. ,11 January 1868. See ~lso -lVI.M., 7 March 1868. 164 an almost complete lack 'of comment from the Aborigi'nes. However, there is some faint evidence to suggest "lv-hat becom.es more apparent in t'he later st.ages of the pastoral frontier and on the mining frontier: that the Aborigines used traditional hunting techn~ques against the settlers' animals and that they modified these in accord:anee with the new conditions. Asunprotect,ed, docile shea!) and cattle were easy gwm~ for such, expert huntsmen, they used "\val1aby-drive techniques when they 1vishedtoslaughter 1a~.ge num bars 0 f th,e comp1l.an:- tan1ma · 1s. 130 Ab"or1g3.UeS· · found unguarded sheep easy to handle and sometimes drove them off to remote or almost inaccessible places, this practice being no doubt forced on them both by the policy of 'keeping the blacks out 1 , which often compelled them to occupy regions unused by the pastoralist, and by the fear of reprisa.ls. Eden reported a story he had ,at second hand of one group of Aborigines copying the settlers and building a, yard,regularly sp.epherding the sheep, and but.chering t.hem syst.emat.ically.131 This sounds like a traveller's tale except that a similar story was reliably· reported from the T:ully River where a group of Aborigines were killing, jerking, and drying beef in tyPical European fashion. In this case, the A.borigines 132 were believed t.o be escaped Nat.ive Police troopers. 'ihile there is nothing inherently iIllprobable in the belief that Aboriginesfonnerly in European employ took the lead in such activities, the claim may merely reflect the conviction that. Aborigines lacked intelligence t.o imit.at.e such act.ivit~~s. 130. Wood, Bush and Town, .pp. 93-~5i'; 131. Eden, My Wife and I in,2ueensland, p.221. 132. I. Hellry, Cardwell, to· (101. Sec. , 9 September ,18~5, Q.S.A.COL!A347:, 6925 of 1.885. 133. Eden is not~lways reli,able' on. matt·era ofdeta~l; but to reject this story oU,t 0,£ hand 'w'hile accepting much of his other observations 'Would be tantamount to holding preconceptions of what Aborigines were capable or incapable of doing. 165 Wood indicated that some Aborigines in the Bowen District drove cattle through a narrow pass into natural hilly enclosures where they slaughtered the animals at their leisure.134 Two members of the Koko Patun tribe reported that on the Valley of Lagoons tlfO Aborigines famous for their spe,ed and daring specialized in cuttil1g a bullock. out of the herd and driving, it towards fe,1101f tribesmen waiting to spear 135 it.. On t.he Mulgrave'River, Collinson indicat.ed t.hat. the Aborigines adapted their custom of digging pits ~o trap cattle. The pits were placed on well-used cattle tracks 136 and the cat.tle in them speared. The Aborigines t.hus seemed to adapt quickly to the alien challenge despite the inhibiting dangers involved. Another coronlon 'Aboriginal practice that was completely inimical to pastoral occupation'was the extensive burning of grass. As has been noticed previously, fire was deliberately used against intruders in North Queensland from the time of Cook and i"(i is ·veryprobable that it was used deliberately against the squatter;!J,s, animals as it was.against native game although tllere i~ no direct e'vidence of this. The evidence of fire seriously disturbing the flocks and herds is itself meagre but of such a nature as to indicate that·· 134. Wood, Ope cit., p. 93. 135. Interview with Mr. flarry Gertz at the Valley of Lagoons Statio'n on 14 October 191~. Mr. Dick Hoolihan also once of the Va~ley of Lagoons Station was present at this interview and participa.ted in it. At the time of the i'nterview Mr. Gertz was approximately 84 years old, l\1r. Hoolihan approxim.ately 65 years old. These· ages can be reliably accepted. When !vIr. Gertz '1fas a boy or an adolescent, Aborigines, then about fifty years 'ol,d, told him how they had killed bullocks when they were young men. The two 1tJ~origines who cut out the bulloc,kswere remembered as, I Char~ie White' and, 'Long .Tommy'. ,Mr. Hoolihan knew and accepted thist,radi'tion. 136. J.'i. Callinson,cEarl,Y.Days of Cairns (Brisbane, 1939)", p. 64. Collinson.was editor of the Cairns Post and apparently derived much of -his material from this. 16f. 137 the pr~c~~c~ W~~ common. There is one reliable report, in 1885, that the Aborigines of the Tully ~ver used fire as ai' we~pon against the settlers t property as some Aborigines who had been placated by Isaac Henry, nephew of the pastoralist Tyson, informed him that hostile .A.bo.rigines intended' to burn him out. As they had killed 69 of bis cattle and 200 of ,Tyson's in' tall' months and forced three other settlers off their prope';rties, . He,nry believed this to be no idle ~hreat.138 I~ seems likely ~ha~ fire was used delibera~ely against the intruders and -their animals much mo.re frequently than would' appear from the extant records and probably more frequently than the settlers themselves realized. The effectiveness of traditional or modified Aboriginal techniques was such as to make heavy demands upon the Native Police, a force that had been created especially to counter Aboriginal resistance. Yet, the rapid eXlJansion:' of 137. D.8•.Macmillan, ·Bowen Downs 18f)3~1963, issued by 'The Scottish Australian 'Company Limited', to mark' the .. Com an, I s Partin .Establish'i Bowen DO'WIls"'Station on the'Landsboroligh Runs in 1863 Sjdney, 1963 " p. 20:; 'The Blacks set,' fire tothe'old.g~a,ss and the fire exte:l),d'ed in all directionsexce,pt':iDg where the grass had'::,','·be:en partial.~Y ea~en down by siiockt • B01'fenDoWns is i'a centra12ueenslandbut used B01ven as a port throughout the 1860's. ·Const. J.D. McGuire, Police Station, Thornbor~ugh,to P.M. Herbe~on, ~ January 1893, encl. D.S.A. 'cOLf13'9, 823 of 1895. "The Constable mentions that less grass was burnt in 1894 than for previous years. Sgt,. J. Whiteford, A1usgrave station, to Insp.J. Lamond, Cooktown, 24 July 1897, encl. !l.S.A. COL/140, 12117 of 1899: 'The Blacks have lately burnt a lot of valuable grass on the Breeza run'. E.M.Curr, The Australian.Race: Its,Origins, Languages, 'Customs, .Place of'Landing in'Australiaand theRoutesb 'VhichltS read Itself over :That Continent 4 vol.s., Melbourne, 1886 ,Vol. III, pp. 20, 21. Pacified Aborigines, accidentally starting a'fire were shot dead forthwith. See Beaglehole ( ed.) Banks t Journal, p.96,for description of firebe'ing used aggressivelyagainst Cook." 138. I~ Henry, Cardwell, to Col. Sec., 9 September 1885, 1!.S.A. COL/A.347," 6952 of 1885. 167 European settlement in North 2ueellsland in the 1860's very often left the pastoralistis ina.dequately protected and oft,en not pl"'ovidedwith. a reta~,i,atory force. This was clearlybrollghtont ,vhen twelve men 'were killed by Aborigines on or near Natal DO'wns during late 1864 and early 1866. Four of the men killed had been on the main road from the Cape River (and ultimately BO'w"en) -to t~e Flind~rs,thus shOWing the threat t,o all stock travelling to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Twosllepherds .had been killed t"\venty miles from the headstation 'notwithstanding our practice Qf having 2 men armed with each flock'. The ability of the squatter to protect his employees on a run of this size or to 'keep the blacks out' 8.0 that they wouldn't be able to launch a SUrlJrise attack was .limited unless he had a body of men to roam at will to do just that. He believed this ,vas the role of the Native Police;yet tll.eir campwa~ 130 miles, a,ray,.on ~he 'Bowen River ~nd on this occasion, asall.of the detach ment's horses were knocked up, it could not reach Natal Downs for a fortnight. It was not surprisillg that John Melton Black abandoned the neighbouring station, Victoria Downs, after two shepherds had been killed, a victory which the manager of Natal DOlvns cl'aimed had emboldened th.. e Ab." or1g1nes... . 139 Th. .e goverrunent 1 sresponse was t 0 f orm another Native Police camp, which was no nearer Natal Downs than the existing one but 'which'would presumably allow more 140 frequent 'patrols to the area. There were very few stations where there was no conflict such as Robert" Christison's Lammermoor, south west of Hughenden. Here C,hristisonhad taken the initiative, captured an Aboriginal,established friendlycOJDnlunications 131t'. R. Kellet, Nat,al Downs, to Col.Se,c., 26 January ,1865, and I. M. 'Spry,M-t.McConnell Station,: to ,P.M. , 'Bowen, 23 January 1865, enclosed U.S.A. COL/AM, 499 of 1865. 140. 1ltlinute, l3,February l,865,D.T.S• .LPol-'~ce Commissione.!7, P.At., Bowen, to 'Col. Sec., 2 February 1865, enclosed 2.8.A. COL/AM, 499 "of 1865. 16R with the Aborigines and explained to them the conditions by which they, would be allo1red to live their lives in safety ~h ~ ~ .and v rl.s·- t·1son. ,rOllId. b.e aebl \10 d evel'op h-l.S s",a;·t-10n.141 He had refused to allow tIle Native Police 'on his station, a practice that was hotly criticised by most settlers from 142 the earliest days of Queensland to the 1880' s. The success of this experiment depell.ded to a large extent on Christison's humanitarian concern for the Aborigines which did not evaporate a~ the first crisis when the Aborigines 143 decided to attack him. The conflict on aajoining stati,ons and protection from the Native Police must have, also provided strong incentives for the Aborigines on Lammermoor to abide by Christison's conditions. Most pastoralists borrowed heavily in order to stock their runs, and in the crucial early years of becoming established had no f,inancial reserves from lrhichto replace losses or meet 'unproductive' costs like that of armed· protection against Aborigines. The practice was encouraged, though not created, by the 1860 Land A~t which s-tipulat.ed that each run had to be stocked to one"':'quarter of its capacity before a lease coul'd be granted. This· legislation also tempted thepast~ralist with, a comparatively secure, fairly long-tenured lease (fourteen years) at a 141. Bennett,Christison of Lammermoor, pp. 56-00,67, 81. 1;42. ibid., p. 83 mentions that the, Mortimers of Manwnbar 5~ation, in 1861, had tried unsuccessfully to protect friendly' Aborigines against opposition of other s,ettlers. In the 1880,t s Edward Palmer had forbidden the I'lative Police to come on to his run in .Cape York Peninsula. See Under Col.' Sec. ttr E~. Palmer, Gamboola Station, loc1itchell River, 17 November 188'2, fc!.S.A. C0l1/ l44 low rental of ten shillings per square mile. Wealthier pastoralists tended to t~e up a series of runs and stock each to the legal minimwn,rather than stock fully ~:,f:smaller 145 nwnberof runs from the outset_ The tendency of the pastoralists to strain their financial resources to t:tJe limit on taking up runs was intensified by an 1863 amending act which made stocking the run to the legal minimum the basis of initial occupation. This was intended to close the loophole which enabled a speculator to take out a licence ,.to occupy a choice run in order to sell at a profit a fe"" mo'nths later before the first official inspection revealed 146 that no attempt had be~n made to stock it. -The amendment thus increase~ the competition to put stock on the runs. Such speculation was based on the expectation that northern runs would ~ontinue to be an attractive investment. In 1867,· an enquiry revealed the still un~atisfactory specp.lative aspect of the large landholdings and resulted in the ,. stricter enforcing of regulations relating to the stocking of 1and.147 However, durillg late 1865 the pastoralis,ts were 144. N. Corfield, The Development of the Cattle Industry in .Queens,land (B.A.· Honou.rs thesis, University',~:·:,ilf Queens- land, 1959), p. ,64. R.D. Allan,Land Utilization and Settlement in Queensland 1859-1901 (B~A. Honours thes:~s, Un.iversityof Queensland, 1957), p. 14. To some extent"this financial stress so early in.the development of a.;;crun was lessened by· a failure to ~:enforce the regulation rigidly'. See 'Allan, op.cit., pp. 15, 16 andJ.n. Farnfield, Geo;rgeElphinstone Dair le - His Life and Times in Oue,ensland 1809- 1874 Ph. D. thesis, Queensland U~iversity~'·,1.~f3_8»), pp. 100..107. <. . 145. Eden,()p. cit., p.57. See also Farnfield, Dalrympl.e, pp. 105, 106. 146. l\.llan, op., cit. , pp., 14, 15. The delay could be ten mont~s and was cOllIDlonly four to six months.' See Corfield, Development of, the ,Cattle'.Industr;fiin, Queensland 1840-1890,p_,39. Farrifie,ld.,. Frontiersman, pp. 47, 4~,gives an account of howtrun-jobbers' sold out options on a run 'in;~~the delay bet'w"een the appl,ication for a run and Dalrymple's inspection. 147. Allan, op. cit., p. 16. 170 discover~ng that the sheep industry 1vas unprofitable in North Queensland. As Boltonpoil"lts out, there is no simple e:q11anation for the failure of:-the 11astoral indust,ry during 148 the 18601 8. In part, the graziers found problems adjustingto'a,::)tr'opical -environment. As ,veIl ,costs were higll,especially the cost of labour. Shepherds ,vera demanding 50% higher wages than they would have received 149 in southern Queensland. Yet, fencing to replace shep herding lvas allnost unkno-rln inNorthj2ueenslan.d in the 1860' s. Lab.?urwas al,v-ays in short SUpIJ!y alld s'"atisfactory labour even more difficult to obtain: yet shepherding:te·quire~,.a large labour supply. Although wool exports continued to gro1v until 1868, the pastoralists were turning,with no enthusiasm, to cattle:",150 for which there was no real Inar.ket unt,il 1866 when -the first boiling down works opened in Townsville,,151 The wool industry was beset by further'1)roblelTIs. The 1rool prices· for several seasons dropped 'alarmingly. On'the coast sheep were found to be prone to foot ,rot, fluke and worms. Yet probably the most decisive factor in the swing away from sheep was the spread of spear 'grass .wbos.e seed penetrated the skin of the sheep and could kill them. The spread of this grass largely resulted from overgrazing although most likely associatedwitll the pra.cticeof 152 burning to encourage new growth. Palmer claimed. that the presence of spear grass in.quanti~y immediately i:ndicated 153 ' tIle run could not support sheep. Thus for a variety of 148. Bolton, A. Thousa,ndMiles ...L\.wa;r, p. 35. See pp.34-42 for a description and analysis of the 1866-1870 depression. 149. ibid., p. 36. 150. ibid., p. 37. \Valter Scott wrote; 1 Cattle are- certain min, but sheeparea.little quicker'. 151. ibid. 152. Palmer, Early Days in NorthOneensland, p. 129; Bolton, A Thousand, Miles Away, p. 40. 153. Palmer, Ope cit., p. 129. 1701. reasons sheep numbers began falling ':·'\,>in: the ,late 1860' s arid by 1871 had been replaced by cat.t1e on most stat.ions. l54 Some graziers were already selling out to salvage something from their investment and by June 1866 there were many North Queensland stations up for sale wit.h no takers 155 on any terms. The collapse of the Agra &. Mast.ert.on Bank which was underwriting much of 2ueensl~nd's eA"travagant borrowing had a grave effect upon the 1vholecolony, especially the many North Queensland squatters who were still getting 156 establislled. The Aborigines were thus one of a complex of problems confronting the pastoralist of the 1860's. In some areas, this resistance was enough on its own to cause stations to 157 be abandoned. On more, as the promise of riches from the pastoral industry disaPl)eared, Aboriginal resistance was a crucial factor. The everpresent strugg1,e invQ,lving -the threat to life, the need to protect the capital invested in animals, and the apparent impossibility of preven~ing stock losses made Aboriginal resistance much more than just another proplem. Yet at, this very time the protection offered to the :squatter by the Native Police was reduced as a result of the government's economy measures and the' use 158 of the Nat.ive Police as a gold escort. In some areas the Native Police detachments were removed as the Police Commissioner tried desperately to rationalize his forces to achieve a protective cover for the squatters. Often, as on a statien in the North Kennedy, the withdrawal of a detachment was 154. Bolton, Ope cit., p. 40; Corfield, Ope cit." pp. 67-72. 155. Bolton, op. cit.,p. 38. 156. Farnfield,Dalr:vmple, p.- 218; Bolton, op. cit., pp. 38, 39. 157. R.. Kellet, Natal Downs, to Col. See., 26 January 1865 and enclosure, I~~M. Sp~y, Mt.McConnell Station, to P.Jvi. BOlV'en,23January 1865, 10c. ,cit. 158. See .TableJ., p~ 150. 172 follol'led by an increase in the destruction of. stock and lo9 threats to life. Indeed it lvas widely alleged "bha,t, insuffici,ent Na-tive Police protection against Aboriginal attacks was cau.sing the abandoning of stations. From the latest area settled, the Gulf Country, there were reports that squatters were abandon 160 ing their runs for this reason. Here the difficulties of establishment and frontier conflict were aggravated by the extremely high price of labour. Shepherds, no matte,r how inefficient, could demand 35 shillings per wsek which wa,s 75% above the south Queensland rate. Graziers in tllis area were further disadvantaged when the Police ..... !il~istrate, Landsborough, decre,ed that employees could not 16l be held financially responsible for their negligence. While in the first settled region,. the Port Denison District, Inspector Marlo'w' reported that the number of 'collisions' with and 1 depredatiQns , by Aborigines from the middle of 1865 to the end of 1867 were double that of the previous eighteen months. The Police Commissioner info~ed the Colonial Secre~ary that the present force was unable to prevent ~utrages' in the "Port Denison District and endo~sed a. plan from the harassed !Jlarlow which aimed at c;ollecting all the coastal Aborigines from Port Mackay to TOlmsville . and confining them on an island off the, coast ",yhere they 159. F. Harailton, Hinchinbrook St,ation, North Kennedy, t.o Col.. Sec., 18 March 1868 and enclosure, F. Hamilton to .John Marlow, Native Police, Bowen, 18 March 1868., f!.S.A. COL!Al04, 1033 of 1868. See first minute A~W.Jd., 16 April" 186S,fJinder COl.See.J: 'The 'Inspector of the District will do his utmost with the ,fo.rceat his disposal to pa~rol every portion of "hi~ district and to meet: 'any sp~eial 'demaIid for protection",. Second minute LProbably the Police Commissioney: . tHave not got any money. l\1r. Marlow must do the' best he can' • 160. p.D.r., "25 April 1868. 161. ibid. 173 162 could be 't,aught to, be useful'. The Colonial Secretary .,' was 'unable 'to entertain1 incre'ased expendit.ure nor to conSider Marlow's proposition although he found it inter~~iing. In this area in 1868, the Police Commissioner reported stations had been abandoned or, were' being abando,ned because of. Aboriginal hostility.1M One such was Yeates' sta.tion fifteen miles from Bowen. As mentioned previously, ~e had lost 1300~sheep and 36 r,ams and sustained:;' damage 1,0 ~ property estimated ~t £55. As well, 'one, of his shepherds was killed and five others left the run and refused ~o return. Yeates, who ,\vas Mayor of Bowen, petitioned the parliament for indemnity because he had not been given l65 police protection. The government expressed sympa.thy but felt there were no grounds for eompensat,ion. Yeates . 166 abandoned his stat1on. Although Aboriginal resistance was but one of many problems confronting the' squatters of North__ 2ueensland, itv/as often the most vexatious. Its consequences were obvious and it seemed. that it, at least, could be solved if more Na-tive Police· were provided or if the squatters, really applied themselves -to their often 'threatened 'war of extermination'. A financial collaps'e, 162. D.T. Se:vmour, Pol. Com., to Col. Sec·. , 6 January 1868, ~denclosures: Insp.J. Ma.rlow, ,Port Denison, to Police Commi$sioner, 9 Decembe,r 18,67, and Chief InspectorMu~ray,NorthernDistrict, to Pol. Com., 6 Jantiary 1868,' 2.S.A.COL/AIOO,56, of 1868. Seymour's minute:jJf.arlol'l'i}""",plan wou,ld be ,far mor~ merciful tot-be ,blacks th~Jlanyot,her, plan as yet tried'. 163. ib,id., Col. Sec" s·"'ininute, Pol. Com. to Col. Sec., (3 Ja.nllary.;1~68. , 164. I Beportof Commissioner of Police Upon Tour of I'nspectionl , 1868V;t &. P., pp. 51, 52. 165. 1Petition from John:' :8 •. Yeates to ,the Legisl,ative Assembly', .1867 V.&:P., p.997. See also f.n. 166 below. 166. & I.,. A., Gregory, Solicitor, Bowen, to Col. Sec., 17 June 1867, enclosing ,Petition of J,.S. Yeates, Mayor of Bowen and Grazie,r, 2.S.A. COL/A91, 1433 of 1867. Minute A.W.M. (Under Col. See.) - 174 fluctuating markets" ecological changes, diseases ,i,n s-tock lrere beyond the control and -often the understanding of the man..on --the run. Aboriginal resistanc,e didn't, seem -to be. As a 'result, this was the problem that dominated the news papers of the day and the one that could rouse the pastorEl,liststo,fury. The Aborigines-:not only drained the squatter's capital by causing destruction; they also increased his eXpenses. More' labour had to ,be employed than was needed fer the actual running of a station to provide increased protectlgt Sometim.es, at le,ast, these men were used aggressively 168 to clear Aborigines off the property,and it was quite plain that, pastoral employees were expected to use firearms aga.instAborigines. John,Yeates was criticised by Inspector lVlarl-ow as well as other squatters when he claimed he had n:ot annedhis shepherds, effectivelybe.cause he' did not think it was their right or responsibility -to kill Aborigines" a ".t,a,skwhieh he believed the Native Police 169 should fulfil. W.R.O. Hill when managing Re~,dy Park west of, Bowen confonmed more to northern expectations. Each shepherd.hOOa Terry rifle and a Colt 12 revolver wllil-e HillIs 'hut was loop-holed to fire through, a precaution 170 which he found ;Ivery useful'.' 167. J.E. Davidson, Journal 1865 to.1868 (copy ill Library, James Cook University), p. 39. Davidson noted. in his diary: I ••• men d'eclare·that' they 'wQuld' leave unless the:r were ina _strong party .to repel niggers'. P.D~T'.," 20N()vember1869" tA"Black Protector~. 168. Davidson,.:Journal 1865 to 1868, pp. ,42,43. 169. P.D.T., 7 Septem.berl,867',> l,e~t,er from John Yeates; P.D.T.,31Augllst 1861, letter from 1ASquatter'. 110. Hill, Forty-Five Years in North Queensland,.p", 30. Seeal:3oEden,.MyWife 'and I in flueensland, ;'p.,67" where he comments ,o.nthe .,shepherd' s need to carry guns.lir. J. -Sulli'vanand Mr.J•.C1iveof.A.yr iJold me of a' stone stockad.e bui,!t on the present Inkerman Sta1iion.and!. haiVEl, been told ,.of .another being dismant1ed by agrazier:llnawarf:l of its' previous function. , See 'Itepo,Ji"on theA.boriginalsofQueensland t ',1896V. & P., vol. IV"p. -727, wh(:)~e" AtlestoD,observed"that,the g0v-ermnent ,houses along 'the overlandtelegrap~f.line in Gape Yo-rk<.J?eninsula were loop-holed,vith sp~ar.... p'roof gates 'to close' at-night. . The disturbance of "the cattle by"'"the Aborigines caused ano~her expense. When cattle were first put on the unfenced runs,they had to be ttailed'; that is, someone rode around the herd· for sOll)e months until the cattle were content to remain there. Th~s process often had to be repeated aft,er Aborigin~l atta.cks thus consuming valu'able labour and tim~~lgiving very real meaning to "the cOmmon 19th century ex-flression tha~ Aborigines and cattle d~d not mix. Even at the, high wages employees could command they were difficult to obtain. One moderate speake'r a:t a public meeting in 'Brisbane asserted iihat unemployed immigrant townsmen from Britain could not be expected to take lonely jobs up country 'where after a couple of years they would 172 be imbeciles in ,mind or idiots for life, • This normal reluct'ance to ·leave the to,ms was accentuated when the jobs offering were in areas where conflict was occurring with the Aborigines. Gray reporiied how one of hi.s shepherds ref,usedto stop by himself a;t Mt. McC'onnell and ttheless seasoned among them 'said they were not going to risk their lives for 30 bob· a, week 'and tU~kerl'.173 This 'evide,nce,plusthat of Yeates near Bowen and '·Davidson near Cardwell,indicated. that such labour was likely iio'. leave when most needed to protect the stock and 'property 174 against aggressive .Aborigines. Shortage of labour a.nd 171. R. Gray,Reminiseenees of India and North ueensland 1851-1912,~ London, 1913 , pp. 160-1&2. 172. Qaeens1and Do,ilyGuardian, 24 July 1866. 2uoted A.A. !Iorrison, "flueensland Colonial Soc'iety'1860 189()' ,Queensland ,Herita.g~,l,.no. 5,(~.. 96tl),~__ See also P.D.T.. ,>g311eeeinberl~~.-'~...... "-' ....' 113. ;'·,~J)~4,.~l::·,'-·,€iri,&Y~<-·P~ini,s~c~nc.es.ef·:..Iildi,a'.'and .Norlh .. t!ueens I'and'-" p. ,77:~- Se'eP.D~:T'·~,':'28·, October 1865, where it 'Wasstat~dt,hereweremany unemployed who would not leave the to·urn. See,alsoP ~D.T., 19N,ovember1864, editorial: 'men will not undertake the charge of the sheep now at so much peril'. 174. I,Petition from John S!, 'Yeates~otheLeg.islative Assembly', ,1867 v.•. &. P.,p.997;I.A.Gregory, Solicitor, Bowen,·to Col. Sec., 17 June-1861, enclosing '.Petition ofJ.S. Yeates, 1vlayor of Bowen and Grazier, f!.S •.A.. COLIA91, ,1433 of 1867; Davidson, Journal 1.865 t,o 1868, p. ~9. 17:6- high wages were _constant problerlls of the pioneer squat,ters for which Aboriginal resistance- was in no small part . 175 responsl.ble. • • • Many problems faced the northeru,pastoralists.in the late 1860's which not only sapped their finance but ~heir enthusiasm· and confidence as well. Edward Palmer, who had experienced these times, wrote: t ••• the march of settlement was instantly checked, and. the outward flow of civilization turned backwards, •176 Stations in outlying areas like the Barkl_y Tableland were abandoned completely and not' reoccupied for a decade when, Palmer remarked, the new generation were surprised to find signs of previous ,~-l occupaney.~-,, 77 Bet/ween,' 18,68 an- d 1870 in t h eNorth Kenne:dy, 56 runs totalling 3,154 square miles, were abandoned; in _i,he"So.u~l1-K~nn~,~y, 81 runs to~alling 5,457 sqilarem,iles; .in the Coo!'-, 28 runs totalling 1,817 square miles; and in the Burke, 134 runs totalling 7,666 square miles. That is, 178 a total of 299 runs or 18,094 square miles yereabandoned. By 1871, ~here were few runs occupied on the Barkly Table 179 lands, ~he Gregory and the Leichhardt. The stock was abandoned or removed to areas closer in where it was sold 180 or boiled do'\m for tallow. As runs had been abandoned and were available much closer to the coast, the Gulf country ~nswerevalueless. In 1870, the C'oJDlnissioner 175. Corfield, The Development of the Cattle Industry in 1jueensland, .·.·1840-1890,p. 27. 176. Palmer, Early Days in North Queensland, p. 135. 177. ibid., p. 134. Corfield, . op. cit., p. 77. The Barkly .Tableland V,a.s. reoccupied after 1877. 178. tpastoral Country l~bandonedinUnsettledDistrictsI, 1871, -V. &P., First Session, p. 549. 179. Palmer', op.cit. ,p. 136. 180. ibid.; Eden, My· Wife and I in Queensland, p. 75. He mentioned boiling down was still the principal use for cattle. The meat was not considered economically. 177 for Crown Lands f?:rthe Burke District stat>ed that though he had 'so much' country,so ,veIl adapted for: cattle and horses ... u'nOCCUI)iedl', the Gulf Lowlands had Isu ch a bad name that Ifea'r they are not likely to meet" witl1favQur in the ma~e~ if off~red just ~w,.181 The pastoralists Wll0 stayed on Viera 'a few dozell strugg'ling ;residel1t owners' wh'o had all their financial resources and any rJossible hOlJe for the: future. invested in 182 their'runs. Capitalists, like Robert. Towns, John Robertsop, and the Bowen Downs Coml)any,w];lohad invested to reap the re1V'ards of other"men'g labour, could find'muc~· 183 more attractive fields of investment elsewhere. The ,North Queensland pastoral industry became a 'small man's frontier'. But, as Bolton remarked, the olvner-managers probably. could not have survivedwitllout the ,discovery ,of the Nortll yueensland goldfields which provided markets 184 for tl'1e .cattle. The. period 1861 to 1868 was uniq~e ~~ the ~istory of Aboriginal-European rela,tions in.,No~·h'-:Ii.t'~f}nsland in that 'c-'- --~' ,; ;,---'--""::-', . __ it :was one, of uncomplicated frontie,rco~lict,'. Until 1~,68" th~re was no reported ch~llge .in--.the .policy ()f, 'keeping th~blacks out'. HO"Ylever, in J,anuary, 1868, Aborigi.nes were admitted at Natal Downs on, the Cape River and, later that year, a"t other stations like Vane Cl:"eek on the B~lya.ndo.185 llY;,Jrebruary 1869, Bode of 181. C.C.L., Norman, to Chief C.C.L~<., Brisbane,12 August 1870,Q.S.A. ceLl i4Gl~ p. 451~ See a.lso pa.lmer, op.c~t., p.136~ 182. Bolton, A Thousand Miles Awa:r, pp.41, 42. 183'~ i"bid.,. p.'~lO;>.~~clllil:1an, Bowen Downs 1863--1963, pp.26-28,:~;~~.---", '.' 184. Bol:ton,ATliollsalld Miles Aw(1) p •. 42. 185. . \1'. Hickson,'Va:neC.reek, B'elyand0 River, to Col. Sec,. , 7'June'1869, 2'.S.A. COL!A127,2455 of 1869; 'V. Chatfield, Natal 'Downs, to. P.~i. Bowen, e~nclosed2.S.A. COL/AI21 , 1483,0£-' 1869., 17~ S-t,rathdon near Bowen, had established communications viith his Abor;i.:gines and admitted them. 186 The Port Denison Times repQrted that the'bl'ackfello1iV"s' 'fere anxious 'to be let in and "ere appearing o!lenly on, the o'lltskirts of' the ,town, " , ,187 to 1vhich tlley ,yere soon admitted. The process of .,f letting-i,n' will be. examined in f1l0re detail in a later -tha~ chapterJ but, suffice to say,b,ere, by-,May ,1869 the process ha4 spread so, mucb··that,o~e ,scluatt~r claimed they were wholly admitted between BOlvenandTownsville.188 The Aborigin~s and·EtlrQp,ea;J. .colonists in many areas of ,North,2uee'nslandwer·e.enteringinto a new relationship. Developments on the·Past,oral ,Frontier 1870-1897. During the period 1870 to ,1897, throughout most of 2ueenslandhostile co~tact: between Europeans and,. Abori'gines sti~ltook lllace mainly on the pastoral frontier. The mining indusyry,. 'V"aa partly reslJonsihIe for th.is· in that it stimulated pastoral developmell:t in settled areas, r~vived pastoral activity in many "areas that had been abandoned, 189 and attra.cted pastoralists 'to Cape York Peninsula. The period of ,the. late 1860's and early 1870's provided ·a respite for many Aboriginal groups who had experienced the earlier dramatic pastoral expansion only to see their enemies curtail their ac~ivities or retreat with their animals. The resident owners who remained'were no doubt even more determined to prevent losses to Aborigines bu.t it is pos~ible .that, as, the· squatters failed to . i-nerea~e, 186. F.,D.T., 6 February 1869; P.D.T., 20 February 1869. 187. P.D.T., 6. February 1869; P.D.T.,3 April 1869. 188. P.D.T., 15 May 1869, a letter to the edit·or signed 'Within 100 Miles of the Burdekin't. 189. See Chapter 5. and often. decreased, their herds, -the A.borigines in some areas accommodated to the new situation. One can only speculate "0'11 the e'ffect on the Aborigines of seeing the departure of the Europeans from some ,or all of their tribal lands and their subsequellt return a, few years latE;lr•. The Acting ,.Police Commissioner rem~rked that, in 1872, 'outrages' of the Aborigines ,had 'considerably". increased as civilization has advanced, fj,nd the country became occupied 90 for past.ora.l, mining, a.nd ot.her purposes,.1 In 1874 heu:r;gentlyrequested and was granted an increa~e in both ordinary and Native Police 'in consequence of the re-occupa-tion of the stations in the Northerndi,stricts and the sudden influx of population in the hitherto 191 unknown Palmer and Endeavour river country'. In fact, the distributional the Native Police Force indicates conflict. in North: flueensland in the 1870's and 1~80ts was very severe. No doubt the increased prosp~rity of the Colony was one 'r.easan for the expansion of the force. The other ,vas certainly necessity. The Police Commissioner constantly had to rationalise his fo.rce during th.isperiod to meet the most urgent dem~nds and always 'Worked within the penny!!,inc,hing fr,ameworkof nineteenth century liberal 'ideas of government;yet it was not, until 1889 that there was a S1zea,'. hI'e red·UC~1ona 1n• the f orce.192 In 187,5, the Police Commissioner announced a plan to . move Native Police detachmen"ts to 'the most unsettled districts leaving a tracker or trackers atta.ched to the or'd ~narya po"'"" 1-1ce. s.·t.a;...,1ons;..1.a 193 mh.l.swasat-mea,n, 1~pa'rt, t'•0 190. ',l:leportfrom the. 'Acting Commissioner of Police for the Year 18721 , in, 1873V.&P~r, p. 918. 191. Pol. Com. to C_ol.Sec.,3MaJ;c.h 1874,i.S.A. c'oLIAl92, 4520£ 1874. Minute: ,1Approve'd' • 192.'Repon,of :the Comm~ssiOBe,r of Police for the Year 18891 , 1890 V. & P., Vol. Ii pp. 978, 979. 193. 'ReP,ort oft4e Commissioner of Pol:i.ce for 1874', 1875 V~. &P., Vol. I·,p'. 617. 180 belp l1imeope ;with the t incessant'deluands for addiiiional Na.ti've Police protection. in the ,wake of the northern goldfields and pu,stora,lexpansion. In reality he was increasing the nwilberof w~ite police performing Nat,ive Police duties in areas conside~ed·moderatelydisturbedor pacified but unsafe. These constables or sergeants '-would perform ordinary, police duties but would as l*lel.lbe expected to undertake prolonged, regular mounted' bush patrols, retal'iate against Aboriginal raids upon stock, crops, etc. an-d f -d.. 1sperse;;:c · t -_.AbOrl.glnes.. Who were - consl... d eremenac1ng... -d - -- · 194 This change of polic,y·· entail'ed stationi'ilgpolicemen who were good horsemen :and good bushmeliaiis-trat,egic points in moderately disturbed are'as. Such a procedure was not, unknolVD ,previously. Now it 'became 'part of a slowly evolving plan to such 'an extent, that men like Constables 'Hansen and Higgins and Sergea,nt,\vlliteford became as important -to Aboriginal-Europe&nrelations on-thef,rontier as Su~ Inspectors of Native Pol~ce like Douglas,Johnston~, and l95 Lamond. They were expected·to keep a. district quiet rather than make it ,quiet.. ~hus, although1iheywere generally less aggressive than the Native: Police and had an ordin~ry policeman as t;heir immediate superior, they 'performed many of the functions of that force. The residents in' ·these moderately 1iroubled areas were opposed to the removal of -the Native Police but it ~ccorded·withthe,wishes of the le,gislature and indirectly 194. For routine of bush patrols to ;encompass Aborigines, see 'Diary of:l)utiesand ()ccurre'BcesCloncurry' is November 18:94-13 June 1896", fl.S. A.,POL!14Bl:; "Duty Book'; .2~August 189~~6:J'anuary1895 Pol'~c:e Department,P~J:1r,DouglasStation·':,g.• :S.A.POL/12D/N2; . t,Letterb90k1 September 189,7... 20 J"u~e1899, ,Poli.ce Depa.rtment, Port .l)0ugla.s,fl.S.A. }>OL/l~/G2; .. '.occurrence Bo,ok 'July 1:889-12 .September 1892, Police Station Ft. Dougla.s ' ,D.S.A.POL/l2D/Nl. 195. SeatOccurrenceBookJJly ,:' 1889-12 ,Sept~mber,1892, Police Station Ft. Douglas', 'g.S.A 'POL!12D!Nl for Higgins and Hansen."'· '.,,'.' 18.l with that vocal body of public opinion, that disapproved l96 of the Native Police. In his report for 1879, -the Police Commissioner pointed out, t,hat he had broken up several detachments of the Na.tive Police and distribUted the troopers as trackers among the ordinarypolic,e st,atio~s as' he had done the prev~ous·year. Be still legarded this procedure as experimental butenvisaged the' t,;gradual?-isembodying of the Nat.ivePolice .Force until the Native Police, as 197 a separa-te Force, ceases to exist , • This did not happen for another twenty years. However, in hisr'eport for 1880, one..;.third of the one hundred and sixty Aboriginal police 198 were trackers, the remainder troopers in the Native Police. During this period, 1870 to 1897, there were two -features of frontier conflict: firstly it was progressively confined to North 2Ueensland; and secondly, it tended to drag on in .some coastal areas longer than might be expected, certainly l'onger than the, Police Commissioner expected, a fact he 199 1 amented as l:ate as 1884. In parts of the ~owenDistrict, the Aborigines were 200 still troubling the squatters as late as 1881. The editor of the Port Denison Times doubted 'whether 'two black troopers here and two at Mackay will be sufficient force to prevent .or evencllecktheir ~epredat.~ens~ • Be also pondered philosophically upon the ext,ensi()n;;:-'~_:f~()~ltlle liativ~- 196. 1875 v. & P., Vol. I, p. 611. See also 'Police COJ;nmissioner's' Report for 1875', 1876V•.& P., Vol.·I,p., 963; P.D.'f., 30 October 1880; and -P.D.T., 26 February 1881. '. 197. ':Report, of the Commissioner of Police for 1879' 1880V.&P•. , p. 707. tReportofthe Commissioner of Policefor1818',187.9 V. & :P.,p. 752. 198. 'Distribution of:Police t , 1881 V.&P. ,':Vol.I, p. 398. 199. 'Repo;rt oftheC.omm,issionerof Police for 1883', 18M'V;. &P., Vol. I, pp•. 542, 543. 200. P.D.T., 25 September 1880,ed:it,orial. See also P.:D.T., 30.0:ctober 1880; P.D.T.,26 Fe~ruary 1881. 182 if: i~l.eg~l".pJ:act,t~~ of a~bi-t..r&.:rily ~hQQting. c+ownAb()r~gines and wondered 'wh.ether it will improve themoraleof,t);le police to make them executioners no-tby. warrant of law. bu.t merely as an experimen.tonthe part of 1:.he government I• 201 This, in areas that were first settled in the early 1860's. In many areas a~ter the main frontier conflict, there was a period when the two races uneasily co-e~j.sted. In some tl,reas A.borigines we;re let in but continu.ed to live traditional lives with, at first, little contact lfith the s,ettlers. In others, a reduction in Aboriginal attacks ~a.y have led settlers -to cease ,direct, interference with Aborigines without any conscious adoption of a policy of 202 letting in. During this period of mutual suspicion and fear, occasional hostile actions were common on both sides. Settlers were sometimes unnecessarily aggre~sive ~r provocative or they incensed Aborigines by making unwelcome approaches to Aboriginal w,omen. Thus at Hughenden a constable was ac.cusedof _n"eedlessly firing Aboriginal cam.ps; whil'e near Bowen a squatter incensed the leader of·a "greup of 203 Aborigines by ordering them away and threatening them. 201. P.D.T., 25 September 1880. 202. P.D.T., 24 August 187a(Bowen District); P.D.T., 30 Oetober"1880 (BolvenDistrict,); P.D.T., 26 February 1881 (Blo'omsbury District.); M.M., 12 December' 1874 (ChartersTow~rs District) ; police inquiry into ,--the death of John Maher, digger, on 21 September 1869, Wandoo Station, Nebo: !l.S.A. JUS/N21, 78 of 1869; P.D.T., 9 January, 1875 (Proserpine Disiirict); P.D.T., '1 ,June 1878 (Nebo District); P.D.T., '11 January 1879 (p'ro.serpine' District); P.D·.T., 10 June 1876 (Proserpine District); F.D.T., 11 January 1819 (Proserpine Di~trict); ~Ilquest into death of Frederick' Toll .OD. AmhurstSelect,ion', O'Connell River, Bowen District" about 25 March 1815,i.S.A. JUS!N44, 176 of 1875; Hudson Fysh, Taming the North, pp. 88-95,121-122 (CloIlcurryBis~rictl. 203. Queenslander,io-:' November 1879, p.626; P .D.T. , 24'·August1818, article beginning 'Mr. Larry ••• '. 183 Near Cloncurry 8, station employee was killed in a period when the Aborigines were not troubling thepastoralists because he tried -to keep an Aboriginal woman agains-t her' ,... 204 and her husband 1 s wishes. Such provocative liaisons with Aboriginal women became very common as soon as the most tenuous contact was established. 200 The Aborigines often renewed attacks on the settlers' cattle, although th1s was. generally on a small scale and . · . .. 206 presumably for foo~. In some cases, 'civilized' Aborigines~ that is, Aborigines who had worked for the settlers and learned some English and some~hing of the settlers· way of life, were involved in such attacks, and sometimes seem to have assumed leadership. Europeans often referred to Aborigines by a European name, even some who were hostile 207 and aggressively continuing to live a traditional life. The settlers considered a ' civilized' Aborigines' retur'n to his tribal life a reversion to barbarism. As well, the "thought of an Aboriginal using his unders~anding of the settlers against them when they were still outnumb~red on their runs and extremely vulnerable was a recurrent fear which was very easily· activated. Thus the rumour spread 204. li:.M., 29 April 1897; !:.M.; 29 September 1897. See Fysh, Taming the North, p~ 210 for the explanation. The newspaper·· reports indi'cated that the Judge acquitted the Aboriginal because Cole had fired first upon the husband trying to get his wife back. 205. P.D.T. ,10 l\.pril 1869. See also Eden, My Viifeand I in Queensland, pp. 211, 212. 206. I\tf.M., 12.December 1874; P.D.T., 9 January 1875; P:D'.T., 30 October 1880; P.D.T., 1 June 1878; P.D.T., 14 September 1878.' 207. &M., 12 December 1874;P.D.T., 1 June 1878: an Aboriginal, Hector was thought to be leader of a g~oupattacking catt.le;P.D.T., 2 October 1880: lone palavering two faced animal stops at-the station towat.ch the movements of the whites,. to giva them .' who are doing .the' mischief· the tip - which way the station hands go out - in case ,the blacks should be caught in the act'"; P .D.T., 24 August 1878, 'Mr. Larryt; ~udson Fysh, Twmingthe North, p. 210. 184 t~atthe' Abo,ri:g.~':':Q.e.s of the lowe'r ,Burdekin \verel,ed bya sophi-stic'ated:-so~$.p.ern'Aboriginal who was going ,to kill . 208 :the '·whitesand.us.e, ,.their ,horses to hunt cattle. ",: . ·S,eti;.l:er,s w~r~ quick to demand that even minQr ,resurgel1.CeS of Aborig.ina..l,,: hostil.ity,.,be>c~s,h.e'dby th'e ordinary police or the N·ative Police. Almost,i~variablythey protested against the' renlovalof the,ir Native Policedet,aehment and demanded its restoration :orrenewed patrols at the ,first sign of trouble' because of the inability ,of lit eonstabl,e and two trackers to terrify,the Aborigines over a ,vide 209 area. . Th,e B01r.en Sergeant of. Police was scorned,for refusing to take action against a group- of Aborigines just outsid,~ t!1e tOlt"ll because he 'was not. quite sure l~hey '-'1't ,210 were g~~.' y. As most of,the responsibilityf'or intimidating the ,Aborigines rested ···onthe set·tle'rs themselves, ev.e~with, the , . Native,Pol,i.ce int,he district, in ,ti~isperi.od of co-existence, it is not 'difficult t·o see why "t'hey olljeeted to the removal of the Nati,ve .Police. _The"y bel,ieved their ,already one.rous responsibility would b~come almost intolerable and much more dangerous. OnCargoon Station lv'llen the lU1ning brothers rode out t,o punish some i\borigines 'Vl10 1Vere spearing cattle, one ,vas suddenly 'attacked by a 1 civilized''Aboriginal ,rho h-ad sen:t th,.. e' 0th'··~r'An... n1ng- ''', 0ff. on a W~"-ld'".-goose C--1·lase.. 211 Very o,ftenthe squatter ,'took the law into his own l1ands to force tIle Aborigines on his station t,o acc~pt his conditions 208.P,.D,.T., 12 Jun,e 1869. , o~ 209.ibid9 :; . Petition Bo1Ven fariners to 'Col'. Sec<., :~'2 May'1872, U.S.A. COL!Ai6'9, 1020 of 1872; P.D.T., 2 :O'ctober'1880,,:, l;etter signe.~'~ete A T,ete I; P.ll. T. ,·9 'January.1875; P.D.T., '10 June 1876;' P.ll T., 16 June 1878,> from Mackay Mercury; P.D.'{., ,11: ,Jal1.u~rY,1879, ,lette'rfrom. E"G. Smith, Suttor HoteL PaD.t., l3w/rch 1371, a request-for Native Police' to return to disIJerse. 210. P.D.T~, 30 October 1880. 211. ~/f.M., 12 December 1874. for co-existence. Such actions could range from fighting and uSing a stockwhipto shooting and poisoning.212 In f'ac:t" it is possible that poi,sonlvas used mor,e frequently ,against Aborigines in this twilight. situation than in the 213' ',previous period of open conflict. There were also instances where the Aboriginal resurgence seems to have been primarily aimed ~t harming or driving QU,t the sett,lers or reasserting Aboriginal authority. Thus the Bloomsbury Aborigines were accused of 214 slaughtering animals for their kidney fat. Settlers in the Cloncurry District believed that the I(alkadunga after a period of comparativa quiet were determined to wipe them 2l5 out. On on~occasion a.n Aboriginal sta.tion employee 212. !h!., 12 December 1874; P.D.T., 1 June 1878; P.D.T., 8:' June 1878; P .D.T.,24 August 1878. See also R~ Ca.nnon, Savage Scenes from Australi'a: Being a ~hort History ,of the Settlement at Somerset,Cape York, in the Form of a Lecture Delivered for the Young iVien f s Chriatian Associati on of Valparaiso, tat·'~._t,he_;OpeningoftheSession1885,With Illustration b Mar DI Arc Cannon from Sketches b the Author Valparaiso, Helfman, 1885, 1> •. 23, for F. Jardine 1 s use of a stockwhip to intimidate Aborigines, and pp. 29,30, for his use of the rifle. It was alleged he 'cut notches in the stock of his rifle. 213.,,; P.D.T., 21 February 1874; Black, North Queensland Pioneers, p. 57, 'Reminiscences of ?virs. Halfpapp':; .fL.ueenslander, 13 September'1890;Queenslander, 22 JunE 1895. However, compare with 'Dark Doings with the Sable SavagesI, B.P.i.N., 31 August 1878, which de~cribe.... in humorous vein the poisoning of Aborigines in a frontier conflict situation. The tone suggests such poisoning was common. 214. P.D.T., 26 February 1881; P.D.T., 1 J~ne 1878; P.D.T., 11 January 1879, letter from E'.G. Smith, SuttorHotel. 'See also S. Yea:ties, BO'w"en, to Chief Sec., lSMay 1872, ellel. U.S.A. COL/Al69, 10200£ 1872 and action taken, Barron, Actting Pol. Com., to ,Chief Sec. ,9··July 1872, encl. above. ' 215. Fysh,Tamingthe . Nortll, pp. 93-95. See also p. 142 wben~he townspeople feared attack. 186 claimed to have heard plans by apparently' peaceably inclined 21,1 Aborigines'to kill settlers and cattle. " ' It was also alleged that the Kalkadunga had sent a challenge via, an Aboriginal employee in the' town to the ,Native Police at C1oncurry.211 After a Native Police detachment was attacked and the officer and three t,roopers killed, 'aJlP:tl.le,r detachment was sent to break Aboriginalresist~ncein this . area. Sub-Inspector Urquhart,later Commissioner of Police, b'",gan"" a nJ.ne., wee'' 'k campal.gn· Wh'·'1C' h" pac1 · f·l.e,'d ....",hem ' ft·,or a, ,1me. 218 Another severe clash with the Kalkadunga at Battle Moun"tain., outside of Cloncurry,finally destroyed·, the, threat. this tribe could offer to the pastoralists~19 The Kalkadunga seem to 'have Iived in this; state of uneasy coexistence with the int'l!ttding settlers for long periods of time 7 intermittently launching determined campaigns' ,vhichproduced severe retaliation. It. was prob~bly only the mountainous nature of the country ;·that allowedthe~ t.o resist for so long so that they provided possibly the most dramatic examples o·f Ab.. orl.gJ.na· · 1 resurgence an:,dEn·.ropeanrepress10n. 220 Once again, as with Christison, it. is the eXCeI)tion which counterpoin-ts the main frontier theme. William Chatfield had bought Natal Downs aft'er it had experienced several 'years of conflict with 'the Aborigines, butw&s one of the first kno"rn. t'o let the Aborigines in in North 2ueens land. He publicly disagreed with-t'hose who cons,idered-the Aborigines an unmitigated nuisance' and ,he removal of, the 216. ibid., .Pp. 122-124. See &ls·~Anon., Pioneering in the North-West. A Few Rambling Notes of Happeriin&! in the Far North-West of ueensland 40 to, 40' Years ~ typescript,M.L." n. p., 1920 , pp., 2, 3. 217. Fysh, op. cit., pp. 142, 143. ' 218. ibid., pp. 141-141. See also Anon., Pioneering in the North-West, p. 3. 219. Fysh, Ope cit., pp. 18'2-184. 220. 'Aboriginal resistance in the far north-west is discussed brieflylat~r in this c·hapter. 187 Native Police an unmixed evil. He asserted the Native Police provoked the Aborigines and their removal was a blessing. He claimed tha-tas the Aborigines were then, in 1881, only one-quarter as numer'ous as they were ·in 1861, any manager could keep the Aborigines on his own run in order with the aid' of the ordinary police. He believed -that too much emphasis was placed on the few cattle thatthei ' Aborigines ill the Kenned.y District were -then 'spearing while the more preval'ent cattle-duffing by whites received little comment. Chatfield alleged that the Aborigines were blwmed for careless management, especially when neglect led to cattle scattering and becoming wild. With 'a little trouble' he· be'lieved that the local Aborigines proved very useful in watching the cattle and accustoming them to the run, but were most valuable in controlling "the marsupial population. He had seen a&many as 360 wallabies and kangaroos hanging in one camp. He referred ,to Chris~ison of Lammermoor who employed Aborigines ~ll the year round as shepherds and asserted he would not be able to keep sheep on Nat'al Downs without them. Be concluded: We have a duty to perfo~ toward ~he aborigines (w~ich does not consist solely in administering lead) and I ainconvinced we shall find that doing t.hat duty ·will in the long run pay the best. Personally I have suffered. much loss at the, hands of the Ken~aedy blacks, but per contra they have of late done me many services for which I shall ever feel grateful to the "Murray" race. 221 ihis objective European comment su::;ge,ststhat, in this period of tent·ativeco-existence, the pe.rsonality and attitude of the pastoralist,~re';,·of very great importance; and, further, that much Aboriginal resurgence was provoked by the settlers. Conflict was still so widespreadinl~~O-.:,na1:r u.ne. Queenslander, one of th'e colony's leading metropolitan newspapers, began a campaign ~o point out the ruthlessness 221. P.D.T., 5 March 1881, letter from 'Y. Chatfield. of the Eu,ropeans l dispossession ,of "the Aborigines under the title 'The Way·\Ve Civilize'. The editor, GresleyLukin, 1vas ,determined: 'the public shall understand what they are dOingl.222 The editor of the Bowen newspaper claimed that those par~iamentarians who debunked theartiele$ were lying but in the same article "demanded more Native . 223 Police protect1on. Such was iihe pragmatism of the frontier. The area half-way between Bowen and Mackay, especially near the present hamlets of Bloomsbury and Calen but also near Proserpine and Nebo and along ~he Bowen Biver, were scenes' of prolonged and often determined Aboriginal 224 resistance till the early 1880 I s. In fact, the Bloomabury Native Police detachment was not replaced,and -two troopers attached to the ordinary police at Bowen and Mackay, till l880,225 while that. at Nebo, west of Mackay, had been 226 removed only in 1878. The terrain suitable for Aboriginal resistance - rugged mountainous country, thick.scrub and forest" "., ..~r numer'QUS islands off the coast.;. which had aided ,'.: the earlier resistance of tIle 1860' s and early 187() 1 s was also an important factor in ,prolonging the conflict·~ This was probably the case in other coastal areas where prolonged conflict was recorded such as Inkerman near the l 222. ,1'2ueensl.ander , The 'Va We Civilize- Black and ,White; The Native Police Brisbane, 1880 , p. 7. Or~ginally published i.n Queenslander,29:May 1880. 223. P.D.T'., 25 September. 1880,edit;orial. 224. See !tI.M.~ 7 June, 1873; 22 May1875;18:&larch 1876; 13 M&rCh."1878J4 May 1878; 22 May .1878; 21 September 1880; P.D.T.,!~ 29 August 1874; 7 August, 1880; 14 August 1880; 11 September 1880; 300ctobe.r 1880; 26, February 1881. See also file Pol. Com. to Col. See., 5 January 1876, 1l.S.A.COL!A217, .57 ofl~76, for account of attack on ,Cryst,albrook.Stationnear Proserpine by an 'estimated 300 Aborigines. In this series of attacks one European and fourst8;~,ion Aborigines were killed. A detachment, of Native Police were moved:toBloomsbury as a, result. 225. P.D.T.: 21 August .. '1880; 11 September 1880; 26 February 1881. 226. ~.: 13 March 1878; 22 Mav 1878. 18.9 mouth of the Burdekifi;7and the Cardwell llistrict~28 Even on the Valley of Lagoons blocks, especially on the Herbert River just west of Cardwell, Wal'~er~} Scott was st.illdemanding more Na1iivePolice protection ten years after he had. first, ta.ken up the runs. Yet the Police Commissioner eompl,i,ined -that the Valley of Lagoons had been provided with more 226 protection than any other station in the whole' colony. I~theearly 18S0·s, Walter Scott attempted to prevent Aboriginal raids on his stock by providing the Aborigines regularly with food. This attempt failed. It satisfied the Aborigines on the Valley of Lagoons headstation but· not those on the periphery who accepted the rations at the Valley of Lagoons but continued to spear ca.ttle in their ,230 own country and on the journeys back and forth. During the period at present being examined, 1810 to 1897, the change from sheep to cattle 'made -the Eu.ropeans much less vulnerable asp,rogressively the isolated shepherd's hut became rarer. As indicated previously, attacks on cattle station homesteads occurred but they "ere much less common and much more risky to theAborigin~s.231 In 227. P.D.T., 14 August 1880; M.M., 21 August 1880. 228., B.L.Jack, Northmost Australia, Vol. I, 354, quoting CaptainMoresby,R~I:",~fofH.M·.S.Basilisk,who visited Cardwell in 1874; P.M., Cardwel-l, to Col. Sec., 3 Fe'bruary 1872,fl.S.A.. COL!Al66,254of 1872; ,P.D.T., 17 April 1875; P.lvi., Cardwell, taCol. Sec., 10 November 1874jjelegraiil, Q.S.A..COL/A200, 7384 of .1874: Iblacks very,bad north of town' • .See also ttueenslander: 11 October 1879; 13 December 1879,'for resistance in Cardwell area. 229. See file W. Scott, Sydney, to Col. Sec., 5 August, 1873, g.S•.A..COL!Al84, 1430 of 1813, .esp,eeially Pol. Com.' -to Col•.Sec., 26 June 1873. 230. P.M. , Cardwell, .. to Under. Col •. ,See., 16 September 1886, encl. D.S.A. COLfA483,7578 of 1886. 231. M~M., 19Sep~einber 1874. St,.~1S ,Station, near Ravenswood was 'stuck up', by 15 or 16 Aborigines and the cook killed. See ,file: Pol. Com. taCol. Sec., 5 January 1876, fA.S.A. COL/A217, 57 of. 1816 for attack by an estimated 300 AboriginesonCrys~albrook Station, near,p~esent town of Proserpine. Four Aboriginal employees and a European neighbour were killediniihis series of at.tacks. In late 1890's stations in Gape York Peninsula-were still ,being attacked.· See llueenslander: 13 July 1895 and 6 June 1896. :190 Appendix B,.--> are lis-ted the deaths caused by th~ ,resistance of __ Aborigines __ on the pastoral frontier fromJanuary 1~68 lVhichthis study has revealed. It cannot claim to be complete although these> figures are probably a more: reliable guide t,ha~those for the early 1860's or.the mining ,frontier. It does suggest that the danger to European life on the past.oral frontier was much. less than seems1io have been the case in the 1860's. After 1815, death caUsed by Aboriginal resistance seems to have, been an i.solated oC,currence, except in -the Cloncurry District which, with Cape York Pen~nsula, now became tlJ.emost dangerous place to own a station. From 1879 to 189'1, OIl:LY .seven deaths have been discovered , which can. be attributed to Aboriginal attacks outside of t,.he Cloneurry District and Cape York Peninsula, and, aft.e,r 1881, only '::rour~_'<' From the .early IS80 IS, Aborigines apparently ceased to trouble pastoralists seriously except in ~he two areas , 232 indicated and in s'ome places around the Gulf, of Carpentar:ua. 232. P.D.T., 22 April 1882: mentions cattle spearing on Gregory Downs on Gregory River, 80 mil·esfr·om Gulf of Carpentaria· Petition from Burke District iJ.68 signature;] to Premier of f,lueensland, Ma.y 18~5, ~.S.A. COL/A422, a0210f 1885. See Fysh, Taming the North, pp. 94-91, 120~125,140-148, 153, 182-184, 210fortlte conflict in the CloncurryDistrict as narrated by Alexander Kennedy, a pastoralist., who was involved in the eonflic~ in this region and a friend of the Native Police officer sent to quell the resistance. For this. district. see also h1.M:-, 5 March 1879; P.D.T., 10 1Ylay 1879; P.D.T., 27 January '1'\883; P.D.T., 17 February 1883; 2.S.A. Inquest, Cloncuri-y, int.o death of J.P. White about 13 JUly 1884; nueenslander: 16 August 1890, p. 293 and 1 November 1890, p. 842; U.S.A., Inquest, Carandotta (Boulia District), . 2.September1894 into deathofWalt.er Nathan;andM.M., 29 April 1897 and'" 29 September 1897; 9.S.A., Inquest,· Cloncurry, '15 April 1897, into death of Jack Cole. These largely corrobor.ate the accoun"t in Taming the North. See also .Anon., Pioneering in the North-West, pp. 1-5. This left a very large area of North Queensland where .conflict, was still occurring and in these areas the struggle was just as intense. This was well brought out by an incident known as the Irvinebank. fdassacre. In 1884, a detachment of Native Police killed a group of inoffensive, well-known . Aborigines at Irvinebank (about 25 miles lvest of Atherton) a,nd the officer and his troopers \~ere put on tria.,l by the Griffith Liberal Ministry. Many northerners felt such a course of action was a threat to their f'reedom to solve' the Abor·iginal 'problem' wit,h violence. The northern newspapers covered the trial with interest but a letter to the Palmer Chronicle seemed "to reflect the situation in North yueensland so well that it was repea;t-ed as the editorial of the Berberton Advertiser wit-h the title: 'TG Shoot or Not to Shoot Tha-t is the Duestiont • In this article the uncompromising nature 23 Q of the struggle is clearly brought out. U 'The Native Police ough~ to be allowed complete freedom, the article argued, and anyindi~cretions excused. Aboriginal resist'ance might brutalize the squatters but this was pardonable. Indeed, the write'r had been invited'to spend the Christmas holidays on the Upper Mitchell 'potting bl~3is'. Thus, except for the change, fr0111 sheerJ to, cattle, the problems for the pastoralists and the consequences to the i\..borigines, were much. the same on the, frontier in the 1890's as they were in 1861 or even in the 1840's. Liberal use of the rifle and poison ,y-ere still common in Cape York 233. Barberton Advertiser, 14 January 1885, reprinting letter fromPallner Chronicle, 20 December 1884. 234. ibid. 192 235 Peninsula in the late 1880's and 1890'8. In 1889, after a European was killed a..ndanotrler seriouslyl''lounded at the hea CHAPTER 5 CONFLICT ON THE, MINING FRONTIER 1869-1897 In large areas of North Queensland it was not pastoral ists but miners lrho made first contacts lritli .Aborigines to exploit the resources of their land. Because of t~e terrain in'which these fields were situated and the nature of the intruding mining industry, thi-s frontier posed challenges t-oboth the Aborigines and the ,invaders significantly.- ,diffe·rent: from thoseexperie~ce~'on, the 13astoral fronti'er. Aboriginal resistance\vas facilit~ted by the terrain and provoked by the fluid, ,nature .of the mining populati.on and the depletio,n of natural resources. These "Vfere not replaced by large numbers of easily ,hunted slleep or .cattle. The isolation of the frontier mining fields made' themvulner able not only because of ,the increased costs associated with e,xplo'iting them but also because of their extended communicatio.Ds•. Queensland"s frontier: policy had .been inherited from New-South \Vales experience and developed to meet the needs of the 'pasto,ral industry.' On .. the front.ier ~mi,ning fields it was often tested and found wanting. . "., Despite the 9ptimismQf,DalryD1pl'eand Leichhardt, . ' .the potential mineral wealth, of .,~{crth i!ueensla,nd' for the first few. years 'was ignored as the settlers were preoccupied with pastorc~l development. Here indeed seemed Eldorado enough for -the col~nists and for the immediate needs of the new colony's treasury. Goldfields had generally come as an additional blessing subsequent to_the prinlary purposes of settlement and, as yet, the region was too far from the established goldfields to attract the nOI1l1ally'"impeeunious prospectors. In 1866, some Townsville businessmen atimulated pros pecting by offering £1,000 reward for the discovery of a payable goldfield. This 'resulted in a, small, short-lived THE MINING FRONTIER o eCloncurry oL.'-----1':".!OOO:--...... ----=:::200miles rush to the Star River about fifty miles west of To·wusville.• 1 Prospectors were in· the field and there were soon rumours and shows _of colour. Aboutsevent'y DIan were, attract-ed to a rush. at Mt. Viyatt, south-lvest of Bowen,in January 1867 but abandoned its obviously limited rewards after two months 2 when the Aborigines proved very hostile. Soon after, in July 1867, gold was discovered on the Cape River south....wes"t of TOlmsville, and a full scale rush ensued. There were: 3 over 2,000 men on the field in 1868, but by 1869 most of the alluvial gold had been worked out and the population dwindled away.4 By this time, gold kad been discovered on MerriMerriwah and Ravenswood stations seventy miles, south west of Townsville. T'o this time the goldfields had been discovered with:ln areas opened up by the pasto;ral :i.ndustry and the diggers apparently i:rihe~ited the status quo as far as their relations with the Aborigines were concerned. Except- at Mt. Wyatt, conflict does not seem to have been significant. The discovery of ,the Gilbert River goldfield in April 1869 took the miners to the limit·s of pastoral sett~lement and hostile Aborigines were very much a pr~blem. However, t~e initial reports from the field were so glowing that there was a population of 3,000 in July 18~9. By August there were 5 only about 150 on the field.. 1. Bolton, A Thousand fvIiles A1vay, pp. 44, 45. Hequotes ,.t-he Weekly Herald, 5 h1ay 1866. The Townsville residents hoped in' tIl.is way to g~arantee their port agaillst the competition. of Cardwell and Bowen. Because of the limited nature of the field, only £500 was subsequently awarded. 2. ibid., p. 45. There had been promise of a payable gold field near Bowen in 1865. See' P. Pinnock, P.:t~. BOlven, to Col. Sec., 7 November 1865, 'Q.S.A. COL!A72, 3031 -of 1865. 3. Hill, Foriy-FiveYears I Experience in North Queensland, p. 47.. Hill· had been clerIc of Petty Sessions at Cape River (1868-1870), Ravenswood (1870--4,1878-82), " Georget'olm(1874-5), The Palmer (1876--8}. 4~ ibid., p. 53. 5. Bolton,op. cit., p. 47. The alluvial gold h~d been worked out, there lvas a shortage of water, and 'Gulf Fever' was raging. The decline of the Gilbert and Cape goldfie14s, turned attention back to Ravenswood where easi·ly worked quartz deposits replaced alluvial gold. as an inducement to the sm.all diggers. By 1870, a permanent to~ of about 2,000 people was growing up to feed the crushing mills., An important factor in Ravenswood's development was its easy access to the coast which lowered freight costs and encouraged the early inUQduction of machinery. In November 1870, the long lasting reefing field on the Etheridge River was discovered to the nort'h of the Giloe'Ft once again taking miners to the limit of settlement. Machinery was quickly introduced for the diggers on wha~t was still a 'small man's frontier. !\{eal1,\vhile, close to Ravens1iTood, in 1871, tllerewas a series of pronlising discoveries lYhich, in January 1872,· culminated in the very rich, easily worked reefing field of Charters Towers. C~~shing machinery was introduced almost immediately and by the end of 1872 three thousand miners were working the field. By then, Ravenswood and Charters Towers were 6 producing more than half of 2ueensland's gold. Yet, even while Charters Towers and the Etheridge were booming prospectin~ went on unabated. In 1872, a Queensland goverllffient expedition led by William Hann reported traces of gold, with no real enthusiasm, 7 on the Palmer River, a tributary oithe Mitchell. Parties lvere~oon in the .field, ho,vevel", and an experienced pros pector, James Venture rY1ulligan, reported rich alluvial gold 6. ibid.,p. 50. 7. Tilis expedition pushed north into the then unknown areas of soutllern Cape York Peninsula to as far north as Princess Charlotte Bay. The IJarty'.saim ,vas, to ascertain the character of the country and its mineral resources with a view to future settlement,. See 'RepG'rt from l~ir. 1N. Mann, Leadel~ of_ the NortllernExpedition' and 'Copy ofa Diary of a Northern Expedition under the Leadership of Ivir •. -\Villiam Hann', 1873 V. & P. , pp. 1031-1070. For the discovery of traces of gold ontb.e Palmer see I). 1049. 1:9 raj all along the Palmer.. Despite Mnlligan'sattempt to point out the inhospitable nature of tIle country, the biggest rush ensued since ·gold was first discovered in Nelr Soutl.1 8 Wales and Victoria. Between 1865 and the close of 1879, North !}ueen.sli1.nd produced a recorded 2,038,170 ounc~s of gold of ,rhich the Palmer prodllced 1,023,855 ounces,th.~t is, more than l'lalf. Four-fifths of the 'Palmer I s gold was 9 produced between October 1873 and December 1877. The alluvial pickings ~f the Pall11er acted like a magnet on the Chinese in North ~ueensland and by the end of 1874 all but 500 of an estimated 2,000 had moved to the Palmer. At this time there were six to seven thousand E:uropean miners in North Queensla,nd. 'By April 1877, the number of Chinese on the Palmer had swelled to a maximum of 17,000 and 1rare almost completely'male. Yet .the population of NOl~h Queensland, exclusive of Chinese, Pacific Islanders, and indigen~s, at the 1876 census 10 was only 17,606. During 1876, the number of E:uropeans 'forking alluvial deposits dropped froln 1,500 to 300 but by then there were 600 involved in reefing.II Between 1877 and '1880 the number of Chinese on the Palmer fell from 17,000 to! 3,000, many moving':to other fields, especially 12 the Hodgkinson. 8. J.V.• Mulligan, Guide to tIle Palmer ~iver and NOnnal'lb;r ,Gold Fie!.c1s, North gueenslan.d, . Showing The Different ~ads To and From the Etheridge River, Cleveland BaZ, and Cooktown 'Vit11 !-faD of the Palmer·· River and Ad· acent Gold Fields. And Journal of -r" lorations Brisbane, 1875 ,pp. 9, 10; Bolton; ,A.TllouSandI\iiles ~\:way, p. 52. 9. Bolton, A Thousand Miles Away, p. 69, footnote 23. Both of these figures are probably underestimates ·asmuch gold "lras allegedly not reported. The Chinese, especially,were The Chinese on the mining fields were nearly all alluvial gold s'eekers. They were in the main, peaceful, industrious and law abiding. They had their own law to punish Chinese offenders and their own organization and were left to themselves as much as possible by the Queens 13 land government officials. The first Chinese came from the south 'to the Cape River in 1867-8 and othe,rs follo1ved but in 1875 capitalists "in South China began orgarlizing an export of Chinese labourers to the North Queensland goldfields from ,rhich they had to ramit a large part of their earnings. 'Varden Hodgkinson estimated that,' while a European needed to find gold worth £3/10/- to £4 .per week to carry on, a Chinaman could live comfortably on 13 or 14 S·1h -ll-l.ngs.. 14 Exploration did not cease with the discovery of the Palmer. Mulligan alolle led five more major e~Je/dition:s from that; field, on the last of which, in 1876, he discovered tIle Hodgkinson goldfield. This was a reefing field which 15 had attracted 1,400 miners by 1877. Other goldfields ,rare opened uP' on the eoen, north-east of Princess Charlotte Bay (1878), theMulgr~ve (1879-80), and the \lloolgar, south west of the Etheridge (1880).16 By this time the ma.jor depos'its of surface gold which caused the large-scale, if short-lived, rushes lv-ere exhausted and the individual prospectors roaming at large were being replaced by settled mining populations working the :inoreextensive 13. J.H. Bin~:i.e, My Life on a'Tropic Gold Field (A1elbourne, 1944), pp. 35, 36. 1':1. Bolton, A Thousand Miles Away, p.·55, referring to II,p~,7'"tG~>_ 1882V. & P., Vol'•. .. '_: See BoltOl1., Ope cit. ,pp. a4-58 for ad'ascription of the Chinese, on thego14fields. See also c.C. ,.21 November 1874, for an estimate- of expenses at-cr3~4) a week. 15. ;'::Bol1i:o,n-", op'~·-·:·cit." p·.59;- H.!1.N., 30 June 1877. Warden Sellileim' s tel:,egr~ to the l{inisterof h1linesil1.dicated there were 1,400 working reefs and a total' popUlation of 4,800. See Queellslander, 6 ltiay 1876, 'The Hodgkinson Rush'. 16. Bolton, Ope cit., pp. 61, 62. 19~ underground re-efs. The discovery of·w·ealth and the inflol,. of capital and labour to exploit it oro to.,provide services for the ne,v centres and the increased population transformed North 2u~ensland. Ports to service ~he goldfields came into being almost overnight': COOktOlfB for the Palmer, and Cairns and Port Douglas for the Hodgkinson, while Townsville receive.d a decisiveboost from the Cape, Ravenswood, and Charters Towers f·ields to the south-west and the Gilbert 17 and Etheridge fields to the north-west. The pastoral industry derived immediate benefit from the gold discoveries. Cattle were selling' at first o~ the Palmer for £10 or £12 a head and the supply was not equal to the demand. Stations had reduced their herds during the 1866-1869 depression and had difficulty meeting the needs 18 of 20,000 miners who had suddenly appeared. Fortunately despite the wildly fluctuating populations ~of the various fields, they were widely scattered and readily accessible to all stations in north-eastern gueensland for extensive periods of time. The pastoral industry had become largely dependent on '"tIle mining industry. Indeed, it even led to new stations being taken up in the far north. Although such prospectil'lg explorati,ons as Hann's and ~lulligants had confirmed the limited pastoral potential of Cape York Peninsula, runs were taken up as close to the mining fields as possible, such as along the !:iitchell from 1873 alnd on the ·w·estern fringes of the Atherton and ,Evelyn 17. ibid.,pp. 48,53,59, 60. 18. Palmer, Early Days in North Queensland, l:>P. 136, 137. During ,the 1810,' s'old runs, ware taken up and new ones applied for encouraged by the Pastoral Leases Act of 1869. 19 Tablelands after 1877. On such major fields as the Gilbert, Etheridge, Palmer and Hodgkinson and' others les's importa.nt like 'the Coen, Mulgrave, Woolgar and Cloncurry, the miners were on or near the frontier and resistance of the Abori'gines was often a very real problem, sometimes the greatest problem c·onfrollting!them. It has sometimes been argued that conflict betwee,n miners and Aborigines might have been avoided if the fo~er had behaved with more restraint: in reality the basis of conflict lvas, as on the pastoral f ront J.er,.. th",e J.nvaSl.on. 0,f Ab,orl.g~na. . 1 1and. 20 H,,' o",vever' th"e nature of, the invaders' industry and the terrain and isolatrion of the major front.ierfields not only determined t~e degree of Aboriginal resistance but also produced a pattern of contact significantly different from that on the pastoral frantier. I~ will be the purpose of the rest of this chapter to analyse this patte~n 9f contact. • •• • The nature of mining on the major frontier fields of North {!neensland up until 1880 entailed a great deal 0'£ 'gully raking' for surface gold by large numbers of miners 19. Bolton, A'ThousandMilesAway, p.92. 'Stock Depastured in Buns in Settled Districts', 1819 V. & P., Vol. II, p. 999. By 1880' runs Ylere being taken up between th'e Hodgkinson and MitchellRivers by pastoral ists of the longer settled d.iE3tricts.'. Theysought second properties as those further south 'vere becoming stocked to their nineteent'h century capacity. 20. C.C. , 6 April 1878, a le~ttersigned ')16.cOUUD1 Bonum'. The correspondent blamed the irresponsible trigger happiness of early miners for the conflict on the ·Palmer, ,point'ing out" correctly, that ,Mulligan had found,them,peageful. Se~ also ~., 28 February 1877, where Aboriginal retaliation was explai~ed int,erms of miners 'earlier, I doing a good deal, of shooting among -them t • scattered widely, proslJecting or working small shows. lViiners congregated for varying lengths of time in areas where large quant'it,ies of gold had been discovered making them inaccessible to the Aborigines. Often, of course, such areasw-ere streams like the Palmer or the Gilbert which were equally as valuable to the Aborigines. On these, relatively permanent towns grew up such as Palmerville, 'Maytown (Edwardstown), Gilberton and Georgetown lvith lines of communication to all parts of the field and to the dis~ant coast. Concentrated in such small areas or scattered widely over large areas, constantly on the move in small or large groups, the European presence was a provo~a~1on..,.. t 0'th'eor1g1nes.Ab .. 21 The Police Commissioner, D.T. Seymour,was confronted with the miners' expectation ~hat it was the governmentts responsibility to protect them as they w~re providip~ much of the colony's wealt~. Yet, it was impossible to do thi-s adequately within the limitations the government placed upon him. As he observed: In a wild unsettled country it would not be possible for ten detachments of police to protect from the blacks solitary travellerso,rpersons out, prospecting who do not take ordinary precaution and who frequently keep as a close secret the direction they.intend taking. 22 The Police Commissioner's outburst h~gl11ighted several of the problems. Firstly, the miners were often moving into t:errain suit-able for Aboriginal resistance. Sec'ondly, they often combed the fields in sma.ll groups or alone. Even if a miner belonged to a, larger group, he sometimes had to separate from the res,1i whereupon he became an. easy 21. Queenslander, 8 June 1818, 'Co.st of gold; Or the f. Murder, of :hJIanuel, Yous 22. D. T. Seymour, Pol. C.om. ,to Col. Sec. ,3:0 April 1876, encl. in g.S.A. COL/A195,1142 of 1874. ' 202 target for Aborigines who ,often had the miners under 23 ., observation. Th~rdly, the secrecy of many mili~t~" who were 'on gold t or hopeful of fillding, it renderedcomplete protection impossible ,vith anything less thana full scale military campaign to subjugate each new field. Fourthly, there was an inevitable hiatus when the, m~ners rushed from one area that was patrolled, albeit inade,quately, by Native 24 Police to a. new one. Indeed, a. misleadingly optimistic comment made by lfulligan, ni;neteell.months af1ier the discovery of the Palmer, tQencourage diggers i10 come to tbefield indicated how serious was the challenge of Aboriginal resistance: The blacks are' no'Wonlytroublesomeon the roads .and -outskirts of the goldfields, ~nd arrangements have been made by the authorities for better police }1rotection. 25 On the goldfields, inhospitable areas such as around Gilberton and the Palmer where the Aborigines might have been forced to find refuge were jus~ as liable to attrac~ prospectors as the plains were to attract cattlemen. Thus Queensland government policy 1rhich had been shaped 'by the needs of the pastoral frontier was much less able to cope 23. P.M., Cooktown, to Col. Sec., 26 'June 1875, g.S.A. COL/A211, 1781 of 1875, and Queells1ander, 8 June 1878, t 'Cost of Gold; or the Murder of Manuel yous • See also Mulligan, Guide to the Gold Fields,p.:9, for an ac·count of how one of Mulligan's party was alone, unaware that Aborigines were observing him. He fired a.t a bird and was surprised when 'a squad of darkies' fled from ,behind a rock close byte 24. Pol. Com. t.o Col. Sec., 30 April 1874, and the rest of this file, ten le-tters in all,g.~,.A. COL/Al9a, 1142 of 1874. See Colo Sec. minute, 1 December 1813, John Cameron, Gilbert Brown and' P. McCardett, Gilberton, to Col. Sec., 26 November 1873 (telegram). The Police Connnissioner had removed the police from Gilberton lrhen most of the inhabitantsand miners ruslled'to the, justdiscovere~ Palmer. The almost deserted Gilberton was temporarily "\vithout police l:>rotection while protection for t.he Palmer in the beginning was virtually non-existent. 25. Mulligan, Guide to. the Goldfields, p. 4. with the problems of the mining frontier. There were several important consequences of 2ueensland t S· inability to provide adequate protection for- the froniPier miners. One was the failure to reach an aceomrnodation with the Aborigines during the period of the major rushes to 1880. This was the time of maximum frontier mining population and exploitation, when racial contact was most chaotic and eonflictgreatestt. In fact, in his 1881 report, the Police Commissioner still lamented his failure to establish communications with the Aborigines in the far north: During the year the attempts to conciliate the Aborigines in the Northern districts ••• have been continued, but owing to the difficulty which has been experienced in inducing these people to come into the camps and to\Olships, haVA not so far come up to expectation ~.. 26 On the frontier mining fields, failure was apparently complete yet the days of large scale rushes were ever. Another consequence of the government's failure to provide adequate protection for the frontier miners was the unresolved conflict between government policy and the miner's expectations. As Seymour said, a force ten times as large would have been insufficient. The settlers were expected 'to take 'ordinary precautions t : that is, they were expected to accept their vulnerability -to Aboriginal attack and to be armed, vigilant, cautious, in company with other miners, and willing to shoot Aborigines. Seymour, an ex-army officer, was either expecting nliners to behave like combat soldiers or accepting loss of European life and a much larger loss of Aboriginal life as inevitable. The immediate consequence was that 'the southern m.iners rushing to the new fields '-v/ere forced to 26. 'Police Commissioner'sFteport for 1881', 1882 V. & P., Vol. I, p.419. See also 'Police Co~issioner's P~port t , 187~ v. &P., Vol. I, p. 903. try to meet Seymour's expecilat,ions. Thus the first luiners and packers to reach the Palmer soon realized the necessity of firearms and -the "need to take corporate action against resisting Aborigines. Just over a year after the first rush to the,Palmer,the Cooktown Courier reported: now every man travels well armed and a carriers camp at eventide is a regular 1 school of mtisketry' no man goes looking for his cattle in thei'morning unless he has his rifle slung ready for use and revolvers "by his side. 27 The typical waggon on the frontier fields of Cape York Peninsula was a 'perfect arsenal in the matter of Snide! rifles, double barrelled guns, Colt-'s revolvers and all "" 28 kinds of ball cartridge'. Tewmsters and packers often travelled in groups for mutual protection from the 29 Aborigines and settlers frequently participated in punitive raids. \'~llen the Strau family, husband, "lvife and cllild, 30 were killed on the Palmer Road in 1874, at least one settler found himself sworn in as a special COl1stable although he refused to take part in the subsequent massacre of Aborigines at Skull Camp.31 Corfield, the owner of two bullock teams, joined the Native Police detachDl!eilt· under Sub Inspector O'Connor, unsworn and lvillingly,to avenge 32 the killing of two of hi~ horses and tvopackers. Such settler retaliation against the .tiborigines,witij" or 33 lvithout the Native Police, was connnon and a direct result, ------_....__._,.._---""--- 27. e.c., 5 December 1874. "28. Queenslandel", 25 December '1875, 'Christmas EVe in the Blf;Lck , s Country'. 29. Corfield," Reminiscences, p. 56. 30. 2. S.i\.. JlJS/N41,· 274. of1874.In~~est, into deaths of John, Bri.dget,·andAnlleStr·~uerL!J.ii] - else"\rhere Strau, Strauve - on 17 October 1874. See!!:.!. , 7 November 1874 ore.c. ,21 Octo·ber 1874. ' 31. J.c.nogflesh, Herberton,t·o B·.D. Morehead,Chief Sec., 8 October 1889, fl.S.A..COL/A595,.~567:of 1889. 32. Corfield,Re'miniscences,pp." 57,,58. SeeC.H., 1 July 1874, -The Blacks .t-\gain', for' a fra~ccount of how a party of six teamste.rs scoured the country to find and attack a large Aboriginal camp. S,ee als() P .D.T., 21 October 1882, for a.n account of settlers on the Annan River, just south of CO"OktoWl'l, organizing to drive off Aborigines. 2,05 of Queens!and's inadequate frontier. pol iey~ Not all of the settlers lived up: to government, e'xpect, ations ,all.d there was a great deal of foolhardiness among the nomadic population of t'he goldfields. Aperu'salof inquests of deathsresnlting froID Aboriginalattacl<: and of c,:~ntelnporary newspapers reveals a sur:pris~ng willingness to take risks: to pusl'! out unarraed, or inadequately arme'd into territory known to be occupied by belligerent Aborigines. Yet the reputation of the Aborigines of Cape Yorl~ Pel1.insula was lvellestablished, by 1873 and increased "ith the ~ntr~sion of the mining frontier. It seems to have been well-merited. An experienced settler like Edward Palmer who had lived at Canobie north of Cloncurry, lfhere tIle Aborigines earned a legendary reputation, and at Gambeola near the Palmer goldfield commented: In no district in Queensland have, the bl'acks ,-sholm " t,hemselves more host'ile to the settlers than in the Peninsula. 34 . Yet, J.H. Binnie told how as a ten year old child on the Palmer, in the late 1870's, he regularly had to journey, alone and unarmed, through country occupied by hostile Aborigines. Soon after, in the same area, a group of . .··35 Chinese who had built a stoclrade ,rere, attacked. Binnie often stayed at an isolated mine for t1foto'three days W1ath only a I-ttl1 e dog·f or company. 36 B-~nn1ea', s f aerth was just as foolhardy with regard to his own safety. When the Aborigines killed his horses, he 1ralked to Cooktown on urgent business unanned as he did not own a revolver and a rifle would, have been too heavy to carry. Altllough he travelled by night to avoid the Aborigil1.es, he,v-as 37 fortunat.e t.o get. t.hrough unnot.iced. On another occasion 34. Palmer, Early Days in North Queensland, p. 183. 35. Binnie, My Life on a Tropic Gold Field, pp. 20-22. 36~ ibid., p. 20. 37. ibid., p. 31. 2U6 when Aborigines ,vere near the Binnie t shouse wit;hhostile intentions, the Binnie family and their nearest neighbours, a ~hinese fossicker canll)ed fifty yards away, andtwominer-s camped half a mile away, had not one f,irearm between them• .After the Aborigines "lv-ere frightened off by. barking dogs', Binnie commented, . tHo,\rever, no time was lost in getting 38 a rifle. from Echotown by special messenger'. One of the. residents of the Gilberton golclfield even, claimed ' •••.that the population·jn Queel1s1and generally have Police Protection and therefore'don't j]3iif provide ,themselves.1fith firearms or ammunition'. 39 This 'Was greatly exaggerated but was probably the basis for the attitude of many who could have af,forded firearms but refused 'to p'llrchase theln. Some simply' refused to accept the conditibn of the mining frontier. There ,vera no doubt many others who co~ldn't: afford to buy arms. The Chinese were rarely adequately armed and often not a~ed at all. They apparently hoped that by travelling in large groups the Aborigines \V"ould avoid them. The reputatiol1 the Chinese had for running away at the sight of the Aborigines was thus, on most occasions, easily explained.40 Unarmed miners were not always as fortunate as the Binnies. Donald and Hugh MCQuarrie set out from Cooktown unarmed. The Cooktown Courier reported with horror that at Hell's Gate theywere.trun dovrn like paddymelons by a merciless mob of infuriated cannibals'.41 3e. ibid., p. 18. 39. A.C. Bernerker(?), Mount Hogan (15 miles from Gilberton), to A.II. Palmer, Col. Sec., 17 December 1873, encl. U.S.A. COLIAl95 , 1142 of 1874. 40. Palmer, Early Days in North. 14ueensland, p. 184. See Argus, 19 February 1876, for an account, of how several armed Chinese packers fled from three arme~_!lborigines (M.L. Newspaper Enraets 1875-1880, Vol. 1);,:' This article gives the 'caricature of cowardly Chinese. 41. Q.&., 3 FebrUary_ 1877. -. See also $}. S.A. JUS,!47\ for the inquest. Yet apart from the rashness of entering country occupied by hostile Aborigines anarmed, many of tIle risks. filiners took were inherent in the industry. firiiners had to scatter widely and to separate in order to prospect. It was unreal ist.ic of the Police Commissioner and the llueensland govern ment to expect miners with generally very limited means to guard one another all the time they were prospecting or to constantly travel in large. groups despite the.warning of one of the first correspondentsvfrom.the Palmer that 'the blacks keep driving in all small parties •••. No person. ought to start without he has four months provisions \vith him, and he must have horses to carry them ••• and ffiil 42 well armed l • Another miner informed those~hinking of coming to the Palmer ' ••• all diggers must travel in gangs ••• 'Vhen .you come bring as. many horses as you can and a gun - no man is. any good without both'.43 Often poor and usually optimistic.miners ignored such. sound advice. The government's failure to accept the responsibilities inherent ill the dynamic frontier industry ,vhich had trans forme4·the colony~s economy posed serious problems not only for the miners but also for the Aborigines they were dis possessing. Aborigillal resistance often hindered the development of a new field. Before the Palmer field was ten months' old, Aborigines. ,yare preventing prospecting by single miners or small parties. A group of six a~ed miners prospecting near Cooktown had been driven in lea.ving provisions and horses to the mercy oftha i\..borigines. The Cooktown Herald claimed that such actions, plus Aboriginal raids upon the unattended camps and -the spearing of miners and their horses, were causing the.men.to.keep together -in the main camps. The paper asserted that this 42. Ravenswood Miner, 6 December 1873. 43. !b.M.., 10 January 1874., ,208 was one of the main reasons no new auriferous ground was being discovered: lien did not care to isolate themselves with the chance of a spear te~inating their existence suddenl~. 44 In early August 1874, the Police Magistrate at Palmerville informed the Colonial Secretary that five men had been reported k~lled by Aborigines since November 1873 and nine others lfounded, as well as horses destroyed to the value of several hundred pounds. He ad~ed: t ••• incalcuable loss is suffered by the miners in conseQuence of not being 45 able to prospect 1 • Such laments 1V'ere often raised as a new field was being developed but Aboriginal raids did not cease to.be troublesome. Thus, in the Etheridge GoldField Report of 1881,t,he Warden remarked nonchalantly:- t •••.the blacks have committed their usual amount of crime. Cattle and horse spearing are ~i£7 of course normal features,46 and as late as 1885; 'The aboriginals have given a little trouble in stealing rations etc., from. miners , camps, but that- l.S· no new th·-, l.ng.t- 47 M--- J.ners- -d·d1 - not a 1,vays - accept t'n~s. state of affairs so· fatalistically. They often comphained 9£ almost daily depredations and wereaometimes forced "to work in'~'pt.J,i~~,one man prospecting while the other s~ood 48 guard with a rifle. Such compf~~n:ts not only illustrated the inhibiting effect of Aboriginal resistance, they also p,\ointed out the vulnerability of the miners. 44. Cooktown Iierald,24 June 1874, 'The Black Police'. 45. P.M., Palmerville, to Col. Sec., 4 August 1874, 2.S.A. COL/~97, 1680 of 1874. 46. 'Etheridge Gold Field Report', 1881 V. & P., p. 222. 47• 1Etheridge Gold Field Report', 1885 V.. &: P., Vol. 11,1-, p. 57. 48. "¥J. Steele, Georgetown, toP.O;t Sullivan, Itd.L.A. Burke:, 4 July .1878, Q. S.A. COL!A262, 2933 of 1878. See2ueenslander, 8 June 1878, tCost of Gold; or the r"iurder of Manuel Yous' for an example of watching Aboriginesspea'ringone of a pair of miners when each worked separately. 209 The miners t horseslvere especially ·,vu.lnerable yet, a l10rsewas almost indispensa.ble to:t,he Europeanminer-, unlike the Chinese one -as essentially he was a gambler and mobility was of paramount importance. The European miner's dream was a find rich enough to. enable him to leave off mining altogetller. Consequently helfas never content with merely making a living on one fi~ld, but remain ed ever alert for news. of new discoveries where he might have betterluck~ .As the richest yields of easily worked gold were usually, recovered early in the life of each new field, he had ~o be, able to travel rapidly if he were to have any chance of 1 siiriking it,rich;J/!. Only a horse could. give him this mobility. Often· he 'fould desert a sound claim at, the hint of some distant. eldorado. Gold 'Varden, Phillip Sellheilil, captured beautifully the mentality of, the frontier miner the wQrld over when he. described the North 2ueensland miner: If the Northern'miner has one bese-tting sin ••• it is his readiness at a"mo~entfs notice to sacrifice his all, if required, to enable him to hurry off to the scene of some new discovery ~"good or bad, authenticated or not. He most probably leaves' a claim that, means good wages', if nothing better, al'ld tramps, suffering all kinds of danger and hardships, on his way to some locality where, on calm reflection, his own commonsense and long" eXperience would have told him that payable gold at the, best could be but, a very remote contingency. 49 The_ Chinese lrho gene,rally moved into a field in large groups after it ,ras opened upmigllt be able to walk but . . 50 mos.-t Europeans "thought thems.elves dependent on h,orses. Yet horses had to, be turned out tograze\; and ''fere easy marks for tb~e- Aborigines. 49..·.·.i8;:o~;i~~~liri~~;iwl~~-·~l.·~~~_1-S':--~-tuoted Bolton, o The countless:re:ferences, in northern newspapers, to the killing and conswnption of horses and cattle on the miping field suggest overwhelmingly that the Aborigines killed them for food - not merely to injure the intruders. This conclusion is supported by the accounts detailed below of Aborigines starving on the mining frontier. The oppor tunity for large scale slaughter of these ani~als was much more limited than on the pastoral frontier. I\1ost miniIl~ fields depended largely on cattle brought from stations removed from the generally inhospitable mining areas, such herds being ov~rlanded directly to the fields or to nearby· holding stations from which' they were consigned to butchers . 51 at .lfayt,own, Palmerville, Cooktown, Thornborough, etc. For most of the time the large herds of cattle on the Peninsula goldfields would have been under supervision. The Aborigines remorselessly att~cked the cpmparatively small number of.tewnsters' bullocks and the horses belonging liominers and packers in the outlying camps and along the tracks. They often attacked in large co-ordinated groups and, speared or drove off the horses. It was firmly maintained that they were seen driving numbers of horses from two to ,more than thirty -' into inaccessible 'mou~t,ain strongholds I where they would kill and eat, tl1.em as required. This charge of systematically harvesting horses was made by. over two hunClredresidents of 'the Palmer Goldfield in a petition to the Colonial Secretary, as ",-ell as .inthe Cooktown COl.trier, and especially in the Hodgkinson Mining ~ lrhere it· was alleged at least five times in seventeen months. Such attacks were most intellse in the early chaotic years of a new rush but persisted until the field was 51. Palmer, Early Days in.Nor-th !1ueensland, pp. 139-141. 211 52 abandoned or accommodation was reached. Such measures may indicate the ease with which the animals could be killed or driven off. They also. indica-te-that the Aborigines' "traditional sources of food h,ad been so damaged, depleted, or rendered inaccessible that they risked very real dang~rs involved in killing the intruders~ animals and the subsequent reprisals. The fti,ct that at least some had to seekrefug~ in inhospit- able ranges and had to take foo,d.there, to -theirdep.endents seems to support this. At this, stage of frontier conflict, there lv-as little opportul"lity for comment on the pllysical well-being of the Aborigines,but there-surVive three reports which lend some support ,to this conclusion. In 1877, an Aboriginal employed on the Hodgk~nson claimed to have encountered some Aboriginal women and children wes~ of Mt. Mulligan who were~maciated and starving 'and scarcely able, 1,0 walk. They asked him 'to take some of:· -their children to save their lives and :he brought ,one to 'w10 atsonV:L · 11e.53 A repo·rt t 0th e ,Mueensn 1"ander was much, more specific: 'Pe'rhaps the deternlination they 81101\1" may be -the courage of despair. The country is not fertile, lS poorly stocked \vith game, and the 'lv-bites have taken possession ' of all the main watercourses. Native Police officers say that, most of the Palmer blacks seem half-st.arved, and 52. Petition of 217 residents of the Palmer River Goldfield toS.VI. Griffith, Col. Sec., j]anuary 188.27,enclased 2.S.A. COL/A453, 552 o£1886;C.C., 18 August 1875; H.M.'N., 14 July 1877; H.M.N., 1 December 1877; H.M.N., 22 December 1877; H.M.N., 21 December 1878; H.M.N., 14 June 1879. 53. fI.M.N\.~ ,10 November 1877. The possible objecti'onto this testimony that this Ab~r,igina,lhad kidnapped the child and was lying to hide his crime is less likely thaIibis assertion, given the normalcy of having and kidnalJpingAboriginal children. The article asserts 'the~e'was afamin~ but it seems that their condition 1Y"as more likely to have been because Aboriginal life lyasdisturbed than tllat the Aborigines could not cope with a poor season. See Queenslander,. 8 December 18'17. recent advice from the Hodgkinson describes the aboriginals tllere as suffering from famine. The white men occupy their only hunting grounds, and in default, of the fish, roots, and game of the waterholes and creek Ubottoms t-t , they are in a manner compelled to eat horses and bullock'.54 Even the Police Commissioner noted, in 1880, tllat the _J\.borigines 55 on the Hodgkinson goldfield were half__ starved•. Frontier mining fields, thus, seem to have posed more immediate and urgent challenges to the Aborigines than commonly occurred on the pastoral frontier. Thus spurred on by hunger, favoured by a suitable terrain, and opposed by intruders "\vhose industry made them especially vulnerable, the Aborigines attacked their enemy Yfherever possibie. Indeed their attacks on the limited number of accessible animals inhibited cm1~unications within a field and sometimes threatened its I'inks v!ith'the outside world. Horses were essential to enable the" scattered miners to keep themselves supplied with provisions. The Cooktown Courier claimed" that one field would have to be abandoned because so many horses 1vere being sIJeared that the miners could not get rations.56· A broader aspect of this problem was the need to keep the roads opell for packe~s, te81Dsters, and travelle'rs. This ,vas especially iluportal'lt for isolated fields of the Peninsula like the Palmer and Hodgkinson. Indeed the Cooktolm Courier in 1877, poillted iJo the impossibility of keeping even. the ma~in road to the 57 Palmer safe. Once again the Police Commissioner C-olltended that pacl{ers ,and travellers e3q)ected to have their horses eI~~relylooked afte~ by the Police. Yet 54. Queenslander, 8" December 1877. 55. Pol. Com. to Col. Sec'., 21 October 1880, n.S.A. COL/A311, 1506 of 1881,. 56. e.c., 16 July 1874. 57. C.C.,28 February 1877. 213 teamsters and IJEi"ckers had to alloyr their animals to graze .and could not 1'latch them the 1vhole time as. SeYlnour seemed to suggest. As well, on most roads certain areas ifere more suitable fo~ cwnping and allovling the animals to graze tha.,n otllers or, thrOT:.lgh some districts, the only on~s. These -wg ere soon known to the .A.borigines ,vith tile result, that t!lere we11 e often attacks t4at wiped out the best part of or, even a whole team overnight. ProvisiollS for 58 the fields were delayed and sometimes destroyed or pillaged. The destruction of animal capital lvaS often crippling enough to arouse the local ne,vsi)apers to a criticism of the. govern ment and the local m~Inber to his responsibilities, an understandable consequence when the cost of such teams is considered. To outfit l1is second team, Corfield hadbougllt as a bargain. 13 steers at ,£16 per head and then .had to break them in.59 In March 1878, the Cookto"\mCourier reported that one tea.lnster had lost tenor eleven horses valued at between £40 and £50 each 'at one fell swoopl.60 Thus, one successfulAbo~iginal attack could destroy all of a tetullster's capital .arnd remove one essential -unit of 58. Pol •. Com. to Col. Sec., 18 Oct,ober 1877, 2.S.A~ 'co~1 l241,5Q55, of, 1877. SeeP.D.T., 19 February 1876, extract' from Cooktown Herald. AlsoP.D.T., 18 March 1876, tThePalmer'from 'Cookto1vn Courier.h. These newspaper articles describe., 'the losses of tearasters and travellers. For tile Hodgkinson tracks to Tril1.ity Bay and Port Douglas,'-,,~ee H.M.N.: 2 April 1877; 30 June 1877; 7 July 1877;14 July 1877,;4 August 1877; 11 August 1877; 24 November 1817;22 December 1877; 2 Marcl1 1878; 30 March 1878; 4 May 187'8; 22 June 1878; '7 August, '1878; 2Novemberl~7,.8; 1 February 1879; g December lS79;13 December 1879. 59. Carfield, :Reminiscences, p. 59. 60. C.C., 2 1v1arch 1878'. See a.lso P.D. T., 19 February 1876 andE.,-D.T., 18 Ji,iarch 1876 asindicatedf.n.58. Alt110lighcarrying to the field,S paid very well in the early days of a rush, it soon tapered'off. By ,1876 ,there was much more competit'i'on to ,the Palmer,: "especially as the Chinese were using ,Coolie gangs to :':'handle th'eir own and others merchandise. By 1878, ··the.profitability,had fallell further and: Corfield turned. to the far west. See Corfield, Reminiscences, pp. 54, 60, 70, 71. transport. Tlie .A.borigines 1fel~e thus at times the . biggest single probleln facing the miners, often prevexlting them from attempting to gather the ·w·ealth of a new field that seemed teruptinglyscattered about. It was unthinkable for COlOl'lists to accept such restrictions on their 'progress 1 • As tIle Cookto1m Herald observed: 'Vlhen savages are pitted against civilizatiol'l, they must go t,o,,-,",the lvall; it is the fate of their race'. 61 Because of the' fear of attack from ambush and the impossibility of protecting their stock and property, the settle'rs would have liked a large enough Native Police force to drive the Aborigines from each .4- m1nl.ng-. d--l.S-t r1C~.· 62 mh.L -e Queens- 1an- d governmen-t l.ncrease-- d the size of the Native Police Force and sent an increasingly large proportion of it to the CookDistrict~63 ~t it became apparent that this did not quell Aboriginal resistance. Thesca~terednature of the population meant that the increased cost ofgrea~er protec~ion was 64 out of all proportion to its effectiveness. Contemporaries even cri~icised the relevance of the whole philos~pby of the Native Police on the mining frontier. Four years after the discovery of the Palmer, the Cooktown Courier pointed out th'at the aim of the force was 'to establish a state of terror among the blacks, and if it fails in 61. .9..:.!!., 24 June 1874,subeditorial. 62. >Petition of 265 businessmen, mine-owners, miners, and residents generally of the Herberto:n District to T. McIlwraith, Premier and Colonial Secretary of 2ueens land, 1l.8.A.. COL/A335, 2409 of 188'2; "G.E. Dalrymple, Gold Comm.issione,r,Gilberton, to Col. Sec., 22 April 1873, $A.S.A. COL/A183,l009 of 1873; Pol. Com. to Col. See., 21 October 1880, encl. Petition of III residents of Hodgkinson Goldfield to Col. Sec. ~.d~ ~.S.A. COL/A311, 1506 of 1881. 63. See ~i;Police Conunissioner's Report': 1872 v•. & P., p. 1494; 1873 V.'& P., p. 918; 1875 V. & P., Vol. I, p. 617; -1876"V. & P., Vol. I, p. 903. 64. See IPolice Commissioner' so--Report t, 1879 v.. & P., Vol. I, p. 751; Brisbane Courier, 10 January 1876. 65 doing so, it becomes worse than useless l • Indeed, resis tance on the mining frontier provoked discussion of alter natives to the Native ,Police. TIle editor of theCooktown Courier suggested 1 justicef, as the system of shooting as many'Aborigines as possible, innocent and guilty, contairied no illcentive for the Aborigines to show restraint withth.e apparent result that 'the blacks had sent around the fiery cross to muster up all their forces to harrass the white 66 intruders , • It was also urged that a missionary should go out to the Aborigines to establish peaceful relations accepting if necessary martyrdom as missionaries had done 67 in the South Pacific. The contention that the existing Native Police system on the mining frontier was almost a 68 complete failure led even to the conclusion that the 'present system of desultory little massacres' should be replaced by a policy of conciliation and reconcil,iation,.69 Yet, when the government briefly tried to change its policy by attempting to make the Native Police more conciliatory to the Aborigines, there were immediate 65. e.c., 1 January 1878, 'I,Our Aborigines'. See also e.e., 16 July 1879; c.e., 21 FeiJruary 1877, editorial; C.C., 28 February 1877, editorial. 66. e.c., 21 February 1877, editorial. 67. C.C., 10 January 1877. The e"ditor was critical of or-minis~ers of religion who ,remained ann-chair critics of frontier violence. 68. C.C." 28 February 1877, editorial. 69. G.e., 11 January 1878, tOur Aborigines'. 216 70 complaints from the frontier. Nor could a change of government policy change the reactions of tIle settlers. There are ample records that vigilantes of team.s'ters or other settlers were formed ifJl;;ative Police protection 71 was unavailable or inadequate. And, as on the pastoral frontier, a complaint about lack of pol,ice protection was always a sensitive ,and serious political issue which was generally tak,en up by the local newspapers and regarded as a reflection on the government. -Some action was 72 normally promised. The hostility of the Peninsula Aborigines was often 73 given as the reason for the need for extra. protection. Even the beleaguered Police Commissioner admitted: The chief difficulty in the Palmer District has been occas:ioned by the aborigines, ",rho in that district have shown themselves to beunus\1.ally hostile and intractable. 74 There were accounts of Abor~gines on the Palmer returning to the attack, after they had been attacked and put to flight 70. H.A4.N.,29 December 1877. 'The ukase ·issued from t.~e Department of the Colonial Secretary (which has the "administration of all mat,ters relating to the 'Native Police and ,the aboriginals) some three or four mont~hs back has ..provedvery pernicious in restraining sub Inspector Dougl'a,s ttroopers from making the reprisals for t.he deternlined cattle spearing of lv-hich the natives 11ave been guilty since they have discovered the present punishment, if punishment it can be called, of rounding them up has supplanted the vigorous plan. of, follo1fing up and dispersing. them in the old style, breaking up their c~ps"and destroying their weapons of offence'. C.P.,7' August 1884, letter from John Atherton, Emerald End: 'lam not aware •• .tha.t he and his troopers were stationed in the district to protect the blacks, not to punisht,hem, ••• if this is really the case •• ~ I fail to seely-hat use he is to the' 1v-hite populatioll here ••• '. 71. See C.C., 2 March 1878, a11d P.D.T., 21 October 1882; C.C.;T7 July 1879...... ,' 72. Petition from ,the Herberton District, !J.S.A. COL!A335, 2409 of 1882. There were 265 signatuI·es. 73. Ravenswood Miner, ··6 Decembel--1873; P.D.T., 19 February 1876. 74. 'Police Commissioner's Report t 1876 v. & P., Vol. I, p. 903. 217 75 by the Nat.ive Police. Mt.er a series of at.tacks on the Chinese at the Etheridge and the nearby Gilbert, a feeling of panic seemed to grip the residents. Two Europeans lyere o killed and two wounded on the Etheridge in la:te September 76 1873. In lat.e November, it seemst.hat. five Chinese miners ,vare killed and two badly wounded when the Aborigines raided their camp at Gilberton and a European"bound. for 77 Gilberton, was killed. The Police Commissioner protested that the residents were abandoning the Gilbert for the Palmer; yet there seems no doubt that at least some, and possibly all, of 'the 140 to 160 remaining, panicked and abandoned the field so I)recipitously -th8Jt, much valuable property, including crushing .machinery, was lef~ behind. Large quantities of goods were burnt before leaving to prevent the Aborigines from using them. A telegram to the Cleveland Bay Express from the Etheridge rep,orted:" 78 tFugitives from t.he Gilbert are still coming int • In February 1874, the Gilbert telegraph, station was besieged by Aborigines estimated at 'some hundreds t. The station master, his wife, and hi.s assistant barricaded -themselves in the office, and wired Georgetown for assistance and the gol·d.fi,-eltl:~Yarden, Mr. Sellheim, and a party of volunteers 75. Maitland ].ifercury, 25 November 1875 (M~L. Ne,vspaper Extracts 1875-188Q, Vol. I), p. 38. 76. Mackay Mercury, 27 September 1873, an article entitled misleadingly 'The Gilbert'. See D.S.A. JUS/N37, 182 and 183 of 1873: Inquests into deaths of Henry Williams (engineer) and Mr. Same Blake (olYller and blacksnli~h) of Caledonia Crushing;Machine, about one mile from Walshtown, Etheridge. 77. M.M., 6 December 1873 (Telegraphic News , Georgeto,\vn, 22 November) and P.D.T•., 6 December. 1873, 'The Etheridge', from Clevel,and BaY Express. See also J. Cameron, Mt. Hogan (near· Gilberton}, to Col. Sec., 18 De4:: ember 1873, enclosed $l.S.A. COL/AI 95 , 1142 of 1874. See also the rest of this file. 78. M.M., 11 January 1874, quoting a telegram from. Etheridge, 27 December ·1873., to the Cleveland Bay Express. See also fil~ {i.S.A. COL/Al95 , 1142 of 1814. . 2',18 arrived from that town·a.nd drove the Aborigi-nes off before 79 they could l.>reak in. Although, such dramatic events ,verenot frequent, they had both an imrllediate and a long term effect. In the long term they reinforced the lessons learnt from such earlier incidents as the Frazer and ',ilis massacres lv-here the Aborigines had st1ruck hard at Eu.ropeam life and property., They were used t'o llighll.ght European. vulnerability: and -to strengthen the argtanent, that European firepower"!as all that prevented the repetition ()fs"Uch events. The attack on Gilberton and the flight of tl1.esettlers became a minor part of the frontiel" folklore, despite its less dramatic basis of a mining field in the process of be~ng abandoned by most of its population.· In Dec;ember 1874, a rather nervous Acting Lands Commissioner at Normanton 'lvorl-.ied about the att'ention his office. and dwe~ling,wer-e're:c;e-i~v*ng from individual Aborigines or, at the most, smal+ groups, commented: Fortunately the blacks have made no organised attack~ or this place would sll.are the fate of the Gilbert Township. 80 He lv-anted prompt measures to 'dislodge the blacks' campe~ near the town. In 1879 when the field "VIas :;rev:;:fv.ed and incorporated in the surrounding Etheridge, a local correspondent retold the story to stress what' t a few howling savages' could do if polie. proteetionw~ denill. The immediate reaction can be seen in the fevered reports that appeared throughout North Queensland. The l1"orthern tvfiner of Charters To~rers believed the withdrawal 79. I\i.lVf., 14 February' 1874. (Tetegraphic Ne~vs ,Rockhampton, 13 February 1874). 80. C. Francis, Acting Lands Commissioner, Nonnallton, to lviinisterfor Lal1ds, 17 December 1874, 2. S.A. CCL/14G2, 2,9 of-1874, (telegram). 81. gueenslallder, 12 llpril 1879; p. 467. 219 of the Native Police from Gilbel..ton whe,n'the Aborigines were so aggressive, had 'produced a most l)erx'licious and d.a.ngerous feeling among the blacks' • To illustrate hiE point, he pointed to a similar situation exis,ting near Charters TO'w'ers and Ravenslrood when the Native, Police protecting the pastoral and mining distri.cthad beell. withdrawn from Dalrynlp:J.~: Vv11at was the consequence. T11e black telegrapp. was speedily at lfork" the 1'1eWS spread among the tri'bes, t,vo unfortunate Chinamen "\vElremurdered by our ublack brethren, U on the Seventy-!rlile road, prospectors have been hunted and their lives elldangered. 011 the outlying diggings life is no longer. safe, diggerslvere stuck up not a week ago by a prowling tribe at Brooks' Cwmp, and this week there ,vas a general gathering of tribes near Mil1chester comprising contingents from the Flinders, Cape, and Belyando tribes. There ,ras a.grand upalaver, n the general purpose was to attack Ravenswood, ~nd treat it as tlley treated Gilberton, and,_ perhaps,1Jheyare leaving Millchester as a bonne bouche ••• TI1.e simpl,e remedy is to restore the'troopers to'DalrYmple, Gilberton, and other' points of advantage on these Northern gold-fields. 82 The Northern Miner ass~rted that, if the government did not meet its responsibility to protect the whites, a 'Mutual Protection Association1 would be fOrlned. It even used the current excitement to threaten the government in Brisbane that North Queensland would. have to seek separation. This was not the last time that the two hounds of the north-south battle, separation and organised large-scale vigilantes, would be unleashed because of fron~ier conflict. As no~edpreviously, the Aborigines of Cape York Penins'ula soon developed a reputation for sustai-ned and vigorous resistance which, seems to have been well-merit.ed. Some consideration ,viII now Ae undertaken of the factors "\Vllich may account for this. It ... iS1Jrobably impossible to discover 'the extent of the Aboriginal campaigns the Europeans believed to exist at Gilberton, Ravenswood- 82. &.!!., 14 February 1874, quoting from the Northern h~iner. 220 Charters Towers, on the Palmer- and el~ewhere on North 2u eensIandmining fields. Historians have tended to.'", ascribe such views to contemporary European. ignorance of traditiona.l Aboriginal life. Anthropologists have pointed to the inability of Aborigines to organize such campaigns among the groups they have studied. It is-possible, although perha:ps.- not capable- of proof,that _t~e added variable of frontier, conflict-,with bellig~rent.a:Q.d ruthless Europeans produced atypical.; or morefrequenv contacts and communications between the various groups on or near ,the frontier mining. fields. European occupancy of the land was often transient or concentrated into the areas c'urrently being exploited. Thus significant-. displace- ment of Aboriginal groups could have occurred. Alter natively, it'is possible that such large gatherings of Aborigines were initially tra,ditiollCJ,lly;.. orientated, and that they were diverted to concerted acts of resistance because of the shared,widespre'ad, resentment of a no longer bearable European presence,or the lack of natural.resources resulting from it. There is one reported eye-witness account of concerted resistance planned at a traditional ga.thering of -the Kalkadunga of the Cloncurry District.Sa The £.ooktolm Courier pointed out, in January 1878 and January 1879, that with the beginning of ,the wet season the Aborigines were migrating f,rom the coast to the, interior. Both of these migrations were associated with attacks on European property, especially the pulling down 84 of telegraph wire which was used for spear points. 83. Fysh, Taming the North, pp. 122-125. Alexander Kennedy described how his Aboriginal employee, Sandy, had witnessed a Kalkadungacerroboree exhorting· the warriors to kill cattle and kill Kennedy. These were included among other more tradit~on~l corroborees. 84. £.:.Q..;,~ 30 January 1878 and 25 January 1879. 22.1 During May 1877, the dry season, a group of 300 Aborigines was reported killing cattle and horses close to Coo]d,own. Such a large group could easily have been gathered at ~he coast for ceremonial reasons and denied their normal food ,supply because of the large population of intruders on the Endeavour River. 85 The anrLual migrations and the driving ~ff and systematic harvesting of horses possibly indicate bo~h Aboriginal efforts to meet new challenges and their attem.pts to ,carryon "their traditional pattern .of life"rhile incorporating the European additions to their eavironment that they found useful. There may have been factors in the tradition~l life of· the Peninsula Aborigines that made them more dangerous ellemies to -the intruding Europeans. A reading of contemporary European accounts suggests -that the P·eninsula Abori.gines staged a prolonged and formidable resistance and ~supports the belief th8Jt theA~origines often resisted in very large groups with p'erllaps more frequency than such large scale resistances were re'corded in the so~th.86 Ye-t much of the reputation of the Peninsula Aborigines can be put, do'\m to the nature of 'the industry 'and the nature of the terrain. The northern fields, as previously indicated, made it impossible for ~he Native Police to offer adequate protection and the minerslvere often unable to defend them selyes e-ffectively. In addition, the centres of the greatest mini~population on each field moved' about f·requently, th~s shifting the grea-test challenge·,"'to "the Aboriginal population from one ,grC!'up to allother. Although, 85. ~., 5 May--1871. 86. See, for example, y., 6 December 1873; C.C., 13 June 1874, letter "to editor from W. Kinmout,h, 'Attacked by_ the Blacks f; ~., 20 June 1874; .£:£.,3' October 1874, 'The Pa.lmer t • 22'2 this must have had B,. chaotic effect, on t,raditi.onal Aboriginal life, it-must also often have meant ~hat Aboriginal resistance was not being .. completely broken by a stable population that had a ves"ted interest in such an outcome. Thus, by the close of 1876~ only three years af~er thePalmerwasdiscov~red, ~he number of Europeans, seeking alluvial gold had dropped to 300 from 1500 at the beginning of the year while, from 1811 to 1880, the Chinese population of,'the field ·had 87 dropped from 17,0001;0 3,000. The Gilbert., discovered in 1869, h~ apopnlation of about 3,000' by August which 88 had dwindled 1;0 about. 150 by Oct.ober. It. was abandoned in 1873 w1th Aboriginal resistance still very:great but 89 re-opened by Chinese leaving t.he Palmer in 1878. Pastoralists sooner or later had to come to peaceful terms ·with the local Aborigines ~r wipe them; out completely. The latter solutio~ was rarely desired and possibly ev~n more rarely passible,. Moreover, as.willbe seen, financia.l and labour considerations often made a peaceful accord de·sirable. On mining fields, however, the industry could surtive and attract optim~sts while there was still ,the lure of easy· gold as long as Aboriginal resistance was inhibited to the stage where it 'Was an acceptable ,risk. Indeed the difficulty of reaching an accord wi~h the ~borigines may have resulted in the miners'resorting to the use of fireanns more easily than did the pastoralistse Thus, in 1876, a party of prospectors chanced upon Mulligan1 s party at dusk on the Hodgkinsoll River and, thinking they were Aborigines, opened fire up()n them. The explanation of the hostile 87. Bolton, A Thousand Miles Avay,·pp. 58, ,6.0. See 'Palmer Goldfield Report for 1879', 1880 V. &P., p. 598 and II.M.N., 30 June .1877, for Warden Hodgkinson! s estimate ofpa,lmer population, after. Hodgkinson rush drew off a considerable number, at '1,400 Europeans and 17,000 Chinese. 88. Bolton, ~p. ~it., ~. 47. 89. ibid., pp. 60'. 61. 223 90 action· ·was ac'cepted. happ,ily by Mull i ganIS party. The inhospitable terrain of Peninsula field,s was a vital factor. It often favoured Aboriginal resistance especially as there were extensive areas where the miners were greatly outnumbered. .It is not co-incidental that the Aborigines of the Cloncurry mining field, where these two factors were also present,had a reputation ,to rival 91 ~ha~ of ~he Peninsula Aborigines. Thus as early as 1870, the Police Magistrate at Burketown reported the Chinese driven away from the old diggings at Cloneurry while ~hose a~ ~he new diggings were being ~hreatened.92 An ex-Native Police officer cl.aimed that the Kalkadunga intended to combine to kill all Europeans on the stations in the 93 district. As the European firepower and mobility were so vastly superior to the Aborigines, it was only in such favourable areas as the Peninsula and the Cloneu~ry di~trie~ that Aborigines could aggressively resist "for an extended period. Strangely enough, while the Aborigines of the North gueensl~nd mining fields have attracted a romantic interest, because 9f their fierce resistance, there is,mlch ignored evidence available which sugges~s ~hat the invaders' brutali~y and callousness provided much 9£ th"emo,tivation. For apart from the Aborigines' natural resentment of the European and Native Police violence and the Chinese 90. Quoted in Logan Jac'k, Northmost Australia.,v"ol. 2, ,p. 464, from J.H. Heaton', Australian Dictionary of Dates and.Men of the Time (Sydney, 1879). 91. ZAnon;], Pioneering in -the North-West': a few Rambling Notes of. Ha ani s in the Far North-West of ueensland 40" to 45 Years Ago. n.p., 1920 , pp.l, 2. type script, M.L.)•• The. writer claimed to be an ex-Native Police Officer, 'possibly'Sub Inspector Eglington. 117~ See~~--~~---~also Fvsh.-"~~--J TamiBlZtheNorth.-----9 - _. -, 44UD. 94-97.",120_ 124, 140-148, 182-184. 92. Vi. Landsborough, P.M. Burketown," to Col. Sec., 7 April 1870, a.S.A. COL/Al47 , 2311 of 1870. 93. LAnon~, Pioneering in the North-West, p. 2. intrusion., there ~as sim~lar enensive kidnapping o~ Aboriginal women and children to that encountered on the pastoral frontier. Thus, frontie'rmailmanand prospector, J.C. Hogflesh, asserted that -the carriers on the Palmer Roadlyerethe 94 lvorst· offenders. In Binnie" s account of, his life on the Palmer from 1876 to 1882, he' described how one passing bullock team gave or sold a twelve year old 'black girl to 'the wife of the teamster transporting Binnie and his mother from Cooktown to th.e Paimer. The girl could not understand English and was very frightened, especially Qfthe teamster . who threatened to shoot two Aboriginal men 'Working for him (and later did), fired sh,ots atnight1io warn off local Aborigines, and horse-whipped her when she refused to fetch wa~er from a n~arby lagoon because of her fear that Aborigines were hiding there. The disgusted teamster1 s wife 'gave her, to the owner of a passing bullock team, .asking that she be sent to a friend in Br.isbane to be 'educated'.95 Carrier, W.H. Corfield, recorded'how the six year old survivor of a Native Police dispersal at the Laura River was retained by"Sub-Inspector O'Connor's troopers as, a camp pet but, tKnovling I had n~ blackboy, he gave me the little fellow he had so well drilled'. 96 . Aborigines were very useful cheap labour for the team sters and it was apparently connnon practice to 'have at least one to look after the animals" help with the loading and ~nloading, and to h'elp make and break camp eac,h day. Children of both sexes and l\.boriginal women· were apparently obtained on t.he goldfields in a variety of ways while 94. J.C~ Hogflesh, Herberton,to B.D. lviorehead, Chief' Sec., 8 October 1889, U.S.A. COL/A595 , .9567 of 1889. He wason the field from as'early as 1870 and actually discovered the .strau massacre. 95. Binnie, My Life on '8, Tropic' .Gold Field, pp. 8..... 11. 96. Corfield, Reminiscences, p. 59. 225 'civilized t male and female Aborigines from other areas 97 w-ere common. The women and adolescent girls were used often to satisfy the sexual needs of the teamsters and others on the predominantly male frontier. The Native Police here, as on other frontiers, commonly distributed orphaned Aboriginal children or children picked' up after , 98 a 'dispersal' and presumed to be orphans. The disposal of Aborigines as if they were the property of the Europeans was thus very.common on the goldfields as it ,vas elsewhere in gueensland. However, on the mining frontier while Aborigin~l resistance was unbroken and police prot,ection inadequate, kidnapping local Aborigines was a dallgerous IJrOVocation. In discussing events on the Cloncurry mining field of the late 1870's, an ex-Native Police Inspector wrote: I may mention that murders of white~ by black~ were~ frequently, and properly so too, referred to as acts of retaliation for cruelty by ,the whites or revenge for interference with their gins. 99 Referring to the Palmer, Binnie agreed: fA great VO~lUIle of tIle crimes committed against tIle whites could 'be t lOO attributed to revenge • On some goldfields, the Aborigines ,rere in the happy position of being able to express their resentment. 97. ibid., pp. 46,47. 98. ibid., p. 59; Davidson, J'ournal 1865=1868, p. 30; RevI» I.V. Black, Trinity Parsonage, BO'w'en, to Col. Sec., 7 September 1868, g.S.A. COLjAlll,914 of 1868, and Col. Sec's reply: 2.8•.A.., Letterbook of Miscell aneOl1S Letters 2 Ja:n.uary 1868-28 Decembel'" ~; P.D.T., 3 Feb~~ary 1877, fromCookto,vn Courier. A naked twelve yea,r old girl,broughtback by blood beSlJattered troopers after a dispers~l, was given or sold to a G"ool~ownr'esident 11vhose iiroperty slle has now· become I. 99. LAnonJ,PiOl1.eeri!:'!K in the J:lorth-\,Vest, p. 3. 100. Binnie. op. cit. ,p. 12. 226 On the goldfields, too, the Aborigines seem to have quickly c~apted their defensive measures and to have used traditional skills to meet the challenge of the intruders. TIle first relJort from the Paltner claimed that thongl1 the Aborigines were very numerous they were not particul~rly hostile and 'had evidently never seen a white man before'. They were mystified by the whites' digging in sand and dUg similarly, aI)lJaren.tly to see what food the Europea~ns had 101 been looking for. The first large scale intEnsions, from the Endeavour River, however, provoked determined hostility.102 Indeed two separate' reports from the Palmer to the Brisbane Telegraph and to the Clevela~ ~ay Express describe objectively thre'e separate clashes, two of which ,vere 103 probably initiated by the Aborigines. These clashes 104 seem to have resulted in great loss of Aboriginal life. 101. :a. IV!. , 11 October 1873, 'TIle Palmer Goldfield'. This refers to Mulligan's first prospecting expedition. 102. R.M., 6 December 1873, 'A Trip to the Palmer', from Cleveland Bay Express. 103. ibid.; Brisbane Telegraph, 20 January 1874, ,'The Palmer'. 104. T. Hamilton, P.M., Cooktown, to Col. Sec., 28 }A:arch 1874, enclosing (1') a sworn statenlentfrom 16 members of ,the Palmer ,ExI)edition, dated 26 Marchl,~74, (2) an article from the Brisbane _Tel'egraRh-~=-2('}'Ja,pu.ary 1874, 'The Palmer', and' (3) 'A. ,David;son, Aborigines Protection Society, Brisbane,toA. Macalister, Col. Sec., 23 January 1874, !!.S.A. COLf'A194,701 of 1874. An enquiry followed the Bris~ane Telegraph's. relJort which cleared the expedition, and especially the Native Police, of indiscriminately slaughtering Aborigines. But, as the Police l\tlagis,trate inquired of sixteen private luembersof the acc~sed expedition lvho would .later need to defend themselves against such A.borigines and call upon the Native Police, their sworn statement is less than c.onvincing. They claime~ that there was on~y one clash when 1,50 Aborigines attacked the expedi~ion at dawn. Their statenlent,.We he@Jrd there was one black shot in the dispersion', can hardly be accepted, especially as such hearsay testimony, conveniently cou~d not be used as evidence. See eXtracts froID ,\r. lVebb 1 s account, of the journey from Cooktown to the Palmer in R.L. Jack, Northmost Australia, Vol. II, pp. 420-423. Williwm 227 Such; frontal attacks with their ensuing heavy losses taught the ...L\.borigilles a lesson. In February 1877,the Cooktown Couriercla~ed the Aborigines were more wary but not cO"fled; they had learned the range and efficacy of a rifle bullet. It was believed that their numbers,vere not, appreciably decreased and the country was still not safe, except in patches where considerable numbers of,miners l05 congregated•. ,A year later the samepaper waS still complaining that the Aborigines wel"e more dangerous and audacious tllan they were the first year after opening the Palmer. 106 The growing sophistication of the ~borigines in this frontier conflict situation was indicated in a variety of ways. A year after the initial rush to the Palmer, they lfere readily adap~ingEuropea~n·articlesto suit a great variety,oftheir needs. Bits of hoop i,ron "lv-ere beaten out into knives and set in handles, the forehead band of a leather bridle was· used as head-band,waggon linch pillS 104. Webb, one of the men on this expedition, later informed (cont.) Logan Jack' that,'solue blacks' andta, lot of blacks' were killed on two separate occasions "vlithout apparent justification and another group who were apparently t'rying to establish pe}aceful contact with the intruders were hunted away by the leader of the government party.' At Battle Camp wher-ethe Aborigines attacked tlleEuropeans' some' ~borigines were killed in the firstassault trllile an indetenninate number were trapped at a large lagoon and killed: 'all that lvent there stayed there t • 'Va bbapparently believed that thEt. 'killing was not indiscriminate and that the g_~vernmen~ inquiry had reported th,e full story. ,lie" also,thought·itjustified. See als0Q.:.!!., 19,-Aug1.lst 1874. A Palmer correspondent toth~Cooktown IIerald,in August 1874, had heo~rdth~=t;t ,thirte.en Aborigines were killed at Battle Camp ;alone. 105. C.C.', 28 FebrUary 1877. 106. C.C'. ,. 2 March 1878. ,vere bea.lten out into axes; in fact> any metal object was 107 carried away as a prize for later adaptation. They also soon realized that' the Chinese ,vere generally less dangerous targets than the Europeans, preswnablybecause t.hey were usually poorly armed and unmounted and thus less capable ofinstitu-ting reprisals. The Aborigines frequently attacked very large Chinese groups of fifty and more. 108 A series, of successfulatt8~cks on the Chinese at the Gilbert River in late 1872 and in late 1873 (discussed previously) indicated that the l1.borigines were often contemptuous of the Chinese. Similar attacks were recorded on :other fields. A~tacks of this sort would have been attempted on large groups of Europeans only in the very 109 early days of a newfield if at 0.11. The need of the Aborigines to be more circumspect with the better mounted and armed Europeans was; increa~ed by the disproportionate number of unprincipled adventurers attracted to the newest frontier. There wascthepromi.se of quick wealth othenvise beyond a poor man~s dreams and, as usual, an"ti--social ruffians who could not live; happily within the normal constraints of European civilization or who would not be tolerated were among the first, to arrive. 107. Maitland Mercury, 25 November 1815, (M.L. Newspaper Extracts 1875-1880, Vol. I). 108. Binnie, My Life on a Tropic Gold Field, p. 13, .refers to the Aborigines 1 lack of fear of the Chinese.'" 109. ibid. See al·so U.S'.A. JUSjN35: 230 of 1872 inques-ts into deaths of Ah Pio, and Cha.ng Sang, miners, speared by Aborigines at the Gilbert Riveer on 1 November 187.2; 238 of 1872, Hug orAh Cow, miner, speared by Aborigines at the Gilbert River ,on 12 November 1812; 241 of 1872, All Cook, miner, speared by Aborigines at the Gilbert River on 12 November 1872; and '242 of 1872, Cum Ty, miner, speared by Aborigines at Gilbert River on 17 November 1872. In all of the above inquests Chin'ese witnessesstate h01Y they ran off at the first sight ,ofA.borigines. No mention is made of using firearms to protect themselves. Palmel", Early Days in North Queensland, p. 183. 22:9 The Police Magist,-r,ateatthe N,orman Rlverin 1871 lvasglad to remark that the bad ,characters from the Burke District ll~ ~ h, a,d moved on t 0 th' eoo-C k "n-J.SLLtrl.C,• t go',Idf·1e'ld's. L,aver the Goldfield Warden at Palmerville asserted that some of the Palmer miners were the 'Worst characters in the c,olony 111 but that many criminals were n~_ver charged. In his brief account of the Palmer f,rom1876 to_J.882, Binnie also gave examp1 es 0'f 's0ID:e ml.ners· 1 l'alV1 essness.' ; 112 -m...\\luI.• l'e 1n· h. l.S · travels to far north 2ueens1and searching for Aboriginal art sites, Mr. Percy Trezise recorded a tradition handed down by miners of Mayto,m and Cooktown that many Chinese deaths that have been attributed to Aborigines'\ver,e actually committed by European gold-robbers who thrust spe-ars into the bullet; holes to simulate an Aboriginal attack.113 It is certainly possible that the.Aborigines were sometimes made scapeg_oats for European and perhaps Chinese criminal acts. W.R.O. Hill who was a government -official on most of the northern fields described the Cape River as fa, decidedly rough locality', some of the miners being 'the scum 'of all the Southern goldfields •• .; brutal fights' ••• ,vera a daily o~currence ••• I have seen a man kicked to deat4 in the op~n daylight, the.police and .everyuol... dy e 1see"J.ngb·'po·\V"eress1 t"·0 l.ftt erf"ere,114.• Ce·rta1U. 1y the ear~y ~ays of a new rush were crude, hard-drinking, violent places but the impression ~erived from reading the .contemporary newspapers and official correspondence is tllat law and ord~r quickly: followed• 110. .~~In'spector (of-'N~tive Police)';}.a.eS•. 'Morisset, P.ril., -Nonnan River, to Col. Sec. ,,22July 1871·,>11.S.A. COL/AI59, 1898 of 187~., . , 111_. ,Goldfield Warden, Falmerville" to Col. Sec., '23 March 1875, !l •. S.A.C·OLfA2~8, 1,111 of 1875. 112. 'Binnie, My Life ona Tropic Gold Fiel,d, pp. 13, .14, 17. 113. Trezise,!1uirikan -Country, p. -111. 114. Hill, Forty-Five Years' Experiences in North Queens land 1861-1905, p. 47. - 230 In fact, la.w and order was demanded as a right. To th'e :Europeans Aboriginal resistance was oned:s,spect of this and it was expected that the Aborigines should be pacified regardless of the cost in Aboriginal lives. Indeed the colonial government drew C01'lstant criticism for its inability to confine this atypical challenge within the no~al framework of European police action. Once again, the colonists differentiated in their public utterances bet,veen killing Aborigines in pacified areas 1v-here it would be regarded as a crime and killing Aborigines in areas where the Aborigin.es were I bad t • Here it l\TaS an act of war forced on the colonist by frontier circumstances 115 or a lax government. -Some at the time regarded this l16 bloodshed with disgust but it Wl;LS generally approved. Thus sub Inspector Douglas of the Native Police was - .." .... 117 described with enthusiasm as 'the terI~or of the b~acks-':, while Sergeant Devine was referred to humorously as an"active and energetic 'black tracker,.118 ~he intensity of the conflict may be suggested, however inadequately, by the casualties inflicted by the Aborigines. Although the loss of non-Aboriginal life was many times less than the I.oas of Aboriginal life, the records for the former, though nowhere near complete, are generally the only ones available. The otherwise unauthenticated, and often it seems uninvestigated,claims of successful 115. C.C., 1 January 1878. See also J. Cameron, Gilbert iii;'er, to A.H. Palmer,Col. Sec., 24 November 1873, Jl.S.A. COL/Al95, 1142 of 1874. There was even on the nomad gold frontier an attitude that it was degrading, a loss to civilizat-ion,to be f_orced to aband:on prosperous pursliits t.o· t savages' • 116. J.C. Hogflesh to Chief Sec., 8 Oct6ber 1889, loc. cit. 117. C.C., 20 June 1874. 118. hTtland lVlercury, 20 November 1875, (M.L. , Aboriginal Newspa)Jer Extracts 1875-1880, vol.. I). Aboriginal resistance that commonly appeared in the news papers, especially with reference 'to theCooktown-Palmer District, suggest strongly that more Europeans were killed -than has been discovered in this research and many more Chinese. Thus the Palmer correspondent" to the Cooktown Courier clai~ed that the murder of solitary travellers and prospectors was 'neither few nor far between,ll9 while the Palmer Chronicie'believedl five Chinamen had been killed by the Aborigines at Chinkies Gully.120 Such ca.sual asides indicate an acceptal1ce of the view that widespread loss of life was occttrr1ng. The first indication that Aboriginal resistance-was a major prob~em to frontier miners, came from the Gilbert. In April 1873, the Goldfield Warden, Dalrymple, reported ten miners and travel~ers had been killed, seven in the 121 . . previous six mon~hs. Between 1 and 17 Novemberl812, at least five and possibly seven Chinese miners had been killed in several spectacular raids by large numbers of Aborigines, the largest group being estin;ul-ted at two to - . 122 three hundred. Dalrymple reported 'nearly the whole Chinese population, which fo~ed t~e valuable alluvial diggings of the field, l~ft the district, leaving the valley of the Gilbert in undisputed possession of the A' b·.or1g1nes· .. ., • 123 A· ye8",r 1at er all-I. 1eas··t f our'. mIners· were 119. -M.M., 31 October 1874, 'The P~lmer1 from Q.:.f.., 29 September 1874. See also Maitland Mereu'ry, 25 November 1875, for an account of unknown diggers, pr'obably killed by Aborigines. 120. P.D.T., 16 November 1878, from Palmer Chronicle. 121. G.E. Dalrymple, Gold Connnissioner and P.M., Gilberton, to Col. Sec., 22 April' ,1873,!l.S.A. C0L./A183, '1009 of 1873. ' 122. M.M.,30 November 1872. See also inquests n.S.A. JUSjN35 andN38,1872: 230, Chang Lang and AhPie (plus ,one otherChines.e mine:r?); Nug Cow; 241" All Cook (plus one other'Chinese miner?); 242, Cum Ty. 123. Dalrymple to Col. Sec~, 22 April 1873, loe. cit. 232 killed and as many more wounded on the Gilbert and tyro killed and two 1rounded OD th'e . adjacent Etheridge. As indicated previously in-this chapter, the, discovery of the Palmer and these Aboriginal raids led to the desertion of the Gilbert. 124 I'dth the opening of the Pa.lmer there be'ga.na period of conflict. that lasted more than twenty years. III the first rush from the Endeavour River in October 1873, one miner, probably two otllers, and possibly l25 a fourth were killed by the Aborigines. By the end of 1874, at least 24 settlers were killed in the Cooktown Palmer District, with the probability of five otllers and 'the possibility of another four; duri~ .1875, at lea,st nine were killed and possibly 13' more; during 18'16, at least two andpossibly three more; during 1877, at least' tlro \vere killed and probablyal1.other one; and during '1878, ";at least fo·ur and probably five more. No deaths ,.yare discovered caused by Aboriginal resistance during 1879. Thus, from October 1873 to the close of 1879, at least 41 settlers 1yere killed by Aboriginal resistance, probably' another 11, and possibly 20 more. During the 1880's, at least anot~er 21' settlers were killed in the Cooktown-Palmer area, and from 1890 to June 1895, lvhen th-e last 'deathresnlting froDl Aboriginal res'istance was recorded, at least eight settl~rs were killed1vith possibly t,yO 124. J. Cameron, Mt.llogan, yiaGilberton,toCol-. Sec., 18 December 1873, 2.S.A.COL/A195, 1142 of 1874; M.li. ,<27 September 1873, 'The Gilbert' and A'l.IvI., . 11 October'1873. See also $l.S.A. JUS/N37, 182 and 183 of 1873. 125. Jack, Northmost Australia, V()l. II, pp. 421 and 423. 233 and possibly four more. Thus more than twice as many people were reported killed by Aborigines in the Cool{town Palmer District than 011 all otherNorth~ueenslandfrontier mining fields. These figures help t9"e'xplain the popular legends' about bloodshed on the Palmer·which "Viill 11.OW , be examined. The Palmer especially 'has become part of frontier 126 folklore and the conflict assumed heroic proportions. Recent connllentatorshave ,also been less than restrained in their accounts of tl'le Europea..lls, and Chil1ese killed by Abor'ig·iIles. In the centenary history of Queensland, Cilento alld Lack claimed 'thousands' of C'hinese lvere kil'l'ed:and 121 eaten by the Aborigines on the Palmer wh:l.1e Holthouse stated that 'hundreds' of C carrlers· .-were k1-IIe.d 131 It seems 1mposs1o· .. 't l..t.e ~o ascer~1n. t· the' facts contributing .to the legend. Only,:\34,dea;ths ,at,triJ~uted. with¢ertaintyto' .Aboriginal resistance h,t\ve been' ca.t~gor~z~,dChi~.esf.)o'" in the course of this research; that 126. Fysh,Taming thel\Iorth, ~. ·148; H.Holthouse, Ri~ of Golcl: the' St<;J.!X of th~Palmer lliver Gold· Rush (Sydney, . 1967J, 1:>., '72; R. Cilento and C.Lack,Triumph in the Tro ics': ari Historical Sl{etch of Oueells1and Brisbane, 1959 , p. 203; Bolton, A Thousand lviiles Al'ray, p. ·57. 127. Cilento and Lack, Triumph in the Tropics, p. 203. 128. H~lthouse, River of Gold, p. 9&. 129. ibid., pp. 126, 127. I have not sighted the origiIlal account of this i:n.cidento» ,Most of the incideIlts I me~n.tio:ned by Holtllouse vlereel1countered in the IJrimary sources in this study. 130. ibid., p. 32. 131. ibid., p. 36. J.s' fewer than half of ,the:~7ltdeatllsc'Ql'lfide~ntlyaccepted. (Se'e Ilppendix B). Bec&)iseofthe nUlnberof Chinese on the field i!i comparison with the European population, one can only conclu.dethat ,the above statistics a, glimpse into the condition of Aboriginal society on the nining frontier obtained. TheA.boriginalart:sitesrecently discovered; by Trezise intheru~ged hillcountrYa,rt:)und the Laura ,River have shown,ho1vever" that s'-orne .A.borigines were:tryillg,to accol11illodate· ·the presence of the int~...lders in ,their:world ·picture. Among the .last paintings execute< by the Aborigil1alarti,sts ,were, rep,rese:ntationsof aspects of. the invaders 'culture. 132. Fysh, op. cit,.,p.148;Holthouf~e,op.cit.,:p:.72; Cilent.o' andLack,op.cit•.'J',p.,203;Bolton,,- op. cit. ~ p.57.' 235 Horse _and rider, Lau.raGallery, Cooktown District. '''-"",'i:~<;~ Above shown lvith tra4itional subjects. l\fr.P. Trezise in foreground. Reprodncet;! ,vithpenllission of lfr. P. Trezise. 236. In a sinal1 gallery tirentymiles north-lvestofCoo!rtolYn, there is a masted boat drawn inpipe~clay. Trezise believes that th.e site had. been used af-ter the coming of the Europea11s because of the presence of tlro l"~ge J.nangotrees outside the sllelter'. He'thinks thatthe'dra,ving represents 'a lugger, pr~bably used by an early beche-de-mer fisherman. In another gallery, there is a relJresentation of a horse, ten 133 feet long and six feet wide. Just north of the Laura 134 River, there is a painting of a policeman with a peaked-cap. In ee..ch of t,ro other galleries, a -ten foot long horse is represented in yellow' ochre. A dark red booted fig-ure seems to represent a rifle-carz·ying black policeman just thrown by his horse. 13Q Near the other horse is a repres entation of a pig. There are three horses represented in these galleries, two about life size and one an astonishillg 136 giant, as well as a stencilled horse's hoe:f. Trezise also records the discovery of an actual steel 'tomaha,vk at one of the galleries made from a horseshoe broken into t,vo 137 pieces, sharpened, and hafted. It, is difficult to sta.te with anycertail1.ty the function of these drawings. Trezise suggests that the Aborigines, finding themselves unable to defeat the invaders physically, resorted to sorcery to try to de'stroy their enemies and that this explains at least some o:f the paintings D1enti~~~d. He cone·ludes; There is no doubt that these shelters, situated high up in rough country, were .the last ,strongholds of t~e wild warr.iors. They retired -to them after each attack on the access andsupply:routes to tbePalmergoldfield, which ,vound -along the valleys and exeeks be,low. The large sorcery paintings illustrated the last dreadful 133. Tre,zise, Quinkan Country, p. 58. 134. ibid., p. 148. 135. ibid.~ p. 126. 136. ibid., p. 127. 137. ibid., p. 77. 138. ibid., p. .63. 237 chapters in a long history of art which had its beginn.ings way off':'. in the Drearntime. 139 Other paintings, for exwnple of tile hOr-~es and the pig, may hav~ been associ"ated with increase ceremonies as these animals becarlle ilnportant elenlents in the Aboriginal life and ,,\,ere probably subswned into thei;r tote!uic world picture as Sharpas'h ~n· d·1caet d'1n ....n~s d'escr~p10n'. t· ole,f th J·1rJoron.· 140t It is possible that the representation of the whit,e nlan, the Native Police, and their huge and ter,rifying horses were early attempts to placate these st~ange de:i11ons. There is only one certain conclusioll that, can be reached. During the ,period of frontier conflict, the Aborigines had tried to understand the invaders in terms of their traditional philosophy. They had tried to accommodate to this newest, most revolutionary and most, disruptive of alien influences. Tlleir attack on ,the invaders and their animals lvas but pa.rt of a much wider cultural response. The mining frontier persisted in parts of Cape York Peninsu].a. througlloutthe period of this ,study. DUring this time there was apparently ~o appreciable ·change in the nature Qf race relations created by this moving frontier. The wave of small discoveries. which sometimes at first . promised other P~lmers rolled up the Peninsula fro~ Coen in 1878, to the Musgrave, to as far as the Batavia River in 1892 1\There there was a, sizeable rush which soon disappointed. There were still 150 miners ont;hat field at the end of 1892 and in 1894 the discoverer, of thefield,Baird,wa$ killed there by Aborigines while two other prospectors 141 were seriously wounded. The distribu.tion of the Police 139. ibid., .pp. 119, 148. 140. R.L.Sharp,.SteelAxes for'StroneAge People, passim. 141. e.c.: 4 May 1894 andl June 1894. See Bolton, A ~usand MilesAway,:p. 61 and Jac~ Northmost Australia, Vol. II, pp.466-7,for the Coen rushes of ·1878 and 1880. See Jack, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 703-4, for the Batavia River rush. 238 -indicated that -the Peninsula Aborigines were still resisting the scattered pastoralists and miners. In 1889, when -tl.?-ere was a very large reduction (apIJroximately one-third) :in the strength of the Native Police,trhere were 43 troopers in the Cooktown District (which included the far northern Peninsula.) and another 16, at Port Dougl'as out of a total of 144,142 and in 1895 t.here were still 45t-roopers or 143 trackers in the Cook District. In 1894, the Cooktown Courierts Mitchell River correspondent co"plainedof the blacks being 'verytrouble,some I and threatening the abandonment of country. They had even made an unsuccessful night attack on Sub Inspector Poingdistre's Nati.ve 'Police l44 detachment. In the same month, theCooktown Courier described, lvith low-key nonchalance, the es'cape of::,'a beseiged party of miners}45 There seemed to be no"thing unusual about this. The forty odd troopers were no doubt gainfully employed butbyt,his time frontier llroblems seemed peripheral, even in'-Cooktown. Thus the nature of Aboriginal-European relations on the frontier mining fields remained much the same from 1869 to the end of the period being studied. They were character ised by coilflict with the Aborigines in the areas being ope'ned up. Theintensity·ofthe conflict was dependent upon -the location and terrain of the mining fields and the nature of the invaders' industry. The fields were situated on or near watercourses that were essential to both the invading and ~ndigenous po,pulations. As well, they were generally situated in mountainous terrain. which made exploitation difficult and eXpensive and facilitated 142. 'Police Commissioner's ~port for 1889', 1890V.&~~., Vol~ I, pp~ 978, 979. 143. 'Police Commissioner's Report t, 1895 v. & ~., Vol. I, p. 1047. 144. c.e., 11 September 1894. 145. e.c., 28 ,September- 1894. 239 Aboriginal resistance. The fluid nature of the mining population meant that there 'lv-ere no sure _refuges to which the Aborigines couldret,ire. The unpredic"table intrusion of" miners must have been extremely provocative and helped produce the intense Aboriginal resistance. The ephemeral nature of most of the centres of population rendered it, virtually impossible for the Aborigines and frontier miners to reach a peaceful accord as happened s'ooner or later on the pastoral frontier. The diggers" were thus "even m.ore -likely to resort to firearms -than the pastoralists. In most areas there was insllfficient time for the miners to break Aboriginal resistance completely or" for the Aborigines to resign themselves to the presence of miners. Indeed, by 1880, when the period of major rushes was over, Aborigines had no~ been let in on the frontier mining fields. A.borigillal resistance posed very serious problems on these fields. Thep~or and of~en lengthy COBnunications between mining centres and between the fields and the coast were extremely. vulnerable to Aboriginal attack. This was especially true of the Palmer and Hodgkinson fields. An additional reason for at,tac~ing the 1 ines of cOIllillunication and the associated animals was the limited number of pastured stock the Aborigines could attack to replace their natural food supplies which were greatly inhibited by the intrusion of the miners. An"impo~ant function of the Native Police was to keep the roads open. This force's normal function of intimidating Aboriginal resistance was much less ,succe,ssful tilan on the open pastoral frontier because of the vulnerability not only of, the miners 1 tent"s and camps while the men were gully raking but also of the" miners pushing out in small groups, often secretively, into new areas, and splitting up further into ones and tlios. Finally, it should be noted that the 2neensland governmen~ was never able to offer miners protection that was regarded as adequate even by the standards of the pastoral frontier. Thus, ·the colony's frontier policy could not, cope effectively witll the frontier mining fields.