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Harry Brown (C. 1819–1854): Contribution of an Aboriginal Guide in Australian Exploration Greg Blyton

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Harry Brown (C. 1819–1854): Contribution of an Aboriginal Guide in Australian Exploration Greg Blyton Harry Brown (c. 1819–1854): Contribution of an Aboriginal guide in Australian exploration Greg Blyton In recent years there have been a number of important historical works which recognise the important contribution of Aboriginal guides in the exploration of Australia. This article contributes to this field by providing a narrative history of a young Aboriginal man from Newcastle called Harry Brown who accompanied the well-known Prussian explorer, Dr Ludwig Leichhardt, on two expeditions into the interior of Australia in the 1840s. Brown was a highly intelligent, resilient and skilful man who made an enormous contribution to Australian exploration, yet has been overlooked in Australian historiography. His contribution to Australian exploration is an exemplar of Aboriginal influence during the nineteenth century which extends well beyond simplistic portrayals of Aboriginal people as useful, submissive and subservient guides. It will be demonstrated in this article that without the courageous and resolute Brown along with his perspicacity and judgement, the widespread celebration of Leichhardt’s discoveries may not have been forthcoming. The recognition of Aboriginal people in Australian history has made some progress since the late Professor William Stanner chastised Australian historians for failing to acknowledge Aboriginal people in the development of Australia. In 1968, Stanner described this omission as the ‘Great Australian Silence’ and referred to mentions of Aboriginal people in Australian histories, scant as they were, as a ‘melancholy footnote’.1 In some ways this may explain why Harry 1 Stanner 1991: 25. 63 ABORIGINAL HISTORY VOL 39 2015 Brown has been overlooked in Australian exploration history. Aboriginal Australian political academics, the late Dr Bruce McGuinness and Dennis Walker, stated in 1985: Aboriginal heroes, of course, in the main remain nameless … Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth … are depicted as being intrepid explorers who found their way across the Blue Mountains in the greater expanse of Australia. Of course this isn’t true. Aboriginal people showed them the way. Without those Aboriginal people they wouldn’t have been able to get across those mountains. Those Aboriginal people remain nameless, yet the ‘intrepid explorers’ are forever glorified by statues and throughout the history books of Australia. There do exist, throughout those historical accounts of what occurred throughout Australian history, many examples of Aboriginal involvement in the blazing of trails, in the establishment of settlements, and in every area of Australian advancement. However, they’re hidden within the historical accounts that exist. They remain nameless people.2 It is evident from nineteenth-century colonial newspapers that Aboriginal guides in Australian exploration were once recognised albeit in a brief, paternalistic and dismissive way. On 2 April 1899, Sydney newspaper the Truth reported that a memorial had been held at the Saint James Church Sydney to remember the tragic death of the European explorer Edmund Kennedy and heroic deeds of ‘… the faithful aborigine Jackey Jackey on a fateful expedition to Cape York in 1848’.3 On 2 November 1889, the Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal acknowledged the important service provided to Captain Matthew Flinders by ‘his black boy, Bungaree’, who acted as an intermediary when encountering Aboriginal communities on several sea expeditions, including the circumnavigation voyage around Australia in 1803.4 On 30 December 1845, Brown is also given a brief mention in The Australian as ‘the black fellow, Harry Brown of Newcastle’ who accompanied the European explorer Ludwig Leichhardt.5 Nineteenth-century colonial newspapers diminished Aboriginal guides by referring to them in derogatory terms such as ‘blacks’, ‘black boy’, ‘faithful aborigine’; they were characterised as submissive and obedient servants on European expeditions throughout Australia. Even in the 1970s, popularised historical novels such as Jackey Jackey (1976) by Margaret Paice maintained the portrayal of Aboriginal guides as timid, submissive and feeble-minded. For example, in the following passage from this book Jackey Jackey is depicted as lacking intellectual capacity in a conversation with Dr Vallack: 2 McGuinness and Walker 1985. 3 ‘Queensland exploration: Kennedy’s expedition to Cape York’, Truth, 2 April 1899: 8. 4 ‘The story of the blacks: The Aborigines of Australia’, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 23 November 1889: 4. 5 ‘Dr Leichhardt’s expedition’, The Australian, 30 December 1845: 165. 64 Harry BROWN (C. 1819–1854) ‘Where this place, Cape York?’ Jackey Jackey ventured timidly, after a moment. ‘It’s the very top part …’ Dr Vallack scratched his head. ‘How do you explain to an Aborigine who had no knowledge of geography outside his own territory?’ ‘Look,’ he said, squatting on his heels and taking up a twig. He began to draw a map in the dust … Jackey understood only vaguely, but he didn’t like to say this.6 McGuinness and Walker were justified in their protests, for it was not until the ground-breaking works of historian Henry Reynolds that a more nuanced appreciation of the importance of Aboriginal guides was advanced. Reynolds wrote in With the White People (1990) that the Aboriginal guide has been devalued in Australian exploration history and portrayed as ‘ubiquitous, albeit often anonymous’ despite playing ‘a vital role in the European exploration of the continent’.7 In recent years, historical research reveals a greater appreciation and insight into the crucial contribution of Aboriginal people to the exploration of Australia in the nineteenth century. The marginalisation of Aboriginal people in Australian exploration history has been noted by Australian historians, such as Nigel Parbury, who wrote, ‘In general Aboriginal guides were written out of the legend of Australian exploration and generations of Australian school children learnt of the discoveries and exploits of white explorers. All credit went to the white man’.8 Similarly, anthropologist Philip Clarke stated in his work Aboriginal Plant Collectors (2008) that Aboriginal guides ‘possessed bush skills and a general knowledge of landscapes that could be broadly applied across the continent’.9 This represents a major shift in the image of Aboriginal guides as portrayed in 1976 by Paice, who depicted Jackey Jackey as lacking the intellectual capacity to comprehend life beyond his ‘territory’. This elision applied also to the subject of this article, Harry Brown. American historian Dane Kennedy in The Last Blank Spaces (2013) notes that ‘apart from Leichhardt’s passing references’ to Brown ‘being a member of the Newcastle Tribe … we know almost nothing’ about his life.10 Brown is minimally referenced in the Australian Dictionary of Biography as a ‘notable Aboriginal from Lake Macquarie who was Leichhardt’s guide’.11 In the following narrative on the life of this Aboriginal guide, primary sources on Harry Brown, including Leichhardt’s journal, will be used along with recent scholarship in the field to show that Brown was among the most effective and skilled Aboriginal guides in nineteenth-century Australian exploration. 6 Paice 1976: 7. 7 Reynolds 1990: 17. 8 Parbury 2005: 65. 9 Clarke 2008: 15. 10 Kennedy 2013: 159. 11 Gunson 1966: 102, 103. 65 ABORIGINAL HISTORY VOL 39 2015 Brown’s early years One of the major challenges to finding details about the life of an Aboriginal guide overlooked by Australian history is locating the relevant sources. The records left by Aboriginal missionary Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld provide a glimpse into the early years of Brown’s life, but little is known of Brown’s birthplace, his father, Ngo-ah-ko-ro or Moses (his European ascribed name), or his mother.12 According to Threlkeld, Brown was a member of the ‘Newcastle Tribe’ and was around five years old when the missionary arrived at Newcastle in 1825 to establish a mission for Aboriginal people at Lake Macquarie. It would appear that while Threlkeld was living in Newcastle in a government cottage, Brown and his family lived in close proximity for protection.13 Though he does not mention Brown specifically, the missionary provides a picture of his camp’s conditions: The Native camp which surrounded our habitation gave a cheerfulness to the scene at night in consequence of the number of fires kept up by the families at the front of their respective sleeping places, which were mere erections of boughs of trees, or sheets of bark placed upright supported by stakes. The blacks chose our place of residence for their new encampment they having been so frequently molested by many of the prisoners of the crown who perambulated the settlement in the night for purposes that would not bear the light of day.14 So, according to Threlkeld, a vexatious relationship existed at Newcastle where these Aboriginal families feared molestation from prisoners. The following year Brown and his family accompanied Threlkeld to establish a mission on the eastern shores of Lake Macquarie.15 According to Threlkeld, Brown could already speak ‘broken English’, as well as being fluent in his traditional Aboriginal language, Awabakal.16 As a child, Brown’s bilingual skills assisted the missionary record local Aboriginal words and he impressed Threlkeld as intelligent and perceptive: From childhood Brown exhibited all the smartness of an intellectual youth, equal to any white lad and when teaching him and other aboriginal youngsters to write the English alphabet, at our establishment
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