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Barriers and Bastions Barriers and Bastions: Fortified frontiers and white and black tactics Ray Kerkhove, PhD (Uni of Qld) 0417192169 [email protected] Paper presented at ‘Our shared history: resistance and reconciliation’ CQUniversity Seminar Noosa 11 June 2015 1 A. On ground realities of Aboriginal wars of resistance For over 40 years, there have been numerous forays into the topic of Australian frontier violence and Aboriginal resistance. The works of Henry Reynolds, Ray Evans, Bill Thorpe and Timothy Bottoms all highlight the vast extent of frontier violence. Recent studies by Robert Orsted-Jensens and Ray Evans now evidence that the toll was much higher than we fathomed – perhaps in the range of 65,000 casualties for the Colony of Queensland alone.1 Despite this, debate still rages over the exact nature of these conflicts.2 Part of the problem seems to be that Aboriginal resistance does not readily match the usual understandings of guerrilla warfare.3 This essay takes the unusual stance of tackling the dilemma from the ‘bottom up’ - exploring how frontier violence and resistance wars were actually experienced and ‘lived’ by both whites and Aboriginals, and then attempting some reconstruction of the ‘rules’ by which it operated. The purpose of this to arrive at a more accurate understanding of frontier warfare, and to demonstrate its reality - which is often lost in the on-going debates about its nature and severity. B. Frontier Violence and Resistance on the Sunshine Coast: a quick history Frontier conflict on the Sunshine Coast has received piecemeal treatment at best. It has certainly long been part of local historical dialogue, but more in passing – initially through works such as works Bull’s Short Cut to Gympie Gold (1982) and Hector Holthouse’s Gympie Gold (1973). Fred Fink and Hector Holthouse can be credited as being amongst the first local historians to speak at any length about the nature of Aboriginal-settler conflict in the area, building on an 1890s statement from local historian Loyau that “…every acre of land in these districts was won from the Aborigines by bloodshed and warfare.” 4 1 See Robert Orsted-Jensen, 2011, Frontier History Revisited – Colonial Queensland and the ‘History War,’ Lux Mundi: Brisbane 2 Jeffery A. Grey, 1999,‘The Military and the Frontier, 1788-1901,’ in Jeffery Grey, A Military History of Australia New York: Cambridge University,’ 31 3 Grey 1999,‘The Military and the Frontier, 1788-1901: 25 4 Hector Holthouse, Gympie Gold Angus & Robertson, 1973, Sydney 4 2 That concept attracted much more interest during the 1990s and early 2000s, although it is again mentioned more in passing than at length, through works such as Helen Gegory’s Making Maroochy (1991), Stephen Jones’ Four Bunya Seasons in Baroon 1842-1845 (1997), and Elaine Brown’s Cooloola Coast (2000). Ron Adams’ Noosa and Gubbi Gubbi: the land, the people, the conflict (2000) offered probably the most detailed account. Today, we are at the point of having biographies of specific leaders – notably Libby Connors’ recent Warrior (2015) which concerns the resistance leader Dundalli. Even so, a full understanding of how events played out as a piece of “military history” remains in its infancy. We can say with some certainty that difficulties began after 1842, when the Governor, Sir George Gipps, was persuaded to declare much of what is now the Sunshine Coast a Reserve5 - specifically for the “Bunya Bunya (groves)… that the Aborigines from considerable distances resort at certain times of the year.”6 This ironically opened a pandora’s box in that the ‘Reserve’ was immediately resented by settlers. They viewed it as simply a bastion of forest-and-mountain “sanctuaries for aggressive Aborigines.”7 In fact, the Bunya Bunya Reserve was barely established when a massacre at Kilcoy Station sparked a decision that affected all of south-east Queensland: … there was a great meeting of native tribes, 14 or 15 in number, in the vicinity of the great Bunya Scrub (Baroon Pocket near Maleny)…. These tribes vowed vengeance and said they had already had some but were not yet satisfied. The blacks at the Toor (gathering ring) were much infuriated.8 Thereafter, with each bunya festival at Baroon: …messengers (were) dispatched in all directions …carrying out their vengeance in a very insidious manner... attacking any defenceless individual that falls their way - proceeding in small bodies without giving the least warning of their approach.”9 The Moreton Bay Courier during the 1840s and 1850s started to regularly comment on the conditions of the Blackall Range Bunya crop, viewing each crop as a prelude to aggression. 5 Reverend Joseph Taiton, Marutchi – The Early History of the Sunshine Coast (n/p, 1982?), 18 6 Fred Fink, History of Maroochydore-Moololaba typescript (n/p. 1992). 7 Malcolm D Prentis, Science, Race and Faith: A Life of John Matthews, 1849 – 1929 (Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1998), 22-23 & Simpson Letterbook, ed Gerry Langevad, ‘Some Original Views around Kilcoy, Queensland Ethnohistory Transcripts Bk 1:The Aboriginal Perspective Vol1:1,1982 op. cit., 2 - 5. 8 The Simpson Letterbook, p. 5 9 The Simpson Letterbook,, 2 - 5. 3 For example, in 1844 the nuts were destroyed by hail. The Courier reported this as an omen of imminent aggressions.10 One of the first of these ‘aggressions’ came in September 1842, when some 300 to 500 ‘Mary Valley warriors’ crossed the Conondale Ranges and attacked drays, shepherds and herds in the vicinity of Esk and Kilcoy, forcing settlers to abandon their runs. Similarly, it was after returning from a bunya gathering in 1846 that Dundalli and Yilbung led ‘depredations’ against the white man.11 Border police were sent into the ‘Bunya Bunya Reserve’ to avenge these actions, and the Reserve was rapidly nibbled away by sheep and cattle runs - half a dozen being in existence by the 1850s.12 When the Colony of Queensland separated from New South Wales, one of the first Acts to be passed by the infant Parliament was the Unoccupied Crown Lands Occupation Act 1860. This was mainly aimed at repealing the Bunya Proclamation, and sanctioned an influx of timber-getters and cattle runs. Thus the Reserve became a forestry-and-pastoral frontier – carved up into half a dozen unfenced cattle runs of 15,000 – 30,000 acres (which split, again, into much smaller plots by the 1880s). With increased white presence came increased frontier violence. Apart from the robberies and disagreements, there were reportedly mass poisonings, massacres, ‘dispersals,’ cattle raids and other atrocities at what is now Imbil (c.1850), Kenilworth, 13 Ninderry (1868),14 Teewah,15 Murdering Creek and possibly Hunchy and Eudlo Flats. For example, one of the first settlers of Kin Kin recalled how he lured some 20 Aboriginals into a hut he had booby-trapped with gunpowder and metal. He claims he promptly blew up the hut, killing all within.16 10 Moreton Bay Courier 9 December 1844. 11 Thomas Welsby, ‘Bribie the Basket Maker,’ in A. K. Thomson, op. cit., 382- 385 and G. Tundle, ‘The Early Days of Caboolture (to 1900),’ Lectures Before Queensland Women’s Historical Association 14 July 1960, Thomas Welsby Library, Royal Queensland Historical Society, 4. 12 E G Heap, ‘In the Wake of the Raftsmen: Survey of Early Settlement in the Maroochy District up to the Passing of Macalister’s Act 1868: Part 1,’ Queensland Heritage Vol.1: 3 (November 1965), 8. 13 Ian Pedley, Winds of Change – 100 Years in the Widgee Shire Gympie: The Gympie Times, 1979, 19-20. 14 E G Heap, ‘In the Wake of the Raftsmen: Survey of Early Settlement in the Maroochy District up to the Passing of Macalister’s Act 1868: Part 1,’ 11 15 Colin L Monks, Noosa: The Way It Was and the Way It is Now Tewantin: Colin Monks 2000, 81. 16 ‘Beseiged,’ The Queenslander, 6 Dec 1919: 5. 4 Under the leadership of the dreaded Ltnt. Frederick Wheeler, a regiment of Native Police regularly patrolled into the area at this time from their headquarters at Sandgate.17 According to Ltnt. Wheeler’s reports, in 1861 he twice (11 April and 10 June) conducted “dispersals” of “bunya bunya natives” and “patrolled” up into the Blackall Ranges. On 31 July 1862, his force was locked in a heated “affray” (battle) with Obi Obi, Durundur and Brisbane warriors at Cressbrook – an “affray” in which Wheeler was obviously the victor. A few months on, Wheeler was shooting “several blacks” at Caboolture and “dispersing” natives at Mooloolah.18 This type of activity seems to have persisted into the 1870s and probably later – especially on and near the Mary Valley.19 To give just one of many examples, here is a report in The Sydney Morning Herald concerning Yandina in 1876: …a mob of blacks, comprising two or three tribes from Bribie Island and Durundur (Woodford), Mooloolah, Noosa, and Kilcoy, had camped on the Yandina run, six miles from Tewantin and had speared a number of cattle there. The proprietor at once telegraphed to the head of the Police Department here for protection, and that a detachment might be sent here to "disperse" them. This request was of course complied with, and we anticipate little further trouble will be caused by the blacks.20 As elsewhere in Queensland, the violence eventually petered out in fits and starts with the decline of the Aboriginal population through epidemics, death from substance-abuse, forced removal and incarceration. However, most of all, it seems the decline came through thinly- disguised genocide operating as‘dispersals’ and similar measures.21 C. A fortified Australian landscape? The period of frontier violence on the Sunshine Coast totaled around 35 to 40 years, which raises the question of how this era was endured ‘on the ground’ – as an on-going, daily reality - and whether it found some sort of expression in the material culture and social life of time.
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