August 4.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
An untiring advocate of justice
...an outspoken critic of white brutality
...[Captain] Irwin* was instrumental in the formation of the Western Australian Missionary Society in Dublin. [1] This Society first sent Dr Louis Gustiniani, an Italian scholar and physician, [2] accompanied by his catechists, Frederick and Fredericka Waldeck, and Abraham Jones. Giustiniani rapidly built a church and mission house in the Guildford area. [3] Appalled by the brutal treatment of Aboriginal people on the expanding frontier of white settlement, Giustiniani became an outspoken critic of white brutality and an untiring advocate of justice for the Aboriginal people.
Later historians often dismissed his courageous outspokenness as 'tactlessness' [4] or 'allowing his zeal to outrun his discretion'. [5] Such estimates failed to give a balanced picture of one of the few whose sense of moral duty was stronger than his personal ambition. He became very unpopular. Petty criticisms – his foreign nationality or his refusal to spend his time teaching white children – masked the real reasons for his rejection. He named those he believed guilty of brutality and criticised colonial Perth society. He went so far as to write to the British Colonial Office detailing specific events and naming particular colonists. [6]
Governor Hutt advised Lord Glenelg in London that Giustiniani's views were 'involuntarily biased by the deep interest which, as a Christian missionary, he might be expected to feel in the condition and future prospects of a race who hitherto certainly have benefited little or nothing from their intercourse with our countrymen'. [7] Inevitably, Giustiniani alienated many influential colonists, including his sponsor, Irwin, and was finally forced to leave the colony... 'the Europeans', said Giustiniani, 'stands in as much need of religious instruction as the natives'. [8] No true Christian could dispute that.
Hawtrey, 1949: 17.
Perth Gazette, 2 July 1836.
Burton, 1941: 25.
Hasluck, 1942: 163.
Burton, 1941: 29.
Lord Glenelg returned Giustiniani's letters to Governor Hutt for investigation with his Despatch 3 of 4 August 1838. see John Hutt to Lord Glenelg, 17 May 1839, reproduced in Aborigines [Australian Colonies], BHCSP, 34, No.627, 1844.
This statement and other materials are in John Hutt to Lord Glenelg 17 May 1839, with enclosures, reproduced in Aborigines [Australian Colonies], BHCSP, 34, No.627, 1844.
Giustiniani, cited in Hasluck, 1942: 163.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, pp. 261, 307 n.18, n.19, n.20, n.21, n.22, n.23, n.24, n.26.
* Further on Captain Frederick Chidley Irwin see John Harris, One Blood, pp. 259-260
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Ancient landscape and ancient human connections.
It was into this ancient landscape, with its interconnected trading societies and complex spiritual rituals and beliefs, that British people began to arrive in the 1790s. With close trading, familial and spiritual connections stretching from the shores of Sydney Harbour through the mountains and along the coast to the Hunter Valley, word of these new arrivals at Sydney had likely already reached Awabakal, Worimi and Wonnarua people well before any appeared on their shores.
Acknowledgment: Mark Dunn, The Convict Valley, p.17.