August 14.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Martial killing
Martial Law – its scope also for martial killing
On 14 August 1824...Governor Brisbane proclaimed martial law west of the Blue Mountains. [1] He did this because Aborigines were considered to have automatically become British subjects when the British claimed Australia. Soldiers who shot British subjects during civil disturbances such as riots could be charged with murder unless their action had been sanctioned by a magistrate or by the declaration of martial law, and several officers and men had faced trial in England over such matters during the eighteenth century. Martial law had been previously declared in New South Wales during the 1804 convict revolt, while Governor Macquarie had provided legal protection to the troops by ensuring they were accompanied by magistrates or civil police during the 1816 punitive expedition. Brisbane's declaration of martial law was made similarly to prevent soldiers or settlers who killed Wiradjuri being charged with murder.
The British claim that Aborigines were British subjects meant that frontier conflict was defined as civil disorder rather than as war against a foreign enemy. The British government would never accept that Aborigines had sovereign rights to their land as this would undermine the Crown's claim to all of Australia. The British government argued that settlers and soldiers killing Aborigines on the frontier was not warfare; but prior to 1824 few settlers had been tried for killing Aborigines and only one – the convict John Kirby at Newcastle in 1820 – had been hanged for the crime. [2] The great difficulty in gaining murder convictions against settlers was that any Aboriginal witnesses could not give evidence because, as non-Christians, they could not take the oath.
Governor's Proclamation, 14 August 1824. HRA, XI: 410.
Port regulations, 1 October 1810. HR NSW, VII: 418; Tony Hayter, The Army and the Crowd in Mid-Georgian England, Macmillan, London, 1978, pp. 32-33; Roger Milliss, Waterloo Creek: The Australia Day Massacre of 1838, George Gipps and the British Conquest of New South Wales, McPhee Gribble, Ringwood, Victoria, 1992, p. 66.
Acknowledgment: John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838, pp. 58, 138 n.12, n.13.
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‘It is ironically symbolic that Queensland’s first official expedition used firearms freely whenever Aboriginal resistance was encountered.’
An imaginative adventurer, George Elphinstone Dalrymple, had formed a syndicate and set out on 16 August 1859 to explore and later settle the Burdekin only to have his plans frustrated by the first Queensland government, which was vitally concerned with the problem of land legislation and considered the capitalists supporting Dalrymple to be mere speculators. However, because of Dalrymple’s knowledge of the country, and in compensation for his successful exploration, he was appointed Commissioner for Crown Land in the Kennedy District. He set out in the Spitfire, on 14 August 1860, to explore the mouth of the Burdekin and to examine the suitability of the recently discovered Port Denison as a port of access. Dalrymple found the Burdekin useless for navigation but reported favourably on Port Denison. On both his 1860 and his 1859 expeditions, Dalrymple reported frequent clashes with the Aborigines and stressed their numbers and aggressiveness. It is ironically symbolic that Queensland’s first official expedition used firearms freely whenever Aboriginal resistance was encountered. [1]
Minute, Minister for Lands, R.R. Mackenzie, 18 December 1859, 1860 V. & P., pp. 577-8. See also J. Farnfield, Frontiersman; a Biography of George Elphinstone Dalrymple (Melbourne, 1968), pp. 12-25 for Dalrymple’s plan and expeditions.
Acknowledgment: Noel Loos, Invasion and Resistance, pp.28-29, 255 n.1.