August 17.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
The colonial media
Squatters, the colonial press and white lack of sympathy.
Amid rumours of a further Dawson massacre* and relentless squatter retaliation, the Moreton Bay Courier plucked up courage to resist “any wholesale and blind attempt to exterminate a whole tribe or race”. Its Ipswich correspondent urged that the government accept some responsibility in the crisis and deplored the irregularities which must eventually take place. For Charles Lilley, a young law student editing the Courier, the Aborigines remained subjects of the British Crown and were consequently amenable to protection. Lilley...was prepared to take his distance from the squatters on this point...in a strong appeal for restraint:
As we fill up the country the animal upon which the blacks subsist disappear and he is driven back upon hostile tribes. Can we wonder that the Aborigine turns upon the intruder when he is pinched with hunger and deprived by the vices which the white man introduces... [1]
[Arthur Sydney] Lyon, editing the North Australian, labelled the Courier's pleas for clemency suicidal but loudly denied charges of inciting an all-out blood-bath. The Moreton Bay Free Press was equally adamant in defence of the white settlers and delivered a sharp rebuff to the Courier:
We have been before accused of inhuman – so called – counsel and we fully anticipate that some “Negrophilos” will spin a lengthy letter in the columns of our contemporary's next edition, expressing pious horror at our seeming want of sympathy for the “poor benighted Aborigines”. Any gentleman so inclined may spare himself the trouble of accusing us of want of sympathy, for we at once confess that we have none. [2]
The local press, especially the North Australian, fed the biblical wrath of the indignant white community by providing it with a global interpretation of the Hornet Bank events.* News of an Indian mutiny, of “diabolical outrages” and of crushing British revenge** reached the Australian colonies only weeks before the Frazer murders. In rebuffing the Courier, the North Australian and the Moreton Bay Free Press established a strong parallel between the Indian massacre and local events. In moments of open conflict, the press stressed the necessity of instilling fear into the “lower races”. Lyon's departure from the North Australian in January 1858 saw little change in that paper's outspoken policies. He was replaced by John Kent, an old Moreton Bay resident and a fervent advocate of the squatting interest. A ticket-of-leaver,*** Kent, like Lyon, had been in the employ of local pastoralists and supported their campaign against Governor Gipps… [The] new North Australian editor reminded Ipswich residents of “the importance and antiquity of the pastoral interest”. [3]
The careers of Lyon and Kent indicate the relative consensus which prevailed in the pre-separation press on the racial issue. As journalists, both proved useful allies of the squatters and were consistently hostile to humanitarian or philanthropic efforts to bring the Aborigines within the realm of British law.
Moreton Bay Courier, 14 November 1857, p. 2.
Moreton Bay Free Press, 11 November 1857, p. 3.
North Australian, 17 August 1857, p. 3.
Acknowledgment: Denis Cryle, The Press in Colonial Queensland, pp. 22-23, n.52, n.53, n.54
* On 26 October 1856, Martha Fraser and her eight children were massacred at Hornet Bank station on the Dawson river, west of Rockhampton..
** Numbers of captured Sepoys were bayoneted to death, while some were fired from British cannon to display British anger, and might, in the face of the mutiny.
*** A 'ticket of leave' was issued to convicts as a form of parole, entitling them, within certain restrictions, to work and move more freely within the colony.