August 30.

Artwork by Glenn Loughrey

Dispossession’ and ‘dispersal’

Justifications advanced for ‘dispossession’ and ‘dispersal’

The debate of 1880 was different to the one of 50 years before. A much changed intellectual climate and two generations of common experience of colonisation had brought the two sides closer together. There was almost no assertion of racial equality based on the biblical notion of shared descent and common blood. Practically all discussants in 1880 took it for granted that the Aborigines were members of an inferior race, one with unique and unfortunate characteristics. Many assumed that they were more primitive than the white race and would eventually die out. There was much less reference than in the 1830s to civilisation, evangelisation and the saving of souls. The idea of a displeased and vengeful God had receded. The settlers may have to contend with disapproval from overseas and especially from Britain. They might fear the stern gaze of Mother England but not the judgmental eye of an all-seeing deity. The editorial writer of the Queenslander hoped and believed his fellow colonists would have 'some regard for the good name of the colony', some desire to see it 'stand well in the estimation of their countrymen in the mother country'. [1] The horror of shedding blood, so pronounced among humanitarians in the 1830s, had moderated. Murder might be morally wrong, or bad in principle, but many people had come to see it as a regrettable but unavoidable accompaniment to colonisation. In the 1880s few public figures referred to Aboriginal ownership of the land or of a debt owing to the displaced tribes. The idea of an 'equivalence', so common in the 1830s, had all but gone. Development had become justification in itself. In the process the pioneer had acquired immense moral authority as the creator of wealth and industry. Colonial society of 1880 was far more assertive about its achievements. It was taken for granted that the frontier would displace the 'savage' and that the displacement was both inevitable and for the better. The Queenslander's controversialist questioned the practice of colonisation, not the principle, arguing that:

…there is nothing of which many people need be ashamed in taking possession of a country like Australia...that [the Aborigines] must suffer is certainly an 'inevitable consequence'...We have argued, and our opponents have admitted, that our system of dealing with them leads to abuses of which the degree may be questioned but the existence cannot be denied. We ask for a reform, we are prepared to show that reform is possible, and there are witnesses coming forward in all parts of the colony to maintain the need for it and uphold its practicability. Is our demand an unreasonable one? [2]

Many Queenslanders thought so and soon hit back. A week after the initial crusading editorial appeared the first of many letters was published from a correspondent calling himself Never Never who had lived for sixteen years 'in outside country always'. He was, he openly confided, a murderer because he had dispersed and assisted to disperse Aborigines on a number of occasions...He conceded that, in common with other bushmen, he was 'regretfully compelled to admit that the deeds of blood curdling atrocity' had been committed by white men. [3]

1. The Way We Civilize, Brisbane, 1880, p. 13.

2. Ibid., pp. 12-13

3. Ibid., p. 27.

Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, pp.112-115, 260 n.7, n.8, n.9.