August 29.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Enslavement and Killings
The enslavement of young Aboriginal men and women
Initially, the pearling industry depended almost entirely on the enslavement of Aboriginal divers. Despite the fact that many came from inland regions, their ability to dive deep and remain underwater for a long time was highly prized [1] by the pearlers. Aboriginal communities were torn apart as countless young men and women were taken from their homelands and forced onto ships scattered along the coast. The capture of large numbers of Aboriginal divers, many of whom suffered lonely and horrific deaths, was made possible through the close collaboration between pearlers and the sheep graziers. Both groups made significant profits from a system of slavery that supported European occupation of the north. By the end of the 1870s, northern colonisation accounted for fewer that 300 white settlers, whose economic survival depended on the work of over one thousand Aboriginal people on sheep stations and pearling boats.
'Prized' not in terms of payment for work done. Not only in North Australia, but in Queensland, well into the twentieth century, wages were withheld and never paid to Aboriginal labour. See also Robinson, Shirleene Rose (2003). "Something like slavery": The exploitation of Aboriginal child labour in Queensland, 1842-1945, PhD Thesis, School of History, Philosophy, Religion & Classics, The University of Queensland.
Acknowledgment: Howard Pedersen and Banjo Woorunmurra, JANDAMARRA & the Bunuba Resistance, pp. 26-27
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Killings were carried out on the largest scale on the north Roper and in Arnhem Land
In the six years of its operation [1903-1909] the ‘Eastern and African [Cold Storage Co. Ltd]’ engaged in what was apparently the most systematic extermination of Aborigines ever carried out on the Roper and in the company’s Arnhem Land holdings:
It is commonly said that the blacks “hunted the cattle out”. This was probably one of the few authenticated instances in which the Aborigines were systematically hunted. For a time the company employed 2 gangs of 10 to 14 blacks headed by a white man or half caste to hunt and shoot the wild blacks on sight. [1]
When interviewed in 1957 George Conway mentioned that he had been hired to lead a hunting expedition into Arnhem Land in 1905 or 1906, and that his party had killed dozens of Aborigines. There are numerous references in the Northern Territory Times to the company’s cattle-droving to the Arafura country, and of the ‘outrages’ perpetrated by the Aborigines whose lands were being occupied. It is likely that killings were carried out on the largest scale on the north Roper and in Arnhem Land, but much violence also occurred in the Elsey-Hodgson Downs area. Sorties were made in the Elsey area to exterminate the ‘wild blacks’ camped at the headwaters of the Roper (near the present Mataranka) and north-east along the river. The oldest Aborigines living at Jembere today were small children during the Eastern and African period but some claim to have heard contemporary or nearly-contemporary stories of the shootings.
Aboriginal stockmen who worked at Elsey were used to help shoot out the ‘wild blacks’. Many of these men lived on to old age and are fondly remembered, for, despite the fact that Aborigines are said to have been the instigators of shooting sorties in a few instances, it is ultimately claimed that they were made to do what they did. The white man said to have been the principal organizer of the shootings around Elsey is remembered by the Aborigines as ‘Miglinin’. He had been, they say, one of Mr Gunn’s stockmen and was well-known in the area. Presumably he was the ‘Sanguine Scot’, John MacLennon, of We of the never-never.
Bauer, F.H. Historical geography of white settlement in part of the Northern Territory. Part 2, The Katherine-Darwin region. CSIRO Report No. 64/1. Canberra, 1964, 157.
Acknowledgment: Francisca Merlan, ‘”Making people quiet” in the pastoral north: reminiscences of Elsey Station’, Aboriginal History, Vol. 2 (1978) p. 87 n.50.