July 1.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Violent settler retaliation
“A ‘perfect arsenal’...rifles, guns, revolvers”
…the first miners and packers to reach the Palmer [River in North Queensland] soon realised the necessity of firearms and the need to take corporate action against resisting Aborigines. Just over a year after the first rush to the Palmer, the Cooktown Courier reported: ’now every man travels well armed and a carrier’s camp at eventide is a regular “school of musketry” - no man goes looking for his cattle in the morning unless he has a rifle slung ready for use and revolvers by his side.’ [1] The typical wagon on the frontier fields of Cape York Peninsula was a ‘perfect arsenal in the matter of Snider rifles, double barrelled guns, Colt’s revolvers and all kinds of ball cartridge’. [2] Teamsters and packers often travelled in groups for mutual protection from the Aborigines and settlers frequently participated in punitive raids. When the Strau family, husband, wife and child, were killed on the Palmer Road in 1874, at least one settler found himself sworn in as a special constable although he refused to take part in the subsequent massacre of Aborigines at Skull Camp. [3] Cornfield, the owner of two bullock teams, joined the Native Police detachment under Sub-Inspector O’Connor, unsworn and willingly, to avenge the killing of two of his horses and two packers. Such settler retaliation against the Aborigines, with or without the Native Police, was common [4] and a direct result of Queensland’s inadequate frontier policy.
C.C. 5 December 1874.
Queenslander, 25 December 1875, ‘Christmas eve in the Black’s Country’.
Q.S.A. JUS/N41, 274 of 1874. Inquest into the deaths of John, Bridget and Anne [Strau] on 17 October 1874; M.M., 7 November 1874; J.C. Hogflesh, Herberton, to B.D. Morehead, Chief Sec., 8 October 1889, Q.S.A. COL/A595, 9567 of 1889; W.H. Corfield, Reminiscences of Queensland 1862-1899 (Brisbane, 1921), p. 56.
See C.H., 1 July 1874, ‘The Blacks again’, for a frank account of how a party of six teamsters scoured the country and find and attack a large Aboriginal camp. see P.D.T., 21 October 1882; Cornfield, Reminiscences, pp. 57, 58.
Acknowledgment: Noel Loos, Invasion and Resistance, pp. 70, 265 n. 18,19,20,21.
____
In 1932, the Eden journalist and historian Harry Wellings interviewed 'Old Bill', then 80 years of age. Bill was allegedly one of the few remaining examples of 'the hardy men of the Snowy'. Born in 1850, he told Wellings the story of old Tongihi, 'the last of the Monaro blacks'. Bill claimed that every member of Tongihi's clan had been shot by settlers 'down the mountains towards the Cann Valley'. Bill's uncle, Sandy, was a 'stockman on the Monaro in the early days'. And 'my word', said Bill, 'he could tell some tales of the things some of the early settlers did to the blacks in those days''. Uncle Sandy told him that they must have killed thirty or forty 'Aborigines', leaving Tongihi, at 8 years, the sole survivor. Wellings' article was published in the Bombala Times. The editor added that a Mr C Cootes had written in to say that indeed Tongihi was well known in the district, although he too had heard that Tongihi's father and possibly his tribe were shot 'down Nungatta way'. [1]
H. Wellings, Bombala Times, 1 July, 1932.
Acknowledgment: Mark McKenna, “Quietly the Aborigines submitted” in Looking for Blackfellas' Point, - An Australian history of place, pp. 42, 238 n.40.
____
...we cannot by mere maintenance in life repay the debt we owe a race whom we have forcibly dispossessed of everything but mere existence.
Acknowledgment: J.E. Calder, Some Account of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, &c., of the Native Tribes of Tasmania, 1875, cited in The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian Quotations, p. 3.