July 24.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
‘Dispersal’ and mass killings.
“Dispersing the mob”...means an indiscriminate shooting down of men, women and children.
In 1878 the Queenslander's Bowen correspondent reported on an Aboriginal attack on a coastal vessel which was followed by a series of punitive expeditions by the Native Police, saying, '...needless to state that these [the Aborigines] were permanently “dispersed” and that they will trouble calling vessels no more...'. A Correspondent in the Evening News in 1879 frankly explained to his readers that '”dispersing the mob”...means an indiscriminate shooting down of men, women and children...'. A Georgetown correspondent wrote to the Queenslander later in the same year that he '...would be right glad to hear of their [the blacks] having been 'dispersed' in the usual time-honored fashion'. A settler using the nom de plume 'Never Never' bluntly attacked Carl Feilberg's editorial printed in the Brisbane Courier on 8 May 1880...defending himself and other graziers against what he termed 'a sweeping villification'. Determined, as he wrote, 'to speak decidedly and openly on this subject' he went on to openly admit that 'I am what would be called “a white murderer” for I have had to “disperse” and assist to “disperse” blacks on several occasions.' [1]
...In connection with the presentation and subsequent vote on the [Parliamentary Select Committee on the Native Police] report in parliament on 24 July 1861, one of the committee members, John Watts (1821-1902), English-born squatter and part proprietor of Eton Vale station west of present day Toowoomba, forcefully supported the Native Police system. Aboriginal people, he argued,
...must be regarded in the same light as inhabitants of a country under martial law [they] must be taught to feel the mastery of the whites...knowing no law, nor entertaining any fears but those of the carbine, there were no other means of ruling them, and that that means must be resorted to. [2]
Queenslander, 8 May 1880, p594c-595a.
QPD as by Brisbane Courier 27 July 1861, p5b.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited, pp. 38-39, n.51, p. 42-43, n.62.
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A massacre and government inaction.
[Queensland Colonial Secretary Arthur] Palmer was a pastoralist from central Queensland, and according to contemporary historian George Rusden his appointment presaged the end of the Aboriginal commission and cancellation of the reserves. Seeking perhaps to avoid public condemnation for such vindictive actions, the government instead starved the commission of funds and power.
The crisis peaked when, after the massacre of twenty-four Aboriginal men and women near Cooktown by sub-inspector [Stanhope] O'Connor and his six troopers, [1] the government immediately endorsed police testimony. With the Brisbane Courier running a vigorous campaign of conflicting evidence, [Anglican Bishop Matthew] Hale sought access to the records but was rebuffed by a scornful Palmer. [Catholic Priest] Father [Duncan] McNab resigned in disgust, describing the commission as a “facade to mask government inaction”. When [fellow commissioner W.] Drew followed, the commission collapsed. The reserves at Mackay and Bribie Island, like that at Durrunbur, were thrown open to white settlement.
Despite acknowledging that identification of suspects was impossible, journalist R. Spencer Browne wrote approvingly of the slaughter of “31 bucks bathing on a small beach...all but three were accounted for”. “Where murders of whites are committed”, he continued “there can be no arrests and no trial by jury” (A Journalist's Memories, 1877-1927, Read Press, Brisbane, 1927: 27-28.
Acknowledgment: Rosalind Kidd, The Way We Civilise, pp. 28, 354 n.34