July 22.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
“...no country they can call their own”
Decline in the birthrate in Indigenous communities and ‘the loss of land’.
The catastrophic fall in the birth rate was another factor of demographic significance. Aborigines not only died at unprecedented rates; they were not born, or did not survive childhood, in anything like sufficient numbers to replace the loss of premature death. 'a child is now but rarely to be met with' wrote a white official in melancholy mood, 'a birth but seldom known'. [1] The missionary Benjamin Hurst commented in 1841 that he knew of only two children under twelve within a forty mile radius of his station on the western side of Port Phillip Bay. [2] A settler at Lake Colac noted that amongst one hundred or so local women there had not been more than six or eight children born in the previous three years. [3] A contemporary could recall only two births in five years in his district and both children later died. [4] William Thomas kept detailed records of the Port Phillip and Western Port clans. Between 1848 and 1858 the population fell from 92 to 56 and only one child survived.[5] The story was similar all over the continent. In district after district children were found to be 'few beyond all proportion'. [6] Many of the factors – malnutrition, exposure, disease and especially V.D. in a variety of forms – were only too apparent. But beyond even their lethal reach there was the loss of land, the dislocation of the known universe, a previously unthinkable disruption of the cosmic cycle of birth and death and reincarnation. Some groups exhibited an unquenchable determination to survive; for others the onslaught of invasion had destroyed everything.* The future itself had been extinguished. Death from disease and chronic infant mortality merely proved that the times were irrecoverably out of joint. The Port Phillip Protectors reported Aboriginal comments eloquent with despair, leached of all hope. Thomas referred to 'this indifference to prolong their race, on the ground as they state of having no country they can call their own'.* [7] 'No country, no good have it pickaninnys', one Aborigine explained, while another lamented 'no country now for them...and no more come up pickaniny'. [8] A contemporary of Thomas reported that he was asked:
Why me have lubra? Why me have picanninny? You have all this place, no good have children no good have lubra, me tumble down and die very soon now. [9]
C. Rolleston, Darling Downs, 11 January 1851, Reports of Commissioners of Crown Lands on the State of the Aborigines for 1850, Colonial Office Papers, CO 201/442.
NSWLCV&P, 2, 1843, p.501.
Select Committee on the Aborigines and Protectorate, NSWLCV&P, 2, 1849, p.464.
Ibid., p.470.
Select Committee on the Aborigines, Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Council of Victoria, 1858-59, D8, pp.1-4.
Rev. J.Y. Wilson, Replies to Circular Letter from Select Committee on the Condition of the Aborigines, NSWLCV&P, 2nd Session, 1846, p.14.
Select Committee on the Condition of the Aborigines, NSWLCV&P, 1845, p.55.
I. Crawford: William Thomas and the Port Phillip Protectorate 1839-1849, M/A. Melbourne 1967, p.22.
W. Hull, Select Committee on the Aborigines, Proceedings of the Legislative Council of Victoria, 1858-59, D8, pp.12.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, pp.102-103, 180 n.94, n.95, n.96, n.97, n.98, n.99, n.1, n.2, n.3.
* For a journey into an understanding of Indigenous peoples’ attachment to “country” note Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly, Songlines – The Power and Promise, Thames & Hudson, Port Melbourne, 2020, especially pp. 87-90, 110-115, 157.