March 29.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Practice of poisoning
The practice of poisoning Aboriginal people.
More compelling, however, are the reminiscences of a former Native Police officer printed in the Sydney based Australian Town and Country Journal in March 1879. The case was a first hand witness account from an unusually frank officer. The readers should take some note that beyond the officers of this force, few men in colonial days were better positioned and more unsentimental observers when it comes to know and report the facts of such matters. His first lines are consequently all the more remarkable as he commenced by describing such use of poison as common knowledge for any outside settler of experience.
Many [sic!] old bushman of the far north will have observed on entering a shepherd's hut some such notice as the following – 'Ration bags in chimney poisoned – scrape for the plant under the corner table...
[The police officer] went on to describe how he and his troopers were called out to a hut where the Indigenous people had stolen a quantity of such poisoned flour and sugar. As this shepherd had been frequently robbed he had simply turned his 'plant' into, as the officer phrased it,
...the emporium for poisoned flour and sugar, securing elsewhere in a log away from the hut that which was needed. Being somewhat of a misanthrope and churlish disposition, his simple notice, in case of some travelller searching, was 'Rations under table poisoned'.
...This officer of the law clearly had no problem with...this; the shepherd was defending himself and the blacks had asked for it. There are thus no signs that it ever occurred to him that he might have a duty to prevent a deadly meal being served to innocent women and children. Instead he described how he and his detachment immediately went in pursuit of the offenders in traditional style, zealously determined to ensure that punishment was well and truly borne out. The manner in which he conveyed his story to the colonial public in 1879 reaches at times almost poetic heights.
It was nearly night when we arrived and as a brand new highly burnished moon was glaring resplendent in the azure firmament, and silvering the tops and edges of the distant scrub, we thought it worth while to try and find the first evidences of the sumptuous repast that undoubtedly the whole tribe, warriors, gins, and picanninies must have revelled in; to a good few, probably, it was a feed for the last time...leaving the horses hobbled, and other things as usual, we plodded on foot, the tympanum of our ears strained to the utmost for the slightest sound...Hark: a low wail reaches us; we move in the direction; the leading boy halts; he had approached the edge of the camp and had taken in its position. Advancing again, we got near enough to hear many groans. Apart from these there was a singular silence and we much feared the main mob had stampeded. Disposing the men as well as possible, morning was awaited, as the then dip of the moon precluded in the dense foliage we were now in, sufficient sight for safe-firing. Day breaking, the rush was made; but few were there; half-a- dozen shots only fell on my ear; the arsenic had done the chief fatal work...fourteen bodies were found. [1]
Town and Country Journal 29 Mar 1879, p607. Evans: Race Relations in Colonial Queensland: A History of Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination, p.49 mentions several more cases of this kind.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited. pp. 91-92, n.175.