March 21.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Casualty figures
Another massacre.
A retribution party [in response to the Maria incident]* came from Cardwell, composed of Sub-Inspector Robert Arthur Johnstone of the Native Police and his troopers, and a posse of local settlers, who virtually annihilated the Djiru opposite Dunk Island. [1] A week later Johnstone confirmed to Lieutenant Gowlland the killings that had already occurred: 'I have also to state that I severely punished the guilty parties having found the property of the missing men in their possession.' [2] Johnstone and his troopers shot a total of 43 Djiru. [3] Historian Arthur Laurie noted with regards to this, that 'there was grave suspicion that many of the blacks they killed were innocent'. [4] Chris Widsoet, who arrived in the area in 1883 and spoke the local language, was interviewed in 1965 about further retribution and told how:
...they cut the niggers [sic] off at Tam O'Shanter point...[pointing to the narrow neck] And drove them out to sea and they shot women and kids and all – only five survived. Five of the old fellows and I got talking...I said 'how did you fellows get away?' 'Well, we got in the caves, the tide was going out and when the white men and all the policemen had gone, we got up too, and cleared out.' [5]
Captain John Moresby of HMS Basilisk aided in the search for survivors, but appears to have found his involvement with carrying the retribution parties distasteful when he recorded that: 'several unfortunate blacks were shot down by the native troopers, who showed an unrestrained ferocity that disgusted our [Royal Navy] officers.' [6]
T Bottoms, 'Djarrugan – the Last of the Nesting', M.A. (Qual), JCU, Cairns, 1990, pp.174-79.
Sub-Inspector Johnstone to Captain Growlland, Ship 'Governor Blackall', 22 March, 1872. Annexure No.3, p.5 of J T Gowlland RN, 'New Guinea Expedition per Brig "Maria" (Correspondence Respecting rescue and arrival of Survivors of) NSW Legislative Assembly Votes & Proceedings (NSW V&P), 1872.
On 21 March 1872, R A 'Johnstone and his trackers having given a very good account of the sixteen he came across', (p.21) and the next day 'Mr Johnstone's trackers (ie. troopers) shot 27 of the Blacks in the camp' (p.22). This totalled 43 Aboriginal people killed. Gowlland, 'New Guinea Expedition per Brig "Maria", 1872.
A Laurie, 'The Black war in Queensland', JRHSQ, Vol. VI, No.1, September, 1959, p.168.
F P Woolston & F S Colliver, 'The Widsoet interview – Some Recollections of the Aborigines of the Tully Area', Queensland Heritage, Vol.3, No.3, November 1975, p.11.
J Moresby, New Guinea and Polynesia: Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea and the D'Entrecasteaux Islands, John Murray, London, 1876, p.42.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, pp 135-36, 234 n.10, n.11, n.12, n.13, n.14, n.15 .
* On the Maria ,see entry for 15 March.
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The great disparity in casualty figures.
Policing at the rapidly expanding frontiers was necessarily precarious. As squatters sought to "clear" their holdings by leading punitive expeditions against local Aboriginal tribes, a state of almost open warfare existed. Evidence from newspapers of the time gives Aboriginal casualties in the Post Curtis region [in Queensland] alone in the mid-nineteenth century of around 1,000, against 28 white deaths in the same area. [1] With critical shortages of manpower and finances, the colonial government turned to the policing agency which had for several decades operated cheaply and "efficiently" in the southern colonies – the Native Police force.
D. Cryle, The Press in Colonial Queensland, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1989, p.12
Acknowledgment: Rosalind Kidd, The Way We Civilise – Aboriginal Affairs – the untold story, University of Queensland Press, 1997, p. 8. See also entry for 4 May.