March 22.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
A casual ‘dispersion’
Again - The great disparity in casualty figures.
'Reminiscences of the Native Mounted Police of Queensland' by 'An Ex-officer', was a small series of articles authored by an unnamed police officer and printed in three articles in the Sydney based weekly 'Town and Country Journal' during March, 1879. In the second of these articles the officer mentions what he casually termed as a 'dispersion of no particular interest'. It was retaliation following the 'murder' of a Chinese shepherd, which may be why it was classified as less interesting. The article, however, provides us with some idea of the retaliation ratio for non-white frontier victims in that period. The officer briefly described how they surrounded a camp and how 'two crushing volleys from the right and left barrels of the carbines resounded through the night, and seven or eight fell to rise no more'. Yet it did not end there, he wrote, another twenty were killed soon after and on top of this was the story of one man who 'slapped himself on the stern', presumably in an act of defiance. This last man was clearly the reason why this otherwise not very interesting story was worth telling, as he was gunned down at the range of 500 yards. We are here talking about a minimum of 29 Aboriginals killed instantly. All of this in retaliation for one man – a Chinese shepherd. It may be fairly stated that there might have been a few wounded individuals escaping this carnage in various ways and that some of them might have died of their wounds later. Yet sticking firmly to the officer's own recollection we are now able to calculate a 29:1 retaliation ratio on a singular event which took place seemingly sometime before about 1876-78. [1]
Town and Country Journal (Sydney) 22 Mar(ch) 1879, p.559. The mentioned article-series ran on the dates 15, 22 and 29 Mar (ch) 1879.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited – Colonial Queensland and the 'History War', p. 54 and n. 93
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The journey into acknowledging truth
Megan Davis reports that during the Referendum Council dialogues, in ‘region after region’
this word ‘truth’ came to the fore. The dialogues spoke of the wound caused by the silencing of the Aboriginal experience after the arrival. In North Queensland they spoke about how their ancestors saw Cook, telling one another with smoke, yet the history books still say he ‘discovered’ us. Frontier wars, massacres and forced racial segregation on reserves and missions are not commonly known by fellow Australians. Some spoke of statues being erected to honour early Australian explorers, one in north Australia holding a gun to commemorate the opening up of the frontier for the telegraph line, while the descendants of the massacred families suffer only sadness and hurt at having to see it. The spoke of the sensitivity of these ‘one way’ commemorations of Australian history. [1]
Stan Grant has echoed this call for truth-telling, suggesting that while in the past he was cautious about such initiatives, concerned that they might ‘harden division’, today he is of the view that Australia needs ‘this mirror into our soul...a full reckoning of our nation’s past, that my set loose the chains of history that bind this country’s first and, today, most miserably impoverished people’. [2] For Davis [3] this is the only way to restart a meaningful reconciliation process. She suggests that reconciliation in Australia ‘has stalled because it failed to do what reconciliation should do: talk about the truth’. Recent debate suggests that settler Australia is still eager to avoid this conversation.
1. Megan Davis, ‘To walk in two worlds: The Uluru Statement is a clear and urgent call for reform’, The Monthly, July, 2017, 2017, p.4. https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2017/July/1498831200/megan-davis/walk-two-worlds
2. Georgina Mitchell, ‘Stan Grant delivers fiery speech on Indigenous rights in wake of abuse scandal’, The Age, 29 July 2016. 2016, pp. 3-http://www.theage.com.au/national/stan-grant-delivers-fiery-honorary-doctorate-of-letters-acceptance-speech-at-unsw-20160729-gqh0dh.html>
Acknowledgment: Sarah Maddison, The Colonial Fantasy – Why white Australia can’t solve black problems, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2019, p.201.