August 28.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
“If the truth is ever known”
Slavery Abolition Act (1833). In British history, [an] Act of Parliament abolished slavery in most British colonies, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa as well as a small number in Canada. It received Royal Assent on August 28, 1833, and took effect on August 1, 1834.
For slave-like conditions for Aboriginal people, see entries for the 16, 26 and 29 August.
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“If the truth is ever known”
Instances of massive violent retribution
The prevailing attitude [among colonial Queenslanders] enabled the events of 17 October 1861 to unfold when nineteen whites were massacred at Cullin-la-Ringo Station (c.80 kilometres south-south-west of the future Emerald). This resulted in a further massive retribution, where at least 370 Aboriginal people were killed. Conservatively, this equates to a ratio of nineteen Aboriginals killed for each of the Cullin-la-Ringo whites killed…The tragedy occurred because the manager of nearby Rainworth Station, Jesse Gregson, had along with Second-Lieutenant Patrick and his Native Police troopers, [1] shot members of the local Gayiri, and it was a retaliatory response. Cedric Wills was later to recall that his brother Tom told him, ‘If the truth is ever known, you will find that it was Gregson through shooting those blacks that was the cause of the murder’. There can be no doubt that Cedric firmly believed this account, as he wrote: ‘It makes my blood boil when I start on this subject – that Gregson, just for the sake of a few sheep, committed the act which was to cause the murder of my father and all his party – men, women and children. [2]
The British Australian settlers’ response was a complete overreaction, with some 400 Aboriginals killed because of the massacre of eleven whites at Hornet Bank in 1857, and somewhere between 300 and 370 killed directly in response to the massacre at Cullin-la-Ringo. The new Commandant of the Native Police, John O’Connell Bligh, wrote to the Colonial Secretary in early December 1861 informing him that he had ordered all settlers to ‘turn all blacks away’ and for all gatherings as ‘large war parties’. [3] Six years later Harry Arlington Creaghe, overseer at Albinia Downs (100 kilometres south-east of Cullin-la-Ringo), described reaction of the neighbouring squatters: they formed a posse which enacted ‘fearful havoc, wreaking a terrible and bloody vengeance and made a pact to shoot Aboriginals on sight. [4]
A M G Patrick was appointed to the Native police in 1860 a 2nd Lieutenant. He was shot in the leg while on duty and resigned with ill-health in 1862. He died in Brisbane in 1870. Jonathan Richards, The Secret War – A True History of Queensland’s Native Police, UQP, St Lucia, 2008, p.255.
Cedric Wills, Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, 9 December 1912.
Native Police Commandant Bligh, Rockhampton, to Colonial Secretary, 2 December 1861, QSA, COL/A 23 61/2777
Harry Arlington Creaghe, Letters From Ireland, 9 April 1867, p. 29 in J Stewart, ‘Emily and Caroline Creaghe (1860-1944), Explorer’, Queensland History Journal, November 2008, Vol. 20, No. 8, p.395.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, pp.53-54, 218 n.31, n.32, n.33, n.34.