May 20.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Disproportionate settler retaliation
Unpaid Aboriginal labour and worse - massacres.
In 1848 [Allan] MacPherson's Mount Abundance station was attacked by Aborigines, who dispersed his stock and killed two of his workers. Blythe's station on Bungil Creek was also attacked and his shepherd killed. Blythe abandoned his station and retreated east to Emu Creek. In 1849 MacPherson petitioned the Crown Lands Commissioner for Native Police 'protection'. He wrote to John Durbin, saying:
That the upper portion of the Maranoa District and Darling Downs is not already occupied as sheep country is I apprehend almost entirely attributable to two causes viz the determined hostility of the Aborigines and the extreme insubordination and lawlessness of the labouring classes in this remote District. [1]
The two factors highlighted by MacPherson – hostility and the lawlessness of the frontier – may have been connected. On the Macintyre River, attacks on station blacks by white workers were observed to have been motivated by resentment over the use of unpaid Aboriginal labour:
These atrocious outrages appear to me to have been instigated partly by a wanton brutality and desire of excitement and partly by a feeling of animosity against the natives and those who employ them arising from the idea that the rate of wages is lowered by their unpaid services. [2]
MacPherson also recounted how he overheard white workers laughing about the attack on his station and the subsequent murder of two of his [Aboriginal] workers. 'We could hardly comprehend how this could be a source of pleasure or amusement to these men until we heard a stentorian voice shout out: “Well, if this 'ere don't keep up wages, I'm blowed”'. [3]
In 1849 MacPherson had another five [white] men killed and his stock were again dispersed. It appears that Crown Lands Commissioner John Durbin, his troopers and MacPherson were involved in retaliatory action in which about forty Aborigines lost their lives. Not long after this conflict MacPherson left the district and never returned. [4]
Allan MacPherson to J.H. Durbin, Commissioner of Crown Lands, Maranoa District, 20 May 1849, John Oxley Library, A2.23, frames 226-228.
Gwydir Crown Lands Commissioner Bligh to Colonial Secretary 4 October 1848, New South Wales State Archives 4/2920, 48/10740.
Allan MacPherson, 'Maranoa 70 Years Ago', Fryer Library, F 1500, p. 10.
Patrick Collins, Goodbye Bussamarai, ch.3.
Acknowledgment: Mark Copland, Jonathan Richards and Andrew Walker, One Hour More Daylight, pp. 58-59, n.164, n.165, n.166, n.167.
____
On settlers squatting on Aboriginal land
One thing is for sure, they were all squatting on Aboriginal land. There was no question of paying rates or compensation to the original owners. The land was simply confiscated from the Aborigines and very little reference is made in the early history of the plight of Aborigines. [1]
Hazel McKellar, Matya-Mundu: A History of the Aboriginal People of South West Queensland, Cunnamulla Australian Native Welfare association, 1984, p. 19.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, pp. 96, 226 n.1.