May 24.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Crimes unpunished
Official inaction or murderous action
By 1813, the now united colony had become largely self-sufficient. Although hunting remained common, cereal crops, sheep and cattle had replaced marsupials as the staple foods. Intermittent contact with blacks continued as the settlements spread further and further along the lush river valleys radiating from Launceston and Hobart. Soon after his arrival in 1817, Governor Sorell reprimanded those 'in the habit of maliciously and wantonly firing on and destroying, the defenceless NATIVES', and threatened 'to punish any ill-treatment'. [1] Two years later he was forced to issue a similar threat, yet no punishment was ever issued. 'The government disapproved of oppression' as John West pointedly observed, 'but it was either too weak, or too indolent, to visit the guilty'. [2]
Government order, 17 May 1817, in Hobart Town Gazette, 24 May 1817.
John West, History of Tasmania, p. 11.
Acknowledgment: Nicholas Clements, Black War, pp. 20, 222 n.25, n.26.
By now [Native Police Officer Frederic Urquhart] was satisfied 'beyond the shadow of a doubt' that he had got the 'murderers'. Still he did not stop. He continued to hunt for 'the other lot'; by which he meant those who had earlier escaped from the swamp. He managed to catch up with some of this party on the Batavia River on the 11 June [1889], where he 'dispersed them', but was subsequently forced to abandon some of them.
Clearly Urquhart and his superiors could see no reason to perform a body count. There is nothing unusual in this, such counts were the exception in those days, and judged from the report here they would also have been quite incriminating, and why should they incriminate themselves? All indications thus suggest that way over fifty 'savages' paid the ultimate price for the one life of poor Eddie Watson in May 1889.
Multiple things are said indirectly more so than directly in such reports. It is thus pretty obvious that Urquhart regarded it as perfectly reasonable and legitimate to shoot as many as possible in the situations described above. It is equally clear from the language used in these reports that this procedure was in such cases a matter of simple routine for him as well as his superior in Cooktown, Inspector Frederick Johnstone Murray (1831-1915). The latter thus added the following congratulatory remark in his note to the Police commissioner David Thompson Seymour: 'Mr Urquhart appears to have done his work completely, and I trust the blacks will be of better behaviour in the future'. [1]
QSA A/49714, letter 9436 of 1889. See also Fysh, W.H: Taming the North, Melbourne 1961, p.144-47. Urquhart and Powell's partner, Alexander Kennedy, describes the same episodes from memory. See also the Grazier's Review 16 Feb 1924 p. 1294 & same on 16 July 1924 pp. 382-3. See also Glenville Pike: Last Frontier, pp. 98-104. I am indebted to Brian Watson, a family descendant, who has provided certain corrections to the original draft. [The] Watson brothers were born in NSW as sons of Sidney Grandison Watson and Constance Maria, nee Armstrong.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited, pp. 57, n.97
See also the entry for 25 May re Native Police Officer Frederic Urquhart
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Given that less than 2500 colonists were killed by Aborigines Australia-wide, [1] the Pallittorre approach to the use of force seems to have been widespread across Australia. And although colonists were killed, never did Aboriginal violence in Van Diemen's Land come to resemble the often unprovoked promiscuous violence practised by the British.
Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, Penguin, Melbourne, 1982, p. 121.
Acknowledgment: Shayne Breen, ‘Human agency, historical inevitability and moral culpability: Rewriting black-white history in the wake of Native Title’, Aboriginal History, Vol. 20 (1996) p. 119 n. 32.