May 2.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Generation upon generation
Between the two World Wars in New South Wales, under the administration of the Aborigines Protection Board, Aboriginal girls and young women were taken from their families to be placed as indentured domestic workers in white household under a so- called apprenticeship scheme. This article examines this policy, for an apparent paradox emerges.
Despite a rhetoric of protection, of giving Aboriginal girls 'a better chance' than they would otherwise have had if they remained with their communities, the records reveal an unusually high illegitimate birth rate to girls in apprenticeships, while close examination shows the authorities made no effort to stem what amounted to a pattern of sexual exploitation of these young Aboriginal servants… From the time Aboriginal activist Fred Maynard railed against the Board's policy in the 1920s — 'They are trying to exterminate the Noble and Ancient Race of sunny Australia ... What a horrible conception of so-called Legislation' [1] — an Aboriginal view of a sinister motive behind the apprenticeship policy has been documented. 'At the age of fourteen our girls [are] sent to work — poor illiterate trustful little girls to be gulled by the promises of unscrupulous white men', Koori spokeswoman Anna Morgan stated in 1934, 'We all know the consequences. But, of course, one of the functions of the Aborigines' Protection Board is to build a white Australia.' [2]
Maynard to an Aboriginal girl, 14/10/27, Premier's Department Correspondence Files A27/915.
Quoted by Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: land in Aboriginal politics in New South Wales, 1770-1972, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards (Sydney), 2008, p. 223.
Acknowledgment: Victoria Haskins, ‘A better chance? — Sexual abuse and the apprenticeship of Aboriginal girls under the NSW Aborigines Protection Board’, Aboriginal History, Vol. 28 (2004) p. 33 n.2, n.3.
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Indigenous settlements in the Brisbane region
Redcliffe
In 1799, explorer Matthew Flinders made landfall below Redcliffe’s Woody Point and proceeded 400 metres to what is now Clontarf. Here he encountered a vacant Aboriginal camp. [1] Redcliffe was established as a penal colony in 1824, abandoned in 1825. Much later, in 1875, Clontarf was where Redcliffe’s first urban settlement developed. Significantly, early residents found a vibrant Aboriginal camp at the same location that Flinders had recorded a camp. [2] They describe its importance in the annual Aboriginal mullet run – groups coming from afar to fish and engage in dugong and turtle hunts and corroborees.[3]...There are 12 references to this camp, spanning more than a century: in 1799, 1823, 1842, 1843, 1859, 1875, 1885, 1887, 1888, 1890, 1900 and 1913. [4]
Wynnum
Wynnum’s Indigenous roots were never denied. The area was first remembered as a large ‘black’s camp’. [5] Early residents stated they knew their Bayside hamlet was named by Aboriginal people after pandanus (win-nam) – a food source. [6] Tom Petrie, an early visitor, described Wynnum as the Aboriginal camp for launching expeditions to hunt turtle, dugong and flying fox on the neighbouring islands. [7]
Flinders in Steele 1972: 31–32.
‘Blacks at Redcliffe’, Courier Mail, 17 August 1935: 19; ‘Redcliffe in the Early Eighties – Many Memories of the First Settlers’, Sunday Mail, 9 March 1930: 21.
Courier Mail, 6 August 1935; Fairhill 1989: 13.
Kerkhove 2015: 25–26; Courier Mail, 17 August 1935: 19
Mr Port in Wynnum Library 1995: 3.
Gough in Wynnum Library 1995.
Petrie 1904: 89; see also ‘Various Fishing Methods’, Queenslander, 9 August 1902: 291. 126 Australasian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil, 17 May 1888.
Acknowledgment: Ray Kerkhove, “Aboriginal camps as urban foundations? Evidence from southern Queensland”, Aboriginal History, Vol. 42 (2018) pp. 141, 172.n.74,n. 75, n.76, n.78; n.123, n.124, n.125.
Note Ray Kerkhove’s article further on Musgrave Park (pp.141-144); Breakfast Creek (pp.152-153); Victoria Park [York’s Hollow] (pp. 153-156) Nundah (156-157); Nambour (pp.158-159); Bli Bli (p.160); Maroochydore (p.160-161); Ipswich (pp. 161-162) and Barcaldine (p.163)