October 1.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Excluded from land, food and water
…the taking of Aboriginal women for sexual and domestic purposes was one of the main reasons for Aboriginal attacks on people and property.
[In the Kimberley] the lack of white female company over the entire district meant that white men, including police and pastoral station owners, sought out Aboriginal women. [1] It is clear that the taking of Aboriginal women for sexual and domestic purposes was one of the main reasons for Aboriginal attacks on people and property. As one north Kimberley Aboriginal man said in a recorded oral history: ‘If they challenged them when taking the young woman away, shoot the man and take the woman’. [2] ...In the Fairbairn Commission report of 1882 Fairbairn observed that conflict between pastoralists and Aboriginal people was due to [white] ‘men keeping [A]boriginal women’. [3] In late 1889...Government Resident Thomas Lovegrove claimed that the unusual level of hostility around Lillamaloora Station was because seven or eight women were kept on the station for ‘immoral purposes’. [4] Even in 1905, at Walter Roth’s Royal Commission, PC Inglis identified the cause of Aboriginal thefts and attack on property thus: ‘in nine cases out of ten it is because his woman has been taken by the white man’. [5]
Typically this issue was difficult to police and, in any case police would be socially castigated for attempting to, sometimes because colonists in positions of authority were involved. In early 1898 a drover by the name of John James Butler reported seeing a young Aboriginal girl of about twelve years of age detained, or as Butler described it, ‘a gin [sic] chained to a tent’, for sexual purposes in Wyndham. Butler reported this to Attorney General Septimus Burt, and to The Sunday Times, where the letter was published. [6] The attorney general referred it to the resident magistrate but because, Butler asserted, the magistrate was a friend of the accused, the ‘matter lapsed’. The accused man was Henry Mackenzie Skinner who was the clerk of courts for Wyndham and a local justice of the peace. [7] It also appears that pastoralists and police would reward their station workers and native assistants by giving them Aboriginal women taken from country. [8] One critic stated: ‘From Hall’s Creek to Wyndham you encounter “Komboism” in every form. Everyone has an ebony consort’. [9]
1. See S. Hunt, Spinifex and Hessian: Women in North-West Australia 1860-1900, UWA Press, Perth, 1986, pp. 31-2, 96-117
2. Mary Jane Webb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare: a history of white bosses and Aboriginal pastoral workers, UWA Press, Nedlands, 2002.
3. Fairbairn Commission, WAPP, 1884, no. 32, pp. 10, 13; for Fairbairn’s report see Western Australian Legislative Council Votes and Proceedings 1882, vol. 33, pp.3-14.
4. CSO, ‘Native “Jeneella” Shot by PCs Armitage and Watts, Government Resident Thomas Lovegrove to Colonial Secretary, 20 September 1889’, SROWA, AN 24, Cons. 527, File 2627/89.
5. A later account of this incident is referred to here: ‘White Savages, Rapes and Murders, Police Intimidated, Sunday Times, 20 April 1902, p.4.
6. Witness statement of John James Butler, Roth Report, 1905, p.105.
7. ‘The Aborigines Question, Testimony by PC Inglis to [Commissioner] Walter Roth’, The West Australian, 15 February 1905, p.2.
8. D.R. Rose, Hidden Histories: black stories from Victoria River Downs, Humbert River and Wave Hill stations, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1991, p.102.
9. For a detailed account see ‘More of the Black Nor-West’, Sunday Times, 30 July 1905, p.7. 567
Acknowledgment:: Chris Owen, ‘Every Mother’s Son is Guilty’ – Policing the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905, UWA Publishing, Perth, 2016, pp. 278-279, 553, n.17, n.18, n.19, n. 20, n.21, n.22n n.23, n.24, n.25
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Tasmanian Aborigines to be driven off their land.
On 1 October 1830 [Governor] Arthur extended martial law to the whole of Van Diemen's Land, so as to enable the 'active and extended system of military operations against the Natives'. Following some preliminary patrols on 4 October [1] the 'Black Line' commenced its advance on a 120-mile (195 km) front on 7 October. The force was divided into three divisions – commanded by Major Douglas of the 63rd Regiment, and Captain D'arcey Wentworth of the 63rd [Regiment] and Captain V Y Donaldson of the 57th [Regiment] – with each division being divided into corps commanded by army officers. Civilians were organised into parties of ten with leaders chosen by the local magistrates, but were ultimately under military command. The parties moved forward in extended order with no attempt at stealth. The aim was to 'beat the bush in a systematic manner' and drive the Aborigines ahead of them to the coast. To ensure each party kept to its line of advance, Arthur allocated each a number and ordered that they continually confirm their relative position by shouting their number, firing muskets and blowing bugles. [2]
...The Line continued to advance, and on 20 October the Northern and Western Divisions joined, forming a continuous cordon for the first time. After a halt on the 22nd to allow stragglers to catch up, the Line moved forward again until, on 24 October, the force had concentrated on a 30-mile (50 km) front. Arthur then ordered another halt, this time due to torrential rain. During this pause Arthur sent patrols forward to look for Aborigines which he believed were being driven ahead of the Line. One of these civilian patrols led by Edward Walpole found a camp of Big River and Oyster Bay people, and at dawn on 25 October tried to capture them. In the ensuing skirmish, the settlers killed two and captured a man and a boy named Ronekeennarener and Tremebonenerp. The other Aborigines escaped through the Line. [3] Arthur later claimed that Walpole should not have tried to seize the Aborigines, but McMahon has shown that Arthur had indeed sent the patrols forward to effect a capture and that Arthur's charge against Walpole was an attempt after the event to find a scapegoat for the Line's failure. [4]
McMahon, British army and counter-insurgency, p 60.
Government Order, 22 September 1830, Governor's Proclamation, 1 October 1830, letter Arthur to Murray, 20 November 1830, memo – Arthur, 20 November 1830, BPP Australia, 4: 239, 243, 245, 244: letter – Arthur to Major Sholto Douglas, 63rd Regiment, 8 October 1830, AOT CSOI 324/7578/9 Pt A.
Letter – Edward Walpole to Arthur, 29 October 1830, AOT CSOI 324/7578/9 Pt E; Robinson, Friendly Mission, p 318. Walpole incorrectly stated that the skirmish took place on 26 October. McMahon points out that it took place the previous day. McMahon, British army and counter-insurgency, p 68. Walpole received a land grant for the capture of the two men. Robinson, Friendly Mission, p. 1045.
Memo – Arthur, 20 November 1830, BPP Australia, 4: 245; McMahon, British army and counter-insurgency, pp. 67-71. Mark Cocker, in the most recent book on the 'Black Line' repeats Arthur's line, and refers to Walpole (even in the index) as a 'buffoon'. Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conflict with Tribal Peoples, Pimlico, London, 1999, pp. 151, 415.
John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars, pp. 95, 97, 146, n.69, n.70, 147, n.74, n.75.
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Unwelcome in their own lands and forcibly excluded from their own food and water sources...
As the 19th century ended and the 20th century began, the continued illness and death of Aboriginal people in the more settled parts of Australia had more to do with their unhealthy living conditions than the lethal effects of foreign diseases. This became extreme when Aboriginal people were forced to congregate in overcrowded and unsanitary shanty towns. [1] Unwelcome in their own lands and forcibly excluded from their own food and water sources, Aboriginal people congregated on the outskirts of country towns. People suffered malnutrition and overcrowding in makeshift shelters of hessian, cardboard, bark, and rusted iron. How many died in these and other circumstances will never be known. In 1902, the Queensland Registrar General informed the Chief Protector of Aborigines that Aboriginal deaths were not to be recorded. [1]
Roth 1902:17.
Acknowledgment: John Harris,’ Hiding the bodies: the myth of the humane colonisation of Aboriginal Australia’, Aboriginal History, Vol. 27 (2003) p.97 n.121.