October 7.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
‘A war of extermination’
My whole and sole objective was to kill them – Edgar Curr, agent of Van Diemen’s Land Company
[The agent of the Van Diemen's Land Company Edgar Curr's] version of events might have gone unquestioned were it not for an account given by Rosalie Hare, who was then lodging with her husband at the Curr homestead. In her journal, Hare wrote that 'while we remained at Circular Head there were several accounts of considerable amounts of Natives having been shot by them (the Van Diemen's Land Company men), they wishing to extirpate them entirely, if possible. The master of the Company's cutter, assisted by four shepherds and his crew, surprised a party and killed 12'. [1] ...Hare, unlike Curr, had no reason to lie.
Whatever the truth, the local shepherds were determined not to rest until the entire tribe was exterminated. The end result of this resolution was the so-called Cape Grim Massacre, which has since become a by-word for the cruelty of colonisation in Tasmania. Rather than attacking at night, the men used the Cape's topography to gain the element of surprise. Having some idea of the tribe's movements, company servants Weavis, Gunshannon, Nicholson and Chamberlain came upon them while they were collecting shellfish at the foot of a cliff accessible only by a steep and narrow track. From their position atop the cliff – one, an ex-soldier – picked off their victims below. Trapped on the beach, the natives suffered a high mortality though Chamberlain was probably exaggerating when he claimed 30 were killed. [2]...For his part, Curr ignored his magisterial duty, and declined to investigate the matter.
Later that year, Curr announced that 'a war of extermination' was underway: 'The recent proclamation of Martial Law...does not speak this out in very clear terms, but it is to be the practical effect of it. [3] The chief agent was nonchalant at the prospect of annihilating the north-west tribes. He once even confessed to offering his men spirits if they brought him back three native heads. In a letter to the company's director, Curr admitted:
My whole and sole objective was to kill them, and this because my full conviction was and is that the laws of nature and God and of this country all conspired to render this my duty...[4]
Hare, Voyage of the Caroline,
Plomley, Friendly mission, p. 230; Windschuttle, Fabrication, pp. 249-94; I MacFarlane, 'Cape Grim', in R Manne (ed.) Whitewash: on Keith Windschuttle's fabrication of Aboriginal history, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2003, pp. 277-98.
Curr to Directors, 17 January 1829, in MacFarlane, Beyond Awakening, p. 105.
Curr to Directors, 7 October 1830, in MacFarlane, Beyond Awakening, pp. 112-113.
Acknowledgment: Nicholas Clements, The Black War, pp. 182-183, 249 n.10, n.12, n.14, n.15
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Aborigines were 'not insensible to their original right to the soil'.
The white invasion often forced blacks into a more assertive and possessive stance concerning clan territories. [In Victoria] E.S. Parker came to the conclusion that it was an 'important and unquestionable fact' that the Port Phillip Aborigines were 'not insensible to their original right to the soil'. He referred to the experience of a settler who was confronted by an old man who told the whites to leave the district because the land and water belonged to the Aborigines. [1]
[G.A.] Robinson reported a similar case in the Western District where a party of Europeans were ordered by local blacks to depart because they said, 'it was their country, and the water belonged to them, if it was taken away they could not go to another country'. [2] A very similar response was reported at much the same time from Ipswich in southern Queensland. A large party of blacks marched up to a recently established station and ordered the Europeans to be off 'as it was their ground'. [3]
E.S. Parker to G.A. Robinson, 20 June 1839, Port Phillip Papers, 1840 No. 39/10026, New South Wales Archives , 4/2510.
Aborigines: Australian Colonies, British Parliamentary Papers, 1844, p.282.
Sydney Morning Herald, 7 October, 1843.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, pp. 54, 175 n.16, n.17, n.18.