October 12.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
“Native tenants hunted down”
“...the earliest inroads of the settlers were marked with blood...”
While news of white deaths resulting from frontier violence was recorded and made public, the same could not be said for black lives lost at the hands of white squatters and their servants. Archibald Meston later commented, 'Very singular is the silence of those old pioneers – Leslie, Arthur Hodgson and Stuart Russell – with regard to the blacks. It looked suspiciously like a conspiracy of silence'. [1] These silences were sometimes broken. Charles Pemberston Hodgson, Arthur Hodgson's younger brother, reflected on his experiences as a Darling Downs pioneer, remarking,
the earliest inroads of the settlers were marked with blood, the forests were ruthlessly seized, and the native tenants hunted down like native dogs. [2]
Only a small number of inquests were conducted into the deaths of Aborigines on the Darling Downs frontier. A white man killed one Aboriginal man 'in self defence', and another two were reported as 'accidentally shot'. [3] In October 1848 [Christopher] Rolleston held an inquest into the deaths of an 'unknown number of Aborigines' murdered by 'unknown whites'. The only known records of these inquests are entries in a New South Wales register. [4] Many of the inquests were conducted by Arthur Hodgson, who was one of the Darling Downs squatters accused by Meston of maintaining a 'conspiracy of silence'.
The use of state-sanctioned violence against Aborigines in Queensland began on the Darling Downs and in the Moreton Bay area. In 1843 Crown Lands Commissioners Rolleston and Simpson joined with a vigilante group of settlers, Lieutenant Johnstone and ten soldiers from the 99th Regiment, to chase a group of Aborigines into the Rosewood Scrub in the Lockyer Valley following the 'Battle of One Tree Hill'. [5]
In his 1888 book Genesis of Queensland, squatter Henry Stuart Russell described the shooting of an Aboriginal man in a battle near Toowoomba on the main range:
The blacks were dancing and bellowing their war-song at the time, and this big blackfellow was more prominent than the rest. 'Cocky' took true aim at his head with his rifle, and struck the black somewhere in the body, which made him rebound six feet high, and all the tribe then commenced to roll the stones of the hill down the incline fancying they could kill all the whites on the flat. [6]
An accurate number of Aborigines who were murdered on the Darling Downs frontier would be impossible to calculate. But there is evidence to suggest that 1840 to 1843 was a particularly violent period. Letters from Crown Lands Commissioner Rolleston constantly reported attacks upon white lives and property. Rolleston often joined with white squatters and their servants in seeking retribution for these acts of resistance. In August of 1843 he reported chasing a group of Aborigines suspected of driving away 484 sheep from Sibley and King's station. [7] The driving away of such a large number of sheep represented more than a crime brought about through hunger. Rolleston appears to have been incapable of comprehending that these acts of aggression were motivated by settlers trespassing on Aboriginal land.
Archibald Meston, 'The Genesis of Queensland, Part 2, Toowoomba Chronicle, 9 April 1920.
Charles Pemberton Hodgson (1846), Reminiscences of Australia, p.233.
Archives Authority of New South Wales, Attorney General and Justice, registers of Coroner's Inquests, 1834-1859, reel number 2921, also held by the Toowoomba Family History Society.
ibid.
Sydney Morning Herald, 12 October 1843, p.3.
Henry Stuart Russell (1888) Genesis of Queensland, pp. 327-328.
Christopher Rolleston to Colonial Secretary. 15 August 1843, John Oxley Library, A2.13, frames 178-180, letter number 43/6628.
Acknowledgment: Mark Copland, Jonathan Richards and Andrew Walker, One Hour More Daylight, pp.25, n.59, n.60, n.61, n.62, p. 26, n.63, n.64, n.65.