September 20.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Imperial ‘magic’
Hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of Aboriginal lands..became the property of the Crown through exuberant incantation.
In 1824, uncertain of its sovereignty over northern Australia, the British government sent the 38-year-old Captain James Gordon Bremer of the Royal Navy, a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar, to take possession at Port Essington. Bremer sailed up the east coast of Australia from Sydney, passing through the Torres Strait before heading along the north coast, his crew amazed by the 'immense body of light' that emanated from the 'natives' burning of Country, the evening glow so bright that it made everything 'perfectly visible' for miles around. [1]
When Bremer arrived at Port Essington on 20 September [1824], he took possession through the customary rituals, which in the proud words of his ship's purser, Henry Ennis, saw vast swathes of foreign territories 'turned, as it were by magic, into...British settlement[s]'. Marines were landed on shore, a tall 'conspicuous tree' was 'cleaned round for the occasion', a 'new' Union Jack was nailed to it and the proclamation read loudly. Bremer took possession of 'the north coast of New Holland, or Australia...between the meridian of 129 [degrees] and 135 [degrees] east of Greenwich, with all the bays, rivers, harbours, creeks, &c. In all the islands laying off...in the name and in the right [sic] of His Most Excellent Majesty George the Fourth, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland'. 'Three volleys' were fired, and the colours 'saluted', and 'three hearty cheers' roared, before Bremer's ship, the Tamar, replied with a royal salute of twenty-one guns. [2]
Such was the manner in which pieces of Australia were gradually spirited away under British law. Hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of Aboriginal lands – Bremer effectively extended the western border of New South Wales to the current border between Western Australia and the Northern Territory – became the property of the Crown through exuberant incantation. It was miraculous. Possession of Country occurred without the knowledge of Country and without any need to negotiate with its Indigenous owners. By sending Bremer to the north coast of the continent, Britain was effectively admitting that in order to successfully ward off rival European powers, its possession of the country needed to be asserted anew in different parts of the continent. Australia was not founded in one moment; rather, it was possessed in an ad hoc, piecemeal fashion, the arms of British law seizing the continent gradually over several decades.
'check mate', George Windsor Earl to Captain Washington, 16 August 1838, in Earl, Enterprise in Tropical Australia, edited by Bob Reece, Northern Territory University Press, Darwin, 2002 (first published 1846), p. 16; possession much debated', J Lort Stokes, Discoveries in Australia, T & W Boone, London, 1846, p. 388; 'immense body of light', Henry Ennis, Remarks on Board His Majesty's Ship Tamar, facsimile edition, Richard Griffin, Melbourne, 1983 (1825), p. 14.
ibid., Ennis, pp. 10-11; Ennis described the ritual of taking possession as a kind of 'magic' while at Fort Dundas.
Acknowledgment: Mark McKenna, From The Edge, pp. 66-67, 223 n.2, n.3.
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[Judge John Walpole] Willis, [in a trial commencing on 20 December, 1841] said...that Aboriginal people could not be considered as foreigners in a kingdom which they actually owned. [1] Although this ruling raised serious concerns in Sydney as it questioned the entire legality of British colonisation, [2] it was nevertheless allowed to stand.
Port Phillip Patriot (Melbourne) 20 September 1841, p.1; Geelong Advertiser (Geelong), 20 September 1841, pp.2-3.
‘Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788-1899: R. v. Bonjon’ (Sydney: Macquarie Law School, n.d), n.p.
Acknowledgment: Murray Johnson & Ian McFarlane, Van Diemen’s Land, pp. 272, 414 n.41, n.42.