January 12.
“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey
Charles Darwin’s comments
12 January, 1836 – HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin on board arrives at Sydney.
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“Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the [A]boriginal.”
Writing in 1839...Charles Darwin noted, "Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the [A]boriginal...The varieties of man seem to act on each other; in the same way as different species of animals the stronger always extirpating the weaker." [1] In the same year, the ethnologist James Prichard sounded the tocsin about "the extinction of human races" in The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal: "Wherever Europeans have settled, their arrival has been the harbinger of extermination to the native tribes." Fearful that a further century of colonization would mean "the [A]boriginal nations of most parts of the world will have ceased to exist," he asked "whether any thing...can be done effectually to prevent the extermination of the [A]boriginal tribes." [2]
F. W. and J. M. Nicholas, Charles Darwin in Australia, Cambridge, 1989, pp.30-31.
James Prichard, "On the Extinction of human Races", The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (October 1839-April 1840) pp.169-70.
Acknowledgment: A. Dirk Moses, "Genocide and Settler Society in Australian History" in Genocide and Settler Society – Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, edited by A. Dirk Moses, Berghahn Books, New York, p.5, 37 n.10, n.11.
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Between Two Cultures
W. M. Ryan, brought up with Aboriginal people, writes of the tragedy of loss of culture for one old man in the Channel Country.
There were now few people in our main camp. It was late 1916 and under the new Aboriginal Protection Act most of the young men and some young women had been taken for work on the various stations around, the men as stockmen, the women as domestic labour at the homesteads. Those left were mostly old people and I noticed that Curraweenya was missing. They told me he had gone to Dingera Creek and that all the elders from the other groups were there for a talk. These talks...only take place in times of great emergency…
Two days later Curraweenya came back and one night he called all the men together and said: 'This is the end. The white man does not know or obey the Law, and we must do what the white man tells us. The young men are all taken and the young women also...The white man says it is wrong for young men to feed old people and there is no place for us in the white man's thinking. We have buried the turinga* forever. There is no more to say'. Little did I know that I was hearing the epitaph of my people; and, in fact, of all the Aboriginal tribes of the south-west.
Curraweenya asked me to get him two plugs of tobacco from the station store, and I did. He took them and said: 'I go now'. I knew what he meant. Somewhere out there in the desert by Nappa merri he would dig a trench to keep the cold wind off him at night, he would build a fire, and then he was home because he was in his own country. He did not carry any weapons because he did not need them...He would not commit suicide, he would just die with his grief... He had failed and he knew not why, only that his people had met a force greater than their own. I know now just how great Curraweenya was. He was not concerned for himself, but for his people. He died, and all the wisdom of years died with him. [1]
W. Mitchell Ryan, White Man, Black Man, Jacaranda, Brisbane, 1979.
Acknowledgment: Lorna McDonald ed., West of Matilda – Outback Queensland 1890s – 1990s, Central Queensland University Press, 2001, pp. 57-58.
Turinga (churinga) – a sacred representation of an Aboriginal totemic usually made of wood or stone; bullroarer. - The Macquarie Dictionary (1982) p. 346.