December 21.
“A Portrait of Australia With Important Bits Missing” by Glenn Loughrey
Women and children
Exploitation of Indigenous women and children
Sources show that the act of kidnapping [Aboriginal] children appears to have been a common occurrence in nineteenth-century Queensland. Similar behaviour has also been described in the Northern Territory by Ann McGrath, along with Deborah Bird Rose's research on Victoria River Downs, Humbert River and Wave Hill Stations, which indicates how prevalent sexual exploitation was, well into the twentieth century. [1] The approach and behaviour appears very much akin to slavery.
Thomas Davis, Steele Rudd's father, who lived at Surat during the 1850s, noted that: 'Twas a custom of the whites to keep a few gins on the stations – say, one apiece . The gin's husbands permitted them to stay until they should require them to shift to some other part of the country'. [2] He felt that attacks on outstations which refused to give up their 'gins' were not 'without some justification'. Davis also observed that the:
Wandaigumbil [Native] Police Barracks early in the fifties [1850s] was a perfect harem – young and old gins ranging from twelve to fifty years, could be seen there any time. The cause of the crimes originated with the whites. The white man was to blame. [3]
Running concurrently with the violence was the sexual exploitation of women and children...that Aboriginal women dressed like men and worked cattle with their white boss, was definitely the case, as was their sexual role when not 'working' . [4]
Little boys and girls were snatched by the Native Police and pastoralists and then given or traded across the outback to fulfil the role of cheap servants. John Swann travelled the Burke district in 1890, having been in the colony for over 40 years, and noted:
...from Normanton to Camooweal there is not 50 white men employed you will find one or two whites on stations the remainder are black boys that in reality are gins in trousers. Now Sir how were the boys and gins procured and how is the supply kept up? I will inform you, by organised parties going up the Nicholson River and along the coast Point Parker way also Gunpowder River supplies some, these children are brought in and tied up and the sleuth hound gin that has found favour in her master's sight is put over them to keep them from running away and if they manage to get away and are caught, God help them...
Regarding Frank Hann, Swann recorded that:
...when I left Lawn Hill [there were] 13 gins [and] three half caste children...his Chinese cook has a gin, his fencers has gins, his stockman has gins. Hann himself has seven as a sort of bodyguard or small regiment of amazons [sic]...his next neighbour Shadforth has not whites of any description, gins and boy gins predominating... [5]
A McGrath, 'Aboriginal Women Workers in the NT, 1911-1939', Hecate, Vol. IV, No. 2 July 1978. D. Rose, Hidden Histories. Black Stories from Victoria River Downs, Humbert River, and Wave Hill stations, North Australia, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1991. see also T Roberts, Frontier Justice, UQP, St Lucia, 2005.
Recollections of Thomas Davis, manuscript collected by Steele Rudd, in the possession of J T Bell, c. 1908-9, p.8 <http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/QU:216890>
Recollections of Thomas Davis, p.9.
T. Egan and R. Ingpen, the Drover's Boy, Lothian Books, Port Melbourne, 1997.
John T Swann letter to C Lilley, Justice department, 21 December 1891. QSA, COL/713 92/12790.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, pp. 92-93, 225 n.57, n.58, n.60. n.61, n.62.