December 26.
“A Portrait of Australia With Important Bits Missing” by Glenn Loughrey
Instances of brutality.
“The settler retribution was indiscriminate and brutal.”
Pushed out of their own territory by drought, and seeking food and water, the Gandagarra came into Dharawal territory, where they also sought revenge for the murder of two Gandangarra families of women and children by white settlers. Governor Macquarie reported this latest outbreak of violence to the Colonial Office:
The native blacks of this country have lately broken out in open hostility against British settlers residing near Cowpastures and have committed the most daring acts of violence. No less than five white men have been killed...I had entertained hopes of being able to civilise a great proportion of them by the establishment of the native institution and settling some few grown up men and women on lands in Sydney...In the mean time it will be absolutely necessary to inflict severe punishments on the mountain tribes… [1]
The settler retribution was indiscriminate and brutal. Some of the local people had sought shelter with a local farmer, Charles throsby, who wrote from Glenfield Farm on 5 April 1816 to acting Provost Marshall William Charles Wentworth about his fear for his innocent friends, Bitugally, Duel and Yettooming. Yettooming’s wife and two children had been the victims of barbarous treatment:
The people not content at shooting at them in the most treacherous manner in the dark, actually cut the woman’s arm off and stripped the scalp of her head over her eyes, and on going up to them and finding one of the children only wounded one of the fellows deliberately beat the infant’s brains out with the butt end of his musket, the whole of the bodies then left in that state by the (brave) party unburied! As an example for the savages to view the following morning, therefore under these circumstances I hope I may be pardoned for asserting that I do not wonder at the savages then seeking revenge in retaliation. I am well aware that the fears and aversions of the ignorant part of white people will lead them to accuse the whole, indiscriminately, therefore it is to be hoped, steps will as much possible be taken to prevent any friendly natives being injured, least the lives of some of our stockmen or others in remote unprotected situations may fall a sacrifice in retaliation. [2]
Governor Macquarie to Bathurst, 18 March 1816, HRA, series 1, vol. 9, p. 54.
Charles Throsby to D’Arcy Wentworth (in Sydney), Wentworth Papers, 5 April 1816, A752/CY699, Mitchell Library, Sydney, pp. 183-6.
Acknowledgment: Marcia Langton, “Ngura barbagai Country Lost”, pp. 29-30, 255 n.70, n.71.
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“Round them up, boys!”
Another time, while out riding in the bush, my father heard a great row, and a voice calling, “Round them up, boys!” And on galloping up he came upon a number of poor blacks – men, women, and children – all in a mob like so many wild cattle, surrounded by the mounted black police. The poor creatures tried to run to their friend [Tom Petrie] for protection, and he inquired of the officer in charge what was the meaning of it all. The officer – a white man, and one...who was noted for his inhuman cruelty – replied that they merely wished to see who was who. But father knew that if he hadn't turned up, a number of the poor things would have been shot...The same police officer (Wheeler, by name) # later on was to have been hanged for whipping a poor creature to death, but he escaped and fled from the country....His victim was a young blackfellow, whom he had tied to a verandah post, and then brutally flogged till he died....
Acknowledgment: Constance Campbell Petrie, Tom Petrie's Reminiscences of Early Queensland (Dating from 1837) Recorded by his daughter, Watson, Ferguson & Co, Brisbane, 1904, pp. 6-7.
# For instances of Lieutenant Frederick Wheeler's killing of Aboriginal people, see Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, pp. 6,23-24,29,44,52,55-56.