January 7.
“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey
Invasion and resistance
“...which resists our usurped authority and dominion...”
[A generation later in 1831 in Tasmania] intense debate within the Launceston community led a settler to write one of the most important public documents about the relations between Aborigines and settlers to have appeared in the Australian colonies during the whole of the 19th century. The 'Correspondent' who signed himself 'J.E.' [1] began by declaring that his feelings prompted him to wish 'the extermination of the Blacks' but after more mature reflection on the subject some 'solemn questions' presented themselves. 'Are these unhappy creatures', he wondered:
...the subjects of our king, in a state of rebellion? Or are they an injured people, whom we have invaded* and with whom we are at war? Are they within the reach of our laws; or are they to be judged by the law of nations? Are they to be viewed in the light of murderers, or as prisoners of war? Have they been guilty of any crime under the laws of nations which is punishable by death, or have they only been carrying on a war in their way? Are they British subjects at all, or a foreign enemy who has never yet been subdued, and which resists our usurped authority and dominion?
Many profound questions were thrown open by the Correspondent's speculation (in 1831) and there were no easy or comforting answers. Before all else was the question of warfare. How that was answered shaped everything else. [J.E.] had no doubt about it and simply declared:
We are at war with them: they look upon us as enemies – as invaders – as their oppressors and persecutors – they resist our invasion.* They have never been subdued, therefore they are not rebellious subjects, but an injured nation, defending in their own way, their rightful possessions, which have been taken from them by force. [1]
Launceston Advertiser, September 1831. The author was probably James Erskine Calder, the 23-year-old surveyor who lived in the colony just under two years before (1829). He developed a lifelong interest in the Tasmanian Aborigines.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Forgotten War, pp.11-12, 258 n.4.
* For Reynolds' discussion of the controversy that erupted over the use of the term 'invasion' in 1988, and into the 1990s, see Henry Reynolds, Why Weren't We Told – A personal search for the truth about our history, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 2000, pp. 153-167.
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...no war or long-term revolt has been fought on Australian soil since the dispossession of the Aborigines.
Acknowledgment: Michael McKernan, The Australian People and the Great War, Collins, Sydney, 1984, p. 1
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...it was a strange and painful sight to see a human being running for his life and see the black police galloping after him and hear the crack of the carbines, the gins and children all hid in the grass...One little girl took refuge under my horse's belly and would not move of course. I took no part in these proceedings, that being the duty of the [Native Mounted] police: it is the only way of insuring the lives of white men to shew that they cannot be attacked with impunity, for though the road party drove them off, if a dog had not given the alarm they would probably all have been murdered as they slept.
- cited from 'Journal of John Ewan Davidson', 7 January, 1866, North Queensland Collection, James Cook University, Townsville.
Also on this day
7 January, 1832 – George Augustus Robinson arrived in Hobart with Aborigines from Oyster Bay and Big River tribes...to be resettled on Bass Strait islands.
Acknowledgment: Anthony Barker, When Was That – Chronology of Australia from 1788, p.90.