January 28.
“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey
Violence and Land lost
[Continuation of quote from 21 January.]
In December 1790, a convict, John McIntire, and three other convicts had gone hunting in the Kogarah Bay area when they were attacked by natives. McIntire later died from a spear wound.
“Violence necessarily underpinned the whole colonial project.”
[Governor] Phillip's decision to dispatch what would become generally known as a punitive expedition tells us a great deal about the relationship between the Aboriginal people and the British invaders in the first few years of settlement. When Phillip acted his servant [John McIntyre] was still alive. His assailant was known and there were several credible witnesses to the spearing. He could have eventually been captured and brought to trial. But the governor did not respond as he would have done with a white assassin by using his police powers. He reacted like a military commander attempting to impose order among a subject population. He treated the Aborigines not as turbulent subjects but as enemies of the state. He intended to use quite disproportionate violence as a result of which the guilty and the innocent would suffer alike in an attempt to crush resistance. It may have been petty warfare but it was warfare just the same. Even with a humane governor who sought to avoid conflict, there came a moment of tragic intensity when the invaders had to impose their will by force of arms. Such action could be delayed but it could not be permanently avoided. Violence necessarily underpinned the whole colonial project. That was the brutal, inescapable lesson of colonial life eventually learnt by officials, army officials and individual settlers all over the continent.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Forgotten War, pp. 57-58.
____
“Aboriginal control of the land was eventually lost...”
Within weeks of the European invasion of each Aboriginal country, Indigenous groups witnessed a novelty: interlopers without knowledge of or custodianship over Aboriginal land, who refused to leave that land. Following disputes and violent confrontations, Aboriginal control of the land was eventually lost and Indigenous people 'came in' to pastoral stations, towns and missions. This 'coming in' was sometimes forced by loss of food supplies, the impact of diseases, and frontier violence. The Pallawah in Tasmania came in during 1830-31, after 30 years of European occupation and a decade of war. In open country covered rapidly by sheep and attendant European weeds, and with few places of retreat or sustenance, groups were forced in more quickly. Some clans had sufficient bush foods to remain apart, but chose to engage with Europeans. The government's offer was one of change as Governor Cawler explained. Ignorant of the great tradition that dwelt in Aboriginal minds, Gawler told Aboriginal people in Adelaide in 1838: 'Black men. We wish to make you happy. But you cannot be happy unless you love God...Love white men...learn to speak English. If any white men injure you tell the Protector and he will do you justice'. [1]
South Australian Government Gazette, 3 November 1838.
Acknowledgment: Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians –A History Since 1788, pp. 57, 384 n.1.