January 29.
“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey
The right of power.
...just think that the bodies had been white…
The research of the last twenty years has put the reality of frontier violence beyond reasonable doubt...But just think for one moment that the bodies had been white [instead of black]. That tens of thousands of our ancestors had been killed in Australia as a long-running civil war. It would have become one of the most studied, most commemorated subjects in our history. There would be shelves of books about it in our libraries and bookshops. There would be relevant monuments all over the country.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Truth-Telling – History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement, p. 240.
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A ‘right of occupancy’! Amiable sophistry! Why not say fondly. at once, the right of power?
The prominent Western Australian lawyer Edward Landor wrote the most powerful polemic in favour of conquest in his book The Bushman or Life in a New Country, published in 1847. [He wrote]:
“...successive Secretaries of State...have repeatedly commanded that it must never be forgotten ‘that our possession of this territory is based on a right of occupancy’.
A ‘right of occupancy’! Amiable sophistry! Why not say fondly at once, the right of power? We have seized upon the country, and shot down the inhabitants, until the survivors have found it expedient to submit to our rule...On what grounds can we possibly claim a right to the occupancy of the land?
...We have a right to our Australian possessions; but it is the right of Conquest, and we hold them with the grasp of Power. Unless we proceed on this foundation, our conduct towards the native population can be considered only as a monstrous absurdity.
Like many colonists, Landor was perplexed about the problem of applying British law to the Aboriginal peoples. ‘What right’, he asked, ‘have we to impose laws upon a people whom we profess never to have conquered’ and have never ‘annexed themselves or their country to the British Empire by any written or even verbal treaty?’ [1]
E Landor, The Bushman or life in a New Country, Richard Bentley, London, 1847, pp. 187-88.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Truth-Telling – History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement, pp. 147-149, 256 n.9.
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Official theory and actual practice.
Lieutenant Governor Collins...was well aware of what was happening, but by this time the situation had got beyond him. The convicts had been loosed. As bushrangers they were running wild. It was impossible to police the untracked hinterland, even had there been a general wish that it should be so policed. Nevertheless Collins once more emphasised the legal rights of the natives for what they were worth – nothing, it seemed – in an order which appears in the Muster Book of 29 January, 1810:
There being great reason to fear that William Russell and George Getley will be added to the number of unfortunate men who have been put to death by the natives in revenge for the murders and abominable cruelties which have been practised upon them by the white people, the Lieutenant Governor, aware of the evil consequences that must result to the settlement if such cruelties are continued, and abhorring the conduct of those miscreants who perpetrate them, hereby declares that any person whomsoever who shall offer violence to a native, or who shall, in cold blood, murder, or cause any of them to be murdered, shall, on proof being made of the same, be dealt with and proceeded against as if such violence had been offered or murder committed on a civilized person.
Once in a while the Administration made a feeble attempt to do justice. A man was flogged for cutting off the ear of a boy, and another for chopping off a native's finger for use as a tobacco stopper. But there the matter dropped. On 24 March 1810, Collins died sitting in his chair. That night two officers of the Government destroyed the official papers.
Acknowledgment: Clive Turnbull, Black War, pp. 45-46.
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Hot pursuit [of indigenous personnel] trumped technical legality
[In 1830] among his travels, [John] Batman also tracked an Aboriginal group but 'considered I could not follow them' when they were spotted in territory 'where Martial Law does not exist', and so headed in another direction. [Governor] Arthur disagreed with this decision. He annotated the report, mentioning that he had an 'earnest desire still to conciliate' if communication was possible, but also declaring that Batman 'under the circumstances' he states, 'may follow the natives into the Territory where Martial Law does not extend'. The message was clear that hot pursuit trumped technical legality. Batman need not fear prosecution for engagements beyond the line of martial law.
The Colonial Secretary duly conveyed to Anstey the Lieutenant Governor's quiet but tacit support for roving beyond the designated settled districts as limited by martial law. [1] Moreover, he did it within days of [George] Robinson's departure for his ostensibly conciliatory mission to Port Davey. Few coincidences revealed how much diplomacy and warfare were not mutually exclusive options, and how the government publicised some measures and was discreet in others. The divergence highlights that while conciliation was an aspiration, clearance and capture were still the main policy objectives, and the law of the land was no barrier.
CSO41/1/1, p. 368.
Acknowledgment: Nick Brodie The Vandemonian War– The Secret History of Britain's Tasmanian Invasion, Hardie Grant Books, Richmond, 2017.pp. 136-137, 392 n.49.