June 15.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Overriding Indigenous claims.
Conflict on the Hawkesbury
Once the New South Wales Corps detachment had withdrawn from the Hawkesbury, the Darug immediately took their revenge by attacking William Rowe's farm near Richmond Hill, killing Rowe and his child. Mrs Rowe was wounded and survived only by crawling to the river and hiding in the reeds. The attack forced [Lieutenant Governor] Paterson to deploy a permanent garrison at the Hawkesbury; with two officers and ninety-three other ranks, this was second in size only to the Sydney garrison. In October 1795 Governor Hunter asked for an expansion of the New South Wales Corps because the need to send troops to the frontier had 'so considerably increased the duties of officers and soldiers'. The troops were divided among the farms, with the lieutenant in charge based at Green Hills, and – according to William Goodall, the detachment's stores sergeant from 1795 to 1797 – 'Parties of Soldiers were frequently sent out to kill the Natives'. [1]
David Collins, An Account of the English Colony of New South wales, with remarks on the disposition, customs, manners, etc. of the native inhabitants of that country, 2 vols [1798, 1802], I:349; letters – Paterson to Dundas, 15 June 1795, Hunter to Portland, 25 October 1795, HRA, I: 509, 534-35.
Acknowledgment: John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838, pp. 39, 134 n.7.
____
...the Aboriginal right of residence and use was usually overridden by both settlers and colonial governments...
Eventually pastoral leases in New South Wales and subsequently in Queensland were provided, with a clause reserving to the Aboriginal inhabitants of the colony 'such free access to the said Run or Parcel of land...and to the trees and water thereon as will enable them to procure the Animals, Birds, Fish and other food on which they subsist'. Similar reservations were inserted in leases in Western Australia and South Australia. In Western Australia the wording was: 'Nothing contained in any pastoral lease shall prevent Aboriginal natives of this colony from entering upon the lands comprised therein, and seeking their subsistence therefrom in their accustomed manner'.
The South Australian reservation was much more detailed, guaranteeing to the Aboriginal inhabitants and their descendants:
full and free rights of ingress, egress and regress into upon and over the said Waste Lands of the Crown...and every part thereof and in and to the springs and surface water thereon...and may at all times...use occupy dwell on and obtain food and water thereon and thereof...and may erect such wurlies and other dwellings as they have been heretofore accustomed to make* and to take and use for food birds and animals...in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this demise had not been made.
This recognition of Aboriginal rights on pastoral land was clearly of major significance in the history of relations between settlers and Indigenous people. It had received both the imprimatur of the imperial government and the personal endorsement of the Secretary of State, Earl Grey. The British officials believed that it was a matter of both high principle and practical necessity. Without a legally protected right to live on their own country, the Aboriginal clans would be exterminated. The honour of both Britain and Australia was at stake – but the Aboriginal right of residence and use was usually overridden by both settlers and colonial governments, and has largely been ignored in retrospect by the historians of land settlement.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Why Weren't We Told – A personal search for the truth about our history, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 2000, pp. 211-212.
* On the existence of Aboriginal dwellings note Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu, Chap. 3 “Population and Housing” pp. 97-144; Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth, 2012, pp. 194, 219, 300-1; and Noelene Cole, “Battle Camp to Boralga: a local study of colonial war on Cape York Peninsula, 1873-1894”, Aboriginal History, Vol. 28 (2004) p. 159 n.34