June 4.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Indiscriminate killing
J. T. S. Bird, in his history of early Rockhampton, writes that “troopers usually fired at the wild blacks on sight”. He adds that they took “a fiendish delight in shooting the hapless Aborigines...indiscriminately killing young and old, at times including women and children, though this is often denied”. [1]
J. T. S. Bird, The Early History of Rockhampton, (Rockhampton: Morning Bulletin Office, 1904), p. 198
Acknowledgment: Ross Fitzgerald, From the Dreaming to 1915, pp. 142-143, 198 n.37.
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The colonial newspapers were overflowing with reports of Native Police dispersals on what was then the northern frontier, central-western Queensland, during the whole of the period 1864 to 1867. Clearly it was particularly bad following 23 May 1865 when a 'successful' Aboriginal raid took the life of three of four troopers and their 22 years old officer Cecil Fulford Hill (1843-1865). Several Native Police detachments were called in to track down and avenge the 'murder' of Inspector Hill and his troopers. The wish to see Hill thoroughly avenged was strong, and sections of a collision report dated 16 June 1865 was somehow leaked to the press. The author was one of the mentioned officers in charge of this operation, the German-born Lieutenant Otto Carl Oscar Paschen (1833-1881). The papers thus released were exceedingly brief revealing no detail and nothing about the actual toll inflicted on Aboriginal people. It simply stated that Paschen and his troopers had 'visited the stations' named Sanders, Mackenzie, Cooroorah, Springton, Tryphinia Vale, Pearl Creek, Coomooboolano, Wooroona. The first 'collision' took place near Springton, 'on the evening of June 2nd instant' and the blacks 'dispersed in the Forty-mile Scrub, Lower Dawson Road'. Another number were 'dispersed' on 4 June on 'the Sanders run near Expedition Range'. On 5 June they 'dispersed' a mob on 'the foot of the Comet Range'. A similar 'collision' took place on 7 June 'near the Treyphinia Vale Station'.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited, p. 50.
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They must give way before the arms, aye! even the diseases of civilized nations – they must give way before they attain the power of those nations.
William Charles Wentworth, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 1844,
Cited in The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian Quotations, General editor Stephen Torre, Associate editor Peter Kirkpatrk, The Macquarie Library, NSW, 1990, p.1.
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The forced separation of children
Robert Donaldson in 1909…was a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly, but in 1915 he became the Aborigines Protection Board’s first Inspector of Aborigines, and was therefore able to put into effect the policy of forced separation of children which he had advocated for so long. He told the Australasian Catholic Congress in 1909:
There is no difference of opinion as to the solution of this great problem, the removal of the children and their complete isolation from the influence of the camps. Under no circumstances whatever should the boys and the girls be allowed to return to the camps. In the course of the next few years there will be no need for the camps and stations; the old people will have passed away and their progeny will be absorbed by the industrial classes of the colony. [1]
Edwards and Read (eds) 1989: xiii-xiv.
Acknowledgment: Peter Read, ‘The stolen generations, the historian and the court room’, Aboriginal History Vol. 26 (2002) p. 53 n.6.