June 14.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Hunted, chained, shot down...
...whole tribes had been ‘rubbed out’...
A hint at the probable number of Aboriginal deaths on the Darling Downs can be gleaned from the reminiscences of William Stamer who visited during the late 1850s:
It was enough to make ones blood run cold to listen to the stories that were told of the diabolical manner in which whole tribes had been ‘rubbed out’ by unscrupulous squatters. No device by which the race could be exterminated had been left untried. They had been hunted and shot down like wild beasts – treacherously murdered whilst sleeping within the paddock rails, and poisoned wholesale by having arsenic or some other substance mixed with the flour given to them for food… [1]
...Letters to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald highlighted the sense of fear present on the Darling Downs. In August 1842 ‘A Squatter’ wrote:
The state of the district with respect to the Aborigines, appears now to have arrived at such a crisis that the necessity of some means being immediately adopted to suppress outrage on their part, and unwarranted retribution on the part of the settlers, is obvious. [2]
Requests for state aid in the campaign against Aborigines continued until arrival of the Native Police at the Macintyre River in 1849.
William Stamer (1866), Recollections of a Life of Adventure, vol. 2, p. 98.
Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August 1842, p. 3.
Acknowledgment: Mark Copland, Jonathan Richards and Andrew Walker, One Hour More Daylight, pp. 27-28, n.68, n.69.
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Aspects of slavery
On arrival in Carnarvon, [the Rev'd John] Gribble set out almost immediately on a long inspection of the condition of Aboriginal people in the inland. It did not take him long to assess the injustice and oppression. He saw much on his trip that disturbed him: Aboriginal women the assigned property of white stockmen, shocking employment conditions and inhuman disciplinary measures. The forced labour system was brutally simple provided there was solidarity between those who enforced it and those who benefited from it.
Theoretically, under the Masters and Servants Act, Aboriginal people entered into what Gribble called 'bondservice' by signing assignment papers. In a majority of cases the signing was not voluntary. Aboriginal people were 'run down' and captured. They were forced to touch the pen which marked the assignment papers, the content of which they could not read. They were then legally bound to their employers. Gribble was particularly angered that women and girls were assigned to single white men in this way.
If they ran away, the police were informed and a warrant issued for their arrest. They were then technically fugitives from the law and could be -and were – shot for ‘resisting arrest’. When arrested, prisoners were chained at the police station, often for weeks, pending trial. Gribble saw them himself at Junction Bay Police Station, naked, cold, hungry and chained both by neck and ankle. Such chained prisoners were not yet proven guilty and chained together with them were witnesses as well as suspects. He saw and heard of even worse practices including the torture of recaptured runaways.
Aboriginal labour was gained by the imposition of terror. If the ‘slaves’ ran away, they had to be brought back and punished. Escape would never be permitted. The system depended on fear.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, pp.417-18.