June 1.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
From stockwhips to poisoning
Methods employed to decimate Indigenous people, including poisoning
On Cargoon Station when the Anning Brothers rode out to attack some Aborigines who were spearing cattle, one was suddenly set upon by a ‘civilised’ Aboriginal who had sent the other annoying [attacker] off on a wild goose chase. [1] Very often the squatter took the law into his own hands to force the Aborigines on his station to accept his conditions for co-existence. Such actions could range from fighting and using a stock whip to shooting and poisoning. [2] In fact, it is possible that poison was used as frequently against Aborigines in this twilight situation as it was in the popular period of open conflict...
Mackay Mercury, 12 December 1874
Mackay Mercury, 12 December 1874; P.D.T., 1 June, 8 June, 24 August 1878. See also R. Cannon, Savage Scenes from Australia: Being a Short History of the Settlement at Somerset, Cape York (Valparaiso, 1885), p.23, for F. Jardine’s use of a stock whip to intimidate Aborigines, and pp. 29, 30, for his use of the rifle. It was alleged he cut notches in the stock of his rifle.
Acknowledgment: Noel Loos, Invasion and Resistance, pp. 57-58, 263 n. 3, n.4, n.5.
____
The wider historical context
Before looking at the three frontiers [Mining, Rainforest and Fishing] indicated in the title of this paper, it is important to focus attention upon Queensland's frontier policy. For the policy of 'keeping the blacks out' and 'letting the blacks in', described by Reynolds in his paper, was not only condoned by the colonial government but actively assisted. A Native Police Force was provided to help break Aboriginal resistance. This combination of settler initiative and government support was referred to euphemistically throughout the Australian colonies as Queensland's policy of 'dispersal'.
It aimed at conquering and dispossessing the Aborigines and keeping them subservient by as much force as was considered necessary. The government expected the settlers to use arms and closed its eyes to excesses committed on the frontier. This policy which had evolved from the experience of the squatting movement proved satisfactory for the settlers on the pastoral frontier of North Queensland...
N.A. Loos, “Aboriginal Resistance on the Mining, Rainforest & Fishing Frontiers” from Noel A. Loos, Lectures on North Queensland History, edited by B.J. Dalton, James Cook University, Townsville, 1974, p. 163.
____
The challenge of remembrance.
Colleague and biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eberhard Bethge. mindful of the challenge confronting his fellow-Germans to face their past, wrote:
Commemoration renders life human; forgetfulness makes it inhuman. We know of course about the grace of forgetting. But even when remembrance carries grief and shame, it fills the future with perspectives. And the denial of the past furthers the affairs of death, precisely because it focusses exclusively on the present. The degree of accountability regarding yesterday is the measure of a stable tomorrow. [1]
Eberhard Bethge, 'Research – Mediation – Commemoration: Steps to Combat Forgetting', in Bethge, Friendship and Resistance, p. 105.
Acknowledgment: John W. de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit – Bonhoeffer's Friend Eberhard Bethge, SCM Press, London, 205, pp.179-180.