January 4.
“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey
William Ferguson – warrior for justice
William Ferguson – fighter for justice for his Indigenous people.
Pressure on the NSW government did lead to an inquiry into the Aborigines Protection Board. A new, restructured board was renamed the Aborigines Welfare Board, and had to include an Aboriginal member. [William] Ferguson was the first Aboriginal member of the board, joining it in August, 1944. It seemed at the time to be a victory, but the victory proved hollow. The token Aboriginal board members had to fight constantly for a better life for Aborigines on the Board's reserves, with few achievement really discernible by Aborigines who lived on them.
...Ferguson grew weary of the fight and put his last great effort into gaining a seat in federal parliament, only possible because he had an exemption certificate, exempting him from the provisions of the Aborigines Act. Bitterly disillusioned with his own Labor Party's failure of will to do anything significant for Aborigines, Ferguson believed that all political parties had betrayed Aboriginal people. Despite the fact that only a few Aboriginal people could vote – those who had significant white ancestry and had successfully sought exemption from the Aborigines Act – he stood as an Independent for the seat of Lawson which contained Dubbo.
On 8 December, 1949, Ferguson delivered his last speech: [1]
To all you people of Aboriginal blood, I say...I am fighting for your freedom; give me your number one vote...Although Aboriginals have to pay taxes, and are allowed to shoulder a rifle, slave conditions still exist in the Northern Territory and special laws in the States. Aboriginals still live under laws only meant to control criminals and lunatics: they are not allowed ordinary human rights...I can promise you nothing but the will to work. [2]
Ferguson collapsed as he left the platform. On 22 December, he heard from his Dubbo Base Hospital bed that he had polled only 388 votes...Two weeks later, on 4 January 1950, William Ferguson died. [3]
NADOC – 1938 to 1983, Aboriginal Newsletter, June/July 1983
Jack Hoener, Vote Ferguson for Freedom, ANZ Book Co., Sydney, 1974, pp. 164-167.
Dubbo Liberal, 8 December, 1949.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, An Albatross Book, Sutherland, 1990, pp. 632-633, 683 n.84, n.85, n.86.
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Those remembered and those un-named.
How has this history [of the Overland Telegraph Line] been remembered? The 1874 Barrow Creek telegraph station attack was the first clash of significant scale in the Centre between Aboriginal people and white settlers, and it resulted in the deaths of three white men and an unknown number of Aboriginal people in subsequent punitive expeditions. Near the entrance to Adelaide's West Terrace Cemetery is an imposing monument to the men of the Overland Telegraph Line who died by Aboriginal spears. A broken Doric column encircled by a laurel wreath stands atop a rectangular plinth inscribed with the names of the fallen. It pays tribute to Stapleton, Franks and Flint, who were killed or wounded in the February attack. It pays tribute, too, to two others, Johnston and Augustus Daer, who were killed at Roper River in the following year. Erected by men of the Overland Telegraph Line, it commemorates the 'comrades who were treacherously murdered by blacks in the discharge of their duty'. The memorial bears no reference to 'Jemmy', the Aboriginal worker wounded, nor does it mention the many Aboriginal lives taken in reprisal.
Acknowledgment: Amanda Nettlebeck & Robert Foster, In the Name of the Law – William Wilshire and the Policing of the Australian Frontier, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2007, p. 177.