November 11.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Wholesale slaughter
“Oral history...along the tip of Cape York still refers to Jardine's wholesale slaughter of Aboriginal camps.”
[Frank] Jardine resumed his role as Police Magistrate and Customs House Officer and developed the only pearl-shell base at Somerset. The Brisbane Telegraph (28 July 1873) accused him of running a monopoly, and again an investigation in Brisbane dismissed the charges brought. Following this Jardine resigned on 7 November 1873. However, prior to this James Atkins, one of Jardine's sea captains who supervised Frank's three pearling boats, went missing from the pearlers' camp eight miles (c. 13 kilometres) from Somerset. It was presumed that Atkins had been killed by the Yadhaigana in their war of resistance, and Jardine then led a retributive party comprising the crew of two pearl-shelling boats and Native Police against them. Some 30 miles (48 kilometres) from Somerset a large force of Yadhaiganas 'showed a most determined resistance', but were 'properly dispersed'. [1] Again no figures are given.
Once the government moved from Somerset to Nurupai (Thursday Island) in 1878, Jardine bought out the government assets and became a law unto himself.* Oral history from Injinoo and along the tip of Cape York still refers to Jardine's wholesale slaughter of Aboriginal camps. By 1875 the Gudang were considered extinct and by 1896 there were maybe 100 Yadhaiganas left. [2]
N. Sharp, Footprints: Along the Cape York Sandbeaches, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1992, p.78; S. Mullins, Torres Strait: A History of Colonial Occupation and Culture Contact 1864-1897, Central Qld University Press (CQUP), Rockhampton,1995, p.52. Both citing from C. Beddome to Colonial Secretary, 11 November, Somerset Letter Book, 1874, QSA, CPS 13c/G1.
Sharp, 1992, p.79.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, pp. 130, 233 n.70, n.71.
Further on Frank Jardine see entries for 14 May, 4 October and 14 November.
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“...there have been frequent south-eastern Aboriginal expressions of their rights to and need for land...
This book [Invasion to Embassy arose] from research aimed initially at investigating Aboriginal politics in the public arena in New South Wales from the 1880s to the 1940s. As I carried out that work, I was struck by the continuity in Aboriginal statements of a strong interest in land and place. This contradicted the conventional wisdom, which is that after the initial defence of land during the early stages of the invasion, Aboriginal people in the south-east were politically dormant until the 1930s...Only, we have been told, after the Northern Territory campaigns of the Yolngu people at Yirrkala in 1963 and the Gurindji in 1966, when the issue of land rights based on traditional ownership was introduced, did south-eastern Aboriginal people take up the call for land rights in their own areas.
In fact, as the archival records show, there have been frequent south-eastern Aboriginal expressions of their rights to and need for land, beginning at least as early as the mid-nineteenth century. These demands have been based on assertions of both traditional rights and the right to compensation for dispossession. Not only have there been formal written petitions or deputations to white officials, and later organised political bodies which made land a central platform, but there have also been many individual and community actions, some planned and some spontaneous, ranging from brief sit-ins and long term squats to tenacious legal and physical battles. These actions confirm a persistent demand for land among Aboriginal people [even after] the invasion violence ceased.
Acknowledgment: Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy – Land in Aboriginal politics in New SouthWales, 1770-1972, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 2008, p.xix.