November 6.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
A catalogue of destruction
“Had an encounter with the blacks; shot a lot.”
It was gold that brought Europeans to far north Queensland, and in particular to the Palmer River Goldfield...on Saturday 25 October 1873, over 90 miners plus government officials landed as the precursor to some 18,000 new arrivals working the goldfields...in the years to follow. All in all, some 110 souls and 31 horses made up the first batch of gold-seekers. One of the official members of the party wrote to a friend in Brisbane from the new diggings, a letter which was then published in the Brisbane Telegraph. It was to cause quite a public outcry, which like all previous criticisms of the treatment of the original owners of the land was sidelined and ignored.
The party started out from the Endeavour River on 30 October 1873 and on the fifth day of their journey (3 November) [1] had three clashes as they:
...Came to Normanby River (15 miles). Started a mob of blacks. Shot four and hunted them. Fine river. November 4 – Started, 15 miles Surprise Lagoons. Camped 5th for spell. November 6 – Blacks surprised us at daybreak, about 150; all were armed. Got close to camp before anyone heard them. Great consternation; shot several. They ran into the waterholes for shelter, where they were shot. Travelled then unmolested for two or three days to Kennedy River...Followed river Kennedy up course S[outh], 15 miles; camped. Had an encounter with the blacks; shot a lot. [2]
This matter-of-fact letter suggests a wholesale slaughter, which historian Noreen Kirkman observes: 'seems to imply the entire 150 – after trapping them in the lagoon'. [3] Whether that was the case, there can be no doubt that the numbers were sizeable. Interestingly, within three months of the above newspaper report, sixteen members of the party had signed a statement in which they: 'most Emphatically State...that in no single instance, did we see any of the officers of the Expedition, or any one accompanying the Expedition fire a single shot at the Blacks...' [4] However, as Kirkman observes, they do not mention Native Police. Nearly 50 years later, one of the signatories, William J Webb, contradicted the 1874 statement and confirmed the original newspaper report. He recalled this early morning event.
...while the stars were still shining, a crowd of natives came up yelling out a terrible war cry, and they reached to about 70 yards [64 metres] from where we lay all over the ground. There were about 40 in the first rank and as many more in the reserve some distance behind. Just as day was breaking, Messrs MacMillan and St George advanced towards them. I noticed that they fired over the heads of the blacks, but some of the men fired straight at the blacks, some of whom fell. Thereupon the blacks ran away and were pursued as far as a large lagoon, and all that went there stayed there. [5]
Webb implies that some 80 Gugu-Warra were killed on this occasion, in a place which became known as Battle Camp. Somewhere between 80 and 150 Aboriginal men were killed here. In addition, the losses for the family clan groups from which they came were compounded by the later poisoning of waterholes and leaving of poisoned flour at their favourite campsites. According to the son of one of the survivors, his mother told him that many more died from the poisoning than those killed at Battle Camp. [6] The combined results would have been truly devastating for the local clan groups. The reason for the initial attack by the Gugu-Warra at Battle Camp was divulged seven years later, when it was acknowledged that a woman and child had been abducted by the Native Police, and the woman accidentally shot and killed. [7]
W J Webb in R L Jack, Northmost Australia, Vol. II, George Robertson & Co, Brisbane, 1922, p.421.
Brisbane Telegraph, 22 January 1874.
N. Kirkman, 'The Palmer Goldfield, 1873-1883', Honours Thesis, JCU, Townsville, 1984, p.268.
Statement of Members of the expedition from the Endeavour river to the Palmer River before Police Magistrate Thomas Hamilton, 26 March 1874, QSA COL/A194 74/701. If one considers the precedents of violence on the frontier since the late 1830s, one can only wonder why this event would be any different. See Kirkman, 'The Palmer Goldfield', 1984, pp.278-72, as she offers an insight into the hollowness of the miners' declaration.
Webb in R L Jack, Northmost Australia, Vol. II, pp.421-22.
Personal communication with Ray Rex, email 1 March 2011. Ray was former Manager and Co-ordinator for the Cairns TAFE Ranger Program and in 1991-92 conducted a week-long fieldtrip with Aboriginal rangers and Elders at Battle Camp. His informant was Jack Harrigan whose mother survived the killings.
Queenslander, 19 June 1880; reproduced in 'The Way We Civilise; Black and White; The Native Police', Queenslander, Brisbane, 1880, V, p.20.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, pp. 117-119, 231 n.19, n.20, n.21, n.22, n.23, n.24, n.25.