In prose of lyrical clarity and uncompromising honesty, Bruce Pascoe invites readers to be awakened, enthralled by fresh and breath-taking truths about the story of Australia. This book, from a writer of Bunurong and Cornish heritage, illuminates the past with a frank, meticulous, considered, proud and passionate scholarship. Convincing Ground is unique. Carmel Bird This is a beautiful book built upon ugly truths which we must all confront. Maturity and independence of the Australian people will never be attained until we are honest about the past and about ourselves. This is not a ‘black armband’ work, but it does explore the ‘whitewash’ habits we have embraced. The colonial shackles are heavy and to lift them off requires a deliberate, conscious espousal of the gross ugliness here rendered with poetical lyricism. This is a book for all of us: it will do us great good even as we are disturbed by it. Bruce Pascoe says: ‘History can never be undone but we have a duty not to pretend it didn’t happen’. Politicians who now seem to love history cannot escape this narrative. Passionate it is because the truth fuels passion; lies never attain that status. Peter Gebhardt Bruce Pascoe’s personal and resonant journeying through his Gundidjmara history is layered with contemporary critiques of an Australia that could have been, and if we listen and question, could still be. None too gently, Pascoe appeals to all Australians to learn to embrace all aspects of our past within our present, and through such courage, to learn to ‘fall in love with’ our country. By critically examining major historical works, sources and witness accounts of the colonisation of Gundidjmara lands, Pascoe releases a cathartic questioning of Australia’s past that is both compelling and investigative. Taking us back to the ‘convincing ground’ of 1833–34, where the Gundidjmara were to be ‘convinced of white rights to the land,’ through violence and conflict, Pascoe has created a new Convincing Ground; one bound within the desire for justice, respect, and ultimately, an honest and unflinching embrace of this country and its incredibly complex histories. Steve Kinnane
Bruce Pascoe’s first two books, Night Animals and Fox, were published by Penguin. His later novels, stories and histories have been published by Magabala, Bruce Sims Books, Aboriginal Studies Press, Transworld and Seaglass. He won the Australian Literature Award in 2000 for the novel, Shark. With Lyn Harwood he published and edited the literary magazine, Australian Short Stories, for sixteen years and 64 issues along with other literary publications. He is currently preparing a dictionary and learning program for the Wathaurong language of the Geelong–Ballarat region. Research of the language has uncovered new documents which provoke alternative interpretations of our history. Pascoe has a Bunurong and Cornish heritage which informs his books. After living at Cape Otway for over twenty years he now lives at Gipsy Point with his wife, Lyn Harwood. Other books by Bruce Pascoe Novels: Fox Ruby-eyed Coucal Shark Earth Ocean Ribcage (Leopold Glass) Story collections: Night Animals Nightjar History: Cape Otway–Coast of Secrets Children: Foxies in a Firehose
Bruce Pascoe
Convincing Ground Learning to fall in love with your country
First published in 2007 by Aboriginal Studies Press © Bruce Pascoe 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its education purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Aboriginal Studies Press is the publishing arm of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. GPO Box 553, Canberra, ACT 2601 Phone: (61 2) 6246 1183 (61 2) 6261 4288 Fax: Email:
[email protected] Web: www.aiatsis.gov.au/aboriginal_studies_press National Library of Australia Cataloguing-In-Publication data: Pascoe, Bruce, 1947– . Convincing ground : learning to fall in love with your country. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 978 0 85575 549 2 (pbk.). ISBN 978 0 85575 694 9 (ebook PDF). 1. Aboriginal Australians, Treatment of — History. 2. Aboriginal Australians — Government relations — History. 3. Aboriginal Australians — Ethnic identity. 4. Australia — Race relations — History. 5. Australia — Colonisation — History. I. Title. 994.0049915 Front cover image: woorrkgnan — moorraka (birthplace — burial place), Vicki Couzens © 2004, acrylic and paper on canvas. Tattered possum skin cloak with skeletal figure overlaid. The figure is symbolic of both how we were buried in the old days, and the resting places of our Ancestors — in the earth. The markings on the possum skin panels tells a story of the Land, the Laws, the Dance, the Songs. It is about how we are born of, and belong to, the Land. We return to the Land; it is who we are. Index by Michael Harrington Printed in Australia by Ligare Pty Ltd
This is not a history, it’s an incitement Bruce Pascoe for the Australians
Contents
Acknowledgments Preface Introduction
viii ix 1
oneâ•…
Franks is Dead History, How it Starts threeâ•… The Lakes fourâ•… Lady Macbeth’s Clean Hands fiveâ•… The Lie of the Land sixâ•… The Psychology of the Frontier sevenâ•… Brave Explorers eightâ•… Lake Corangamite nineâ•… The Raised Sword tenâ•… The Great Australian Forge elevenâ•… The Great Australian Face twelveâ•… Golden Boy thirteenâ•… Don’t Mention the War fourteenâ•… The Language of War fifteenâ•… The Language of Resistance sixteenâ•… Native Born seventeen True Hunter eighteen Germaine to the Problem nineteen The Whispering Land twenty Elbows on the Bar
5 30 40 44 51 61 69 73 78 88 116 122 145 166 178 195 223 234 242 249
Appendices I Wathaurong Language Sample and map II Place Names of the Geelong–Ballarat Region III Jillong Timeline
259 262 265
twoâ•…
Notes Bibliography Index
275 282 291
Acknowledgments
For their assistance in the preparation of this book I would like to thank the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative, State Library of Victoria, Mitchell Library of New South Wales, Geelong Historical Records Centre, Victorian Parliament Manuscripts Library, Public Records Office of Victoria; Chester Eagle, Kenny Laughton, Peter Gardner, Dr Ian Clark, Maureen at Colac Library, Michael Cannon, Doris Paton-Woollum Bellum; Ivan Couzens, Gundidjmara Aboriginal Community; Craig Edwards, Lindsay Arkley, Anita Heiss, Rhonda Black, Steve Kinnane, Roger Leuers, Brendan Marshall, Denise Lovett, Richard Fry; Damien Bell, Winda Mara Co-op; Antoinette Smith; Annette Peisley, Joy Evans, Max Joiner, Helen Stagoll; Arthur Williams, Opoutuma; Julia Ditterich, librarian, Sacred Heart College, Geelong; Paul Paton, Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages; Alex Blaszak,Victorian Archaeological Survey; Steve Wadsworth and Lyn Harwood.
viii
Preface
I love my country and its people. While working on a dictionary for the revival of the Wathaurong language I kept turning up new information on how the Kulin Nation (the clans surrounding Port Phillip and Western Port bays) defended their land. There was plenty of unused material in the archives but more importantly I was told stories and shown diaries, letters and photos by Indigenous and n on-Indigenous Australians which proved crucial to an understanding of those turbulent days. Few of my sources were scholars and they had had no previous opportunity to paint the picture of their ancestors’ lives. From that perspective our national story looked quite different and it seemed unfair that most Australians’ knowledge of their homeland was blighted by a cruelly inadequate history. This book is for the Australians, old and new, black and white. Some might find the style offensive and abrupt but it has been written so that Aboriginal Australians can recognise themselves in the history of their country. Too often Aboriginal Australians have been asked to accept an insulting history and a public record which bears no resemblance to the lives they have experienced. I begin with western Victoria because it’s what I know best and it provides some telling incidents supported by reliable sources. From that point I wanted to compare the events and attitudes of colonial Australia to those of today. In doing so, I ask a lot of questions of the reader because I don’t have all the answers. It seemed like a good time to begin a fresh and honest debate. It may prove upsetting for some, but they are questions crucial to a Christian democracy and it is impossible to answer them with glib or patronising banter. ix
Preface
Many will scream ‘black armband’ but I hope readers will be patient and make up their minds after looking at our history from an Indigenous perspective. There’s nothing to be lost and everything to be gained. We’re stuck with each other and we’re stuck with our history, not just the school history of triumphal explorers, miners and pastoralists. Australia’s first white immigrants were convicts, soldiers and imperial harvesters, not all were saints and most were prejudiced against the incumbent landholders from the beginning. It’s not a pleasant history, no country has such a thing, but neither is it the end of morality and civility. The worst thing we could do would be to pretend that history didn’t happen. We can learn and grow rather than cant and cringe. Australia is a magnificent continent. We know that. We swim in her seas and rivers, we toast her sunsets with cups of tea and home-grown wines. We know her worth and love her for nurturing us. We are a strong, resourceful, friendly and humorous people but too few of us know much more than a fairystory history, a story which insults all of us and insults our land. We can make a great nation here, one worthy of the land, but we must be honest with ourselves and learn how we were lucky enough to live here. It won’t be easy and sometimes we will be hurt and confused, but nations are not forged without the metal getting hot. They are wrought out of earnest, respectful debate. We’ve got the land, we’ve got the energy, and we’ve got the wit, but have we got the grace of knowledge and generosity? Sometimes a decade arrives when nations have the chance to turn away from bigotry and selfishness and turn to their countrymen and women and embrace them as loved members of the human family. But do we have the ticker for it?
x
Introduction
There’s a woman at Cape Otway and I can’t get her out of my head. I think of her every day. I know what she eats, I know what she looks at when she wakes. I know the most intimate things about her. I know that she is left handed. I know that she is meticulous and I’m sure she has a son. I know all these things but I dearly want to know what she thinks. I discovered her bedroom and kitchen and like a thief turning over the contents of her drawers I began to know her and her secrets, the things only lovers and family should know. I am shamed but men under thrall do not always act with honour. Is she beautiful? Her aunty certainly was. Very beautiful. And probably cheeky, raunchy. I’ve seen a photograph of her. The secret mischief in her eyes, even at eighty. But the woman of my fascination is probably more discreet, or at least I imagine her so. Because of her things, how she goes about her life. Or is that the romantic notion of a man under her spell, a man aching to see her, to ask her just one question, to look into her eyes, even for the briefest moment. What right do I have to crave this woman’s attention, to lie awake at night wondering about her? My claim on her is that she is an Australian and so am I. We have both slept, loved and eaten within sight, sound and smell of the bay she saw every morning. She is my countrywoman. Dead now, murdered, but if we had met we would have been able to talk tides and fishing, fruiting and waterproof seams. You see, I found where she slept, where she cooked, where she sewed her winter clothes, discovered that she was left handed and her son too most probably. 1
Introduction
On the Cape Otway cliffs, in the longest unbroken human occupation site in the southern hemisphere, I found her seamstress’ kit. I saw that she had five different needle sizes in two different shapes and could dress the end and edge of her needles to keep them in perfect order so that the seam she sewed was completely waterproof. And when I went to use her implements I also discovered she was left handed. Later I found her son’s hammer and axe. Well, I am guessing that it was her son but given the incidence of left handedness in any human population and that the man and woman lived at exactly the same time the chances are they are mother and son. He was also a meticulous craftsman. The hammer he made from a piece of limestone is among the most beautiful objects I’ve ever handled. But not as beautiful as his mother’s sewing kit. It is no bigger than the top of a match box but on the two flat surfaces there are graded holes, grooves and notches to hone needles, cut thongs and yarns and dress needle points. The person who made it was deft and proud. I can imagine her heart filling with pride at her ability to care and provide for those she loved. She was proud, beautiful and left handed. I blushed. It was information far too intimate for a stranger to know. I looked out over the view from her doorway. The tide was going out and pools were being revealed where she had gathered her crayfish, abalone, skutus, urchins, sea lettuces, sweep and whiting. I knew that because I had fished there and taken home the same bounty so that I could sit among my family and feel proud. I used her recipes: the char-grilled rock lobster, the sweep stuffed with pepper cress and bower spinach, the abalone poached on coals with sea rocket and bush pepper garnish, echidna and yam in the earth oven cooked to perfection in lomandra baskets resting between clay heat beads. The sea urchins never make it home. We always crack them open in her tidal pool and scoop out the mandarin segment of roe and suck it between our lips and savour it on our tongues before letting it slide down our salty throats. I blushed again and sweat formed in the corner of my eyes. It was impossible that my countrymen and women could find this most womanly of women inhuman. The failure to understand that this woman could bake and sew and keep a neat home, provide
2
Introduction
for her children, love her husband and most of all know and love her country binds me and my fellow Australians in the grip of an ignorance she never knew. I wake at night dreaming that I could take food from that woman’s hands. Take the food she offered; not her land.
3
One
Franks is Dead Everybody agrees that this is what happened. Franks and Flinders were killed by blows from steel hatchets landing so heavily that Franks’ skull was driven into the turf. And that’s the point at which agreement stops. The Champion arrived at Point Gellibrand in Port Phillip Bay in 1836. On the ship Charles Franks brought 500 sheep and a partner, George Smith, and a shepherd called either Flinders or Hindes, but nobody seems certain. The waters off Point Gellibrand are shallow, clear and calm, crowded with mussels, oysters, flounder, flathead and garfish. Only twelve months earlier, Bunurong, Wathaurong and Woiwurrung people feasted on this bay of plenty; their ovens and houses are evident but already the people are scarce, avoiding the frenetic activity of the white people. It is winter but even so the days can be brilliant with mild sunshine, the wavelets scattering light as if from a shattered mirror. It is God’s own country. A man might become anything here. In those days women could please themselves. In this mood of limitless opportunity Franks removes his sheep from the Champion on 23 June and, on the advice of George MacKillop, decides to take up land around Mount Cotterell on the headwaters of the Barwon River. It took until 2 July to cover the 20 miles (32 kilometres) of flat volcanic grasslands. After depasturing the sheep George Smith returned to Point Gellibrand to bring up more stores. On 8 July Smith arrives at Mount Cotterell, sees no sign of Franks or Flinders but the stores appear to have been ransacked.
5
Convincing Ground
He takes fright and returns to Point Gellibrand where he conscripts the help of Mr Malcolm, Mr Clark, Mr George Sams, Mr Armytage, Dr Barry Cotter, Charles Wedge, and Mr Gellibrand. Gellibrand asked Henry Batman to accompany him with William Windberry, George Hollins, Michael Leonard, Benbow, Bullett, Stewart and Joe the Marine. On the way they fall in with Mr Wood and his large party, some of whom were David Pitcairn, Mr Guy, Derrymock, Baitlange, Ballyan and Mr Alexander Thomson. So, a party of well over 23 people are curious enough to drop what they are doing to investigate the upsetting of a cask of flour at Mount Cotterell.1 Or have they already mounted similar expeditionary forces since the establishment of the first Yarra settlement less than a year before? Are they at war with the Kulin Nation and recognise this as a beachhead in the war for possession of the Port Phillip plains? When Captain William Lonsdale is appointed Police Magistrate of Port Phillip in July 1836 the frontier community is under token jurisdiction, but it is an indelible indication of the true activities of the previous twelve months that when George Smith notices an upturned barrel of flour he has no trouble in mobilising a small army to investigate the cause. These men do not believe a delinquent possum is rampant, they mount a volunteer force of heavily armed volunteers. They are not involved in casual reprisal but a calculated vigilante campaign. The party followed a trail of flour and discarded stores and came across a band of about seventy to one hundred Wathaurong people. In responding to Lonsdale’s investigation of the incident Henry Batman says he yelled at them but they didn’t move so he fired his gun once above their heads and they ran off; John Wood said several shots were fired but none could have taken effect because they were fired from too great a distance; Edward Wedge believed that by the nature of the cuts to the heads of Franks and Flinders, whose bodies were found near the stores, they had been ‘inflicted with a particular type of long-handled hatchet’ which he had given to the natives earlier in the year ‘to conciliate them’;2 Michael Leonard says several shots were fired but to his knowledge noone was injured; William Windberry says that the party went after the blacks to retrieve the stolen property but he did not think any were killed. 6
Franks is Dead
William Lonsdale receives the evidence and advises the Colonial Secretary that no harm had been inflicted on the Aboriginal people despite it being common knowledge in the colony that at least twelve were killed. The Wathaurong said over 35 but, of course, they were never invited to give evidence. No investigation is made of other attacks which follow the first punitive expedition. The court hears that the murderers of Franks and Flinders were Goulburn Aboriginals Dumdom and Callen. The Daugwurrung are the people of the Goulburn River and this evidence places them in Wathaurong and Woiwurrung country, but given known clan movements of the time this is unlikely. But to the avengers one group of Aborigines is much the same as any other. George Smith says it was impossible that Charles Franks could have provoked the murder because he ‘had a great aversion to the native blacks, and would not give them food, thinking it the best way to prevent them from frequenting the station’. 3 He’d arrived for the first time only days before at a ‘station’ at the headwaters of the Barwon River, heartland of the Wathaurong and Woiwurrung people, a land they would defend with their lives. Mr Franks was ‘very mild and gentle in his general conduct, and I do not think he would molest anyone,’4 concluded his partner, Mr Smith, but Robert William von Stieglitz, in a letter to his brother, casts a different light on Franks’ gentle Christian demeanour. Stieglitz went to Franks in order to buy lead which all knew Franks had in great supply. Franks told Stieglitz that the lead was excellent for ‘making blue pills for the natives’. 5 Some historians take the word pill literally and assume it is a euphemism for the manufacture of strychnine to lace bullock carcasses in order to poison Aborigines, a common practice in the colony and further refined in Port Phillip. When challenged about this practice it was a common defence to say that the poison had been for the crows. This was a popular jest in Port Phillip because at the time many referred to the blacks by the American euphemism ‘Jim Crow’. It’s more likely, however, that Franks was making his own shotgun balls. Either way, it seems this mild Christian had been murdering Aborigines to secure the ‘selection’ he and his partners, George Smith and George Armytage, had decided upon. It seems he came upon his ‘great aversion to the blacks’6 in a very short space of time, perhaps even in advance of meeting them, so that he thought 7
Convincing Ground
it necessary to bring the ingredients of their destruction in his first stores. Joseph Tice Gellibrand, Attorney-General of Tasmania until recently, and now the token representative of law and order for the Port Phillip Association, wrote of the Franks murder on 7 August 1836: ‘Several parties are now after the natives and I have no doubt many will be shot and a stop put to this system of killing for bread’.7 The press were also phlegmatic in their understanding of the true nature of the conflict. The Cornwall Chronicle records the event thus: ‘The avenging party fell on the guilty tribe…and succeeded in annihilating them’.8 It’s only twelve months since the arrival of the colonists and yet it is a matter of conversation, among men meeting for the first time, how to eliminate the annoying insistence of the Indigenes to protect their land. Entrepreneurs in Van Diemen’s Land frustrated by the restrictions being placed on land acquisition determine to form a company to take up the green fields discovered by sealers at Port Phillip. In their correspondence with each other they discuss the advantages of taking up broad acres where no civil authority exists to hamper their enterprise. Mindful of the Colonial administration’s increasing desire to ameliorate the Indigenes and the Van Diemen’s Land governor’s determination to uphold that line, they confect a series of documents to disguise the true nature of their activities. The clans of the Kulin peoples surrounding Port Phillip and Western Port are about to experience one of the most blatant thefts in the history of humankind. John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner were both sons of convicts, both had built fortunes from property in Van Diemen’s Land and joined to become the two principals of the Port Phillip Association. Batman was a chaotic character and his wild nature swung recklessly between acts of kindness and bloody-minded self-interest, while Fawkner was a more calculating and meticulous personality. Within days of landing at Port Phillip they were at loggerheads, Batman parading around the settlement with Aborigines he’d brought from Sydney and Fawkner making plans for hotels and newspapers, the stuff of prosperous settlements. But their different humours didn’t prevent them from co-operating in the wholesale division of the Kulin lands. 8
Franks is Dead
Some of the most astute businessmen in Hobart helped establish the Port Phillip Association and they were joined by the more entrepreneurial members of the administration and judiciary. It was a formidable combination of law and enterprise; the entrepreneurs providing cash and energy and the legal minds steering the Association through the administrative shoals of colonial government by concocting sham documents of possession in the most portentous and arcane language. These men were involved in very influential circles and knew how to weasel their way around Governor Arthur’s instructions. Batman, Fawkner, Gellibrand, Charles Swanston, and others were the most celebrated business people in the colony and their plot to gazump the authorities and the real owners of the land is still celebrated in Australia as the bringing of the light to the heathen wasteland instead of the white shoe brigade land sham it really was. Thousands of pounds changed hands in weeks as frantic entrepreneurs threw themselves at the Association in their haste to secure land. Most land was ‘selected’ unsurveyed and thousands of sheep were offloaded on the tranquil shores of Point Gellibrand where as many as eight ships rode at anchor on any given day, such was the speed of ‘settlement’. In fact some of the party sent to revenge Franks’ murder were recruited from the crew and passengers of these ships. Nothing happened at random here; this was an orchestrated campaign where the colonists work against both the Kulin Nation and the colonial governments in Sydney and Hobart. The unanimity of the colonists’ purpose can be gauged by their relationships with each other. They were eager to see all the lands populated by like-minded individuals in order to thwart the government’s purposes, and to murder and disperse the black population in order to secure the ‘peace’. Indeed they went to great lengths to ensure that their friends joined the colony, their letters to each other confirming that they were anxious to create a solid confederacy to protect their interests and obscure the deceits instituted to acquire them. George MacKillop, who admired Smith, Armytage and Franks in their precipitous lust for land, was experienced in the process of dispossession having already applied the procedure to great 9
Convincing Ground
effect in India where he had worked in partnership with Charles Swanston. Swanston went on to become exceedingly rich in Port Phillip, his interests in land and banking making him one of its most respected and powerful citizens. Swanston and MacKillop have extensive business dealings with the staunch churchman George Smith, Franks’ fellow squatter. These are respectable people, already wealthy from their Indian and Van Diemen’s Land investments; churchgoers, solid citizens, good enough to name streets after, but they were directly involved in the war to dispossess the Kulin people. How did these solid citizens justify their actions? They describe the murder of the ‘gentle’ Franks as an ‘outrage’, the term coined for the action of a black man raising a hand against a white, not patriots desperate to protect their mothers’ lands, but criminals to be destroyed before justice could intervene. They urge other settlers to ‘full satisfaction’ against the blacks. 9 Black resistance is labelled criminality, for to equate it with armed resistance is to acknowledge prior ownership. The squatters applaud the appointment of the Police Magistrate Foster Fyans in Geelong. Fyans earned the sobriquet ‘Flogger’ for his administration of ‘justice’ at Moreton Bay and Norfolk Island, and the esteem with which the gentlemen of Port Phillip regard him was earned by his thoroughness in defending their lands in the Indian Colonial war. What is establishing itself in Port Phillip is a close-knit club of men experienced in dispossession, war, treachery and silence, experience gained in the British Empire’s most recent wars against legitimate landowners. This is a land war and conducted in the same manner as any other in the history of conflict between nations. At Portland, to the west of Port Phillip, the Henty brothers had already established a sealing colony, and the conflict with the Gundidjmara people is symbolised by a clash on the beach for possession of a single whale. Both sides probably saw it as a beach head in the fight for possession of the soil itself. The battle site became known as the Convincing Ground, the place where the Gundidjmara were ‘convinced’ of white rights to the land. The Gundidjmara were beaten in that battle but never convinced of its legitimacy.
10
Franks is Dead
Australians, however, have absorbed that conviction so completely that they are battling the Gundidjmara in the courts and shire offices today so that they might build houses on the Convincing Ground. The events on that soil in 1833–34 and the attempts to consecrate them in the courts in 2007 keep the battle of the Convincing Ground alive. This book is an attempt to show how colonial attitudes continue to forge modern cultural imperatives. So little heed was taken of what Aboriginal people said or did that the colony could never progress except with enormous misunderstanding and, eventually, ill will. The nature of the planned dispossession precluded any partnership or cultural acknowledgement of the Indigenes because the occupation of their lands was predicated on their unworthiness to hold it. To draw close would reveal the humanity of the adversary, to acknowledge the women as wives and mothers, to admire the men for their courage, and the care and inventiveness with which they provided for their clan could not be allowed. It was crucial to the ‘plan’ to ‘convince’ authorities that the Kulin were barely human. This deliberate misrepresentation of the Kulin people is still taught in schools today and continues to stand between us, our country and our identity. But who are the Kulin people? Did they exhibit evidence of brute savagery or were they just in the way of money changers? Some settlers, more curious than the majority, report a ‘story’ told to them by members of the Kulin nation gathering in large numbers near the Botanical Gardens for what they claimed would be a momentous event.10 Over 150 people from the Yerrunillam balug, Devil River clan of the country north east of Delatite River, arrived and brought with them a spirit man named Kuller kullup who was well over 80 years of age. He was at least six feet in height, fat, and with a fine upright carriage. His forehead was corrugated; the fine horizontal wrinkles looked scarcely natural; it seemed as if a native artist had been at work on his countenance; and his cheeks too were finely and strangely wrinkled. His friends — indeed all who saw him — paid respect to him. They embarrassed and encumbered
11
Convincing Ground
him with their attentions. He could not stir without an effort being made by someone to divine his wishes. At sunrise, the adult Aborigines — strangers and guests — sat before him in semicircular rows, patiently waiting for the sound of his voice, or the indication by gesture of his inclinations. None presumed to speak but in a low whisper in his presence. The old man, touched by so much fealty and respect, occasionally harangued the people — telling them, probably, something of their past history, and warning them, not unlikely, of the evils which would soon surround them. Whenever Mr Thomas approached for the purpose of gathering hints of the character of his discourse, the old man paused, and did not resume his argument until the white listener had departed.11
William Thomas, the Aboriginal Protector for the Melbourne region, thought it his right to be addressed by this man but each time he came and sat in the circle Kuller kullup refused to continue. Thomas had an evangelical approach to his job and privately abhorred his charges as savage heathens. We are in his debt, however, because he kept good records and was able to confirm with Billi-billari that the big man had come from a tribe inhabiting the Australian Alps who lived in caves, separately from all other people, and were rarely seen. Billi-billari told Thomas that these remote people dreamt the corroborees which they passed on to all other Aboriginal clans. The Kulin had never seen Kuller kullup before but the legend says he had been living for as long as anyone could remember. There is a comparable story told in the early days of the Port Phillip settlement that a huge man who glistened with Bogong moth fat lived far away in the mountains and was rarely seen by other people. This man was responsible for ensuring the sky was lifted above the sun so that it could not fall down and eliminate the people. He had been urging clans from all over Port Phillip to bring him axes. Axes streamed into the mountains but still this man wanted more. He needed axes to cut an unbelievable number of poles to hold up the sky because he had noticed it was falling down. White correspondents record the event with the usual patronising tone, convinced that the people had been duped. In their way of thinking it was a scam, just like any number of schemes Europeans had used to rob each other. 12
Franks is Dead
But theft among the clans was unknown, tools and hunting equipment was held in common and left where any authorised person might come along and use it. The people weren’t robbed of their axes; they gave them because they knew the need was urgent. But the whites scoffed; Henny Penny, the sky’s falling in, they mocked the simple savages. Such heathen innocence. But what if you look at that story in the light of what we know of the circumstances of the frontier and the dramatic change in behaviour of blacks towards whites around that time? Perhaps the sky was falling in as far as the big man was concerned, perhaps the spirit man had seen the invasion for what it was and the collection of axes was not for the metaphoric purpose of holding up the sky but to wage resistance in a united stand across the frontier. Was that his address to the meeting on the Yarra? Is that why he refused to speak in the presence of whites? We will never know because that man, and his clan from the Australian Alps were never heard from again. Did he fall victim to some heedless act of violence on his journey east? Just another black man to be killed on sight? I would like to know what that man knew, just as I crave the knowledge of the left handed woman at Cape Otway. I wish they had not been taken away from us so soon. How might our history have changed if that man had been able to guide his people in resistance? What might have been if white people had held intelligent discussion with men like Kuller kullup, men who dreamt the cultural representations for all the peoples of south-eastern Australia? Unfortunately, people like Thomas could not believe that another race had a viable faith in the progress of the human family. The relationship between black and white in the race of races fell at the first hurdle. But back to the start of that race. John Batman, head of the Port Phillip Association, entrepreneur, braggart and syphilitic, had been given no colonial authority to enter Port Phillip, no right to select all the land thereabouts and no right to bribe the Kulin people with beads, mirrors and axes to sign two title deeds. But he did, even if he fabricated both the document and the signatures. 13
Convincing Ground
Obviously the Wathaurong and Woiwurrung people did not speak or read English but in accordance with their custom were prepared to trade with visitors, even someone with half a nose. More probably, however, they were negotiating temporary habitation rights as they did with their neighbours during particular harvest periods or spiritual ceremonies. The rite of passage ceremony was called Tanderrum, a word used frequently by the Wathaurong in those early conversations with William Todd, Batman’s supervisor at the first landing point at Indented Head. William Buckley was also familiar with the term. Buckley escaped the first penal settlement at Sorrento in 1803 and lived with the Wathaurong people for the next 32 years. He was a source of valuable information about Indigenous culture but his knowledge was plundered for the single purpose of land acquisition and he never recovered from his unwitting role in the destruction of the culture he had adopted. William Robertson, who claims to have initiated the Port Phillip Association with Batman, wrote that it was Buckley alone who gave away the land. George Russell remembers the bequest like this: ‘When Buckley saw Robertson take the knapsack from Gellibrand, who showed signs of fatigue, and carry it along with his own pack, Buckley was so pleased with this kindly act, that with a sweeping gesture of his arm toward the hills, he presented Robertson with all that country’.12 At first glance this reads like a cosy little colonial story where the natives fall to their knees in respect for British civilisation. In the past, historians have accepted such accounts simply because they were written, but Buckley was considered an infant by his Wathaurong saviours, indeed the ignorance he displayed during his thirty years in the clan precluded any authority being given to him. Oh, they loved him as one of their own and demonstrated that on many occasions, but he was too ignorant of cultural rules to trust with major decisions. He wouldn’t have been in the position to give away land but, more importantly, as we can see from his later actions and thoughts, he was not inclined to betray his black family. Within days of rejoining his countrymen he is completely disillusioned and inclined to grumpiness and depression. George Russell’s description of Buckley’s actions is at odds with every other
14
Franks is Dead
report on Buckley’s demeanour. If Buckley ever waved his arm to Robertson it was more likely to brush away a fly, but what we see here is a little myth-making in preparation for arguing the case before the colonial authorities. Every action of Batman’s entrepreneurs is part of a calculated campaign to advance their financial interests. Franks is killed, Buckley waves his arm and both become pieces in the campaign mosaic. To understand what is going on in those early years Batman’s treaty has to be studied more closely. The document called the Dutigalla Deed was drawn up by the consortium of business men who had devised a plan to pre-empt the official settlement of the Port Phillip district. Not only was the document written in a language the Kulin didn’t understand but also in an arcane legal form of that language no longer used by colonial authorities: ‘to Give, Grant, Enfeoff and confirm unto the said, John Batman, his Heirs and Assigns’.13 Gellibrand had constructed this title on Batman’s request but it was never intended that the Aborigines should understand it. The Bellarine version of the title was finished while Batman was on his way back to Tasmania, almost an afterthought. When you’re on a good thing, fake it. The documents did not use conveyancing techniques but a long forgotten feudal land transfer. Enfeoff was a term defining feudal possession, sometimes referred to as livery or seisin, and described the practice of passing a handful of soil or leaves to another as a symbol of the land being transferred. The Kulin rite of Tanderrum used a similar symbol of transfer but it represented rite of safe passage through the land, not ownership. Recipients of the privilege were handed foliage, water and available foods of the estate which signified ‘that as long as they are friendly, and under such restriction as the laws impose, they and their children may come there again without fear of molestation, the presents of boughs and leaves and grass meant to signify that these are theirs when they like to use them’.14 Batman’s treaty meant to take advantage of this goodwill in a coldly calculated deception. Members of Batman’s party were under no misapprehension about the purpose of the documents or their illegality. John Wedge, a member of the Port Phillip Association, wrote to fellow member James Simpson of the proposal to find
15
Convincing Ground
blacks who might possess the authority to transfer land to Batman: ‘there is no such thing as chieftainship amongst them, but this [is] a secret that must, I suppose, be kept to ourselves or it may affect the deed of conveyance, if there be any validity in it’.15 Wedge was given the task of drawing the deeds to scale but had great difficulty because none of the boundary points had been fixed with instruments and the furthest had probably not been visited. Alistair Campbell in John Batman and the Aborigines analyses the deeds in great detail and states that no group of eight men would have had the authority to transfer land, especially as most of those alleged to have signed the document were not even on their own land. The marks which Batman says were signs of the land’s boundaries were not etched into the trees until the day after the documents were signed. William Howitt, one of the most prominent anthropologists of the time, showed these marks to other Kulin people who ridiculed the idea that they held any cultural or legal meaning or had in fact been drawn by any Kulin person. And in any case Batman says the signs were marked during the ceremony of tooth evulsion, a blatant attempt on his part to pretend intimate knowledge of the people. The Kulin did not practise tooth evulsion but his own natives, brought from Sydney to help capture Port Phillip Aborigines, did. Campbell analysed the signatures on the deed and found they ‘were drawn with a spreading nib in the same style of approximately equal size and design. There appear to be no errors or false starts and they are neatly arranged’. Three copies of the deeds were drawn and required 12 marks by each man. ‘It is inconceivable that Batman could have persuaded eight unrehearsed Aborigines in a few hours to have drawn the marks with the neatness and penmanship shown in the document, not once, but twelve times’.16 These are people who have never held a pen or drawn on paper. And furthermore, the 120 miles (193 kilometres) Batman said he traversed in order to acquire the land could not have been covered in the few hours he was ashore. Batman’s journal says he left the Kulin at 10 am to return to the ship and his report offers 12 midday, so the most generous allowance from dawn to noon allows 5–6 hours. The leading phrase of the deed refers to a branch of the Marybyrnong River, but the stream Batman describes was in
16
Franks is Dead
fact the Yarra and not seen by Batman until the day after the treaty was signed. Those signatures are themselves suspect because the Dutigalla deed uses the names of eight men and the Geelong deed uses the same names as if they also possessed the Bellarine Peninsula. Batman is not just telling porkies, he’s fabricating blatant lies in a callous attempt to defraud everyone. Many contemporary influential Australians have cleaved to the same principle. ‘I am monarch of all I survey,’ Batman muses while looking over the ‘deep, black diluvium, with grass 3 foot to 4 foot high [0.9–1.2 metres]’. ‘My right there is none to dispute,’ 17 the great man opines, neglecting the artifice he has engaged to defraud the colony. Most of these facts have been known for decades but still the myth of legitimacy pervades Australian culture. Batman’s deeds were displayed by Museum Victoria in 2004 with great fanfare and unambiguous pride. The continuing respect for these documents allows the people to indulge the myth of lawful acquisition. Instead of revisiting the entire illegality of the seizure, the public has the luxury of believing the land was acquired cheekily at some kind of mortgagee’s auction where the maiden aunt had no idea of the value of her property. Not stolen, just snapped up at bargain price. History can never be undone but we have a duty not to pretend it didn’t happen. Sir Richard Bourke, Governor of the Colony of New South Wales, and George Arthur, Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, had expressly ordered that no-one take up land without the authority of the Crown and that all residents of the colony were to ameliorate the condition of the Aborigines. The orders from the Colonial Office in London were unequivocal. William Wilberforce had managed to introduce a bill to the House of Commons abolishing slavery after having failed in his previous eighteen attempts. Wilberforce dedicated his life to this struggle. That he was successful in 1833 was not just an indication of changing humanitarian standards but also the good fortune of having his Clapham Group carry the balance of power for the first time. Australian politicians with the same luxury are more likely to introduce a goods and services tax, outlaw birth control or make the right to vote optional. Wilberforce’s tenacity sent
17
Convincing Ground
shivers through colonial powers and coincided with the discovery of the wide grasslands of Port Phillip. Some who tricked out their greed with paternalism learnt to couch their ambitions in different language after 1833 knowing that previous techniques of eliminating Indigenous landholders would now be outside the law, in fact considered murder, rather than a necessary and justifiable expedient. The tenor of the advice Bourke received from Chief Justice Forbes of the Supreme Court anticipated most of the abuses the new colony was about to endure. Defining the true limits of the Colony within your Commission as Governor, declaring that all settlements made on any land within such limits, without the permission of the local government, is illegal and cautioning persons against purchasing any portion of such land from the aboriginal inhabitants under the impression that such purchases will be respected as conferring legal title… I deem such a measure of the more importance, as the example of Messrs Batman and Gellibrand will be surely followed by other persons nearer home and much trouble may be occasioned if the Crown seems tacitly to assent to the right of the Savage to sell, and of His Majesty’s subjects to buy the land of the Colony.18
Governor George Arthur was a straight man, his enemies said rigid, but he was true to his commission and tried, within the confines of his limited wit and the fact that he thought the idea that Aborigines could own land was ridiculous, to accommodate the new instructions from London, and this earned him the derision of John Batman, a man who preferred to spend afternoons rolling drunk with men and women of similar inclination. Arthur tried to avoid conflict wherever possible but Batman, son of convicts, selfmade man and ‘gentleman’, taunted Governor Arthur, appealing to his fellow ‘countrymen’ to throw off the colonial shackles. The Colonial Government was sticking to its commission, but Hobart was seething with excitement after the bays and plains of the Port Phillip district were properly explored. Reports of excellent pasturage were fuel to the fires of progress and independence and contradicted Captain Collins’ 1803 report which had painted a bleak picture of the first settlement at Sorrento: sandy soil, little 18
Franks is Dead
water, flies, no hotel and no white women; which is why he took his mistress with him and why both were keen to return to the fleshpots of Hobart. Two hundred years later it’s hard to contain Hobart and fleshpots in the same sentence but this just proves how grim Sorrento must have seemed to Collins in 1803. The whalers and sealers knew better and had probably been using the bays for upwards of twenty years but they had a vested interest in not sharing this information with the authorities because they weren’t supposed to be there either. And besides, sealers and whalers aren’t interested in pasture, just seals and whales. And black women. That’s probably where the trouble started, where the modern history of these south lands began. Secrecy and lust. When Captain Flinders arrived in Port Phillip in 1802 the Wathaurong people were sufficiently aware of firearms and white men to hide from the Englishman’s party as it climbed the You Yang ranges to view the great expanse of the western grasslands. There were already official reports of sealers murdering Aboriginal men and stealing the women. Lieutenant Tuckey found it necessary to murder two Wathaurong while surveying the western shore of Port Phillip Bay as part of Collins’ Sorrento experiment in 1803. It’s no surprise that recriminations began almost immediately. And if the previous provocations had not been sufficient, the arrival of the Henty family at Portland in 1832 certainly set the seal. The Henty family were already enormously wealthy landholders in Surrey but could see their fortunes and, more importantly, their social status dwindling in England and decided to emigrate to a land where taxes and inhibitions were unknown. They set about enforcing their usurpation of lands in Van Diemen’s Land and Portland with unwavering ruthlessness and subtle connivance. Like politicians of today they appear to have selected servants willing to do the killing for them if the reports and diaries of Chief Protector Robinson and others are to be believed. Knowledge of the Henty tactics spread quickly among neighbouring clans and well before Batman arrived the Indigenous population were suspicious of white people. The Gundidjmara were becoming increasingly offended by the Hentys’ depredations on their fisheries, lands and women. They took 19
Convincing Ground
a stand against the sealers on the beach but they were decimated by Henty henchmen. The black heathens had been ‘convinced’ who was boss. The Convincing Ground is an emblem of our nation. It was a key battle in the dispossession of the Indigenes and yet the Hentys and the authorities successfully hid it from our accepted history. Or are we hiding ourselves from it? The official reports are so vague and euphemistic and the ‘evidence’ provided so oblique and contradictory that it slips almost unnoticed from our history. Today, we, as Australians, are so willing to be ‘convinced’ of settler glory that we allow such incidents to be withheld from our children and scholars. In those early years men with compassion or perception were ignored in favour of the venal and violent. As an example, William (Andrew) Todd was left at Indented Head to guard John Batman’s stores and ‘titles’ in 1835. Todd was a reasonable man and for a while relations with the Wathaurong were peaceful and cordial; but this probably had more to do with the fact that William Buckley was present and helped allay the fears of the Wathaurong, already aware of the atrocities at the Convincing Ground. Todd’s civility served to ease their anxiety but even as he befriends them he wonders in his diary what will become of them when the more voracious members of his party begin settlement of the land with all the disruption and violence that would entail. John Wedge, another member of Batman’s Indented Head party, recommended that the Bellarine Aborigines receive daily provisions, even if those provisions be damaged or of inferior quality, as a permanent sign of goodwill and a crucial foundation for the settlement. But when John Batman’s brother Henry replaced Todd he did not honour Wedge’s agreement. Wedge had a greater understanding of consequences than any of his fellow entrepreneurs and after Franks’ murder he proposed that the perpetrators be sent to King Island where they would have plenty of food ‘as a little promptitude in meeting the outrages in the commencement will save a deluge of blood as it respects both Europeans and the blacks’.19 Wedge also believed that Buckley was important to the settlement’s success, but most of the other members treated the
20
Franks is Dead
wild white man with disdain. Wedge was no saint; he had little of Wilberforce’s fervent humanity; it was just that he was looking rationally into the future and could see that a little temperance of the squatters’ greed could prove beneficial to their interests. His partners, however, had no such sophistry and could see no reason to restrain their plunder. Observing this Buckley became suspicious of Batman and entered the camp of his English countrymen with reluctance. It became obvious to Buckley that any preliminary goodwill could not disguise their ruthless intentions. Once Buckley’s Wathaurong clan became aware of the Batman deception and the violence to follow, Buckley’s position was untenable. John Morgan, a desperate journalist arrived in Hobart from his failure in California, wrote a histrionic sketch of Buckley’s life, embellishing it, where it seemed to him too domestic, with details from American Indian culture, source of much more racy and violent fare. In the manner of any modern tabloid journalist he garnished the account with stories of cannibalism and constant warfare, so that it reads more like the Cowboy and Indian chapbooks, all the rage in California at the time. Morgan had free reign because Buckley could neither read nor write. If war and cannibalism had been prevalent at the rate Morgan suggests, the population of western Victoria would have been nil but, on the contrary, the first squatters found vast numbers living on the produce of the lush plains and bountiful waters, often in substantial villages of stone and timber houses. Profound evidence of civilised life was deliberately ignored, destroyed wherever possible, and Buckley’s reports on that civilisation were ridiculed and, to make sure they were never given credence, Buckley himself was portrayed as an idiot. Buckley had at least one Aboriginal wife and probably more than the one child we know about and he insisted that he had led a very enjoyable life of fishing, hunting, ceremony and popular theatrical entertainment. He certainly witnessed the ritual consumption of kidney fat and, while appalled by the act, recognised it as more akin to the sacrament of the blood and flesh of the Host than cannibalism.
21
Convincing Ground
He was a huge man and when the Wathaurong found him wandering helplessly through their lands after escaping the penal settlement at Sorrento they believed him to be the returned spirit of one of their recently departed dead. The belief system of the Kulin Nation of central Victoria was that the spirits of the dead sometimes reappeared as white wraiths. This suspicion was reinforced by the fact that Buckley bore a spear he had taken from the grave of a recently departed warrior. They called Buckley ‘Murrangoork, or Ghost Blood, but soon came to realise that they had adopted a largely incompetent, but apparently harmless, white man. And Buckley was satisfied with that, so satisfied that he avoided contact with the white sealers who occasionally visited the district, and considering the events of his later life, regretted the day he visited Batman’s camp, met Todd and remembered the word for bread. The press and historians regurgitate Buckley’s story interminably. It is an extraordinary yarn of survival but the focus is always on the Englishman and never on his saviours. When the Geelong Art Gallery decided to mount a Buckley exhibition in 2002 no Wathaurong artists were included. Despite the fact that the community has a number of basket weavers who have revived traditional methods, the only baskets included were by a white woman who used non-traditional methods, styles and materials. The paintings hung were all by white artists and mostly of white characters. The managers were astounded and offended to be challenged on what they saw as a fine historical exhibition. They were good people, well meaning, among the most enlightened in their community, but they acted under all the false assumptions that created our history in those early Port Phillip days. And, like many Australians, they were shocked that their actions might be considered racist. We can either learn from history or fall in love with the bedtime story of its deception and repeat it endlessly. The truth about Buckley’s life and its implications for our history are often overlooked in favour of the more colourful and racy events, whether invented by Morgan or not. Buckley’s only great contribution to Wathaurong life was that he was in no position to claim their land. First, he was a pauper whose family
22
Franks is Dead
had no experience of land ownership and, second, he was on his own, incapable of mounting a land grab even if he were inclined. And that’s the main point; he didn’t seem inclined. The life he led with the Wathaurong was richer in food, culture and harmony than anything he’d experienced before. Why would he want to change it? In England he had been so poor he went to war in order to eat and was then transported to Australia for life for stealing some cloth. Morgan fabricates much of the violence but even so it couldn’t compare to the violence and hardship Buckley had experienced in civilisation. When he expressed these sentiments the white squatters of Port Phillip and Hobart were scandalised and immediately dismissed him as a fool. How could he possibly prefer the society of barbarians? Todd met Buckley on a beautiful headland surrounded by waters rich in fish, molluscs, water birds and outstanding beauty, a point where tranquillity steals upon the soul. It is also an area where the young men and women from as far away as the Murray and Darling rivers were initiated. As the season for that year’s ceremony approached the Wathaurong became anxious and tried to convince Todd and party to leave but the new arrivals were ignorant and heedless of the subtle etiquettes of people they considered the temporary barbaric custodians of the land. Batman left them with instructions ‘to warn off all persons found trespassing on the land I had purchased from the natives’.20 At this point of tension it was probably only Buckley’s reassurances which prevented the Wathaurong from attacking the party, a forbearance they would live to regret. Not all white men were as tolerant as Todd or as well informed as Buckley and no white man since has had the opportunity to become so immersed in the subtleties and luxuries of Kulin life. Buckley found it impossible to impress on his countrymen the value and sophistication of Wathaurong cultural life and was terrified of the repercussions of informing them that he was an escaped convict rather than a shipwrecked sailor. These impediments compounded the misunderstandings and contempt which accompanied Buckley’s reunion with his race, so that in a
23
Convincing Ground
couple of months his relationship with them had collapsed and the wholesale theft of land and murders of tribesmen caused the Wathaurong to treat him as a traitor. Buckley became enormously depressed. He’d failed to bring his two civilisations together; treated as a figure of fun by his own race and with suspicion by his adopted clan. The rich life he’d enjoyed for three decades was his no longer. He broke their trust and received none from the colonials in return and ceases to be a significant figure in colonial history within months of meeting Todd. Today the people of the Wathaurong community tell a good joke. Q: Why is William Buckley the only Wathaurong person known to any Australian? A: Because he was white. Boom boom. No, not very funny, but in the context of Australian history viciously true. Australians find it disturbing to have the colonial myths unstitched but we need to examine all these landmark incidents with a critical eye if we are to understand ourselves. There’s no need to indulge in an orgy of flagellation because the major proponents were operating within the limits of their humanity at a time and place where there was no restraint on the worst inclinations of their nature. Every war is like that. The beasts club the enemy and the instigators of the war sneak in when the field is quiet to peg out their claim. We don’t know very much about the first clashes between June 1832 and July 1836 because that information, like every other action in the district, was kept secret from authorities. Later, when rudimentary colonial authority was established what little the Crown Commissioners discovered was excluded, more often than not, from their reports to the Governor in Sydney or the Colonial Office in London for fear of dismissal after having failed their commission, a commission which expressly forbad theft of land or mistreatment of the Indigenes. In the beginning of the Port Phillip Association’s campaign there was some residual if tokenistic goodwill between white and black. Lip service was paid to the treaty so that: For a few years after 1835 Europeans had to negotiate with the ngurangaeta [clan head] of particular areas and were able to rely 24
Franks is Dead
on their goodwill, but when squatters outnumbered the Kulin they sneered at the tattered dignity of the landless chiefs. The next generation, eager to forget that the European occupation was accomplished by carnage rather than courage forgot the generosity of the Woiwurrung, Bunurong and Wathaurong.21
In the space of just eight years 12,000 Europeans had arrived with one hundred thousand cattle and one and a half million sheep.22 The Kulin were being eaten out as quickly as they were being shot. The new proprietors did not number the Kulin dead but made a careful tally of the 59 Europeans and several thousand head of stock they claimed were killed by the Kulin. The Port Phillip Association knew that Batman’s ‘titles and deeds’ could only delay the involvement of the Crown in the disposal of land and so speed of occupation was their primary concern. They couldn’t afford even the most casual scrutiny of their actions by colonial authorities and railed against Bourke and Arthur as purveyors of conservatism, sheet anchors on the course of development, but neither man was particularly oppressive — they merely stood between these feral entrepreneurs and their greed. The squatters muffle the clamour of their activities in a cone of silence and in this vacuum myth takes the place of history. Vast tracts of land were ‘selected’ in those first years, the first great battles fought and with meticulous deliberation the details of these attacks were left off the public record or replaced with a gift for euphemism from which contemporary predators in politics have learned to justify the excision of another’s wealth unto themselves. And the colony of 1836 was as quiescent as the public of 2005 and the squatters who dared question the tactics were considered bleeding hearts and race traitors just as they are today. This book was begun during the build up to the war in Iraq when the United States tried to bribe other states to support the invasion of a sovereign country for reasons which have been found since to be incorrect. American rhetoric in 2003 never mentioned the simple intent to usurp another nation’s control of its resources, relying instead on the euphemisms of democracy and justice. Batman and his confederates used identical dissimulation. The history of war shows that they are seldom fought on moral grounds but most often on greed, the greed of the population, or at 25
Convincing Ground
least that part of the population in a position to scoop up the spoils from a dead man’s hands. The rest are sold the pup of divine right and then told to go out and kill and be killed in its name. By the time Franks was killed the warfare around the bays was in full, silent swing and the social and behavioural codes entrenched, well learned in the previous campaigns in India, America and Africa. London’s new liberal theories of human evolution and the rhetoric of the Anti-slavery Society are mere words in the colonies, platitudes only to be taken seriously over tea and cake at the Strand, as far removed from frontier Realpolitik as the moon. The ‘Colony Rules’ are so pervasive, and the exponents so assured of success, that colonists pay only lip service to Bourke’s commands. There is a contemptuous swagger to their insolence and it infects every sentence of their republican chorus. Over half of the first Western District squatters are Scots and they bring to Port Phillip a ruthless determination wedded to strict Caledonian allegiance and avarice. The cold calculation of their efforts to keep their activities secret and obfuscate their true intentions with bogus treaty documents is gilded by sanctimonious pronouncements of their wish to uplift the lives of the Indigenous population. Anyone reading these documents could be forgiven for thinking a pantheon of saints was bringing the Lord to Port Phillip instead of the venal and venereal diseases of men. Batman wrote: As available lands in this Colony were occupied by flocks of sheep, and fully stocked, it would be a favourable opportunity of opening a direct friendly intercourse with the tribes in the neighbourhood of Port Phillip, and obtaining from them a grant of a portion of the territory upon equitable principles, not only might the Resources of this Colony be considerably extended, but the object of civilisation be established, and which in process of time would lead to the civilization of a large portion of the Aborigines of that extensive country.23
But we see a different attitude altogether if we look at what Batman’s Van Diemen diaries record of his attitude to the Indigenes who dared defend their land.
26
Franks is Dead
The natives arose from the ground and were in the act of running away into the thick scrub, when I ordered the men to fire upon them, which was done, and a rush by the party immediately followed. We only captured that night one woman and a male child about two years old…next morning we found one man very badly wounded in the ankle and knee, shortly after we found another. Ten buckshot had entered the body, he was alive but very bad. There were a great number of traces of blood in various directions and we learnt from those we took that 10 men were wounded in the body which they gave us to understand they were dead or would die, and two women in the same state had crawled away, besides a number that were shot in the legs…On Friday morning we left the place for my farm with the two men, woman and child, but found it impossible that the two former could walk, and after trying them by every means in my power, for some time, found I could not get them on so I was obliged to shoot them.24
Obliged? What kind of man is this? Upon what assumptions does he act? What is the nature of his conversation with his squatter friends on how to acquire and keep land? If these are thoughts he commits to his diary what are the guffawed allusions among his mates after half a bottle of port? He never wrote ‘This is the place for a village’ when referring to his Yarra district in Port Phillip but he did intend it to be the place for a pillage. Turning from the pages of this account of ruthless attacks on the Indigenes of Van Diemen’s Land it is sickening to read the sanctimonious bleating about Aboriginal welfare in his official Port Phillip report. Batman was more than enthusiastic to pursue and murder Tasmanian Aboriginals on behalf of Governor Arthur in exchange for rewards of land, one of the few times their opinions coincided. Even his first foray under Arthur’s commission saw the implementation of Batman’s standard tricks. He massively under reports the number of Aborigines killed and massively over reports the provocations. Gellibrand’s correspondence conveys similar calculation: ‘we are about to enter a war of extermination, for such I apprehend is the declared object of the present operation and that in its progress we shall be compelled to destroy the innocent with the guilty’.25
27
Convincing Ground
Batman is obliged and Gellibrand compelled. It is interesting to ponder the forces operating on both men to generate this compelling obligation to kill but even more fascinating to see the word ‘war’ enter colonial discourse. Gellibrand and other letter writers and editors use the word freely in their analysis of the situation. War is officially declared in both New South Wales and Tasmania but our nation hardly dare mention its name. Today politicians run like rabbits from mention of the ‘w’ word in relation to the frontier. Is it because acknowledging that the country was at war is proof that the land was stolen from the people, not given up without a fight? The public record is full of reports where hundreds of Aboriginal warriors engage the Europeans in battle to retain their land. In 1837 two hundred Wathaurong raid the Clyde Company’s Gulf Hill station in an attempt to drive the white men off the land. During the Eumerella War of the Mount Eccles district there were parties of as many as three hundred fighting last-ditch battles for their country. In every part of Australia forces of this magnitude rise up to defend their land after the real intention of the ‘civilisers’ is apprised, but the history we tell our children today avoids the Resistance entirely because to acknowledge it mocks our legitimacy. The attitude of men like Batman and Gellibrand is unequivocally aggressive but their reputations have been enhanced over time as our country searches for a foundation of honour. Like any nation we strive to find heroes in our past, men and women fit to be the parents of our character. This search has led us into marshes of deception, blithely trying to convince ourselves and our children that there was no war, that the Aborigines gave up the land without a fight, didn’t deserve to have it in the first place and that the principal characters of the frontier were running around like Gandhi. I want to believe the best about my countrymen too, for I love this country with a fierce passion, but refusing to face the facts makes us look like the dumbest child in the international class. Men like Gellibrand and Batman are acutely conscious of their place in history and how they might be perceived in that history and, like almost every other official in the colony, prepare the
28
Franks is Dead
ground for that perception, by producing dual reports, one to brag, the other to delude. Of his Port Phillip days Batman produces two such reports. The Port Phillip Exploration document is a largely accurate journal but altered to romanticise his undertakings and published in the Journal of Australasia in 1856. The second report was for Governor Arthur, written in Gellibrand’s legalistic jargon and skewed to put the best official light on their activities. He had more angles than a map of New Guinea. John Glover, the colonial artist, had occasion to observe Batman’s character at close range and reports that Batman ‘is a rogue, thief, cheat, liar, a murderer of blacks and the vilest man I have ever known’. 26 But artists are notoriously oversensitive. In later years, John Batman, hiding his eroded face behind a rag, is wheeled about the town in a bath chair by two Aboriginal retainers he’d taken from Sydney and brought to Melbourne as a charade of racial harmony.27 In that one vision the whole period of history is encapsulated and in choosing to believe the deceptions of Batman and his partners we are allowing ourselves to be wheeled around our country in a bath chair of ignorance.
29
Two
History, How it Starts Frederick Taylor was one of the colonists’ favourite henchmen. Wherever he went in the district massacres occurred. When Franks was murdered Taylor was not far away and participated with unusual enthusiasm in the many reprisals. Any warlord anywhere in the world has always been able to draw recruits like Taylor from the general population. Psychotics abound and gravitate inexorably to the wars of race and religion. You start a website denigrating blacks and one of the visitors to that site will think it a good idea to bomb their house in the belief he has God on his side. Someone objects to the way a man stares at his girlfriend’s brief bikini and a mob can be armed within hours to win back that beach for ‘Australians’. In every society at every point of history men have been found to do the violent work of entrepreneurs or zealots. You want someone to rape the wives of Amazonian Indians resisting logging of their homeland; recruits will queue around the block. You want vigilantes to disrupt an independence movement in Papua you will have so many recruits they’ll form their own army. You want men to dissuade Australian Aborigines from the idea that they own the land, you’ll find plenty willing to shoot pregnant women and laugh. World history is full of examples of brutes who volunteer for such tasks. George Augustus Robinson’s diaries, among others, show Robinson’s alarm at the frequency of the same attitudes. The frontiers of war provide an ‘acceptable’ outlet for the blood lusts of some men. Frederick Taylor was one of those men prepared to commit murder for no other reward than wages.
30
History, How it Starts
After his sprees to avenge the murder of Franks and other untold casual atrocities Taylor remained vigilant for Indigenous malfeasance. In September 1836 he intercepted an Aboriginal man who refused to give Taylor his name. The impertinence! The opportunity! Edward Freestun, one of Taylor’s convicts, gives a different story. Freestun says the black man gave his name as Gilgoran and throwing off his cloak proceeded to help Freestun and another convict labourer, John Whitehead, load Taylor’s dray with fence hurdles. On completion of the task Gilgoran went on his way to the settlement. Taylor, however, claimed to recognise him as the same man who had attacked Captain Flitt with a tomahawk three months earlier. Taylor gets one of his men to intercept Gilgoran and tie him to a tree while he sends two other men to bring Flitt for the purposes of identification. The Aboriginal man is Curacoine, a senior and well respected man of the Wathaurong people, and the rendering of his name as Gilgoran was a common enough colonial mistake of phonetics. According to Taylor, Curacoine began making a noise as if to call for help. John Whitehead objected to the noise and told Taylor that if the black didn’t stop ‘he would put him on one side’. Taylor told Whitehead ‘he might do as he pleased’.1 Whitehead duly shoots Curacoine and then drags him down to the river and throws him in, still alive but mortally wounded. Whitehead and Freestun return to the tree and begin a fire to eliminate the blood stains but they must have become a little peckish because they then use the fire to cook their dinner. The incident is reported to Lonsdale after it becomes gossip in the colony and he is obliged to bring it to court. Taylor tells the court that when Whitehead said he intended to put Curacoine to one side he had no idea he meant murder. Flitt corroborates the evidence in a deposition to the court and both he and Taylor are called as witnesses in the trial of John Whitehead but before the trial Flitt and Taylor leave the district for Van Diemen’s Land. So, for want of ‘evidence’, Whitehead is released and Taylor’s guilt in encouraging Whitehead to commit murder is never examined.
31
Convincing Ground
Frederick Taylor is cynical and savage in the extreme but his career could only have flourished in the nod and wink climate of the phantom law being encouraged by the authorities and squatters. Entrepreneurs engaged in illegal activity need brutes like Taylor. The dog is trained to kill; let him slip the collar, lash his jaws with crimson and when he returns scold him for being a naughty puppy. Don’t beat him because that might break his spirit and you need that spirit just as the legislators of apartheid needed maniacal white supremacists to enact it. Port Phillip is like this. The mad dogs have been released to stun the country with terror. The intentions of the colony are poisonous, premeditated and popular. In 1839 Taylor massacred at least forty Aborigines at Murdering Gully, Mount Emu, where he managed Puuroyuup for MacKillop and Smith. Annoyed by the theft of some sheep, Taylor attacked a sleeping encampment of Djagurd wurrung and Colijon, slaughtering all but a handful and throwing the bodies of the dead into a waterhole. Karn, one of the survivors returned to the camp, recovered the bodies from the water and ‘was placing them on the ground four deep, head to head’2 preparatory to burial, when the Europeans returned and took him captive. A second survivor, Wangegamon, escaped by swimming to the other side of the river and hiding in grass from which vantage point he saw his wife and child killed. After the bodies were ‘thrown into the creek the water became stained with blood’. 3 Missionaries from, ‘Buntingdale’, the Wesleyan mission at Birregurra, questioned the severity of Taylor’s response and while he felt confident in escaping punishment he was canny enough to go to India until the dust had settled, which it did with incredible celerity, allowing him to return and continue his indulgences in Gippsland. Taylor was involved in the murder of numerous Aborigines in Victoria and settlers queued up to gain his services. Not all settlers were like this, of course. James Dawson, one of the most considerate men in his relations with the Aborigines, arrived with his family from Scotland in 1840 and, after establishing a dairy on the Yarra, took up land near Port Fairy in 1844. Such had
32
History, How it Starts
been the speed of westward settlement, however, that Gundidjmara defence of their lands had been almost exhausted by this time. Dawson was an educated and tolerant man and recorded his observations meticulously. He was one of the few squatters to search for information about the substantial stone, timber and turf houses of the people, most preferring to burn these villages to the ground rather than face the questioning of authorities regarding their rights to occupied land. Such was the speed of destruction of these buildings that settlers arriving only a few years after the colony’s establishment saw no sign of them. Dawson records all the information he can glean from Aboriginal informants but other white people also report on their existence. Job Francis at Lake Condah comments on the extent and sophisticated structure of villages and Charles Griffith reports on a meeting he had in a house which was 15 feet (4.5 metres) long and high enough for a man to stand.4 Twelve people were comfortably accommodated. Some houses had areas reserved for widows and children, bachelors and widowers, as well as conventional families. Thomas Mitchell’s second in command sees numerous houses west of the Grampians, one ‘capable of containing at least 40 persons.5 The buildings were so impressive he suspected William Buckley must have been involved even though Buckley had never been within 200 kilometres of the area. They were big, complex structures but contemporary Australians know nothing about them. Dawson encouraged the Kirrae wurrong people to camp on their tribal lands within ‘his property’ and proceeded to detail their language and culture. Dawson’s daughter, Isabella, became fluent in the language and together they made a more thorough inventory of south-western Victorian culture than any other coloniser attempted. He was a fearless advocate of Aboriginal people and incurred the contempt of fellow colonists for his constant letters to the newspapers and willingness to report ‘settlers’ who committed crimes of violence against the Indigenes. And yet this wonderful Scot with the benefit of his intelligence and liberal outlook assumed that it was his natural right to occupy the lands of a sovereign people. It wasn’t Dawson who killed the Kirrae in order to steal
33
Convincing Ground
their land but he occupied it only a few years later. If Dawson, one of the few to understand the complicated system of clan boundaries and land obligations, saw no flaw in the imperial principle of forced land usurpation then what hope was there for justice to survive, or even arrive? Historians are upset when decent men like Dawson are criticised but he knew who the land had belonged to and still built his house upon it. A colleague argues that there was nothing else he could do because he arrived after the land was usurped. But that’s what we’re still saying today when both major political parties defy Native Title and seek to eliminate Aboriginal culture ‘for the Aborigines own good’. Just because we weren’t there when injustice occurred doesn’t absolve us from responsibility to try to set it right. Unless, of course, we are happy with things as they are. The press and pastoralist push attacked the few men like Dawson and didn’t spare any clergy troubled by their conscience. The Wesleyan missionary, Benjamin Hurst, railed publicly about the brutal treatment of the Aborigines stating that Christian principles had become so corrupted that settlers left church on a Sunday to spend the rest of the day hunting and shooting blacks. Hurst believed over two hundred Colijon and Kirrae had been shot around the Colac lakes alone. The press launched into Hurst with blustering outrage, declaring him un-Christian and cowardly. La Trobe commanded him to give evidence for his claims but abruptly dismissed Hurst’s verbal explanation. La Trobe established his own investigation but, tellingly, declined to appoint Charles Sievwright, Assistant Protector of Aborigines, giving the task instead to the Portland Magistrate, James Blair, whose fear and hatred of Aborigines was known to all in the district.6 Chief Protector Robinson reported in 1840 that Blair advocated killing all in a tribe who refused to hand over those suspected of attacks on whites.7 Blair set out to discredit Hurst’s informant, Tulloh, and found plenty of squatters willing to tell all kinds of stories against the young man. In fact Blair only asked his friends to give evidence and most of them had already been involved in massacres. Blair’s most powerful card in the pack was to elicit outlandish stories of cannibalism from these scoundrels who seem to pluck their ‘facts’
34
History, How it Starts
from a variety of populist pamphlets and phrase them in almost identical sentences. Academic Colin Tatz believes most reports of cannibalism are third hand or worse while reliable first-hand accounts are ignored. Most of the references to cannibalism in Port Phillip originate from Blair’s inquiry and are still repeated today as graven proof of the degraded morality of all Aboriginal people. When Pauline Hanson, Queensland political figure, talks of the debased cannibals of Australia, it’s likely her reference, if indeed she has one, is Blair’s report to La Trobe. The focus on cannibalism is a strange phenomenon. Incidents of cannibalism have occurred in every society and cases arise even today. Infanticide is also one of the proofs of Indigenous immorality, but the practice was rife in eighteenth-century Britain when colonisers invoked it as one of the reasons Aborigines didn’t deserve the fair plains of Australia. One of the most frequently quoted incidents of infanticide comes from a report by Foster Fyans, Geelong Magistrate, who claimed to have seen a baby dashed against a tree.8 Fyans witnessed this event while standing on one side of the Moorabool River while the ‘assailant’ on the other side was obscured by a grove of trees. So at best Fyans is 400 metres from the scene. Did he see a possum being dispatched or a hairless kangaroo? Both were delicacies of Wathaurong diet and both were killed in this fashion. What Fyans did or didn’t see is not as important as the fact that our scholars build an argument on flimsy evidence from proven and prejudicial liars. Another source of reports of infanticide and cannibalism comes from The Colony of Victoria 1864, by William Westgarth who was hip deep in dispossessing the Kulin people. His reports are often quoted but, in fact, he didn’t witness an incident of either but used third-, fourth- and fifth-hand hearsay. Infanticide, like cannibalism, was never investigated with any intellectual integrity but used as an emotive call to the avid and ignorant to despise those standing in the way of unimpeded access to land. Those most offended by the thought of cannibalism ignore the existence of mortuary cannibalism in early Christian practice and its representation in the modern Sacrament. Colonials deliberately
35
Convincing Ground
misrepresented the nature of the events witnessed and today’s commentators ignore the relationship of Indigenous mortuary practice to communal grief and religious belief. The educated class were not truly deluded by the practice, merely opportunistic in how they publicised it. Having Blair, one of the greatest anti-Aboriginal propagandists, investigate squatter violence and Aboriginal perfidy is like asking radio shockjocks to judge corporate ethics. The settlers combine to destroy the credibility of witnesses and urge La Trobe to withdraw their rights to land within the colony. Blair concluded his inquiry by saying ‘the settlers of this district are, I may say without exception, gentlemen of education. Most of them have arrived from home within the last two years, and who cannot, therefore, be supposed to have so soon forgotten the principles in which they were educated as to render their society dreadful’.9 La Trobe accepts this whitewash and sends it to Gipps without risking an opinion from the Aboriginal Protectors who have been appointed for that very purpose. The Superintendent of Port Phillip adds his own emphasis to Blair’s report by claiming that not one authenticated death of an Aboriginal has been reported in the last eighteen months. Even with the attitude to truth current in the colony this is an incredible claim. Blair himself was implicated in massacres but escaped the charges just as he has helped his friends in other instances. The duties of police magistrates were conflated with the registration of land acquisitions and as a consequence the impartial application of the law is impossible. The squatters are smugly satisfied with their control of the legal and judicial process and gloat that the district has gone ‘quiet’. Deathly quiet. The squatter, Arthur Pilleau, told Chief Aboriginal Protector Robinson that settlers were encouraging their men to shoot blacks and to keep it quiet.10 A new methodology had been developed to escape censure, Pilleau claims; Aborigines are shot singly or in pairs and the bodies disposed of thoroughly. He estimated that twenty blacks were shot for every white. Pilleau was inclined to the view that this was not such a bad thing, the sooner to bring peace to the district.
36
History, How it Starts
Individuals of goodwill or keener sensibility were overwhelmed by the craven and crude. The first acts of most European visitors to the shores of Australia were to steal stocks of food, implements or women from Aborigines. One of the few truly intelligent approaches by an English official is marred by subsequent thefts and violence of ever increasing severity. Sailors from a whaling brig stole food and canoes from the Bunurong in 1801 but when the brig returned in 1802 Lieutenant Bowen made serious attempts to ameliorate the situation. He arrived on shore holding aloft a green bough in the customary Kulin symbol of peace and even removed his clothes, on request, as a mark of respect. On a later occasion he danced with the Bunurong but all this was in vain because a second landing party from the same brig stole a quantity of timber, shellfish and swans against the express wishes of the people. Another group of sailors demanded fur cloaks and weapons and when their demands were not met they fired repeatedly into the group, killing at least two and injuring many. On sailing away the captain ‘took possession of the port in the name of his King’.11 Lieutenant Bowen’s actions seem extraordinary in the context of the past and future attitudes of sailors and settlers but perhaps he was just attempting a more civilised approach to achieve the same ends — possession. It didn’t seem to matter who landed on the shore: sealers, governors convicts or gentlemen, almost all visitors fire on Aborigines within their first 24 hours on the continent. They never admit to an understanding that the people were resisting the invasion of their lands, nor did it occur to them that killing people was no way to negotiate or conciliate. Despite what they thought of the Indigenes’ level of humanity, it seems an incredibly stupid tactic to enrage the occupants on day one. Was it incompetence or arrogance? Had the gentlemen entrusted with the implementation of Westminster’s charter shredded that plan to confetti in their own minds well before their bow drew alongside the Australian shore? Was anyone in England under the delusion that on this land imperialism would be undertaken with genuine care for the Indigenous population? When you label a race as heathen barbarians without any attempt
37
Convincing Ground
to enquire into their belief system or methods of civil governance can you ever interact with those people without the Bible in one hand and the gun in the other? The invasion is undertaken by people whose psyche is primed to believe that it is in the best interests of the invaded to lose their land, their spirit and their lives. Or perhaps we make ourselves believe in any myth that leads to the sating of our greed. In Rebellion at Coranderk, Diane Barwick outlines a series of murderous attacks carried out by sailors and colonial officials from 1798 to 1803, long before Batman’s party arrived. Wedge reported an attack on Aborigines by bark gatherers who shot several Aborigines while trying to steal women on 15 March 1836. He reports another attack prior to 1835 where whalers succeeded in stealing four women. Similar campaigns were conducted by sealers in Portland. In his journal Wedge considers that ‘unless some measures are adopted to protect the Natives a spirit of hostility will be created against the whites which in all probability will lead to a state of warfare…and will only be terminated when the black man ceases to exist’.12 The cessation of that existence was just what the colony, including its clergy, expected and desired. Bishop Broughton tells the Select Committee on Aborigines in 1837, ‘They do not so much retire as decay; wherever Europeans meet with them they appear to wear out, and gradually to decay: they diminish in numbers; they appear to actually vanish from the face of the earth’.13 Abracadabra, sim sala bim! The clergy were the educated members of society and their mission as professionals was to dispense tolerance and love to all humankind. To express such thoughts so publicly and confidently requires an enormous effort of delusion or malice or a failure to comprehend any of Christ’s teachings. Too often the men charged with the implementation of Britain’s finest principles seem to have forgotten all but one of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt have no other God before me. It was too late to hope for a more civilised society, the tone had been set, the prejudices entrenched, the enmity permanent. If any of the settlers had met the lady from Cape Otway they would not have wondered about the perfect tailoring of her cloak, the robust
38
History, How it Starts
health of her children, the cosy warmth of her neat house; they would have seen a barbarian whose greatest need on earth was to learn the Ten Commandments, commandments the colonial proselytisers applied with vicious discrimination.
39
Three
The Lakes Who were the first men to bring this duplicitous civilisation to Port Phillip? What sophistry of mind did they possess which allowed them to pray to the Lord our God but interpret his Word with such bias? Let us examine the actions of some of the first to push into the western plains immediately after Franks’ murder. These men are all Christian but all are aware of concerted attacks on the Wathaurong, Bunurong and Woiwurrung around Melbourne and quite a few have participated in these crusades. How did they explain their actions in their prayers? Hugh Murray was one of the first white men to see the Colac lakes. It was September 1837 and Murray, like other venture capitalists, was breathless in the search for open plains not yet occupied by too many graziers. He wasn’t in the first wave of ‘settlers’ and had to leapfrog lands already ‘selected’ by members of Batman and Fawkner’s Port Phillip Association. On the track Murray met Rev Naylor searching for JT Gellibrand and GBL Hesse who had gone missing while engaged in a hectic dash for broadacres. Naylor, told of the open plains he’d seen around the lakes,1 and Murray and his partners, Lloyd and Carter, hastened to find the Elysium but were beaten by JN McLeod who arrived in the gathering dark and surprised a large party of Colijon collecting fish in their extensive lake weirs. The people fled, apparently apprised of the results of meeting white people with guns. The Europeans camped that night by the lake but stayed awake as they could hear the Aborigines within a stone’s throw of their camp. In the morning the entrepreneurs emerged and were soon approached by an old man and a boy. The old man was crying and
40
The Lakes
begged them to return a boy who had been stolen from his mother by Dr Clarke three weeks earlier. The old man said the mother was ‘sad very much’ and had not stopped crying.2 It’s not certain if McLeod knew Clarke but in any case the old man’s courage was not rewarded because McLeod turned to the fishing nets of the Colijon, divesting them of ‘the delicious little smelt’ and left some trinkets in their place, despite having taken the hand woven nets as well. The old man’s faith in direct appeal to the white men was probably quenched on the spot. The people who are soon to punish every spearing of a sheep with the murder of as many as fifty or more Aborigines think nothing of picking up Indigenous possessions as if they have been left as souvenirs. The assumptions of superiority and immunity from the laws of human decency are betrayed by such casual theft. To steal and destroy become campaign traits of every excursion westwards. At this time the Colijon had done the squatters no harm, most never having seen a white man except Buckley, and so to take the nets, the spears, the cloaks and baskets, and most of all set fire to the thatch of the stone houses, exhibited gross contempt and ignorance, but more importantly eliminated hope of peaceful relations. Peace was not part of the plan. The casual and deliberate theft, destruction and aggression indicate that the Europeans had arrived with well drilled tactics ready for immediate implementation. Historians pay almost no attention to these acts and yet all vengeance parties admit to it. Most of the stones from destroyed houses are picked up and used to build the famous Western District basalt stone fences. Local historical associations go all rosy cheeked and nostalgic ‘about these great feats of British engineering’,3 but stare blankly and uncomprehending when advised of the five-roomed houses from which many of the stones were stolen. One of the great myths of Australian life is that southern Aboriginal people were nomads who did not build houses more elaborate than skimpy windbreaks. The truth is that stone, turf and bark houses were common in the district. On 28 January 1836, soon after Gellibrand had arrived in Port Phillip, he was venturing only a few miles from the bay where his party ‘fell in with about 100 native huts’.4 It is only a passing reference and reported with
41
Convincing Ground
no great surprise. Obviously it was common to find such large settlements, probably representing a resident population of around four to six hundred people, perhaps more. It is important to note the extent of this housing and the permanent occupation it represents. James Dawson of Camperdown describes the housing in detail including evidence he had accumulated of stone and turf houses large enough to accommodate twenty or more people. Some large houses had roof rafters supported by central poles. This is more than a house, it’s a small town hall. Despite the obvious importance of these buildings most have been destroyed within twelve months of Batman’s arrival with only the foundations to speak for the civilisation of Port Phillip and the Western District. It is difficult to convince historical associations and the mandarins of Aboriginal Affairs that these towns of stone dwellings existed. Schoolteachers have challenged me, politicians have threatened me, tourist operators expressed scorn, but the evidence is irrefutable. We as Australians might prefer the myth that the people lived in nothing but windbreaks and perhaps this ‘fact’ is perpetuated because it hides the ownership of the land and the permanent utility made of its resources, requirements which Native Title legislation uses to dismiss Indigenous claims, be it in north Queensland or the Convincing Ground at Portland. A descendant of the warriors of that war, Damien Bell, Chairman of the Winda Mara Co-op at Heywood, points to the extensive stone fish traps and aquaculture techniques as evidence of sophisticated culture, but his assertions received concrete confirmation after the bushfires of January 2006,5 when the foundations of very large buildings were revealed in southwest Victoria. Some were five metres in diameter and capable of housing four large families. The 150 sites were grouped together, unmistakably forming a town of a permanent population supported by their fishing industry. Here are the houses reported by Gellibrand, Lawson, Robinson, Griffith and a host of others but ‘invisible’ to today’s Australia. We spend a lot of money excavating the sites of convict prisons to uncover fascinating objects like tobacco tins and shoe buckles but why have we, as a nation, spent so few resources to find the
42
The Lakes
buildings so frequently reported by early ‘settlers’? It is a crucial key in the search for the nation’s soul and the reason for our steadfast refusal to acknowledge that we have one. Deprivation of housing was one of the most destructive acts short of murder. Once deprived of housing in the cool Victorian climate the exposure to the new pulmonary infections was incredibly debilitating. In combination with the theft of possum skin cloaks and bedding, the destruction of the houses created hardships from which the clans suffered greatly. After a few years of war there were so few men alive that the re-building of the stone walls and turf roofs was impossible, and in any case the people were under constant pursuit and harassment and unable to stay in one place long enough to contemplate such large constructions. Introduced diseases were given optimum conditions for success.
43
Four
Lady Macbeth’s Clean Hands Once the West was won, attention turned to explaining to God and government how it was won. Apart from the efforts to prove that the Indigenous population did not deserve such wonderful land, the sophists sought to wash blood from the hands of the colony and explain the elimination of the Indigenous population as the result of passive means; the natural debility of the people, their despair when faced by a superior culture, their corruption, their susceptibility to disease. Those efforts continue today at the highest levels of academia and government. Look, God, they just fell over. A big case has been made for disease being the prime eliminator of the people, some historians sniffily assert, the only one. Certainly syphilis had a severe impact on fertility, and smallpox epidemics swept through clans but the death rate from smallpox may have been dramatically overrated because the population had been previously exposed to smallpox thirty to forty years earlier when sealers first visited the coast. Judy Campbell in Invisible Invaders even excuses Europeans of having introduced the disease, laying that blame at the foot of the Macassans. She plots the course of the disease from north to south; but using the same evidence and assuming that sealers had visited the southern coastline late in the 1790s you could argue that it was first brought to the shores by sealers from any number of ships, any nationality of their crew and any one of their ports of origin. Campbell’s thesis argues that violence was not a significant cause of death because the Aboriginal population had already been significantly reduced by disease. The earlier smallpox epidemic did
44
Lady Macbeth’s Clean Hands
reduce the population but it rebounded with a level of immunity and a steady recovery of numbers so that by 1835 large numbers of Aborigines still lived on their land in robust health. Subsequent letters from squatters and official dispatches indicate a rapid decline of the Victorian population after 1835 and although introduced syphilis and pulmonary disease gained a grip on populations and reduced fertility it cannot account for such an immediate drop in populations. By 1838 some districts appear to have almost no Aboriginal people. Campbell acknowledges that smallpox was often introduced by giving blankets to the Aborigines which had been deliberately infected with the bacterium. This ploy was used in America where death rates amongst some Indian communities was 100 per cent.1 In 1763 it was estimated that up to half of all Indians across America died from smallpox. Even though the same unimaginable act was perpetrated in Australia, medical records and casual observation indicate that far less carnage resulted from the re-introduction of smallpox in the 1830s possibly because of immunity gained in the first epidemic. Campbell argues that the American statistics of 1763 prove that the same impact occurred in Port Phillip but she supplies no data to support that argument and steadfastly ignores the evidence of war as a cause of depopulation. Her contribution to the debate is very important, because no-one else has investigated contact diseases as extensively, but it is necessary to analyse these cataclysmic death rates with an eye to all possibilities. If smallpox was responsible for the decline in numbers you would expect to see a disproportionate number of men because of the propensity of the disease to kill women, particularly pregnant women. The population statistics, however, indicate the reverse, an alarming reduction in the numbers of adult males between eighteen and fifty, implicating war as by far the more serious cause of death. Campbell’s own data analysing longevity indicates that many Aboriginal people lived well into their seventies but a study of age distributions a decade after Batman’s arrival and combined with Campbell’s own analysis of gender balance show a huge hole in the population where men of warrior age should be. This is a vastly different story from the one painted by most of our historians.
45
Convincing Ground
The majority of squatters were under no illusion as to the cause. Some pretended to believe in the natural decline of an inferior species but the truth was embedded in contemporary knowledge. EM Curr, no great friend of the Aborigines and handy with a weapon himself, estimated that 15 to 25 per cent of all deaths could be attributed to murder. In 1844 William Westgarth believed that the population around Mount Eccles had fallen by 50 per cent and most of this was the result of frontier violence. George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines, after touring western Victoria, estimated that forty blacks died in battle for every one white man ‘and if the statement of the Aborigines were admitted it would be trebled’.2 Robinson sent this report to La Trobe but it was ignored. Deaths from disease of whatever magnitude did allow some Europeans to speculate on their biological superiority. Andrew Markus’ book, From the Barrel of a Gun, is very uncomfortable reading, making you squirm in your skin as you read the press articles collected from the period. In these pages the victors refashion history. Darwinism is in full flight and Australians leap on the theory to explain their occupation of the continent and provide the kind of succour Cardinal Broughton wallowed in when pontificating on the ‘disappearance’ of the heathen. The letters and reports chosen by Markus are eerily similar to the sentiments expressed in the Port Phillip press and indicate the underlying assumptions of the squattocracy. Mr GJ Brockman of Kalgoorlie in defending himself against public charges of violence towards Aborigines says ‘I may remark here that placing a native in the stocks “and whipping him with saddle straps” would not hurt and is not a cruel punishment. He suffers in no way beyond confinement’. Brockman alleged his victim had stolen a pair of boots.3 Brockman defended his district against infamy, and the ease with which he considers his assumptions acceptable to civilised debate is as chilling as his admissions. Ours is singled out as the district where natives have been most cruelly treated, and yet we can certainly show a cleaner sheet in
46
Lady Macbeth’s Clean Hands
this respect than any other place in Australia. There has never been a district settled where so few natives have been shot (possibly if we had shot them down instead of trying to utilize them we should have got more praise than we get at present).4
From the Barrel follows the correspondence about the allegations of slavery and violence aired by the missionary, Rev J Gribble. Sir Paul Hasluck, a former federal parliamentarian, remarked that Gribble may have achieved more if he’d kept his claims to himself, implying that it was un-Australian to involve London in domestic affairs. Hasluck was in parliament when today’s politicians were cutting their teeth on racial politics, and as a later Governor-General, was a considerable influence on Liberal values. When you read Gribble’s mild rebukes of Carnarvon settlers it is hard to imagine how a cultured and educated man like Hasluck could have taken exception. Gribble describes six ‘slaves’ chained by the neck and ankle to each other and then to a tree in the scorching sun where they stayed day after day. Even after they were ‘trained’ to their slavery these people were chained neck and ankle to each other and the wall of a corrugated iron enclosure. In another place he saw 37 similarly chained in an enclosure 30 feet (2.76 metres) square. In Black Australians Hasluck complains that Gribble’s disclosures were unjust and unproductive ‘because colonists were sensitive about their honour’. Hasluck was Minister for Territories in the Menzies government and a parliamentarian for over two decades, yet he could remain relaxed and comfortable despite reading about people chained to the wall, not because they had committed a crime but because they ‘are slippery customers’ and might abscond from their slavery. The first impulse of Hasluck, a cultured man who published poetry and literary vignettes, is to chastise Gribble for impulsiveness. At a later date he questions the notion of Aboriginality because blackfellas are refusing to die and some are coming into the towns and adapting to contemporary culture, living in European-style houses, washing cars, mowing lawns. How dare they! Hasluck in his position of Minister for Territories attempts to redefine Aboriginality more narrowly so that only those not
47
Convincing Ground
living like white men, regardless of their genetic heritage, might be considered black. Later on he wrote, ‘the superiority of western civilization both on its merits and its established position as a way of life of the majority…indeed the incompatibility of civilized usage and pagan barbarism — left only two possible outcomes: separate development or assimilation’.5 Hasluck was a poet, philosopher and politician but he failed to examine the nature of the civilisation he condemned. Such intellectual myopia has bedevilled this country for over two hundred years. It’s time we stiffened our intellectual spine. Hasluck grew up in an era and district where the opinions of the Western Australian newspapers were taken seriously. Too seriously. But when did poets and philosophers rely on the daily press to form their opinions? The Victorian Express of Geraldton published an admonishment in 1886. Gribble must leave the district at once, for as long as Mr Gribble is here the Church of England must suffer in reputation. The settlers here are a fine manly lot of fellows, no better and no worse than their fellow men from a moral standpoint, but scorning all this is base and mean. They come to a place like this and find bareness; nothing to encourage them, but, rather, much to discourage, and like the true Britishers which most of them are, they face every difficulty, and determine to open out the country…This means not only profiting themselves in the future…but also making the whole colony richer…this has been accomplished with comparatively little bloodshed. A few, maybe, were shot — a few had to be shot to save greater bloodshed in the future. The Rev Mr Gribble may cavil at this, but who with any truthfulness, and who is conversant with the subject can say it is not so.6
At a public meeting in Carnarvon Gribble is accused of not being a true Britisher. In a letter to the West Australian Brockman writes, ‘if he continues with his campaign the colonists will dispose of the blacks and bring in ‘Malays and Chinamen instead’.7 The men involved in this tirade of abuse represent some of the most wealthy and ‘distinguished’ Australian families. Towns, streets and art galleries are named after them and yet this is what 48
Lady Macbeth’s Clean Hands
the flower of Australian society was thinking. They received official compliance with their methods of murder and slavery in Britain’s other colonies and now, with the strategies honed to a razor’s edge, expect to receive the same acclamation here. Anyone complaining was not a Britisher. The parallels with Australia’s contemporary political methods admonish us. At the same time as Brockman was blustering around in the north-west, Joseph Bradshaw and Andreas Gunn were cutting the figures of dashing cavaliers in the Kimberley. Gunn’s diary of the time recalls, ‘We crouched in the dark, with our nerves strung to a high pitch of excitement. It was one of those rare moments when we play the game of life with death and are victors whether we win or lose. The game was the thing. The stakes were nought’.
He’s talking about a raid on their camp by the Indigenous owners of the land they have stolen. An instantaneous photograph of a magnificent savage, bedizened with red ochre and decked with lines and bands of bird down, flashed on my mind as he sprang. I have the photograph yet along the shining barrel of my Martini-Henry rifle. For an instant my finger quivered on the hair trigger, and then a sharp bark rang out. There was a solitary groan.8
Their ‘run’ was 12,400 square kilometres on the Victoria River. They were prepared to kill for it but as Germaine Greer has pointed out, people like Gunn and Bradshaw and Stan Kidman later, had no attachment to the land. They’d kill to keep it one month and sell it for a profit the next. Gunn’s wife went on to write We of the Never Never, the famous but cruelly racist account of their lives in the north, while Bradshaw gave his name to an incredible gallery of paintings which he ‘discovered’. Desperate to deny the longevity of Aboriginal occupation of Australia, today’s historians and archaeologists, riding the coat tails of conservative political and academic power, claim that the art in these galleries is too good for it to have been created by the ancestors of contemporary Indigenous people. The art must have been painted 49
Convincing Ground
by a more sophisticated race who visited and left. Extra-terrestrials perhaps. This incredibly biased and inept commentary, which we are supposed to accept as academic research, fails to acknowledge that art of almost identical style exists at Mount Borradaile in western Arnhem Land. These galleries are in the care of descendants of the ancestors who first began to paint those caves over the space of several rises and falls in sea level and several alterations to climate, and not only that, those direct descendants have the authority to add their contribution to that art and are doing so. Not only is the art consistent with the entire occupation of the period, new art was added to it in 2004. We cannot allow the gainsayers to get away with outright deception for their own ideological ends. When do we get sick of being lied to and decide to expend the energy to examine the history and culture of our own country for ourselves? It is not just the attitudes of the frontiersmen we need to examine; a critical scrutiny must be applied to all contemporary commentary on the foundations of our civilisation. Special scrutiny should be applied to those arguments which attempt to shift all blame for violence inflicted on Aboriginal people to the victims themselves, particularly those which seek to explain the demise of Aboriginal people on their inferior intellect, morality or constitution. Science and Darwinism tried that in the nineteenth century until later science proved that the brain capacity and genetic structure of Aborigines and Caucasians are identical. Those preferring to rest an argument on relative morality should examine the religion and morality of Indigenous Australians and then compare it to those who murdered them in the 1800s and those who try to excuse or deny it today.
50
Five
The Lie of the Land In 1836 the lies and deceptions were running at breakneck speed even among the more refined Port Phillip squatters. Despite possessing the same prejudices as his fellows Hugh Murray was not the cruellest man to enter Port Phillip and yet he pursued with relentless ferocity any who dared steal his sheep. Oh, his parties were always large and well armed but he insisted no-one was ever killed except for one man shot in the process of throwing a spear. Squatters followed the well developed colonial technique: keep your own killings quiet, encourage or pay others to do it for you when you can, and wherever possible accuse the victims of bestiality, therefore deserving of their death. When Murray met Rev Naylor, supposedly searching for Gellibrand and Hesse on behalf of Gellibrand’s wife, the clergyman was leading a party which included some Barrabool whom he had ‘hired’ so they could wreak havoc on the Colijon who were occupying land being sought by squatters. Naylor ‘allowed’ these Barrabool to spear two of the Colijon with whom Naylor believed they were in enmity. Murray saw them return holding portions of flesh aloft and reports sententiously about the horror of cannibalism, but neither he nor Naylor interfered in the raid made possible by the new weapons at the Barrabools’ disposal. What Naylor and Murray witnessed was not cannibalism but more like American Indians’ counting coup. They adopt the well established imperial technique of condemning the act but obscuring the fact that the inter-tribal attack they incited by bringing strange clansmen onto the land of others achieved exactly what they had intended; to clear the plains for themselves and blame the clearance on someone else. 51
Convincing Ground
As discussed before in reference to La Trobe’s reports, cannibalism is one of the first accusations levelled at any group of Indigenous people inconveniently in possession of land desired by Europeans. Almost all reports are coloured by avarice and the repulsion felt by Europeans for such acts while ignoring the incidence of the same in their own societies. Many colonial accounts mention that skin is removed from behind the knees and in front of the elbows and indicates a more ritualistic practice than hunger or blood lust would suggest. In one of the most complete reports, Charles Sievwright, Assistant Protector of Aborigines, refuses to leave a ceremony where Jarcoort people prepare the body of one of their daughters. The girl was killed during an argument brought about when two opposing clans are forced to take residence together on George Augustus Robinson’s ill-informed insistence. Sievwright knew that both groups would be insulted to live in the same camp and wasn’t surprised when violence occurred.1 Sievwright got on well with the Jarcoort and understood them better than most but it didn’t stop him from insisting on witnessing the mourning ceremony while lounging on a log from which vantage point he could watch in comfort. The girl’s body was opened at the chest and the initial incision was accompanied by prolonged singing and wailing. Methodically the organs, blood and serum were removed from the chest cavity, and portions of skin meticulously sliced away. Sievwright admitted the grief displayed was extraordinary but refused to go when requested and continued to watch as portions of the body were consumed. He interprets the enthusiasm for the consumption as avidity and ferocity but can’t explain why this particular ceremony is conducted in this way while all other burials he has observed proceed normally. The girl’s head is smoked for preservation and memorial and in all other ways the respect and grief attest to the people’s love for the girl. Sievwright is repulsed when offered part of the body but the people seem confused by the Assistant Protector’s refusal to leave the scene. Perhaps they think he wishes to be included in the ritual, but whatever they think or Sievwright thinks it is compromised by cross-cultural misunderstanding. Sievwright had been told by the
52
The Lie of the Land
people that they abhorred cannibalism but, naturally, he is shaken by the scene he witnessed and unable to see it in any light but savagery. He believes they have no ‘religion’.2 Something else is going on in this ceremony and it might be repugnant to most other civilisations but to call it cannibalism in the absence of true understanding is extremely prejudicial and to report only that part of the ceremony obnoxious to Christians without explaining the attendant grief and ritual is mischievous. Modern political figures might be excused by their historical ignorance for using such examples in a prejudicial way, but anyone with anthropological awareness must read that report and know that the ceremonial use of the body and the obvious grief mean the incident is not an example of cannibalism. What the ceremony means has been lost with the destruction of the Jarcoort elders who might have been able to explain the higher significance. The squatter, CB Hall, was more alert to the subtle cultural messages than most. He reported to La Trobe: ‘Their cannibalism and cutting out of warriors’ kidney fat were only manifestations probably of their religion or superstition, as the rack and the faggot have been, and the prison is now, the means by which the dominant orthodoxy of the day is vindicated on the other side of the world’. 3 This perceptive gentleman was never invited to comment again but his abhorrence of murder seems to evaporate as he is later accused of allowing his cook to shoot two Jacelet men. Perhaps Sievwright gained a more profound insight into the ritual after the Muston’s Creek massacre. A party of Kirrae, two men and their wives, two other women and two children, left the Mount Rouse Protectorate in 1842 on their way back to their own country but while camped at night a posse of at least eight white men, possibly with the involvement of the squatters Osbrey and Smith, stormed into the camp and five of the Kirrae were killed. On that excursion the squatters had some neighbours, some labourers, a visiting cousin, an accountant, a draper and the proprietor of the Melbourne Daily News.4 Quite a party. It seems everybody liked to get involved in a bit of rough justice. In Scars in the Landscape Ian Clark brings together all the documentary evidence on numerous murderous clashes of the period, and reports one of the participants in this incident saying
53
Convincing Ground
that the party ‘rode off in great glee’5 as if the attack had been premeditated to relieve the boredom of a summer evening. So, had this odd assortment of people, some from as far away as Geelong and Melbourne, assembled at this remote station with this kind of sport in mind? Like getting a couple of slabs and a few of the boys together to go trout fishing and with any luck monstering a few barmaids just for a lark? Anyway this mob of the colony’s finest had their fun and left the scene. The survivors hurried back to Mount Rouse taking it in turns to carry the surviving child on their shoulders. Sievwright set off to investigate with Pwebingannai as his guide, the Kirrae man who had just survived the massacre and whose wife was one of the dead. The Assistant Protector and Pwebingannai gave aid to one of the women who, though mortally wounded, was still breathing. At the same time Sievwright, in his capacity as magistrate, was busy taking notes and trying to get depositions in an attempt to bring the perpetrators to justice. The court would later dismiss the case for lack of evidence but it only came to notice because Assistant Protector Sievwright arrived so soon afterwards. If he hadn’t, the name Muston’s Creek would not appear in the pages of our history. This is a silent war. Meanwhile Sievwright endured the extraordinary grief of Pwebingannai who was devoted to his wife and now, painted in mourning white, attempted to perform funeral rites for her amid the chaos of the dead, the dying and a white man trying in good faith to record the evidence of gunshot wounds which had been administered at point-blank range. Pwebingannai cut off one of his wife’s arms and returned with it to Mount Rouse. This is not cannibalism, this is grief. European society believes in not desecrating the dead, traditional Aboriginal society believes in remembrance. All commentary by the ignorant should be avoided, and in this regard I am very ignorant, but it seems obvious that the colony, with help from people like the Magistrates Blair, Fyans, Murray, Naylor and fellow citizens of power, had deliberately misconstrued this aspect of Indigenous culture for their own advantage. They are not saying that these are not the sort of people we want here, as the Coalition government has said of boat people arriving on our shores, they are being even more decisive; these are the sort of people who need to be eliminated. 54
The Lie of the Land
This attitude is firmly entrenched in the early days of any colony. Clifton Crais, in analysing the South African frontier, claims that the colonisers needed to create a colonial identity and this necessitated the demonisation of the dispossessed so that they could be portrayed as the other. From the 1820’s Africans were increasingly represented as libidinous, uncontrolled, lazy and disrespectful of established authority…The growth of negative appraisals centred on two issues…violations of private property (thievishness) and the unwillingness of Africans to labour for whites (indolence)… Settlers were continually outraged that Khoikhoi living on Mission Stations were averse to acknowledge that much of the country is now all private property. 6
The sentiments and prejudices being expressed in the colony of Port Phillip are identical to those aired in the South African Planters’ Club, not because the Indigenous people are identical but because the colonisers are and have learnt the same rules from the same sources and use the same words in their rhetorical war chest: outrage, clearance, pacify, bestial, infanticide, cannibal, treacherous. Just as in India, America and Africa these words become the conversational currency. The colonists extend this attitude beyond the Indigenous peoples to the fauna and flora in an attempt to justify their abrupt entry into the landscape and the changes they seek to wreak upon it. The flora and fauna are as deficient as the Indigenous inhabitants but, behold, we have arrived to correct the mistake! Peter Conrad in his Boyer lecture describes how many early naturalists were scandalised by the grotesque creatures they encountered. The kangaroo is a ‘mistake’, the eucalypt a product of God’s joke, the whole country ‘was the Creator’s clumsy apprentice work’.7 Some believed that the skin of a platypus had been sewn together as a scientific hoax, while others refused to believe the country had been created by God. The land as well as its people are thought barbaric and offensive, just waiting for the correction of civilised Britons. Which is why Ferdinand von Mueller, the famed horticulturalist, imported the blackberry and his compatriots the rabbit, fox, pig and deer. 55
Convincing Ground
The colonists encouraged each other to deplore everything about the land and its people but behind their scorn for the other was a calculated intention to take advantage of it, using any strategy and any form of words which might confer legitimacy. So, regardless of what Rev Naylor and Hugh Murray thought they witnessed at Colac when the Barrabool returned with portions of flesh on their spears and the prejudicial interpretation with which they twisted it, what were they doing? Looking for the lost squatters, Hesse and Gellibrand, for which Mrs Gellibrand had paid Naylor, or setting up displaced and already disenfranchised Aboriginals to create havoc on the frontier and further hasten the demise of the traditional owners of the land? Aboriginal people from distant clans sometimes conducted revenge attacks on ‘warrigals’, wild blackfellows, but Europeans often encouraged these crimes so that their own crimes could be sheeted home to people who were not permitted to give evidence in the courts. The Native Police Corp was formed in 1837 to provide protection to squatters in outlying districts of the colony. It proved ineffectual in capturing relatives charged with ‘outrages’ but was brutally efficient in effecting capture and murder of those they viewed as mainmate, literally, enemies or foreigners. Marie Fels in Good Men and True states that they were often participants in Native Police actions for their own ends entirely, sometimes capturing women while on patrol, but they were more often scapegoated for slayings in which they were not actually involved and in some cases not even present.8 Historian Peter Gardner analysed the reported incidents of inter-tribal warfare and found most accounts were compiled by third-hand reports or worse. There was none of the evidence which squatters and colonial courts insisted on at all other times. It looks like part of the war’s propaganda. This pattern of disruption to Indigenous lives had been refined in all colonial outposts and became a normal strategy of warfare. The colonists were not responding with spontaneous panic but with well-rehearsed strategies. They knew their own law and the windows of opportunity through which they could exploit it.
56
The Lie of the Land
William Buckley was just another weapon in the armoury. He was sent out with another party led by Captain Pollock in search of Gellibrand and Hesse but, while Aborigines they encountered had seen the ‘explorers’ heading west, there was no hint that they had been murdered. A more detailed commentary on events couldn’t be received because in the middle of the meeting Pollock’s men rode up and scared the Aborigines away. Buckley had expressly requested they not do this in order to give him time to get a complete explanation of events, but it seems Pollock and his party, like so many of the other ‘rescue parties’, were more interested in ‘exploration’ than in the search for the lost carpetbaggers. The squatters had no interest in communication with the Aboriginal clans because they were looking to a future where colonial strategies eliminated the impertinence of their existence. The mood was volatile on both sides and the frontier erupted in violence while the colonial authorities searched for ways of rendering the chaos more palatable to their political masters. La Trobe wrote to a number of squatters asking them to report on the progress of settlement and the state of the Aboriginal clans. He was trying to collect material so he could respond to the stern letters he was receiving from London where reports of massacres in Australia were being met with far greater opprobrium. Many of La Trobe’s respondents replied with callous disregard for the welfare of the Aborigines, most using the tried and true euphemisms of ‘taught them a lesson’, ‘took full account’, ‘set them to one side’, ‘discouraged them’ and ‘dispersed them’ in order to veil the true nature of the ‘clearance’ of the Aborigines from their lands. That Hugh Murray’s language was milder than some didn’t mean his mind was less calculating or his intentions less nefarious. They never lost an opportunity of stealing our sheep…In such cases the settlers assembled and pursued them, and when their encampment was discovered they generally fled, leaving behind them their weapons, rugs, etc, which together with their huts, were destroyed. I am happy to think that they met with more forbearance here than in many other parts of the country, and to be able to state with certainty that never upon any such occasion, or at any time since their country was first occupied, was one
57
Convincing Ground
of their number shot to death, with one single exception, when I believe a man died of a shot wound he received after having thrown a spear’. 9
Thank goodness for that, Hugh, for a minute there I thought we’d named the main street of Colac after someone intent on his own advancement and the eradication of the only obstacle in the way of his greed and self-aggrandisement. Murray’s own emphasis in the sentence seems to plead too much, or perhaps he is just blind and deaf, because his neighbours report ‘much loss of life’, ‘clashes’ and ‘all out war’. Squatters who arrive after 1850, however, blithely report the docile nature of the remaining few Aborigines. Much has happened between 1835 and 1850 but Hugh Murray, in residence for the entire period, must have blinked. As quoted earlier, Bishop Broughton confidently reports to the Select Committee of 26 June 1837 that the Australian Aborigines simply wear out, decay and vanish. Wear out, vanish! The clergy seem to have a better grip of euphemism than all the venture capitalists and politicians combined. Clergy and squatters within two years of occupation seem to have averted their eyes and ears from the actions committed in their neighbourhood. If you aren’t given a convenient lie to explain away an unpleasantness, invent your own. A section of CB Hall’s report to La Trobe has been quoted earlier (p. 53) and may have saved the Superintendent of Port Phillip much frustration had his perceptions been acted upon but perhaps it was already too late. Hall was discomfited by the presumption of the frontiersmen that, as a squatter, he would share all their views and methods. He travelled through the district in 1840 following the wheel ruts of Major Mitchell’s expedition and reported some disturbing scenes. At the period of my entrance into the colony of Australia Felix, in almost every part of it the mutual relation of the natives and settlers, at first, was one of distrust and violence. This it was stated, arose from the attempts of the blacks to steal sheep, or other property of value, from the settlers. These robberies were
58
The Lie of the Land
often accompanied by violence and murder, committed in the treacherous manner common to most savages. Such occurrences naturally led to reprisals, in which the superior arms and energy of the settlers and of their servants told with fatal effect upon the native race. Instances of this deplorable result might be observed by the explorer in the early days of the settlement of the colony. Native Skeleton in a Waterhole — When I was passing with cattle over the Eastern Wimmera, a shepherd came up and entered into conversation with me. He held a carbine in the place of a crook, and an old regulation pistol was stuck in his belt, instead of the more classical pastoral pipe — pastoral pursuits in Australia being attended at this time, with circumstances more calculated to foster a spirit of war than one of music. After some conversation he led me to a waterhole, where the skeleton of a native — exposed by the shrinking water in the summer heat — lay on the mud. There was a bullet-hole through the back of the skull. ‘He was shot in the water,’ the man told me, ‘as he was a-trying to hide hisself after a scrimmage! There was a lot more t’other side.’ Bones under a Gum-tree — ‘I might see the bones a-sticking up out of the ground close to the big fallen gum-tree, where they’d been stowed away all of a heap’ — a grave good enough, he took occasion to assure me, for the ‘sneaking, murdering, black cannibals.’ Bones under the Logs of a Bush Fire — On another branch of the Wimmera, when looking for the horses one morning, after camping out, my black boy came back, his complexion changed to yellow with fright; taking me away to a short distance, he showed me three to four bodies, partially concealed by logs.10
Hall is no shrinking violet, he has no great estimation of the Indigenous people but he is one of the few to mention the casual finding of dead bodies, not buried in the local way, but ‘all of a heap’. These examples would have been known to many but only a new chum, perhaps a man with his conscience still in place, would mention it. Hall stumbled on the aftermath of battles which had been occurring all over the district. Within hours of seeing their first white man the Colijon of Colac have had a child stolen, at least one
59
Convincing Ground
warrior shot, the rest dispersed, houses burnt, their weapons and fishing nets stolen and ‘unfriendly’ tribes introduced to their lands with the express purpose of chasing them from their traditional country and leaving the acres open to Murray, Clarke and the leaping frogs in their wake. This is our history, this is why things are the way they are.
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Six
The Psychology of the Frontier The psychology of the frontier is complicated but self-interest promotes any opinion be it Darwinism and the indisputable Godliness of the British or the pretence that they actually believed what they were doing was right. As former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, observed, ‘in a two horse race always back Self Interest because at least you know it’s trying’. A peculiar example of how the selfish mind can pretend to believe anything to its own advantage is given by Rebe Taylor in her excellent history of Kangaroo Island, Unearthed. The first white men to take up residence on the island did so in co-habitation with women stolen from Tasmania and the Bass Strait islands. Gentlemen who later take up land on the island ostracise these men because they are mere sealers and ex-convicts, not real British gentlemen. They say the first white men are not legitimate settlers because they have no authority from the Crown and they are living in sin with black women, although the same could be said for many men in the early days of the colony. The newcomers aren’t as morally offended as they are greedy and look to any excuse to legitimise their own claims and refute all others. To this end they make Indigeneity a transmissible disease, any hint of transaction with Aboriginal women leaves the earlier settlers infected and beyond the pale so that today it is acceptable to exclude them from the local museum. Just as many such stories have been expunged from the national memory. The presence of those women on Kangaroo Island, however, makes a mockery of the theory of the last Tasmanian, a term which
61
Convincing Ground
still finds its way into the press and Hansard despite such obvious evidence that it is incorrect and offensive. Self-Interest ran on strongly in Port Phillip and many of the venture capitalists respond to Governor La Trobe’s request for information about the early years by explaining their method of acquiring land and the legitimacy of their claims. So sure are they that dispossession is not a crime that they reveal their acquisitions in great detail but leave their strongest assertions for the fact that no Aborigines were killed, or none that I saw, oh, my men fired shots but I’m sure it was over their heads, in any event they never came back! Hugh Murray’s own letter to La Trobe bears all these hallmarks. The methodology was planned well in Hobart, schooled by years of experience in India, Africa and Van Diemen’s Land, so that the Port Phillip Squatters were more like an invading army than a group of keen graziers. They knew each other, had discussed tactics, as the letters of Gellibrand and Batman reveal, and were determined to thwart the Colonial Government’s control of the distribution of lands in the new frontier. Their responses to events in Port Phillip were calculated sequences in the plan rather than random reflexes. Not only had they prepared their invasion thoroughly in advance but also the excuses and obfuscations, which they would present when required, to uncooperative authorities. Niel Black, who couches most of his public thoughts with great care, is more direct in his personal journal and writes that the perpetrators of violence against Aborigines hid their actions by hints and slang phrases, as the Protectors of Aborigines are always on the lookout for information against the whites, and anything plainly said would subject them to a prosecution…I believe they…are slaughtered in great numbers and never a word said about it…After they got the first taming by means of a few doses of lead effectually administered, it seldom happens that they occasion much trouble afterwards.1
Black makes it sound as though he is reporting incidents relayed to him by others but, in fact, he was a perpetrator of many offences himself. He expresses his repugnance for the way some frontiersmen
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The Psychology of the Frontier
behave and insists on purchasing an established property so he won’t have to exterminate the owners of the land; but it doesn’t stop him from destroying any habitations he finds on his properties and driving off the remnants of the people. At his Glenormiston property he destroyed a large dwelling and left signs to advise the owners never to return.2 His morality can be measured superior in minutes not degrees. Like Black, Thomas Manifold is ingenuous in the extreme. He was the first settler to land sheep at Point Henry. Having gathered detailed information about that district from members of the Port Phillip Association he was determined to settle to the west of Birregurra. He replies to La Trobe’s request: ‘I am afraid I can give little information. Although each tribe had its district, and each family its portion, I never could perceive that they became in any way attached to a particular spot, or attempted to construct a dwelling having any greater permanency than the common miamia’.3 A strange observation given that other members of his party of ‘squatters’ report seeing stone houses and those who followed his tracks only days later report the same. He goes on to tell La Trobe that they have no religion and their numbers are greatly overrated. Manifold is securing the ground for his legitimacy although the reports of settlers less well versed in the ‘colonial code’ contradict each of his claims. Manifold would have done well to ask his brothers, both of whom participated in massacres, their opinion, in particular on the drawn-out Eumerella War. All the Manifold brothers were vigorous in pursuit of their acquisition of vast properties, and while Thomas acted the part of statesman and gentleman he forgot that there were witnesses who, unlike most in the colony, recorded frontier history in their diaries. Perhaps the Manifolds just assumed the complicity of all the white brethren. Unfortunately for them some couldn’t resist recording the great deeds of the brave pioneers. In the manuscript history of the McGarvie family, neighbours of Manifold, and the same family that later produced a Governor of Victoria, it is reported that, Many innocent Aborigines were killed indiscriminately for some transgression or other. In 1840, after discovering a large
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Convincing Ground
number of sheep missing from their properties, Peter Manifold and Arthur Lloyd of Colac, pursued a group of approximately 50 Aborigines. After rounding up the group they fired at random and left. Many would have been wounded or killed: however neither man suffered any censure’. 4
Later McGarvie relates that ‘other settlers made a sport of hunting Aborigines in the manner of kangaroo shoots. The name of Manifold is one of the most ‘respectable’ and well known in western Victoria and the nonchalance of his deception of La Trobe, if in fact La Trobe was deceived or simply happy to have received an acceptable reply, speaks volumes for the feeling of immunity with which the advancing pastoralists felt they could effect their well rehearsed plan of assault. They were not stupid men; they were investors, entrepreneurs, and must have been assured that their sins would be smiled upon or at least dismissed with a squeamish grimace. The Liar in Australia has proved in the earliest days of his arrival that he can escape punishment as long as the Lie is the one the majority wish to believe, need to believe in order to soothe the timid Christian conscience. Regardless of their relative cunning, however, they all use the same euphemisms, often in identical sentences: the natives commit ‘outrages’, they are ‘cannibals’, they are ‘filthy, ugly and stupid’, none ever die from gunshot wounds when ‘dispersed’, they are ‘treacherous and cruel’, have salacious designs on the white women, even though there are so few European women in the colony that the most common question asked of the invaders is ‘Where are your women and children?’ It’s a man’s world and in this world Foster Fyans was right at home. The Eumerella War was raging around Mount Eeles (now Mount Eccles) and the ‘outrages’ were still occurring in the Stony Rises, so the authorities stationed the Geelong Police Magistrate and more than thirty mounted troopers from Sydney on the west bank of the Pirron Yallock Creek.5 Under the leadership of Fyans and Sergeant Hatsell Garrard they conducted incursions into the district, moving from station to station ‘to keep the raiders in check’. 6 But the ‘fallacy of dealing with the blacks as if they were civilised human beings, capable of knowing right from wrong, 64
The Psychology of the Frontier
was soon made apparent, and the mounted police often had to act on the dictum that a charge of buckshot was the most effective argument that could be used against such savages’7 and when cattle were speared or sheep driven off the squatters would assemble with Fyans and Garrard and deliver ‘swift punishment, a work which could not be shirked on any consideration’.8 Fyans tells La Trobe he thinks the only solution is for the squatters to deal with the Aborigines ‘on the spot’ because their ‘habits of idleness, extreme cunning, vice and villainy’ meant that it was impossible to do anything with them short of abrupt justice.9 Perhaps Fyans is prejudiced by the fact that he has taken up land around the Colac lakes and these ‘idle villains’ are in his way. The editor of the Port Phillip Patriot declared on 23 February 1841 that ‘a few mounted police, well armed, would effect more good against the Aborigines in one month than the whole preaching mob of Protectors in 10 years’. The use of the word ‘against’ in that sentence says volumes about the public attitude to any impediment to their avarice. So confident were they of success that the squatters were claiming outrageous acreages. JC Hamilton’s Pioneering Days reports that ‘like many newcomers, Gibson and Hamilton attempted to claim a much larger area (30,000 acres) than they could hope to retain or needed for their present stock’.10 In 1848 Gibson applied for 150 square miles around Lake Bringalbert. The confidence to scoop up parcels of land as big as Wales encouraged the squatters to ignore the risks. Brown and Oliver pushed on beyond the settled area in 1845 until Brown was killed. Mr Brown, was shepherding sheep not far from the station, and, seeing a camp of blacks, he went over to have a chat with them, not fearing any harm as he had a double barrelled shotgun with him. He was in the act of stooping down to get a firestick to light his pipe with, when a blackfellow struck him over the head with a waddy. It was necessary to teach the blacks a lesson, and the station people met and decided to take the law into their own hands. A call to arms was made — the footmen going one way and the horsemen the other. They were all armed with flintlock muskets and pistols of the same sort — heavy clumsy weapons they were, but effective enough. (I have put a ball into a tree at
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Convincing Ground
a hundred yards with one of these pistols.) It was a bad day for the ill-fated darkies. They opened fire and many of the blacks went under. What happened that day is a scene from the past, and the curtain is drawn over it all. One of the blacks, mortally wounded, made it to a cave and died there. He was found years after, sitting in an upright position, petrified, and was one of the sights of those wonderful caves, until he was stolen and taken to England where he was exhibited. The lesson given the blacks that day made them understand that they must respect the lives of white men’.11
Some salient facts about this report are that Brown was attempting to push beyond the known frontier to claim a massive slice of the Western District, the penalty for killing a white man with a stick is for the entire clan to be shot and that while the caves are ‘wonderful’ the murdered warrior is merely a ‘sight’ to be exhibited. Squatters travel with light emotional baggage. The entire frontier is like this; no interfering morality, no uncommitted members of the party, no evidence that doesn’t put them in the best light. Brown’s report contains many obvious inconsistencies. His casual approach to the camp when considered under the circumstances of his annexation of the people’s land seems at odds with the sudden ‘call to arms’. Most of the historical documents can be read in several different ways but one of the research methods rarely used, it seems, is to question the validity of squatters’ statements or the benevolence of their intentions as reported by themselves. By 1896, just five years before Federation, the colony has tidied up the matter in its mind. This passage from the Age on 26 September 1896 sums it up. The pathetic death of King Billy, the last of the Ballarat blacks, recorded in Thursday’s issue, calls attention to the curious problem of race decay and extinction. The favourite theory at Exeter Hall is that the disappearance of the native races is due to the cruelty and malignity of the white race. Those who are acquainted with the history of this colony from its first settlement are aware that no such charge can be alleged against the Victorian people, and that the black race has decayed, and is
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The Psychology of the Frontier
rapidly dying out from causes quite outside of the power of the white man to control. Scenes of violence sometimes occurred in the early days no doubt, when a family was exposed to attack by native tribes; but it may be safely asserted that the use of offensive weapons against the natives was not resorted to except for the purposes of defence. Ever since the Port Phillip was constituted as a separate colony the natives have been regarded as a sort of pets. Not only has the Government established refuges for them into which they could come if disposed…but the settlers have ministered to their needs more ungrudgingly than to the wandering members of their own race… In Australia fortunately, we are free from this race problem. The aboriginals were of too low a stamp of intelligence and too few in number to be seriously considered…What we have to be afraid of is that…we shall be overrun by hordes of Asiatics.12
I occasionally have to check the date of that Age report because it seems to me I read similar things during the Vietnam war. The Age saw itself as a liberal journal under the leadership of David Syme and enthusiastically espoused the theories of Social Darwinism. It saw itself, and still does, as the voice of reason, but in the late 1800s it seemed to be applying a balm to the colonial conscience. In January 1888 it reports: It seems a law of nature that where two races whose stages of progression differ greatly are brought into contact, the inferior race is doomed to wither and disappear…The process seems to be in accordance with a natural law which, however it may clash with human benevolence, is clearly beneficial to mankind at large by providing for the survival of the fittest. Human progress has all been achieved by the spread of the progressive races and the squeezing out of the inferior ones’.13
An editorial on 26 September 1896 explained: Why an unprogressive race which had existed for untold ages should suddenly die out in the presence of a more advanced civilization is the question which suggests itself to many a
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Convincing Ground
startled conscience today. The answers which have been given to that question are not quite satisfactory. The ravages of newly introduced diseases amongst savages are admittedly terrible, and the vices of whites so easily adopted by the inferior races, must have a powerful influence on the duration of life. But the curious thing is that the Australian blackfellow does not seem to have perished from these causes, but rather from a general sterility with which the females are stricken…There seems so far a confirmation of Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest that an inferior race has a tendency to wither away in the presence of the superior very much in proportion to the inequality between the two.14
So, there you are, hysterical infertility brought on by the luminous superiority of Europeans. These are the liberals of the colony desperately opining about the circumstances of the past, fervent in their wish that they and their ancestors did little more violence than simply arrive. It is scary to think these editorials were written just a handful of Melbourne Cups short of Federation and the Constitution. Those people are like me and Prime Minister John Howard; desperate to be proud of their country. But all of us, black and white, must investigate our past and on examination of that record come to some basic agreement of how the past unfolded. Some, like academics Keith Windschuttle and Ron Brunton, and politicians John Howard and Mal Brough, may deny it, but the rest of us must arrive at an understanding before the ulcer of despair erupts like the poisonous grievances of other lands which, left untreated, foment into ulcers of civil disruption.
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Seven
Brave Explorers When Joseph Tice Gellibrand and George Brooks Legrew Hesse went missing in 1837 they were depicted as brave explorers felled by vicious savages and that furphy persists to this day. Just as La Trobe has his followers wanting him elevated into a pantheon of saints there are contemporary historians urging monuments to be erected for the ‘explorers’ who gave their lives for the sake of science. Western District school teachers and historians write and ring beseeching me to offer them words of comfort about the unblemished character of this or that ‘explorer’, this or that ‘statesman’ of the frontier. They want heroes, they want to inspire people about the foundations of Australian society, but blameless people are hard to find, especially those in pursuit of fame or fortune. When I offer dissenting views on the character of Gellibrand or La Trobe or Murray, these people, desperate for a comfortable story, attack the messenger. They write to the papers declaring me un-Australian. The truth often gets in the way of a favourite story. Gellibrand fled creditors in London for the wild shores of Van Diemen’s Land and is soon installed as Attorney-General. He falls out with Governor Arthur who is disquieted by the unruly company kept by his principal legal officer and later astounded by the distasteful, and often illegal, schemes Gellibrand employs to gain grants of government land only to sell them on at enormous profit. When dismissed from his office by Arthur, Gellibrand teams up with Batman and the Dutigalla group, later to become the Port Phillip Association. They plot to subvert Arthur’s conservative colonial
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Convincing Ground
plans by stealing a march to the newly ‘discovered’ lands of Port Phillip where they plan the ruse of using an implausible treaty document to convince the Colonial Office of their good intentions and rights over the new district. Gellibrand’s plan, as always, is to take up free land in the name of ‘opening up the savage lands’ and then sell it at enormous profit to those English migrants with fewer contacts in the ruling class. He proclaims that the best way of getting rid of the Aborigines is ‘sitting on the blacks to eat them out or drive them out’.1 It’s hard to imagine sitting on someone having such a deadly effect. Gellibrand’s avarice grieves Arthur but his inclination to mix with disreputable people and engage with them in endeavours of questionable legality unnerves the Governor for fear of undesirable reports about his Attorney-General reaching London.2 Arthur does not immediately dismiss Gellibrand but plans with him to round up and expel all Aborigines from Van Diemen’s Land.3 Gellibrand suggests a military line to march across Tasmania to mop up Aboriginal resistance and expel them to offshore islands. George Augustus Robinson is employed to promise the Indigenes eventual return to their homes. The Tasman solution is one of the ploys of experienced colonisers, an inspiration to spin doctors everywhere. Having tidied up the little item of threats to his Tasmanian investments Gellibrand arrives in Port Phillip with fellow barrister, George Hesse, and they storm west ignoring the advice of their guide, William Akers, that they are following a line too far to the south. They miss their intended rendezvous with Captain Swanston and wander further westward. Akers, exasperated, returns to Melbourne and nothing further is heard of them. Of course they’ve been slaughtered by savages; they wouldn’t just starve or fall off their horse would they? But they do. The venturers are never seen alive again. It is an outrage that gentlemen should be slaughtered by blacks who go unpunished, so Gellibrand’s wife funds a search party led by Naylor and Parsons. These two gentlemen arrive in Melbourne, rock up to Police Magistrate Lonsdale and in a peremptory manner demand horses for the search party. Lonsdale takes a dim view of this attitude but they go further and insist on the services of William Buckley, the ‘wild white man’, but when Buckley refuses, his horse
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Brave Explorers
is found hamstrung by a sharp blade and has to be destroyed. The perpetrator is never found. They do, however, engage the service of some dispossessed Barrabool tribesmen who are keen to avenge their losses against any old foe and it is these men who Naylor ‘allows’ to run amok in the Colijon camp. The same men who told Naylor that the Colijon admit to the murder of the two gentlemen explorers. This is the first time any cognisance is given to black evidence despite the fact that it neatly allows the Barrabool to attack Colijon with white consent and for the whites to then claim the vacated land. Cape Otway Aborigines, however, told how Gellibrand and Hesse stumbled into their camp starving and close to death. One died almost immediately and they killed the other some time later. Once again, Australian historians, adamant that it’s impossible to accept Aboriginal accounts in other circumstances, fall over themselves to repeat these allegations as facts, even though the report is at least fourth hand and never committed to paper. Stranger still is that the recollection of Henry Allan of Allansford seems to have been ignored altogether. It was Allan who ‘leant’ La Trobe an Aborigine to help him reach the coast of Cape Otway. Allan’s account of the incident is that ‘Gellibrand was assisted by Aborigines who found him near the coast and when he died a few days later buried him in the sand’.4 They say Hesse died in the forest. The historian, Pescott, claims that Isaac Hebbe had been told the same story by Allan but never includes it in his history of Gellibrand’s death. Why is that so? In a comprehensive report of one of the most sensational stories of the time why would you fail to include such a crucial piece of evidence?5 They may have been killed by Aborigines, although the skeleton found shows no signs of violence, but they were engaged in wholesale dispossession — it was a risky game. Gellibrand’s Tasman solution and his boasts of the best way to deal with blacks don’t suggest he would have conducted himself like Christ on his journey through the plains of Port Phillip. There is no butter melting in Gellibrand’s mouth; he is ruthless in his pursuit of profit as his scandalous Hobart transactions illustrate. Is a man like this capable of treating the black benefactors, upon whose charity he is suddenly dependent, as his saviours or is
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Convincing Ground
he more likely to starve them out, ‘sit on them’? His early reports to La Trobe seem written by a saint but given his other less savoury utterances the tone reminds you of the practised modulations of a lawyer using weasel words to con the only man who might stand between him and his fortune. Reading ‘Gellibrand’s Memorandum of a Trip to Port Phillip’ it is hard to dislike the man.6 He is full of praise for the country, treats William Buckley kindly and has hopes that the Aborigines will learn to grow potatoes. But at the same time he is riding through Wathaurong country visiting and assessing the available allotments. He’s a tyre kicker. His basic assumption is to acquire land he is fully aware belongs to someone else. He says Buckley has to be cultivated for the Colonists’ advantage and the Indigenes weaned onto a life of dependency to keep them out of the way. There is a kindly spirit inside him but it has a cold, pragmatic edge and it insists that everyone and everything will give way to his commercial advantage. He’s a cultivated, good-humoured man and a favourite of many historians, but to me he is just one more ruthless property charlatan. The death of Gellibrand and Hesse is tragic, but no more tragic than the death of any person. Just because we don’t know their fate is no cause to begin a process of sanctification. Gellibrand was a greedy man and would have died true to his nature, as men do. The fact that he died hungry is the result of his own pigheadedness and poor bushcraft, because if he’d followed the advice of his guide, Akers, he would have lived to continue his pursuit of unseemly wealth. Australians have a habit of loving such people. Born in another age he may have raced yachts against the Americans with the proceeds of corporate crime. Let’s not declare a holiday for Gellibrand’s death as one of our prime ministers declared for a charlatan’s boat race.
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Eight
Lake Corangamite I’d like to tell a story about that country around the Western District lakes. How it feels today, what the country can tell us of the past. We’re not sidetracking here, rather delving deeper, discovering that the repercussions of history are still felt, that the history is modern, touchable, we can’t just ‘get over it’. This is a story about a visit to the stone lakes, a country of such beauty and wildness, such stillness and silence that warm days are gentle and stretch out like a sleeping cat. Lake Corangamite takes its name from the Colijon word koraiyn, meaning bitter or salty; they use the same word for the white man’s alcohol. They found it bitter to the taste and to their life. It’s a curiosity that despite the antipathy white squatters held for the Aboriginal people and the contempt with which they regarded the Indigenous culture they often chose to preserve local Aboriginal names for the properties they stole from them. Drive through this area and you pass Pirron Yallock, Colac, Elliminyt, Warrion, Beeac, Irrewarra, Birregurra, Geelong, Werribee, Burrumbeet, thousands of them; you see property names like Mone Mone Meet, Buninyong, Kardinia, Gerangamete, Moodmere, Pyalong, Murdeduke, Tarndwoorncoort, Trawalla, Yan Yan Gurt, Wooloomanatta; there seems to be a compulsion to remember the original name even while trying to forget how the property came under white ownership. As if usurpation is not complete unless you steal the name as well. It’s eerie to have the names but almost none of the people. I took a journey to Lake Corangamite in gorgeous early autumn sunshine. The Burrumbeet road through the Stony Rises dips and 73
Convincing Ground
bounds through volcanic mounds where eucalypts and wild apple trees wrestle their roots into rock. It’s great to be Australian. No-one is hungry enough to strip any fruit tree bare; there’s always something for the traveller. The day is divine, the fruit is delicious, every gate post bears an Aboriginal word and yet there is a bleakness about my search that no bounty, no joy at seeing such beautiful country seems to shift. I don’t meet anyone on this day who isn’t generous, warm, humorous, wry; good honest country Australians, and yet I approach my task with foreboding despite this generosity and friendliness. For instance, there’s a house on the highway near Pirron Yallock made out of local stone and over twenty years I’ve tried to get permission to have a look at it. It’s a striking house — gun embrasures let into the walls. I ask members of local history organisations. They know nothing about it, seem vague about whether they’ve seen it or not. Argue that the slots might have been to ventilate the Cobb and Co. horses that used to be stabled there but can’t explain why it is called a fort. The Information Centres are emphatic that no house in the district would ever have slots in the wall, no, no, not in this town. On another occasion it was being run as a kind of nursery– museum but the proprietor took an instant dislike to me and refused entry. I didn’t hold out much hope for his enterprise and sure enough it was closed in a matter of months. The next time I tried I could hear a person walking by the door. The radio fell silent but there was no answer to my knock. Bluestone makes for a bleak house at the best of times but these grim rocks seemed to be infecting the residents. Except on this day, this sublime day in March, the day of free apples and friendly faces, a young woman answers the door holding a child’s building block and the child she’s been playing with turns to look at me with that open-mouthed awe with which children will scrutinise the stranger. The woman is pleasant, pretty in a country way, dressed in the coarser fabrics of forest protesters. Oh, of course, she says, go on round the back, it used to be a museum or something but we live here now, take as many photos as you like. I ask about the slots in the wall and her face falls a little and she lowers her voice and becomes confidential. It’s an old house, she 74
Lake Corangamite
says, the settlers had a lot of fights with the Aborigines, they used to shoot at them through those slots. She falls silent and brings her hands together and stares at me, seeming to wonder if I appreciate the horror. She’s a good person. In her world people should not shoot at other people. Her child will be given every opportunity to exhibit the goodness of its little heart. I take my photos at the back of her house, the garden plump with ripe fruit, a picture of the rustic paradise. But it wasn’t always so even though the fruit and sunshine may have been contemporaneous with the embrasure and carbine. I call out my thanks as I leave and her voice trills from deep in the house like a bird thrilled by the fecundity of its world. In amongst the Stony Rises I get lost, of course. I do it almost deliberately. I love being lost, the opportunities it provides, and of course I’m approached on one of these apple-laden lanes by a rustic on a four-wheeled motor bike and the irony is on his face even before I wind down the window. He knows I’m lost and he knows I don’t care. He’s got sheep like that, used to correcting their errant little cloven hoofs. Because I’m in this lonely, little travelled part, his country, he treats me as a friend, a brother, and even when I ask about the fish traps in the lake his face clouds only a little and he directs me faithfully to the correct road. And when I look in the rear view mirror he’s waving as if knowing I’m like a twelve-yearold on a lazy adventure. Good bloke, good decent Australian. But the gate I arrive at, as he said I would, is padlocked, so I drive further on and turn in to the next farm house and as I approach I notice how tiny it is, how bone grey and flaky the fibro sheets of its construction. At the back door I peer through the glass and see all the strewn boots, five different sizes, the baby’s cot jammed against the window of a side room, the blatant poverty, the washing drying on a clothes horse. He comes out, the farmer, and hears my request to photograph the lake and seems to guess immediately what I’m after, a grim line momentarily forming on his lips, but he shows me how to approach the shore by going past the smallest dairy I’ve seen in years, down along the fence line, through the gate, no worries. He is kind in the way of really hard-up people, but at the back of his eye there’s a look of shock that someone should have enough time to take photos in the middle of the day. 75
Convincing Ground
I don’t know how he came by this farm but I can see the work ahead of him in every rotten post, every gate clinging to its hinge with nothing but the pride of being a gate, and I can feel the weariness come over him as he sees someone with no fixed list of desperate tasks, someone now strolling through his paddocks of labour to take sunny snaps. Of other people’s houses and their fish traps. The people who gave his property its name. He knows this is what I came for; I saw the realisation in his eyes seconds after we met, and I can imagine the frustration he struggles to hide with his genuine good nature. Someone here to take photos of the blacks’ houses and fish traps, just jumbles of rocks if you ask me, and here I am slaving my guts out on a salty farm with never enough money to buy a pair of socks without standing in the supermarket juggling the really cheap pair, a size too small and a hateful colour, against the slightly dearer pair, but in a pleasant brown and bound to last longer, but $6.50 against $4.50. I’ve had years when I’ve stood in supermarkets like that and it’s soul destroying. It can make you bitter, jealous, hate the people with time to stroll in the sun, who won’t have to try and hang a gate in the gathering dark so the baby can’t get to the dam. And some babies do. Soul destroying. But this bloke doesn’t hate me, goes out of his way to ensure I get where he knows I need to go but when he sits down to his dinner tonight, conscious of another three hours work ahead, he’d be inhuman if he wasn’t just a little resentful. But my concern for him soon evaporates. I can see the fish traps striding out over the shallow salty lake and I look about, trying to imagine where a fisherman might have his house, and, yes, there it is, no, there they are, on the rise from which you’d be able to see the fish coming along the concourse of stones first built by grandfathers in a time so distant their names have become synonymous with creation. Oh, the walls are tumbled down now, you can see the shiny spots on stones where cattle have rubbed, the roof beams and thatch have long been burned, but they’re there, thirty, forty, fifty, many houses and this is just the fishing camp. How many must have lived in the Rises, those Colijon, Jarcoort, Kirrae wurrong? 76
Lake Corangamite
The sun rests on your back like a lazy cat and the pelicans glide across the water, sleepy and mesmerised by their own reflections. I can see the fish come, the giggles and shrieks of children, the smoke spiralling in perpendicular coils, the dozing dogs and I am sorry for the beleaguered farmer but I am devastated for these people, that such beauty and peace should have been stolen, that such easy bounty should have been replaced by a grinding labour of devastating grimness. I sorrow for farmer and fisherman alike but oh, how it hurts to see the waste of that generous civilisation. It hurts to think Australians allowed it then and accept it now. Hardly anyone comes here today and those who do often bear the names you see in the early history books. Schools, libraries, historians and politicians might ignore the story of this land, wanting something more cheerful and heroic: if only Bourke hadn’t been such an idiot, if only Brahe had waited one more day, if only Angus McMillan hadn’t been a murderer. But the truth is etched on the stones of this old, tired land. There is no need to gnash our teeth, strike our foreheads until blood flows, no need to apologise, no need to despair, but there is every urgency to know and reflect on that knowledge, to wonder what we as Australians need to do next. Often you find the answer in the wilderness, in the stone country.
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Nine
The Raised Sword In wondering about my country and my countrymen and women I am intrigued by the people who blithely swept the Aboriginal people off the land they had ‘selected’ and then turned around with finicky pride to paint the Indigenous place name on a board, stepped back to assure themselves it was hung straight, sufficiently grand to honour their land. But I also wonder how they could raise the sword in the same hand they hold the Bible, that they could bring the rifle to the same shoulder their child will snuggle into just hours later. What impulse is involved when a man strikes another man down or impales a child on a bayonet? In the world’s history what energy allows the mind to justify acts which all religions consider barbaric? What power exists which can cause a woman, who kisses her baby on the brow and sheds tears at the innocence of its pouted lips, to turn aside when her neighbour’s child is raped or slaughtered? Are the words: Jew, Indian, Muslim, Christian, Nigger sufficient in themselves? Any consideration of history, can’t fully explain the events of that history without an analysis of the fount of violence and the efficacy of its waters. Is there only one way for history to proceed? Do the Amazonian Indians have to give way to the timber mills of multi-national corporations. Do the people of the Baliem Valley in Irian Jaya have to fall before the imperatives of Indonesian imperial economics and culture? Is that the inevitable outcome of history? And must these massive changes be achieved by unimaginably callous violence and deceit? 78
The Raised Sword
Is that what our species’ future insists upon or is there another way, is there a path where violence, greed, invasion, continuous economic growth are not the only tools of progress and imperium not the only measure of evolutionary success? Might a society develop where land wars are forgone for the greater good? Can negotiated borders survive in the world or must they succumb to a perpetual wave of tanks and bombers surging back and forth like rapid ice ages? Is there another way for us to behave? What are the functions of violence and aggression in the human psyche? Do we need Hitlers and Pol Pots, Husseins and Mugabes just in case our species is painted into a corner and the only way out is to fight in a chaotic eruption of savagery? Do we need to chain up a few psychopaths to be released when civilisation is not enough? Or might we cultivate a resolution and toughness in the common soldier, the well trained farmer, the gritty sailor, the earnest accountant? The kind of instant bravado displayed by ordinary, unremarkable citizens when the Twin Towers of New York came down and the nightclubs of Bali exploded? Those tough surfers with not a day’s military experience between them who stood in the burning Sari Club and allowed others to climb on their back and out of the building to safety? The footballers from Adelaide who in another part of the building re-entered the inferno to drag Australian and Indonesian strangers from the flames, not knowing if another explosion or falling roof might claim their own lives? Can we find the corpuscle of humanity that races unnoticed through their veins and reward it over the platelets of cunning demonstrated by tax frauds? Must we revenge every slight? Is there another way of looking at the past so that the victor can bear to look the defeated in the face, not in gloating triumph but with concern for the future? I ask these questions of you because I don’t know the answers. I have ideas, and like many in the world I’m trying to recruit people to the idea of embarking on a voyage of self discovery, not to achieve dominion but to find how to set our world feet on a path toward a civilised future. I ache to be a proud Australian because there is so much of which to be proud but why do we stubbornly refuse to repair the damage of our sins? 79
Convincing Ground
I want to be proud of our enormous achievements, the undeniable qualities of generosity and courage displayed by Australians every day. Like most peoples we long to be proud of our country but this pride often renders us incapable of acknowledging those qualities we possess of which no-one should be proud. We would like tennis player Lleyton Hewitt to be more sportsmanlike, cricketer Shane Warne not to stretch our credulity further than the leg break that beat Gatting, and we wish businessman Alan Bond hadn’t sullied the America’s Cup win by being jailed for fraud not long after. We don’t want our achievements to be the result of fraud, violence and deceit. We don’t want our athletes to be drug cheats, we want them to have the grace of John Landy when he turned away from the race of his life to lift Ron Clarke, the stricken comrade who tripped and fell, to his feet. If only we could do that without those whisperings of cringing conscience in our heart. Part of me would like to return to those days of heart-bulging pride when, in the antipodean dark, I listened on the crystal set to the deeds of the great Australians defeating the English cricket team at Lords. I’d rather not know that Donald Bradman wasn’t simply the best cricketer the world has seen but also a share trader whose methods were brought into question, that Darren Lehman isn’t just a jovial champion but also capable of racial abuse and Shane Warne isn’t just the best bowler the world has seen but a man thrown out of the 2002 World Cup for failing a drug test. Many will say sportsmen don’t matter, that they are unimportant in the national drama, but a nation’s values are displayed in every aspect of its life. We want Warne not to disappoint us but most of us also want to believe that our Prime Minister didn’t misrepresent why Australia sent troops to the Iraq war and we don’t want to think of members of our government and public service sitting around a table fabricating deceptions about the fate of refugees, especially as those refugees were fleeing the Taliban who we claimed were the Axis of Evil. Did we go to war to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Hussein regime in Iraq or were there less noble motives? We have to get our heads out of the sand and understand that what politicians do they do in our name. It is our character the world judges. There is no hope of returning to crystal-set innocence; if
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The Raised Sword
we are to take credit for the national triumphs, the sunny national character, we have to accept all the deeds of that character; we have to accept John Howard, Charles Franks and Angus McMillan along with James Dawson, John Landy and Caroline Chisholm. Warts and all, that’s how knowledge of country is achieved. Not just an air-brushed version of Sir Donald Bradman that denies his ruthless and self-serving commercial character, not just reverence for Sir Thomas Mitchell the Explorer but acknowledgment that he casually shot Aboriginal people as they attempted to flee from his approach. We must not take pride in the undoubted goodness of James Dawson without recognising that despite his knowledge of crimes committed against the Gundidjmara he occupied the land he knew to be their home. What is it that drives apparently good people to treat others with such cruelty? Must good people strike pre-emptively against those they consider to be bad? Is violence intrinsic to the nature of men? Must it be rehearsed and practised lest we perform it less well? All these questions and no potatoes. As a nation we hold widely divergent views of our history and yet we hold these convictions on the basis of such little evidence. As we all learn more, will our views become less polarised? Sometimes when describing the colonial frontier it is like talking about the Tasmanian Tiger; no-one has seen it for eighty years but everyone seems to have an entrenched opinion about whether it exists, and both sides argue from little personal knowledge. Perhaps the discovery of America’s ivory billed woodpecker after being thought extinct for a century should inspire us. That bird was rediscovered by a single person in a kayak who had set himself the task of searching the most remote reaches of the everglades. Australia needs men and women to embark on arduous journeys of discovery; not for a thylacine but for our soul. Too many people committed to a reappraisal of contact history attempt to paint Aboriginal people as an uncomfortable pastiche of Pollyanna and Gandhi. Aboriginal people are people, incontrovertibly identical to Europeans except for skin colour. Violence was not absent from Aboriginal society. Punishment for infringing the law could be capital but in general terms open
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warfare was uncommon. Indigenous people made a pact of sustainability with this continent and warfare is only sustainable when birth rates are unsustainable. The Indigenous population of Australia was very stable until waves of introduced disease and war produced catastrophic losses. Scientist and philosopher, Tim Flannery, maintains that Aboriginal people applied population restraint in response to the low nutrient base of Australian soils. These conditions meant that all animal life, including human, had to be cautious and circumspect in their relationships with each other and the fragile environment. Violence was a low-yield, high-risk activity and so people evolved a more conservative behavioural approach. The stable population and clan borders were a product of this caution and were inculcated into successive generations so that violence took on a symbolic rather than functional purpose. No people on earth have ever maintained a system of political and cultural life for as long as Australian Indigenous people. Some historians like to point to the outbreaks of Indigenous violence witnessed by early squatters as evidence of the base, violent and treacherous nature of the people, as if the War of the Roses and the Crusades were exemplars of civilised restraint. Aboriginal life underwent traumatic change once clans were pushed into the lands of neighbours already trying to resist the white tide. Food became short after sheep grazed the staple yam daisy crops to their roots. Competition for ever decreasing resources created enormous volatility while the introduction of a divergent legal and moral system eroded the Indigenous law and morale. Internecine clashes were inevitable. The advance of the white frontier was aided by the generally flat terrain and the fact that Indigenous agricultural practices left the country open and easily traversed. More than one settler commented on the similarity to an English park. The speed of white encroachment was aided by geography and an established agriculture and the fact that the Aborigines of Victoria believed the white squatters to be their ancestors risen from the dead. This belief persisted for almost a year until Indigenous patience evaporated. The squatters were like cane toads tipped out of a bucket. They leapfrogged each other to claim the open plains of Australia Felix,
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the term Thomas Mitchell coined after his expedition of ‘discovery’ in 1835. His report indicates that it never occurred to him that the ‘English park’ he so admired had been created by a system of husbandry of greater antiquity than the entire history of Britain. Thomas Mitchell failed to ask himself some obvious questions but as he’d been shooting Aborigines ever since he left Sydney it may be that his journal is a document written for the English parliament and not an actual account of his acquired knowledge of the country’s ownership and development. In any case the stable Indigenous boundaries and absence of a history of land war meant the Aborigines were unprepared for the military might, morals and numbers of Europeans swarming across their lands. Perhaps the conservative social and legal principles established over 60,000 years had left the Indigenes vulnerable to the vicious intensity of a less morally encumbered army. When the intentions of the Europeans became obvious the Kulin speared the advance guard of shepherds, but most of these men were expendable convicts and hardly caused a dent in European confidence. When the warriors turned their attention to the ‘gentlemen squatters’ all hell broke loose and massacres and imprisonments so decimated the Kulin numbers that they began to target sheep instead. This phase of the war saw the Europeans brought to their economic knees and Indigenous resistance began to bite so hard and on so many fronts that the European advance was halted and in some cases reversed. The Gundidjmara had the Europeans on the run in the battles called the Eumerella War, the Jarcoort won significant victories in the fastness of the Stony Rises and Warmdella of the Wathaurong led fifteen men on at least six attacks on the stations of Kenneth Clark, Robert Williams von Steiglitz, John Campbell, Dr D Wilsone and others in the latter part of 1840. The Woiwurrung and Wathaurong had borne the brunt of the early advance but Warmdella and his warriors were determined to halt the invasion even though they’d lost the tactical advantage by their restraint in those first crucial months. Among Warmdella’s warriors was Yammerbock who maintained his resistance right up to the point where there were almost
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no surviving adult Wathaurong men but himself. In despair he collected the remnants of his people and led them to ES Parker’s Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate where he had been assured that his people would be protected by the light of Christian kindness.1 That this promise was so soon revoked and the mission lands consumed by conniving squatters may have been the last nail in the coffin of Yammerbock’s people and his faith in the Christian God, but perhaps he knew the nature of the enemy well before he led his people into God’s church. Michael Cannon, in Who Killed the Koories?, details the raids of various groups around the Werribee–Loddon area when the Kulin formed confederacies and changed the nature of their resistance to a war against all white people, not just those who had encroached on their land or committed violence against them. Jackie Jackie and his guerrilla band attacked stations in the upper Yarra in the 1840s and escaped the punitive raids of troopers and squatters to extend his campaign into the Goulburn district. By this time he was arming his warriors with captured European weapons so that La Trobe introduced a new law banning the possession of firearms by ‘natives or half-castes’ and by empowering ‘any constable or free-person whatever, providing that no personal harm be used…than may be absolutely necessary’2 to take arms from Aboriginal warriors. It is extraordinary the number of doctors, clergymen, barristers and educated men who were part of the early advance in Port Phillip and astonishing how quickly they resorted to extreme violence to defend lands they had occupied only weeks earlier. In most cases they didn’t even own that land in a legal sense. Henry Monro was the son of the Anatomy Professor at Edinburgh University. In response to Jackie Jackie stripping his shepherd of his warm clothes and driving away the sheep, he organised a band of seven Europeans to ride down Jackie Jackie’s band, killing at least two despite the fact that La Trobe had already sent a contingent of Mounted Police to do the job. The Professor of Anatomy’s son was undertaking his own study of anatomy. Two hundred warriors then attacked Sandford Bolden’s property near Heidelberg. Like the others Bolden was targeted for his particularly brutal treatment of women and children.
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Many of the warriors in this raid were armed with muskets and ambushed the Mounted Police as they crossed a river. La Trobe was alarmed by the new tactics and issued instructions for the police to prevent Aborigines from entering Melbourne, including the women who were sneaking in to buy ammunition. Assistant Aboriginal Protector Parker reported that warriors were joining guerrilla bands in increasing numbers. La Trobe considered the colony under siege and pleaded with Governor Gipps to despatch a regiment of soldiers. Major Lettsom arrived and listened with half an ear to La Trobe’s cautioning for judicious force. Lettsom lost no time in attacking Jackie Jackie with the largest contingent of soldiers and police the colony had seen. Some Kulin were shot, including the great warriors Windberry and Tom, and the methods of imprisoning the rest caused some of the more just officials to call for an enquiry but of course it failed because it was impossible to find white witnesses, even though Tom’s body had been penetrated by many sabre thrusts as well as shotgun fire. Black witnesses claimed that far more were killed than Lettsom reported but black evidence was not allowed in colonial courts. La Trobe cautioned Lettsom to be circumspect and euphemistic in his report of the campaign to London. With a doctored report and a sudden absence of white witnesses, Lettsom and his soldiers escaped without reprimand. Australia has made a habit of lauding the deeds of people like Lettsom, Breaker Morant, Fyans, McMillan, Mercer, Gellibrand and Batman. Streets and towns are named after them such is the depth of pride and the shallowness of knowledge. Do we see violence itself as a virtue, the mechanical arm of Darwinism, a fast-tracking of evolution and an assumption of its direction? Evolution has entertained many dead ends over the millennia and the humans involved never knew if they were on the cul-de-sac or the highway. Like youths exhilarated by the power of young muscle our judgment can be clouded by assuming we are the chosen ones, God’s idea of human destiny. Perhaps God is determined that those to reach his pinnacle retain the humility to continue growing their own vegetables and have chickens and
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rabbits in the back yard. God might be a gardener and we’ve made the mistake of thinking he was chairman of the board. Too often lust for oil, land or women clouds our perspective of why we embark on particular ventures. In hiding from our primary motivation and the contravention of rules our society professes to revere, we build a theory based not on scientific and moral investigation but on a series of excuses and fabricated history to excuse crimes our religion says we must never commit under any circumstances. In the course of re-inventing history and fabricating alibis some resort to Darwinism while others seek to explain their actions by claiming they are involved in a kind of Biblical purge against the heathen or infidel, that the violent spirit of man was created just for this purpose. None seem to wonder if what they do is for the common good or the common wealth, that the pre-emptive strike may eliminate from our species the legitimate and humanising spirit of democracy and forbearance, a sustainable land-use philosophy and a spiritual attachment to place which has ensured stable territorial borders and might, if applied in a modern state, eliminate the primary cause of violence that we see on our news every night. Jared Diamond in his new book, Collapse, speculates on the collapse of seemingly indestructible states. Sophisticated and wealthy states from the Mayan to the Norse collapsed at the peak of their development. Diamond isolates the key factors of disintegration: deforestation and environmental neglect, the failure to produce their own food, the wasteful excesses of war and the predilection to build monuments to kings which tied up generations of workers who had to be fed and clothed but contributed nothing to the common wealth. Diamond says the Egyptians, Mayans and others sometimes had over 80 per cent of the population and state resources building a monument for the pharaoh, king or grand poo bah. He also gives as an example the Mayan kings who committed so many to the field of battle in such distant places that the people who carried provisions to the soldiers ended up eating 90 per cent of the food themselves. He then goes on to point out that America is as vulnerable as the Mayan on every key indicator of collapse behaviour.
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We should be more modest and inquisitive when theorising on the intentions of God or the logical direction of human development. For all we know God’s crest might be a crossed rake and shovel surmounted by a particularly fine turnip. I hope not, I hate turnips, but then God may not have intended me to be the kind of person to survive. Once again I’m asking questions I can’t answer, but I ask them because the answers I’ve heard so far are unconvincing. I suspect if violence has a role it is for sustainable procuration of food and selfdefence in circumstances of last resort. It seems inconceivable to me that violence was intended by God and Mohammed to eliminate unbelievers. The world is littered with kings who thought they were God or had a special authority from him. The stones of those kingdoms now grow weeds and yet at the time it was inconceivable that they would be toppled, just as it is hard to imagine that the Sydney Harbour Bridge will cease to exist. There have been civilisations which prospered without violence but they are few and seem of little interest to a world fixated by kings, generals and weapons. On his program, Late Night Live, Phillip Adams, reported on the excavation of the ruins of an Indus Valley civilisation which relied entirely on its good relations with everyone to become an important trade and market centre. No weapons of any kind were found by archaeologists. The population had prospered without resort to an army or general violence against neighbouring countries. We must speak out against violence committed in any of God’s names. We should never be ashamed or fear being called wimps when we express outrage when men massacre women and children in the name of their God’s goodness. We must resist these justifications when they come from other religions but never ever ignore the occasions when they come from our own. A murderer of babies is just a murderer whether he has the bomb strapped to himself or drops it from a plane so high in the sky it is invisible to the victim. Vanity and blinkered environmental, spiritual and historical analysis are not behavioural traits likely to perpetuate a culture. Are we Australians on the highway to humanity’s destiny or doing donuts in Darwin’s cul-de-sac?
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The Great Australian Forge Australians like to say their country came of age on the shores of Gallipoli, that on those sands the national character was forged. This popular sentiment, favoured by politicians and historians alike, conveniently ignores the furnace of the frontier. The sacrifice of Australian soldiers at Gallipoli is undeniably one of the most selfless and tragic incidents in Australia’s recent history. The young men who leapt out of the trenches knowing that they would meet a rain of fire, did so because their sense of duty had sublimated their knowledge of certain death. I cannot imagine the turmoil in those young hearts and minds while waiting for the order to deliver their breasts to the guns. I will never forget those men. I have not forgotten the uncle I was named after to ease the grief of his sister when he died in World War II. I still ache for the wounds to the hearts and minds and bodies of those doomed youths, the theft of their future, their contribution to their country and family, I am reduced to throat-aching tearfulness every time I hear the Last Post played by a lone bugler. Young Australian service men and women have displayed enormous character and resilience in those wars but we cannot ignore the contributions to the national character made at Murdering Gully, Red Banks, Coniston and Convincing Ground. We cannot pretend that the pervasive belief in racial superiority that provided justification for those massacres has no link to the prejudice and arrogance of many Australians today. I suspect I have a great deal in common with Prime Minister John Howard. I would be surprised if the pre-pubescent Howard
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did not listen to English Test Cricket series by crystal set, willing Australian heroes to victory. I feel sure, as a primary school student, his reaction to the Anzac Day services was like mine, and I am certain he had eyes for no other competitors in the Melbourne Olympics than those in the green and gold. I revered ABC nature radio broadcaster Crosby Morrison and author Alan Marshall for their love of their country but the more I read Marshall the more I realised my hero countrymen were just men after all; and in pursuing more knowledge of Crosby Morrison’s passions realised that one of the football grounds I played on twice a year had once been home to a dozen species of birds now extinct in Victoria. While Howard seems to have sustained a story of fewer and fewer doubts and greater and greater triumphs I have learnt a history where the heroes are few and quite often black. My parents were passionate Australians but they were not fools; they may have been uneducated but they knew that history is complex, that few heroes shine in all corners of their heart. My father reserved his highest praise for pastor Doug Nicholls, footballer ‘Polly’ Farmer, boxer Dave Bracken and his mate, builder Pat Davey. Good men, he assured me, and made a point of introducing me to each of them. It never occurred to me until a decade later that his unalloyed heroes were all black except Davey. I think my father was a very unusual man. He had a prickly relationship with authority and the cabal of orthodoxy which separated him from many of his fellows. He hated deceit and hypocrisy. As Manning Clark once said, everything he did in his life was to earn his father’s respect. I feel like that about both my parents, the two most just human beings I have ever met. Our language can often reveal our heart. As Malcolm Knox so incisively explained in the Melbourne Age on 27 January 2003 in response to the charge of racial abuse being levelled at the Australian cricketer, Darren Lehman, ‘To believe this was the first time Lehman used this terrible language about black people is to show the indulgence of a parent…Lehman’s misfortune is that he is the man who got caught revealing the unwitting racism that infuses not only Australian cricketing culture but mainstream Australia.’1
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Lehman is a good bloke, great team man, and liked by many in the cricket world, so the story goes, but just as he represents his country in hitting the ball hard he represents us by what he thinks and says. Sport is a great and potentially innocent part of any culture but its best practitioners are too often seen as gods rather than mortals with strength and hand–eye co-ordination. It would be wrong to make too much of Lehman’s outburst but at the same time it is impossible to dismiss the underlying hint of racism which finds more frequent expression than this incident. Lleyton Hewitt complained about a black umpire in 2004, Australian cricket crowds abused South African cricketers with the racist epithet, kaffir boetie, in 2005 and racially insulted the Sri Lankans in 2006. Australians fought pitched battles at Cronulla to reclaim the beach for Australians but Prime Minister John Howard refused to denounce violence committed by people draped in the Australian flag. We are not a racist nation, he declared. That is what we would all wish for our country. Australians have it within them to be among the most generous and open-hearted people on earth and at their best accept people for who they are, not what they are. I currently play cricket in a team which includes three Aboriginal people of varying skin colour and it seems to me that each is judged as a human being wholly and solely. I haven’t heard a racist remark and can’t imagine Lehman’s ‘black c***’ epithet going unchallenged. None of my team mates is an exceptional Australian, all are ordinary working people on ordinary wages but they behave much better than a lot of their wealthier countrymen. Are they morally superior beings or simply in possession of better information? Many Australians think sport defines us, but it is a complicated definition falling somewhere between Darren Lehman and the cricketers of Eden. I’m much more comfortable with a broad and complex national character than a simple and narrow selfconsciousness. John Howard watches cricket from the monocultural confines of the members stand while I play it on the scorched fields of Australia. Howard’s elevation of Bradman as ‘greatest Australian’ makes a mockery of the work of scientists, artists, engineers, doctors and educators. The habit of raising figures like Bradman and Bond to the status of national hero is the most startling indication that
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we have yet to come to terms with the history and responsibilities of nationhood. The heroes we choose reveal a great deal of what is in our heart. Intelligence, compassion and commitment to the welfare of others are not qualities likely to be popular in Australia. David Marr believes that John Howard pursues policies of deliberate disadvantage to Muslims and to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and savages any press who dare suggest there is a racist element to his philosophy. No-one in the Australian government turned a hair when we so enthusiastically joined forces with the American President in labelling other sovereign nations as the Axis of Evil, as if our world was a board game. While Americans care for no history but their own, Australians can never embrace the entire history of this country, or the full breadth of our own character, when we continue to nitpick about how many murders make a massacre or whether the resistance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to the theft of their land represents war. The whole richness of the country, the full impact of its voice, the complete understanding of who we are is connected to the umbilical of those early colonial years and to deny it prevents Australians from receiving the full blessing of the land, a blessing which is there for any who inhabit it and are prepared to acknowledge the successful and ancient occupation of the continent, a success unparalleled by any other civilisation on earth. Historians who have read that last sentence might reach for the Quik-Eze and angina tablets appalled that I’d make such a claim. Some historians who claim to represent the truth of our past will reach for their scathing pens to argue the definition of ‘success’ as they’ve argued in the past about ‘massacre’, ‘war’, ‘land rights’ and ‘culture’, but a culture which has developed over a bare minimum of 60,000 years is neither crude nor a temporary historical aberration. There are almost no civilisations in the world’s history that have lasted more than a few thousand years. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island cultures are profoundly sophisticated responses to the environment but, more particularly, the social organisation is the most egalitarian the world has seen. No slaves, no prisons, no race to material, military or spiritual superiority. Many will argue those are not the most important values in a civilisation but their
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application would extinguish every current world conflict inside a generation. Isn’t that a sophisticated response to the complexities of living? A culture which led the world in technology, language, dance and song, a culture which managed to conserve the land over that period to maintain provision of food and water, and a culture whose communal organisation looks incredibly like the first demonstration of democracy, is successful in ways which modern cultures, for all their great ‘inventions’, have failed to emulate. Some extraordinary civilisations have blazed across our skies like meteors but they have all burnt out inside a fraction of the time Indigenous Australians have occupied this land. Where Atlantis succumbed to the rising seas and Pompeii disappeared beneath volcanic ash, and some Persian cultures disappeared beneath sand, Aboriginal civiliations survived several visitations of all these cataclysms. The New Right opposes such ideas as ‘politically correct’ and campaigns with the support of a sympathetic government to urge Australians to ‘move on’, to forget the past. But if we persist in hiding from history we will have learnt nothing from those current and previous civilisations which believed murder and theft would allow their culture to appear holy in the sight of their God. It’s time for this nation to grow up and realise that no action can be excised from our character. We are what we did yesterday and say today, and if we argue that it’s not our fault, because it wasn’t us who drove the Gundidjmara over the cliffs to fall where the rocks meet the sea, then Australians can’t own the past and if you can’t own the past you can’t pretend to own the land and all the riches she waits to deliver. Nations disowning their history invent all kinds of swagger to define themselves. If you can’t take pride in your past it is likely you will elevate sportsmen and entertainers to ridiculous levels of importance. So, let’s look at some of the personalities who were prepared to raise the sword or excuse its use. And what better place to start than Portland, Victoria, one of the first white settlements on the south-east corner of Australia. Just as we write more about Don Bradman and Kylie Minogue than we do about medical researchers and dry land conservationists, Australians are inclined to elevate the national sense of humour to
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sublime laconic heights. But how’s this for a joke? In 1833 or 1834 the Henty brothers and their offsiders fought a protracted battle with Gundidjmara people on a beach near Portland. Just as no-one is certain of the date or how many were killed, they can’t even agree on what caused the battle. MacDonald, a Henty whaler, asserts that the fight began when the Gundidjmara men rebelled against the theft of their wives but Edward Henty states that the whalers went to battle to prevent the tribesmen from taking a stranded whale. The number killed? Nobody knows because no report of the incident was ever made. Foster Fyans, the Geelong Police Magistrate, visited the district to investigate current and past reports of massacres of Aborigines but Edward Henty failed to enlighten him about the incident, perhaps Fyans never asked. In any case it never rates a mention in Henty’s Portland Journal and Fyans’ report to the Governor claimed instead that ‘every gentleman’s establishment’ had been ‘molested by the natives.’2 Fyans was scathing of the Aboriginal Protectors whom he accused of encouraging Aborigines to the view that they had rights before the law. Flogger Fyans preferred ‘to insist on the gentlemen in the country to protect their property, and to deal with such useless savages on the spot.’3 That’s the Police Magistrate talking, the upholder of British law, his instincts for propriety refined in the war against Indian patriots. When Governor Bourke ordered Fyans to distribute clothes and hatchets among the Aborigines he preferred to throw them in the lake. And the joke? Oh, the sand on which those early battles were fought became known to the Henty settlement and Australians to this day as ‘the Convincing Ground’; where the traditional owners were ‘convinced’ of the right of the Europeans to take their women, their whales, their land or whatever took the colonists’ fancy, and the Europeans were ‘convinced’ in return that the authorities would protect their right to do so. Today’s authorities share the same attitude. The Glenelg Shire Council recently approved a housing development for the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the frontier war. In fact the Australian press shares that attitude. Reference to the lust for development on the Convincing Ground battlefield passed across the face of Australian newspapers in small paragraphs on remote pages but, in
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the same month, the disturbance of bones by roadworks at Gallipoli made the front page of most Australian newspapers for weeks in succession. Bill Sellars, an Australian journalist living at Gallipoli, was reported as saying ‘This is a key Heritage site, a sacred place, not just for Australians, but for Turks’.4 Perfectly correct. It is disrespectful of our fine young soldiers to disturb their bones resting so uneasily in foreign soil, and it is right that we view such insensitive acts as vandalism, even if it was our own government who requested the roadworks, but we show our moral selectivity when a housing development on one of the nation’s most emblematic battlefields is allowed to proceed with no public interest. Denise Lovett, of Heywood’s Winda Mara Co-op, said the Glenelg Shire had a plan of protection for Indigenous archaeological sites which might have saved the Convincing Ground, but had failed to implement it. Meanwhile, on a separate front, farmers were being allowed to bulldoze stone houses under the pretence of levelling the land, whole villages razed in the process. It’s not impossible for cattle to graze among the old foundations, they’ve been doing it for the last 175 years, but the Coalition government encouraged people to fear for their leases and barbecues and cynical farmers embraced the opportunity to show the black bastards who was boss. Convincing Ground should remind us to bite our tongues every time we utter the sentiment that ‘Australia is the only nation founded without war’. It’s a myth, a joke, the most ridiculous intellectual folly we could commit, and yet at the point at which we could remind ourselves of the true history of the nation we avert our face and allow the battleground of our soul to be obliterated, wash our minds of memory, impoverish our intelligence with deliberate contempt. If someone attempted to withdraw iron from our children’s diet there would be a public outcry, governments would fall, but we happily permit our children to have their intellectual growth stunted, and all for the comforts of our own delusion. What will it take to convince us that a proper embrace of the past, while it might be painful, will stiffen our spines and minds, make a nation of us, turn us into the country which can rightfully engage the world in moral debate about civil rights and democratic and Christian principles? I think we are on the brink of the most
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courageous or cowardly decision we have ever made. We either bite the tough bullet of nationhood or continue to swim in the Plain Label chocolate mousse of myth; we have the choice of hardwrought steel or artificial custard. I think only our young have the heart for it. I call on them to take the might of their intelligence and apply it to building a foundation of intellectual rigour and moral steel with which we can survive what has to be a staunchly contested debate. I’ve addressed halls of young academics whose hearts burst with compassion for Timor, Africa and India. Never forget those nations you mighty young, but please turn about and look your countrymen in the face. Most of your parents and grandparents never had the courage or the tools but you have access to both. Remember that if you are white not to guess at what your black countrymen and women think, they have perfectly functioning ears, tongues and minds. Remember that if you are black not to settle for beads and mirrors and a pat on the head, and unfortunately you must never accept a promise or a piece of signed paper. That’s how the land was lost in the first place. Also remember that you will never recover the entire land but you can demand to live in it equally and to have the trove of your people’s great history learnt with respect and kept close to the heart of most Australians. All great nations begin like that, not with dogma and stubbornly held ignorance but with justice and respect. We are yet to begin our greatness because the forge for the Australian character was fed slag by compromised whitesmiths in those early days and if we are to understand the national steel we cannot remain ignorant of the metals which compose the alloy, today and yesterday. The whales of Portland are a significant indicator of both the contemporary and colonial mood. The Aboriginal people of Australia had made use of the whale and seal resources for thousands of years before Europeans arrived and Indigenous conservation of that resource allowed Henty and his fellows to become rich men very quickly, but so rapacious was their plunder that most fur seal colonies had vanished into their vats by 1832 and the whales were not far behind.5 They saw each and every one of these mammals as their own and sought to ‘convince’ the Indigenes of this claim’s
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truth. The wholesale slaughter of the breeding colonies eliminated entire species and at Henty Reef, near Apollo Bay, the fur seal colony is only now beginning to re-establish itself, 170 years later. Historian Jan Critchett has brought this period of history into perspective by celebrating the lives of Gundidjmara and Kirrae wurrong men and women who fought for their lands and culture in those early battles.6 Critchett is trying to fill a void in the national comprehension of the past, for when today’s Australians refer to that period of history it is always William Buckley’s name that is invoked. Kaawirr Kunnawarn (Hissing Swan), Wombeetch Puyuun, Curacoine, Yammerbock, Yarrun Parpur Tarneen, Mombourne and Muulapuurn Yuurong Yaar are never mentioned, and in that ignorance some of the metal in the alloy of the Australian soul is withheld and the understanding of the Australian character is weakened. No country should ignore those who gave their life for their land, not in an aggressive invasion of someone else’s land, but in the defence of the soil upon which they and their ancestors were born; in short, great Australians. And speaking of flawed metal, no-one in the history of the country has ever worn a sillier hat than George Augustus Robinson, with the possible exception of Governor General Sir John Kerr on Melbourne Cup Day 1973. Robinson was a builder in England but saw himself cut from grander cloth and emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land in 1828 to try his hand on the frontier where circumstances were to re-invent his life. The colonisers of Van Diemen’s Land, having taken up all the suitable agricultural areas, turned their attention to the Indigenous population’s aggravating attempts to resume their lands. All previous measures to prevent Aboriginal resistance had failed miserably, including Governor Arthur’s scheme to herd all Aborigines from the north to the south of Tasmania in a farcical quail drive, but Robinson, the man for the moment, seized the opportunity to shed the sackcloth of humble tradesman to don the finer fabric of man of importance. He adopted the colony’s plan to remove the remaining Aborigines to offshore islands, thus pretending to be saviour to all.
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Arthur and the colony leapt at the opportunity to be rid of the Aborigines, not just the harassment of their warfare on outlying squatters but also the inquisition from London’s Anti-Slavery Movement and the Aborigines Protection Society, both of which had the ear of Westminster at this time of liberal humanist philosophy. The ‘agreement’ for their eventual removal to Flinders Island was in effect a treaty for them to abandon their traditional lands. It was not, however, the understanding the Aborigines believed they had wrought with Robinson, for that had allowed for a return to the mainland following a period of ceasefire in the Silent War. Historians argue whether it was Robinson or the colony as a whole who betrayed this agreement but the outcome was the same; Van Diemen’s Land ceased to be an Indigenous sovereign state. Despite the hat and his eventual desertion of his ‘flock’ on Flinders Island, Robinson was a more sensitive man than most in the colony; although this is not great praise. He could see what his countrymen could not, that the Aborigines had a sophisticated spiritual outlook, and in this realisation he was able to draw close to the desperate people and convince them that his plan evinced some hope for eventual return to the motherland, if not in triumph, then with a chance of a greater share in the proceeds from their country’s bounty. But there were more canny minds than Robinson’s at work, because once the Indigenous Tasmanians were incarcerated on the island the authorities determined to leave them there. In this they were greatly assisted by the Aborigines’ vulnerability to introduced diseases and their own despair: betrayed by those in whom they had placed trust, removed from their habitation, their diet, and all spiritual connections to the places of their birth. They were victims of Robinson’s missionary zeal and private ambitions. Robinson became a hero in Van Diemen’s Land for ridding it of the ‘plague’ of Indigenous resistance and the whisperings of rudimentary European conscience, but once the offshore islands policy began to fail, and his ‘mission to civilize the natives’ seemed hopeless, his mind wandered to areas where he might build on his reputation as colonial saviour with more success, comfort and remuneration.
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He considered positions in South Australia before deciding in favour of an invitation to act as Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Port Phillip District. If the South Australians, to whom he applied for positions, had inserted the word ‘Chief ’ in any of their letters of offer Victorian history may have been saved the presence of a peculiar hat but missed the volumes of material our vain missionary produced and which have proved invaluable to both Aboriginal and European historians. Robinson’s hubris compelled him to record his deeds, be it the purchase of a roll of calico, the seduction of a fellow officer’s wife or the listing of a series of words given to him by one of the many Victorian Aborigines who placed their trust in this unusual man.7 He was able to talk with the Kulin people, developing a rough understanding of their languages and beliefs and sympathising with their losses, to which the Kulin responded with warmth for they had met precious few with even the vaguest interest in plumbing the depths of fellow humanity. Robinson for his part, however, was far more concerned about the inadequacy of the land and chattels being offered to him by the Port Phillip administration and the slights to his character appearing in the colonial press. He bridled at the most insignificant admonition, fought with any person who seemed not to offer him the respect he felt his reputation and exalted position deserved, and cultivated the vanities to which men of gentlemanly persuasion seem most susceptible. Robinson still defended Aborigines in court, he still took great interest in their culture but he took far greater interest in the quality of cloth allowed for curtains, the amount of provender set aside for his sustenance and the finicky tailoring of his trousers. He became a figure of fun, not just because he assumed the trappings of gentlemen after such a recent catapult into their company, but also because he continued to uphold the rights of the traditional owners of Port Phillip to protection under British colonial law. He was reviled in the press and distracted by it to such an extent that he spent the bulk of his time in support of his own pride rather than defending the people he had been employed to conciliate. Despite the distractions of his vanities he was able to communicate with the Port Phillip clans because they were impressed
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that he was accompanied by several of the inmates of the Flinders Island gulag and the local Aborigines saw this as a good reason to entrust him with some of their precious cultural knowledge. That trust was misplaced because Robinson was playing the role of great conciliator and when the Tasmanians who accompanied him from Phillip Island proved troublesome he abandoned them to their own resources in Port Phillip where they became what the press called outlaws. They could just as easily have been described as hungry and desperate, but Robinson ignored their fate, even that of Truganini, who was thought to be his lover. The great genius of Aboriginal relations cast off his failures as skinks drop tails when caught in a tight spot. This was not the first time Robinson had ignored his responsibilities, but the Indigenes, in the absence of any other supporter, still turned to him for help. One young warrior of the Corondeet, who had witnessed the massacre of so many of his people and the succumbing to dislocation and disease of the rest, believed himself to be the last of his people and in that bleak knowledge felt compelled to unburden himself to Robinson, to speak up for his country and his people. For one whole day he ran beside the Chief Protector’s horse,8 calling out the name of this hill and that creek, the birthplace of this person, the places of massacre of so many others, places where they had netted fish, gathered honey, where the sun had set most spectacularly, and all this richness spanning inestimable time. Now that knowledge dwelt only in his breast and so he ran beside Robinson’s horse calling out the key words of his civilisation, desperate that just one more person should share that knowledge, even one such as Robinson, cantering so heedlessly on his horse. RUNNING AT YOUR STIRRUP While riding through the western plains In 1840 God’s time George Augustus Robinson Protector of Aborigines a carpenter, a chief came upon a black man a black man on his own. That man of Corondeet 99
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knew the man, had heard of his hat knew he was the Protector and so told him that to be protected. Robinson cantered across the plain the black man at his stirrup calling to the white man the names of all his country, the sappy wattle myrniong a line of hills a creek. He told him this, his protector Because who was left to hear He yelled as he ran to the white man’s ear I am the last of my people I need none to look out for me But this is our land Who’ll look after she? Bruce Pascoe 1995 Just as my heart aches for the young men jumping into the arms of bullets at Gallipoli, I ache for that young man, my countryman, who called out to his land in the presence of the last man on earth who might listen. Robinson did listen and did record it for posterity, probably his own, because ambition and self regard soon erased any relic of Christian compassion and he accepted the Crown’s silver and gold and returned to England, resurrected as a gentleman. So much is revealed by our actions. The assumptions of the whole colonial system are embodied in the image of George Augustus Robinson trotting on horseback, anxious to make that night’s accommodation, while a young man, distraught at what has befallen his universe, runs at the great man’s stirrup beseeching him to pay heed to his revelation of country, his people’s entire history, their every belief. It is tragic, it is Australia. All Robinson’s good intentions are weighed against the assumption that he must ride and the Corondeet man must run.
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A convict, a rapist, a murderer, a man who could not recite even one great event in the history of the world might have been treated with more humanity. Robinson was impressed by the solid construction of Aboriginal houses, saying they were ‘sufficiently strong for a man on horseback to ride over.’9 How can you gauge what can support a mounted horse without putting it to the test? His sketch of one house shows a horseman on its summit. Try to visualise the man on horseback, complete with ridiculous hat, crowning the roof of the Gundidjmara house. What did it say about the people who owned that house? What did it say of the motivation and assumptions of the colonisers, even those of relatively good heart? No English pauper’s slum would be treated with such disdain. We owe a great deal of our knowledge of early Indigenous culture to Robinson but he was determined that we should think that. He wrote every report with an eye to the establishment of himself as the expert on anything Aboriginal. For a while that was his reputation, such was Van Diemonian relief at having freed themselves from their Aboriginal scourge, but in fact Robinson was a dilettante and shocking administrator whose awful pride had him use his position to deride every one of his Assistant Protectors, two of whom at least, would have done a much better job than Robinson himself. Charles Sievwright was one of those men even though he came by the position after having a serious problem on the punt. His gambling debts caused him to sell his military commission and call on influential London friends to gain him paid employment. That they acquired for him the post of Assistant Protector of Aborigines in Port Phillip under the erratic leadership of builder-come-good George Augustus Robinson must have seemed like a poor joke six years later. The punt wasn’t Sievwright’s only problem. He liked a drink and a journey and left his wife on at least three occasions for long periods without much financial support. His wife Christina liked a bit of a drink herself and went to all the officials in Melbourne, including Lonsdale and La Trobe, complaining of penury and desertion and eventually child molestation. Well, she did retract that last charge when it looked likely to lose her husband his
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income, but the damage to Sievwright’s reputation was done and his enemies seized on the notoriety to condemn him. Fyans and William Lonsdale both recorded that they had little faith in Christina’s word or her morality but it didn’t stop them accepting her charges against Sievwright. There have always been plenty of men to condemn those who stood between them and a fortune. Sievwright also appeared to like other men’s wives and a good time. Despite the fact that it took his accuser some years to reveal his cuckold’s suspicions, and the only other accuser was a wowser who interpreted noises he heard coming from a distant tent, the claims were accepted as good enough to condemn him. The documents do not confirm anything particularly unseemly in Sievwright’s behaviour towards the wife of fellow Assistant Protector Parker but the sounds of merriment during a pretty convivial drink in the Officers’ Mess may have sounded like it. Anyway, let’s just say it wasn’t a good start…and he hadn’t even got to Geelong. But when he did, who should be waiting for him but Flogger Fyans and they disliked each other immediately, which, knowing the inclinations of Foster Fyans, is a very creditable feather in Sievwright’s cap. But, as they say today, he was as good as dead in the water. The calumny surrounding him was known to all, giving the authorities and the rampaging squatters the perfect opportunity to destroy someone who had the intelligence and determination to see his job performed with honour. And that would not do at all, particularly as Sievwright proved himself to be one of the few people in Port Phillip willing to tackle the injustice being perpetrated on the Indigenous population. Robinson, who should have been by his shoulder, took every opportunity to frustrate Sievwright because he immediately proved himself capable of a close and intelligent relationship with the Aborigines and that was Robinson’s role, there could be only one expert, any other challenger would have to be destroyed. It is not exaggerating in any way to say that if Sievwright’s Keilambete and Mount Rouse farming projects had been allowed to proceed, the history of Victoria might look quite different today. When Sievwright first ventured into the Western Plains he listened to the Jarcoort’s concerns about staying in their own
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country with their own people and observing their own culture. They were close to agreeing to give up the resistance if they could be given a corner of their precious nation. Their numbers were so reduced and they were in such shock at the changes wrought in just a handful of years that they made an agreement with Sievwright to try their hand at farming. Progress was good at Lake Keilambete but even after La Trobe forced their removal from there to Mount Rouse they continued to apply themselves to agriculture. They’d been used to cultivation of their yam pastures and after watching Sievwright’s ploughing operation saw the flaws in it straight away and began improving the method. After the men ploughed, the women broke up the clods across the contour of the land to improve moisture retention and seed propagation.10 Sievwright acknowledged the method’s superiority to cross ploughing. The crops grew, the farm prospered and the people were happier than they’d been since Batman arrived, but could the white men leave it alone? No, it was like a red rag to a bull. No sooner had Sievwright nominated Lake Keilambete as a Reserve for the Jarcoort than John Thomson turned up and ‘selected’ 10,500 hectares for himself.11 As luck would have it, La Trobe had just appointed Thomson as a magistrate and he wasted no time in visiting the Superintendent and complaining in the strongest terms that Sievwright was clearing trees on his property and, even worse, had a large number of blacks with him. The Jarcoort had only just survived the massacre by Frederick Taylor and saw Keilambete as their last chance of independence. They tried to remove Thomson’s sheep and shepherds and in the ‘outrage’ that followed the shepherd Hayes was killed. Thomson called his neighbours together and they held a public meeting demanding that La Trobe deliver them from the black plague. Thomson sees La Trobe again privately and, confident of the Superintendent’s support, returns immediately to Keilambete with Fyans’ Mounted Police and a posse of seventeen armed squatters.12 They scoured the country for three days before finding any Jarcoort, but of course the squatters could identify them as the murderers even though they were two aged men, three women and a youth. All were captured and the men imprisoned for their crimes despite the inability of anyone in the party to speak their language and the
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only evidence against them coming from the men who were trying to destroy the Aboriginal reserve. And of course that evidence was believed with so great enthusiasm that one of those able to ‘identify’ the murderers was presented with a shotgun etched with the inscription ‘for his bravery in beating off a tribe of natives’.13 Everybody was out to get Sievwright: Robinson out of jealousy, settlers like Bolden, whom Sievwright had charged with murder, out of revenge and Governor Gipps and Superintendent La Trobe out of fear that Sievwright’s reports would get back to London. He had to be destroyed. And the Jarcoort had to be relocated. Where was the man to visit the new station and wonder about the beneficial possibilities of Indigenes farming their own land without being continually harassed? Few such men could be found and none who wielded any power. It seems peculiar that at the same time the great humanist movement against slavery and oppression is de rigueur in London but has almost no adherents in the Great South Land. Those charged to conduct colonial duties in accordance with the new liberal values find themselves in pitched battle with entrenched entrepreneurs. Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart are a long way from London and if you offend the powerful elites of the colony you can quickly find yourself with no-one to drink with and no-one to sit next to in church. Just as importantly, your wife will experience the same isolation and soon colonial life becomes unbearable. There is enormous pressure to draw closer to the government officers and landed gentry if you are to have any hope of remaining sane in the penal settlement. It’s much easier to join the new society, crude as it is, and devise cunningly worded reports to disguise the true nature of events in Australia. Most importantly, you have to dredge every skerrick of rumour and scuttlebutt that maligns the Indigenous population to prove that the fate you deliver is well and truly deserved and exactly in line with evolutionary theory. In consideration of the pressures operating on colonial authorities it is not surprising so few voices are raised in dissent at the treatment of the Aborigines. Sievwright and Robinson are almost alone in their meek attempts at amelioration. But when you think about it there is
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almost no-one else in the colony with sufficient intelligence combined with an occupation not compromised by greed or self-advancement. James Dawson is among the most sensitive to the Aboriginal cause but can’t prevent himself from occupying Kirrae land. Anne Drysdale starts out as one of the more humane but, on having some flour and potatoes stolen after she refuses food to the people on whose land she has squatted, begins a series of murderous raids to teach the Wathaurong a lesson. All clergymen, even the ones in possession of a kind spirit, like Bemjamin Hurst and Francis Tuckfield, are massively blinkered by their belief that there is no way forward for the Indigenes while they cling to their savage cultural and linguistic practices. There must be no other God than the one favoured by the Europeans. Rev Tuckfield at Buntingdale Mission near Birregurra collects Wathaurong language but only so he can translate the Bible and the psalms. William Thomas at the Loddon River is a caring man but is repulsed by the naked and lusty people he must ‘save’ from sin. In later years women lead the way in enlightened human values but in the early days of the colony there are so few white women who are not convicts, prostitutes or both. The married women are under the yoke of their husband in an age where independent ideas and women are mutually exclusive notions. So we are left with Robinson and Sievwright and precious few others and the colony is merciless in pursuit of their destruction and the destruction of the whole idea of Aboriginal Protection and land reservation. The colony has to destroy them if they are to prevent London from restricting white settlement to the east of the Mitchell line, the line of wheel ruts left by Thomas Mitchell as he ‘explored’ the country from Sydney to Melbourne and proclaimed the Western District of Victoria as Australia Felix. There are probably only two men in the southern half of the colony who believe it would be best to leave the fair western grasslands to the heathen horde: Sievwright and Robinson. Reading the correspondence of the attack on these two men is like using night vision goggles to watch a tiger stalk a rabbit in total darkness. The rabbit never sees it coming even though he suspects something is in the wind.
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There is something in the wind, a mood, a temper in the colony which all Europeans can feel on their acute cultural antennae. That mood permeates Foster Fyans’ letters to La Trobe. In one, the Police Magistrate claims that the Aborigines have suffered only ‘a very trifling disadvantage and injury’. Later he wrote, Under every circumstance, I conceive that much praise is due to the character of Europeans in this country. They have displayed great forebearances, and evinced an inclination to benefit the Aborigines on every occasion. I also remark that the most trifling act on the part of the European is noticed, and if possible turned to their disgrace, when murder, outrages, and destruction of property pass un-noticed on the part of the native. Situated as the settler is, he dreads to protect his property, and tacitly submits.14
Apart from declaring a passion for the word trifling this passage reveals a cynical note in the correspondence between the two men. La Trobe is well aware of Fyans’ views, although this letter has not been written for the Superintendent but for more liberal eyes in London. Any claim against the Aborigines no matter how grossly confected is accepted as justification for squatter violence. James Kilgour of Port Fairy is so impatient to eliminate the Gundidjmara that he forges the signatures on a document which vastly exaggerates the squatters’ losses, and delivers it to La Trobe as proof of the injustices experienced by white settlers. La Trobe is sympathetic and bemoans the prevalence of unprovoked attacks on good men.15 History relies on the written records of the period and diaries are some of the most valuable, particularly those where the diarist is not writing for a political purpose, that is, with a view to launder their own reputation. Much of the official colonial correspondence, however, is so corrupted by prejudice or, like Batman’s treaties and Kilgour’s forgeries, so full of lies, that they are next to useless as true reflections of what is happening. Most of the more objective reports are written by women. Isabella Dawson, Anne Drysdale, Georgina McCrae, and Sievwright’s daughter Fanny, all provide a perspective on the period so 106
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different from the men that when reading of an incident observed and recorded by both it seems the correspondents were on different planets. Annie Baxter was an extraordinary but contrary example. Like many of these women diarists she portrays the frontier in frank terms, usually avoiding the euphemistic dissembling which is such a feature of records prepared by men. But even though she observes incidents with greater candour than men, she seems, unnervingly, to share their attitudes. I think of Annie every time I think of the Children Overboard Affair and the sinking of the SIEV X in 2001. Like many Australians I couldn’t believe that our government and armed services were forcing unseaworthy refugee boats back to sea, overflying sinking boats and not lending assistance, behaviour which is wholly against the international rules of the sea and the basic instincts of humanity. I couldn’t believe that the press could be so quiescent about the drowning of 353 from the SIEV X, a ship our air force and navy were monitoring and had reported to Canberra was in serious risk of sinking. Many of those servicemen are still suffering from the fact that they had been commanded to offer no help. After I recovered from the shock of having witnessed this act of contempt for human life I considered my nation had lost any right to brag of its image as happy go lucky, she’ll be right, fair go, support the underdog, to hell with authority scallywags and larrikins. All that innocence went down with 353 men, women and children, but I tried to work out why it was possible. How could ordinary Australians allow themselves to be used like this for a political party’s re-election strategy? The natural ruthlessness of politicians like Peter Reith and John Howard had been observed frequently enough during the Wik people’s fight for land and the waterfront strike of 2000 but people like Robert Hill, Phillip Ruddock and John Anderson fell in behind them. I thought those men were merely deluded rather than cruel and uncaring, but they let 353 drown. Men in war situations, men engaged in a battle for their own advancement have been capable of wicked, vicious, unthinkable brutality in every century. Why are we still surprised? Is it because these men are our countrymen and we like to think of ourselves as honest and decent? Is that why we pretend the fair go is our national ethos? 107
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Confused by the motivation for this action I turned my attention to the women who co-operated in the incarceration of children and the drowning of other women. I came to Jane Halton, the liaison between the Department of Defence and the Prime Minister’s Department. I read all the newspaper reports and much later, Marr and Wilkinson’s Dark Victory and I focused on Halton because she seemed so different to the vast majority of women I’d known. I thought that if just one woman in authority had raised her eyebrow the chain of events could have been broken. As I read the transcripts I realised Halton was the crucial link and thought, unfairly I admit, that it was her failure to be incredulous at a dozen or more junctures in the events which had eased the way for bellicose men to poison the Australian psyche. It’s unfair to expect one woman to have raised objection when so many men had buried their heads like ostriches, but that is what I’d come to expect of women. I’d come to expect that they would caution us from indulging our more stupid behavioural characteristics. Morality was going down the drain, our country’s reputation soiled, and all so that one group of men could out balls another group. A blood sport involving real and innocent people. We stopped greyhounds doing it to live rabbits in the 1960s. Turning away from the extraordinary pillage of a nation’s soul, I opened the pages of frontier history and it was then I read the diaries and memoirs of Annie Maria Baxter and realised that Jane Halton had a precedent on the Western District frontier, another woman whose psyche did not match what I thought I knew about women. In her diary, Memories of the Past by a Lady in Australia, Baxter wrote throughout the period of war between 1838 and 1842. The early days were not easy for a refined and educated young wife, particularly after she discovered her husband had been sleeping with an Aboriginal woman. From that point on, Baxter and her husband never shared a bed because, as Annie said, she couldn’t forgive ‘the man who could lessen himself and me so tremendously’.16 Despite her disappointment, Baxter enters into the life of the district with such enthusiasm that she jokes with a man who is worried he might get into trouble for his habit of shooting 108
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Aboriginal children. She records in her diary, ‘It’s too bad to shoot the unfortunates like dogs and I’ll write to the man or speak to him of it.’17 Instead she plays a practical joke on the man to scare him, pretending to have written to the police, and seems delighted with her wit. On several occasions she joins posses intent on retribution against the Gundidjmara for harming stock and on one of these occasions writes contentedly, ‘even I looked a formidable person with my red shirt and black belt — in the latter was a pouch with balls, caps, cartridges etc — and my constant companion — my pistol’. The men of the party have double-barrelled shotguns, rifles, pistols and swords and the camp they fire on contains only women and children. But to show her true humanity Baxter says as the carnage begins, ‘Poor creatures, may God forgive us!’ After the shooting they ‘commenced the work’ of burning the huts, spears, rugs and implements. She had enough sense to save some bags, two spears and kangaroo skins which she ‘bore off in triumph’. She mentions thirteen of these raids, the numbers of Gundidjmara attacked, the state of European weaponry, but, avoiding her normal frankness, there is only oblique reference to black casualties. Another frontier woman, Anne Drysdale, took up huge areas of land on the banks of the Moorabool and Barwon rivers at Geelong and called the properties Lib Lib, Kardinia, and Borron Goop.18 The names are beautiful, redolent of the riverlands she has taken. Lib Lib refers to the rails and crakes of the marshes, Kardinia to the first rays of the morning sun, Borron Goop to the sound of quails in the pastures. They are romantic names and she has chosen them with sympathy for the land where she has settled with her lady companion. At first she has a good relationship with the Wathaurong around her properties but when she stops feeding the people they believe the contract is broken and begin taking what they believe is theirs. Drysdale, one of the most intelligent and well-meaning people in Port Phillip, collects a party together and rides out on a series of reprisals. The name Kardinia was later given to the Geelong Football Ground but in 2001, when it was dropped in favour of the name of an oil company, none of those who objected did so because it was 109
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a Wathaurong word, their objection was that something familiar had been replaced by an icon of capitalism. Not for the first time in Australia, left-wing sentiment ignored Aboriginal heritage. So, in the muscle of our Australian hearts we have the valour of the youths at Gallipoli, their brothers on the Kokoda Trail, the pomp and self-regard of Robinson, the viciousness of Frederick Taylor, the smug ambition of Charles Franks, the startling lack of compassion of Baxter and Drysdale, the civility and blindness of James Dawson and the penchant for betrayal and silly hats of Sir John Kerr. If we wish for a more substantial peg on which to hang our hat then we need to reach for it, Indigenous and nonIndigenous together, and if we want the national steel to be free of great flaws then we have to attend very carefully to the scrap we feed into the forge. Whenever the nature of our national identity is conjured, our politicians and scribes reach for a cricketer, a horse race, incompetent explorers, courageous white soldiers, the battling farmer, the drover’s wife…and Eureka. Eureka, the birth of democracy, they say, the ultimate example of the Australian’s refusal to bow to authority. All those things are true, just as Phar Lap was a supreme racehorse and Bradman’s average was 99.94. But the Eureka Stockade rebellion was over a 30-shillings-a-month tax. Some nations have rebelled because they weren’t able to worship their God without persecution, some to end slavery, some to enfranchise the poor, but we rebelled in defiance of a $3 tax. Of course other issues were involved. There was a surge towards freedom from the English yoke, rights for the workers, freedom of speech; all very admirable sentiments, would we were rebelling for them today. The fervent pledge of the Eureka rebels was, ‘We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.’ Or, in other words, natural human justice. But it was 1854. The miners were ignoring the plight of the Chinese who had been introduced as cheap labour, but more particularly those passionately egalitarian diggers were living in a district which had just waged war on the Wathaurong, Djab wurrung, Djagurd wurrung and Djadja wurrong. The defeated
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armies of these people could be seen moving from one temporary habitation to another like Rebel soldiers caught in Union states at the end of the American Civil War. The men of Ballarat stood at the barricades and the women sewed their rebel flag, determined not to pay a 30 shillings licence, but not one of them lifted a finger in defence of the defeated guerrillas they walked past every day. There was a time when I would have taken the Southern Cross as a national emblem but after reading my country’s history it would be anathema to salute the Eureka flag because it ignores too much. The flag has been usurped by Bikie gangs, just as the patch of Rebel flag on an American biker too often advertises drugs. Like so many of our best qualities the Eureka flag’s stars are compromised by our use of them to cover our ignorance and as a badge of brotherhood for scoundrels. The Southern Cross constellation is meant to represent the unique Australian identity but for at least 60,000 years it represented the Bram bram bult brothers throwing spears at the giant emu, Tchingal, who killed the Creator spirit, Waang. Each star in the constellation represents either protagonists in the battle or the spears they threw. Sadly, if that were a Tibetan or Balinese story Australians would have carvings of the deities on their coffee tables or keyrings. Our confusion, our inability to frankly examine the past, leads us to look to other countries for history and culture and quite often for spiritualism. Mired in this muddle we often seem confounded by what is happening in our country. The last few years of Australian history have revealed our potential to be seduced by the obvious mistruth. It is difficult to believe a transparent lie, but not impossible if it is a lie upon which your identity is founded. Lies can obscure ignorance sustained by self-interest and render crimes against humanity palatable. It takes courage to admit mistakes and even greater courage to repair the damage our lies have perpetuated. If we choose racism and self interest over tolerance and self-knowledge then we must blame ourselves if the name of Australia and Australians is held in less regard than we like to believe. The foundations of Australian racism did not finish on the frontier. Nationalists, educators, republicans and royalists have
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mounted public campaigns decrying Australian ignorance of the early Federation prime ministers, but being able to parrot a name on ‘Wheel of Fortune’ or ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ is no advance in national identity. Let us examine what our first two prime ministers stood for. Edmund Barton, Australia’s first prime minister and favourite quiz question, addressed Parliament on 7 August 1901, on the problem of Kanaka labour once their role in cane farm clearance was complete. The difference in intellectual level and the difference in knowledge of the ways of the world between the white man and the Pacific Islander cannot be bridged by acts or regulations about agreements. This difference between the two races is that one is above the other. The difference being in human mental stature, as of character as well as of mind and these differences cannot be put aside by passing 50 laws or one thousand regulations…we are guarding the last part of the world in which the higher races can live and increase freely for the higher civilization. I place before the House a measure of definite and high policy.’ 19
The early days of Federation were ablaze with fear that the pure white race of Australia could be polluted by blacks and Asiatics. Alfred Deakin, the second prime minister, said ‘Unity of race is an absolute essential to the unity of Australia. It is more, actually more in the last resort than any other form of unity.’20 ‘Little more than a hundred years ago Australia was a Dark Continent [without] a white man within its borders. Its sparse native population was as black as ebony…In another century Australia will be a White Continent with not a black or dark skin among its inhabitants.’21 This is what leaders of the country thought. Is this the heritage of foundation history? That’s the question I want asked and answered on ‘Wheel of Fortune’. It will take very brave Australian men and women of many different colours and faiths to leap from the trenches into the hail of cynical fire from those who believe a war was never fought on this land, that no decent Aussie man could commit rape and murder as if he were no better than a heathen. There has been blood spilt here and the land calls on us to honour the battlefield and its warriors, to cry out for peace, for an honourable end to the war. 112
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And the start of that progress is to imagine the humanity of your foe and to imagine what it is like to lose your entire country and most of your people. Those in possession only ever ask that question of the dispossessd when they are dead, ensuring, I suppose, that you don’t receive an awkward answer. But should civilisations be built in that way? Refusal to grapple with history is the source of the national migraine. Today’s conscience is a small voice but it whines inside us like a dentist’s drill and we try to dismiss that annoyance by dulling the pain rather than correcting the cause. If it was a rotten tooth we’d tear it from our head. Australians are no better or worse than the best and worst in any country but we have the advantage over most nations in having usurped bountiful natural resources and inherited some cherished institutions built upon the theory that all of us are built in God’s image and deserve equal treatment. It is a wonderful model except when it’s forced on a people who have what they think is one better suited to their land. To take land from the Iraqis, impose democracy and hand it back once the resources are exhausted does not guarantee anyone’s liberty. In Australia the resources have been usurped but it’s more difficult to impose democracy because it was already practised here and more perfectly than anywhere on earth. Decision making was never the province of a chief but supervised by a council of elders, sometimes men and women separately, sometimes together. Some Australian Aboriginal nations left the matter of warfare to the decision of women. All adult members contributed equally to the provision of the group’s needs and all received enough for their requirements including the old and incapacitated. One of the benefits of the skin system was that no-one at any stage of their life would be left without someone who was responsible for their welfare.22 Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, probably is a duck. Sounds like democracy to me. The rod of the black usher and the Speaker’s magnificent chair are no different in effect from the stone circle and alcheringa handed down to the elders from one generation to another over thousands and thousands of years, a tradition of government so deliberate and conservative that no war was undertaken for the purposes of land annexation. 113
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The ancient stability of all Aboriginal languages is proof of their existence over millennia, and their intimate linguistic connection to a specific landscape is proof that they have remained in that place since the language was developed. The languages often refer directly to geographic events which occurred within the clan boundaries, sometimes 50,000 years before. No Genghis Khan swept across the continent eliminating cultures as he went. The languages record events from an age no other language on earth remembers. That language and that language alone observed the geographical phenomena of particular regions and allows us to place that language and its speakers in time and place. The Australian heritage is unique on earth. What would happen if Australians embraced the civilisation they’ve usurped in order to better love and understand their stolen land? What would happen if heroes of democracy sat down somewhere, Speaker’s chair or not, and charted a way forward which acknowledged the sophistication and worth of the Indigenous civilisation as well as the inevitable arrival of another successful cultural evolution? That meeting of minds and morals cannot occur when the debate is at the level of ‘they didn’t invent the wheel’, ‘they didn’t farm the land’, ‘they didn’t wear decent clothes’. Let’s analyse such claims and in the analysis we’ll see some revelations about the nature of this land we’ve begun to call Australia. Why should it take a former AFL footballer, Michael Long, to walk to Canberra in protest before the prime minister will agree to discuss national Indigenous affairs publicly? Why don’t Australians demand that the only colonial nation yet to make treaty with those they dispossessed gather their collective honour and begin the process, even if like Long, they have to shame parliamentary representatives into a policy consideration beyond the pragmatics of economic advantage and international aggression? It was only a few years ago that Tasmanians took Islamic refugees to their hearts. What went wrong in the meantime? It was not so long ago that Australians passed a referendum with an overwhelming majority to allow Aboriginal people to be counted in the Census and for the federal government to legislate for Aboriginal people. How did we allow a prime minister to destroy
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the High Court’s decision in favour of the Wik people’s claim to have access, access not ownership, to the land they’d lived on before other human’s had begun to talk. As Wesley Enoch said in Richard Frankland’s Charcoal Club, John Howard wasn’t big enough for prime ministership so he shrank the country. We don’t need to secure our own economic stability at the expense of the fundamental morality of every religion practised in the country. It’s possible to vote for a political party and still expect that party to respect national moral codes. We can demand that the Labor Party object to the invasion of Timor; we can refuse to allow children to be incarcerated without trial; we can insist on every mother’s right to see her children outlive her. None of those things need cost the country more than say a failed international currency investment, or the refurbishment of Parliament House. In fact most can be achieved with no more expense than the application of decent Christian ethics. There are two fundamental Australian truths. One: Black people have proven they will not go away despite the exaggerated reports of their demise. Two: White people won’t go away either despite what some Aboriginal people wish to believe. We’re stuck with each other and we’re stuck with our land. What a magnificent prospect.
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The Great Australian Face It was not just character being forged in the frontier furnace but the entire skeleton and genetic structure. Companionways in ships and lighthouse inspection platforms were designed for men who stood 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm) in their imperial socks. Their native-born Australian sons and daughters soon outstripped the height of their parents and grandparents. The features of their faces were changing too. If you look at pictures of the first squatters and then turn to photos of generations ten, twenty and even 150 years later you see a remarkable transformation. The faces are wider and stronger, the lips and noses fuller and we know from our own ancestors that the character became more reticent, stoic and laconic. Sociologists have speculated on the influence of diet and the loneliness and hardships of the bush to explain both appearance and behaviour but the Indigenous influence is always ignored. In 1836 the Aboriginal population of Port Phillip is calculated variously at 11,000 (Manning Clark) and 7500 (Edward Stone Parker, Assistant Aboriginal Protector) while Charles Sievwright’s population census of 1839 counts three clans, Barrabool, Colijon and Kirrae wurrong, as numbering 1000 with the Djab wurrung outnumbering all three. Noel Butlin, using population modelling techniques for the year 1841, came up with 30,000 for the Western District although Critchett believes this is too high and favours Lourandos’ claim of 8000.1 These calculations applied conservatively across Victoria would suggest a population somewhere between 30,000 and 70,000.
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But it is the size of the European population which is most crucial to this analysis. In 1837, Europeans numbered around 500 in Port Phillip with almost no women among them. By 1838 this population has climbed to 3500 but still only 430 are females and perhaps only 200 to 300 are adult women. How were the other 3300 men, most of whom were convicts or penniless shepherds, sating their lust? Duck shooting? No, 3300 white men do not just twiddle their thumbs; they engage in sexual activity ranging from violent rape to sexual slavery and sometimes consensual cohabitation. Almost every record of contact between black and white in the period 1835–1845 attests to the brutal treatment of Aboriginal women who were stolen, raped and enslaved often after the murder of their menfolk. As the Silent War progressed, the population of adult Aboriginal males plummeted and the numbers of white men increased. Under these circumstances Aboriginal women were more likely to cohabit voluntarily with white men. In the early months there are reports of mixed-race children being eliminated by the Aborigines but soon these children represent the continuation of the race as the war and introduced venereal disease reduced the fertility of Aboriginal clans. After about 1838 the number of mixed-race births in Port Phillip increase dramatically, far outnumbering the arrival of European children. While investigating my own family records of this period I studied the birth records of the Wonthaggi–Cape Paterson and Geelong–Ballarat regions. In the six years from 1845 to 1851 identified white births represent less than 20 per cent of the total record while most of the other entries declare that the names of both mother and father are unknown. For a day old child you can’t discover the mother’s name? She had to be attached to the child’s lips but like the war she is both forgotten and invisible. Black domestic servants on frontier properties are commonplace, their children many and their fathers reluctant to acknowledge their unofficial offspring. The suffusion of Aboriginal genes into the white population begins slowly but, as more children are enslaved as domestics, the number of fairer Aboriginal women who slip almost unnoticed into the white population increases.
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Turn the pages of photo albums from that era, perhaps your own family album, and watch the profiles change. The finer features of the English gradually transmute. The increase in height is attributed by historians exclusively to diet but is equally influenced by the transmission of genes for longer limbs received from Aboriginal women. Aborigines towered over people like Captain Cook, Governor Arthur and Foster Fyans and yet within the space of one generation the nation’s ‘white’ men and women are taller, leaner and stronger. The tall, slim limbed, Australian type as represented by Drysdale and bush folklore is not achieved entirely on a diet of mutton and potatoes; the subtle insurgency of genes is an unseen battalion. And the manner? The restraint, the reticence in strange company, is that to be blamed entirely on eucalyptus and wattle, or did some 3300 men create children who learnt such attributes from their mothers? And those mothers were the exclusive influence on behaviour because the fathers buckled their trousers and sauntered off to build a nation. Germaine Greer speculates on the source of the Australian accent and considers that the accent arrived, with a large new component of vocabulary, from the Aboriginal population. ‘The broad flat vowels, complex diphthongs and murmuring nasalities’ came not from Ireland and the English cockney dialect but from the land itself.2 Typically, Greer takes a provocative approach to the facts, because it’s obvious that the British were a huge influence on the Australian accent, but why is it so different from the New Zealand accent? Does the difference lie in the two different Indigenous language influences? The Maori influencing the pronunciation of a and e in New Zealand and the Aboriginal language flattening and drawing out the vowels in Australia? After solving the nature of the Australian accent, Greer moves on to wonder about that reticence and reserve of Australians. She claims there is no precedent for it in our other heritages. She wonders about the unequivocal nature of mateship too, the non-prying, non-judgmental nature. Greer speculates that the original bond between post-colonial men may have been an amalgam of frontier conditions and isolation, as well as the influence of ‘neighbours’
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in whose company, like it or not, those first generations of white men drove the cattle, wielded axe and crowbar and yarned around the fire in otherwise lonely corners of the bush. She’s a drama queen, is Germaine, but behind the theatricality and attention seeking there are acute observations and provocative questions. Australia is much blended since colonial times. The Chinese influence was almost negligible in the south but more marked in the north, but the arrival in the twentieth century of Italians, Greeks, Germans, Slavs, Vietnamese and Poles had a massive impact on Australian features and character. Sit on any tram or train today and you can see the overwhelming evidence of recent migration, but study the features of older Australians and you will see the distinctive characteristics of those early frontier years. Any family who can trace their Australian history to 1840–1880 probably has a better than 70 per cent chance of sharing the genes of the Indigenous population. That trace of blood doesn’t mean much unless you want it to but it’s surprising that it hasn’t produced a greater empathy for Australia’s great-great-grandmothers. Or perhaps it is naïve to be surprised; perhaps the victorious invaders not only write the history but white out their grandparents. Perhaps the valiant ‘explorers and settlers’ don’t show much empathy to anyone for to do so makes a mockery of their exploration, their famed discoveries. They certainly ignore the merest skerrick of ignoble birth. Recently I wandered into the Wyndham Hotel in southern New South Wales and enjoyed a quiet ale while perusing the photos of all their footy teams since the Ark hit Mount Ararat. I saw some mates from the past including a lot of blackfellas. The Wyndham Wedgies Grand Final team of 1988 was composed almost entirely of black men and from just two or three families by the look of it. I wondered how many in the district share that blood. I wondered how many were proud of it. I wondered if the committee with the humour to call their under-twelve side the Wedgie Mites acknowledged and embraced the black faces in their teams. What would it mean to our country if we could celebrate our entire family? Might we feel an enormous sense of relief in not having to avert our gaze from issues and people we’ve ignored for so long?
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Perhaps by the time of our next national celebration we may have taken a lead from the creators of the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony and embraced our more complex national traits along with the safe icons of surf board, Hills Hoist and Vegemite. At the time of the bicentenary it was de rigueur to discover a convict ancestor, as long as they were transported for a crime worth celebrating, like Irish rebellion, stealing silver or hankies, swearing at a policeman, that sort of honourable crime. Maybe there will come a time when the lost descendants of Kaarwirn Kunawarn will discover their black heritage. Hopefully that may provoke an interest in the study of our real national roots and instincts. Perhaps. Aboriginal identity is not a hot social cachet at the moment but communities are sometimes visited by people newly discovering their inner Indigene and wanting to receive both the blessing and benefits of their birthright. Too often these people disappear never to be heard from again until you receive a job application bearing the statement of their identity. People of broken and distant heritage like me usually make the mistake of barging into their rediscovered community expecting to be greeted like the Prodigal Son. The reality is more difficult, humbling and troubling than could ever be imagined. Such people are Johnny-come-latelys and, never having experienced the shame of racism, the pain of being removed from family or the simple financial disadvantages of Aboriginal Australia, it is impossible for them to fully understand what it is to be Aboriginal. You’ve lost contact with your identity and in quite profound areas it can never be reclaimed. You might become familiar with the language, the country of your heritage, some aspects of the culture: you will regain family, but because you were not there doing the hard yards, not there when you were needed, you cannot fully appreciate the experience of your brothers and sisters. It would be insulting to think you did. As a result of this limited experience you cannot assume authority or the position of spokesperson. You might be very good at some skills you received courtesy of your uninterrupted family life and education, but in Aboriginal terms you know nothing and while your skills might be appreciated for their utility you will need to learn to shut up, particularly to restrain that white characteristic
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to leap into overdrive when your individual rights are challenged. White Australia, western culture in general, encourages, indeed insists that you stand up for your rights in the most assertive manner possible. It’s called free enterprise democracy. Aboriginal Australia drinks from a different spring. Black communities may have been seared by disadvantage but respect for the authority of elders is an enduring characteristic. Those who choose to explore their heritage and embrace the results will have to acquire manners for which their white lives have never prepared them. You will need to watch out for the peculiarities of the Australian public record too. Tracing family in early Australia is made difficult by the cavalier topiary of family trees, often pruned of a few early branches, especially old black wood. Despite these difficulties it is strange that Australians with their confusion and angst about national identity have not taken more pride in their legitimate claim of affiliation with a land and history reaching back 70–100,000 years, to a civilisation which probably created the first tools and art, language and dance, possibly watercraft and music. It’s even more remarkable that the demonisation of the Indigenous population by the invaders can staunch empathy 125 years later. The impotence of that empathy, however, cannot deny the fecundity of the mid 1800s and the impact it has had on Australia’s genetic imprint. We are the product of our parents’ genes, what we eat, where we eat it and what we dream. What will we dream in the next few decades?
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Golden Boy John Howard, the current Prime Minister of Australia, refers to any questioning of the contact period of Australian history as a black armband conspiracy and in this he is supported by those historians who prefer the manly derring-do of the frontier. There are, however, no absolute rights and wrongs. To query the accepted history is not to be a lily-livered apologist, to retch at the portrayal of Indigenes as noble savages is not racism personified, and to ponder that which our political, legal, religious and educational systems have hidden is not un-Australian. If you are born here it is impossible to be un-Australian, we are stuck with you and you with us, we are the sum of each other; the only thing we must not do is air-brush the Australian character. Take Governor La Trobe, for instance. La Trobe is wheeled out every time someone wants to provide examples of colonial virtue. And why not? The British establishment loved him. He was a flower of their civilisation: cultured, elegant, well travelled, influential. He was, at various times botanist, geologist, musician, writer, gifted artist and dedicated naturalist. He advised government on the emancipation of slaves in America and so, with all his other gifts, he was seen as the right man to civilise the Aboriginal people of Port Phillip. His views accorded with the liberal anti-slavery movement which held influence in the British parliament and, when he arrived in Australia, he was accompanied by established good will. The locals, however, were a difficult audience to please, toughened by their own hardships and cynicism, calculating in the protection of their own advantage and impatient for independence
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from British colonial law, particularly where it applied to the rights of Aboriginal people or the provision of all arable lands to the free settlers. The hardheads of Port Phillip found La Trobe’s finicky dress and diction more foppish than formal and his giggling laughter more effeminate than authoritative. They used both to undermine him. In many other ways he should have been a man they could admire. His endurance on horseback was phenomenal and he was a capable bushman who undertook some of the most difficult contemporary journeys of ‘exploration’, qualities which should have made him an outright favourite in the colony had it not been for his insistence on maintaining the Colonial Office line, and most infuriatingly, espousing the rights of the Indigenous population. Murders would be investigated, rapes prosecuted, illegitimate seizure of land prohibited, all of them matters which impinged on the squatters’ unfettered enjoyment of their new realm. La Trobe was the representative of unpopular laws and opinions but privately he believed that the Indigenous people of Australia were beyond civilisation, ‘a race of beings who were never intended to be swaddled at all, that they were wild animals living off an uncouth continent’. 1 They showed no inclination to adopt the British culture, they walked about naked, they were lusty, all things La Trobe was not. In this regard he reflected the liberal philosophy and the great blind spot in its humanitarian program: imperialism. They never considered that any sentient being given the opportunity to become an Englishman would refuse. Passionate ideas of elevating the ‘natives’ above their unholy state in order to join their brethren in education and religion is fundamental in the rationale of all imperial forces, whether of arms or holy book. The notion that ‘savages’ could or should occupy land before reaching a particular point of civilisation was untenable to the free thinkers of the colonial era and perhaps remains so. For a definition of civilised read: just like me. The seizure of lands was universally accepted because the soldiers of arms and commerce saw it as a simple military campaign of commercial logic, and the missionaries could not spread the
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word of the Lord while the Indigenes remained independent or engaged in warfare. Dispossession reduced the clans to poverty and dependence, just the position in which a missionary might begin his work and raise the ‘savages’ out of the muck of their unholy sin. As in every imperial campaign since time began the invading force sought to justify occupation and murder by arguing that the debased values of the incumbent couldn’t represent sovereignty and the old chestnuts of infanticide, cannibalism and promiscuity were raised. This tactic allowed the proponent to ignore evidence that infanticide was often the result of an unwanted pregnancy from a white rape, and ‘cannibalism’ was always associated with one of several rituals usually associated with mourning. No reliable first-hand accounts report casual consumption of flesh. Aboriginal magic men claimed they could operate on people and remove malignant stones and kidney fat. This claim was ridiculed by Europeans, of course, because only they were capable of surgery. William Thomas expressed his incredulity of such feats but an Aboriginal man demonstrated how he could incise the body and then draw the edges of the cut together so that Thomas could not find where the cut had been made.2 The promiscuity Aborigines were accused of indulging in may have been nothing more than a liberal sexual attitude which Englishmen found abhorrent. Rape was not so abhorrent to the English, however, or the prostitution of women. The claims of unChristian behaviour always seem to spring from economic rather than moral imperatives. Once access to the traditional lands and diet was prohibited, the houses destroyed, watercourses fenced, trespassers shot, the clans had no resort other than the missions or that famous sanctuary of all disenfranchised people, poverty, and all its attendant desperations. But always the theft perpetrated on the oppressed is blamed upon their fantastic immorality. Organisations of the rabid right accused Russians of eating their own children as recently as the 1950s; Jews were accused of every mythological sin under the sun in the 1930s; Amazonian Indians are demonised for homosexuality today; Afghanis throw their children overboard: any slander will do so long as it provides access
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to lands and wealth desired by an imperial enemy and absolves the imperial crimes. One of the most common colonial ploys was to pretend that nobody lived on the land and if they did were of such low intelligence that they couldn’t farm, build houses or show any of the other skills associated with ‘civilisation’. This is one of several colonial amnesiac devices. When Batman saw the weirs and dams and the 4-feet high walls (1.2 metres) of the fish traps could he fail to appreciate the skill and level of social organisation required to build them? When any of the squatters travelling west came upon the villages of stone and turf houses could they convince themselves that they had been built by an inferior race? Some of those early white tourists would have been born in almost identical dwellings. Witnesses to the miles and miles of water races and aquaculture arrangements must have understood the labour involved in the construction and the sophistry of the design. Those who saw women tending acres of gardens could not have avoided comparison with agricultural practices anywhere and some, including Andrew Todd and GA Robinson sketched lines of women harvesting the yam pastures. The colonists certainly had an appreciation of the nutritional value of the plant, or at least their sheep did, because most of those gardens were grazed flat as soon as the flocks arrived. So closely did the sheep crop the Myrnong, yam daisy, that the plant was eliminated from most areas of Victoria one season after the arrival of sheep and with it went the staple vegetable of the people of south-east Australia. Nothing, short of murder, could place more stress on any population. The industry of the people of western Victoria seems to have been all but excised from history, but archaeologist Heather Builth has measured more than 100 square kilometres of landscape modified for eel farming by the Gundidjmara people alone. Some of the channels are tunnelled through rock and are over 30 kilometres long. The produce from this system was capable of feeding over 10,000 people in perpetuity and would not have been built to that capacity if it were not required. To take advantage of the harvest smoke houses were set up to cure the surplus fish — ensuring prolonged availability of protein. Some of those smoking ovens can still be seen today.
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Builth says that ‘a society takes a quantum leap in sophistication when it can produce a surplus of food, because the community has more time to devote to pursuits other than basic survival’.3 This farming operation has been radiocarbon dated to 8000 years making it one of the most ancient agricultural pursuits in the world, certainly the most complex and the Gundidjmara the world’s most developed race at that time in history. Similar practices are found throughout Australia so it takes an enormous effort of self delusion to eliminate this evidence from your mind and the public discourse. Builth believes this ignorance is partially explained by the fact that by the time archaeologists arrived in Australia the people living on the most desirable lands had been all but eliminated, and much of the evidence of their occupation erased in a deliberate program of destruction. Archaeologists only witnessed Aboriginal people living traditional or semi-traditional lives in the arid regions where large-scale agriculture, apart from wild grain harvests, was impossible — for anyone. Today these people are often cited by white Australians as the only real Aborigines. Try telling that to the Gundidjmara. We need to examine this period of history with much more sophisticated tools of enquiry than have been used to date. Victoria’s Archaeological Survey examined the same area as Builth in 1990 and concluded the stone arrangements were not house foundations at all. Builth re-examined the area with precise scientific tests and proved the stones had been laid as house foundations. We need to examine our history with the cataracts removed. We also have to understand the level of deception and obfuscation required to defeat the best attempts of the liberal idealists of the British Colonial Government. If anyone could have found a way through this intimidating maze it was TJ La Trobe but even his skills and refinements were no match for colonial greed. In the face of all the lies published by the colonial press on behalf of its entrepreneurial owners, La Trobe attempted to do the job he’d been paid to do. He was thorough, resourceful, energetic and, in the main, fair, but set deep in his heart was the old imperial arrogance: he simply did not believe the displaced people deserved as much of God’s gifts as their white ‘brothers’.
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In 1839, throughout the whole colony, there were fewer than five people who knew more than a handful of Aboriginal words and none of these was in a position of any power. Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines, and William Thomas, Assistant Protector, recorded a substantial amount of language, but by that time their positions were publicly ridiculed and the squatters, through the newspapers owned by John Pascoe Fawkner and other colonists, were undermining the whole Protectorate system and any attempts to ameliorate the poverty of the dispossessed. La Trobe, who might have intervened, was busy wondering if the Indigenes were blessed by the same God as an Englishman. James Dawson and his daughter amassed a wealth of information and could speak fluently with the Kirrae wurrong and their neighbours but Dawson’s own race ostracised him as a ‘nigger lover’. The colony had shut its ears and eyes to the Indigenous culture and once those people were removed from their traditional lands and villages, and in most cases their family, the press gloatingly depicted them as disease ridden, alcoholic fringe dwellers; perfect bait for the cartoonists and pamphleteers, the journeymen of imperialism. This imperious blindness became a deliberate lust for blood in some, an unheralded opportunity such as any war provides to commit unpunished murder, but in many others it was simply the old arrogance of one culture despising another for its difference, and in Australia’s case a culture which had developed fundamentally different value systems and spiritual understandings. The Kulin Nation evolved from the people who produced the world’s most sophisticated stone blades and axes, the first art, the first canoes and the first democratic organisation. Schoolteachers go purple when I advise their students of these facts, politicians draw me aside at Australia Day ceremonies and caution me about lying to the Australian people, but when have the Australian people objected to that? The stone technology of Australia was in advance of any other contemporary technology, and, if the dating of art sites throughout Australia is correct, then Aboriginal Australians were the first to paint, sculpt and make petroglyphs. The petroglyphs themselves are probably the first word symbols. The antiquity of Australian
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languages seems thousands of years in advance of any other language development and was certainly unrivalled in sophistication. With language came dance and song so it is inconceivable that Australia did not lead the world in these developments. The subject matter of the art forms is sufficient on its own to vouch for their antiquity. Paintings of outrigged canoes and bark coracles are of such great age that water craft may well have originated here too. I can find no evidence to dissuade me from this view, so if teachers don’t like it they’d better start encouraging young historians to research the claims and if politicians find it treasonable they’d better provide those young students with financial support to test the theory. Of course it is contestable but the evidence available points toward a highly sophisticated culture and to deny it will require the most recent archaeological dating of art and technology to be found wanting. I’m only an Archaeological Site Worker not a qualified stone cruncher but the evidence seems undeniable to me. Prove me wrong or prove me right but at least enter the field without old colonial prejudice. The Indigenous Australians did not invent the wheel as former Communications Minister, Richard Alston, so usefully pointed out, but then kangaroos are neither co-operative nor useful in harness. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel analyses the requirements for the wheel and finds only eight animals in the world with the characteristics needed to perform the task. Kangaroos, echidnas and platypus are not among them. Without llamas, reindeer or oxen the wheel could not be conceived. There were no symphonic orchestras, no banks, no prisons, but the people were mobile and above all happy, healthy and intelligent. They didn’t possess pianos and violins but the entire population was responsible for the maintenance of their culture. Dance and musical performances with over a thousand choreographed participants were common then and continue today. The contrapuntal musical forms are as complex as can be conceived and yet most Australians are under the impression that Aboriginal music is crude. I wondered about the style myself until I saw the music, dance and storytelling come together in a complex performance covering five days at the West Arnhem Land Garma festival at Yirrkala in 2004. All Australians should witness it before claiming they know what it is to be Australian. 128
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William Buckley tried to communicate the depth and breadth of Wathaurong culture and was ridiculed mercilessly when he tried to convince the Port Phillip squatters of their sophistication. In the face of his insistence they tired of representing him as an example of the endurance of British manhood and instead used his experience as a caution to the lower classes of falling back into bestiality. There could be no worse fate for an Englishman than going native. The difficulties facing La Trobe in his imperial myopia are most clearly evidenced in the massacres which took place at Cape Otway from 1846 to 1848. In many respects you could read it as the great Australian frontier story and most of our historians have seen it in this light: brave colonial treks into remote mountains where no man has set foot so that sailors might sleep soundly in their bunks and fair English lasses may emigrate in the sure knowledge that Lieutenant Governor La Trobe has set a beacon on the Cape to light their way. Hurrah, hurrah! It is partly true. La Trobe knew that the increasing traffic through Bass Strait and the many tragic ship wrecks at Cape Otway and King Island meant that some white man had to force his way through the forest to find a position for a Light and La Trobe knew that man was himself, one of the best bushman–explorers in the colony. Hundreds of ships were bringing eager migrants to Port Phillip and every one of them had to ‘thread the needle’ between Cape and King. Most wrecked ships had failed to identify which coast they were approaching with the resultant loss of over 100 ships and thousands of lives. More importantly for the merchants, their businesses were suffering. No responsible governor could allow these disasters to continue. The colony was clamouring for a lighthouse at Cape Otway but no-one had ever seen the cape from the land side. Enter La Trobe, man of the hour. In 1845 he made his first attempt from the east but was beaten back by the heavily forested ravines.4 Next he tried from the west with an Aboriginal, Tommy, who was ‘lent’ to him by the Hopkins River squatter, Henry Allan. Tommy took La Trobe on a track to the bank of the Gellibrand River but was afraid to encroach into Gadubanoot lands and they had to turn back. Eventually La Trobe found the Cape with Allan in 1846 and marked a suitable site for a lighthouse, but they turned 129
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on their heels immediately that was done, afraid they were being followed. The first attempts to penetrate the hinterland forests of the Otways were unsuccessful until it occurred to some genius to ask a local who, in the droll manner of most locals, enquired if they had tried the track! The Otways were networked with a series of Aboriginal walking tracks and, far from being cut off from all outside contact, the Gadubanoot had been enjoying relations with neighbouring clans for millenia as is obvious from language and cultural convergences. Nevertheless La Trobe thought he was the first white official to achieve the Cape, a triumph of bushcraft in anyone’s language and it should have been a moment of unalloyed success for the determined Englishman; but a war hardly ever permits such luxury. Also in 1816 he sent George D Smythe of the Survey Department to survey the Cape Otway coast and the lighthouse precinct. Smythe was an accomplished bushman too, but had been found by Assistant Protector Parker to have been living in flagrant immorality with a group of Aboriginal women and young girls on his Pentland Hills property. Smythe soon had a surveying party at the Cape but one of his party, the seaman James Conroy, was murdered by the Gadubanoot while guarding stores at Blanket Bay. Smythe returned to Melbourne to advise La Trobe of the incident and seek permission for a retaliatory attack. La Trobe appointed Smythe as an honorary constable with a warrant to arrest Meenee Meenee. No-one knew for sure that Meenee Meenee had committed the murder but he was the only Gadubanoot anyone knew by name and he was known to aggressively defend his people’s lands. Smythe led a party of Europeans and Barrabool blacktrackers and they joined another ‘heavily armed posse consisting of William Roadknight and his men’.5 Roadknight had already taken up land south and west of Birregura, and would later covet the Aboriginal Missions at Buntingdale and elsewhere, undermining missionaries and Protectors so that La Trobe would despair and dispose of the lands to him and his mates. Roadknight also used the common ploy of arming a party of foreign blacks so they could attack the Barrabools who were attempting to retain land ‘too good for a
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nigger’. He had stock pasturing on Cape Otway having found access to the Cape, shortly before La Trobe, by extending Henry Allen’s track. So, a perfect deputy for Smythe. They came upon a group of Gadubanoot and Smythe claimed he ‘lost control’ of the Barrabools who massacred most of the tribe. Roadknight had used Goulburn blacks to attack Barrabools and now he brought Barrabools to attack Gadubanoot. Survivors of the resultant massacre, however, told a missionary that they were shot down by whites and the Barrabool ran away as they were on foot and unarmed and that Conroy had been murdered for raping Gadubanoot women.6 A novel way of guarding the stores! It’s interesting to note that the Indigenous law held rape as a capital offence but contemporary English law hardly penalised ‘ravishment’. Ian Clark in Scars in the Landscape documents all the massacre sites of western Victoria and reports that documentary evidence exists only for the Smythe atrocity at Cape Otway, but local information suggests two at least, probably three, and perhaps more.7 There is still plenty to do if we want to find out how we came by the land. But are we courageous enough? Forty-two years after the Smythe attack this recollection appeared in the Age on 8 January 1887. The letter is signed JH and this may have been Joseph Hawdon who overlanded sheep to Port Phillip from Sydney some time shortly after 1835. He reports: The [Aborigines] looked upon Smythe with feelings of awe and terror, and he was fond of amusing himself at their expense. There could not have been a better man for leading the enterprise of vengeance, upon which his comrades were bent. He had influence too, from family connections at headquarters. He made a formal application for the despatch of an armed expedition to bring in the murderers. Mr Superintendent La Trobe was too timid a man to sanction any expedition on a large scale, but he authorised Mr Smythe to exercise his own judgement…The very absence of instructions was an advantage in the party. They had a roving commission to do what they thought best, and were free from responsibility to any particular official…they at last started for the unknown region of Cape Otway, taking with them a black of the Djilong [Geelong] tribe to serve as a tracker.
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They were six or seven in all, and they were actuated by a very determined spirit to do their work thoroughly… At length the fateful hour arrived. Early one summer morning the avengers saw, from the summit of a rise, the encampment of the little tribe deep in a hollow…The precise details of what followed the discovery were never divulged, for it was an article of the pact of the avengers that they should say nothing to incriminate each other. There may be some formal record of the transaction, but if there be it cannot be regarded as reliable. Nothing of the kind was ever published. Be that as it may, the broad fact alone remains that, with one exception, the whole of the men and women of the tribe were killed. Whether there were any infants is not known. After the deed was done a young lubra was found crouching behind a tree. She was taken by the party and brought to Melbourne, where she was adopted into the Jaga Jaga tribe. [When anyone survives these attacks it is most often a young woman. B.P] The precise locality is unknown, but probably it will yet be discovered. There is a difficulty in arriving at any judgement on the transaction; for the party were engaged in a lawful quest — the discovery of murderers — and it is easy to suppose that there might have been some collision as rendered the consummation of the work inevitable. To the benefit of whatever doubt there might be the avengers are entitled. The case was not one in which scruples would have much weight…There was no proper public investigation, and the liberty of any member of the party was never interfered with. In private circles, the opinion was freely given that the affair had been hushed up…The statement of the survivor might have been taken, but as the law stood then her evidence without corroboration would have been inadmissible… Some suggested the blacks should have been brought in as prisoners, but they spoke in ignorance. It is not easy to make a blackfellow a prisoner, and probably the party was deficient in the requisite appliances of coercion…Individually they were, no doubt, estimable members of society, but in a corporate capacity they may have been without conscience, and been actuated by no other principle than that of lending each other mutual support. Fear might also have had some influence over them, for they might have felt that if they did not kill the blacks, the blacks would kill them. On all these points the oracle is dumb, and will never speak out. 8
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The oracle is dumb because La Trobe had hold of his tongue. Smythe provided La Trobe with a cursory summary but this adulterated report of the incident landed on La Trobe’s desk and he must have looked upon it with dismay despite the massacre being expressed in euphemism and understatement. Smythe spreads the rumour that the Barrabool blacks had ‘gone wild’. Hawdon says there was only one Geelong Aboriginal present but the wild Barrabools seeking revenge becomes the accepted history while the report on the incident from the missionaries is ignored. For La Trobe it meant that a site which should have been untainted as a glorious memory was clouded with controversy, or would be if he were to release the reports of either Smythe or the Colac missionaries. What was he to do? To reveal the massacre would illuminate his role in sanctioning the retaliatory mission and implicate him in the undeclared war mounted by the squatters and which the Colonial Office had expressly ordered the Lieutenant Governor to avoid at all costs. So, he did what countless politicians have done before and since. Buried it.9 The evidence had been adulterated to make it as palatable as possible, but it was still a fact the British parliament could never digest, so La Trobe hid the reports at the bottom of his drawer and there they stayed. La Trobe was the consummate politician and, like those of his trade, knew the techniques of locking in fellow politicians and the public at large in support of diabolical acts. Were children thrown overboard by Afghani refugees in September 2002? Well, let’s say they were, let’s dehumanise the people, let’s accuse them of crimes they didn’t commit, and if we find that our people committed worse crimes or that evidence existed that no children were thrown overboard, well let’s bury that evidence and lie to the public, because after the lie is in currency for sufficient time it can never be withdrawn and the only damage is that the public will have been stupefied by those people whose job it is to enlighten them. Charles La Trobe folded the papers, stuffed them in his desk and never mentioned the incident again, allowing Smythe’s myth of savage murdering savage to impoverish the public intelligence. La Trobe’s pragmatism may have had an even more subtle purpose. There had to be a lighthouse at Cape Otway. The loss
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of lives and cargoes in the past thirty years had been appalling. Everybody agreed that Bass Strait had to be lit and that Cape Otway was the most important promontory on which to begin. The whole enterprise of settlement depended on it. A lighthouse must be erected and keepers had to keep that light burning. In the state of affairs that existed in 1846 that would be a particularly hazardous exercise. It was a war zone. How could the families be protected? They were light keepers, ex-sailors, hardly a day’s military experience between them. La Trobe knew he had to provide a permanent military force for the light station or he had to remove the threat. The Superintendent was struggling to provide enough police and military protection for any of the widely dispersed squatters, and a special force for just two families was unthinkable. His musings on this conundrum appear nowhere in his correspondence, but then a lot of weighty matters never made it to his reports and letters. La Trobe acted, and he acted with the enthusiastic support of many. Support came from all the likely people: Smythe was only too willing to participate, but the campaign also involved people like Roadknight, a man who, in other compartments of his life, conducted himself with kindness and humour. In Eleanor Parkinson’s diary he is depicted as a kindly man, a man who told the story of how ten had been massacred by Smythe but even though Roadknight was on the Cape at the time he could not have been involved.10 It was unimaginable. But he was. Smythe’s report confirms it. And Roadknight already had cattle pastured there before La Trobe’s visit.11 Who was looking after those cattle? Why was Roadknight so confident he could leave them there and expect them to be unmolested? It is obvious that Roadknight had already solved these problems but Parkinson’s book related the rest of their Cape Otway sojourn as one jolly picnic. There were at least three major campaigns on Cape Otway, probably four, and the number of Gadubanoot people killed in each varies from report to report, anywhere from ten to forty on each occasion. La Trobe may have been on the Cape when one of them occurred; so was Roadknight. Smythe was probably there for two and if the posses bear the same composition as similar
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vigilante forces they would have included some officials, many local landowners and perhaps some convicts. The campaign at Cape Otway was more calculated and determined than at any other location because the lighthouse families must be kept safe at any cost. And the cost to the Gadubanoot was huge. From being one of the last groups to feel the impact of white settlement in 1846 they had been all but eliminated by 1848. And forget disease. The smallpox epidemics had already been and gone. La Trobe and Isaac Hebbe dismiss the numbers of people living on Cape Otway as minimal but don’t believe that; have a look at the ground. The entire Cape is one huge cooking oven and habitation site. Aboriginal people lived there in large numbers and continued to live at the Cape after the lighthouse was built, albeit stealthily. Tools made from lighthouse window glass have been found in the middens and locals report meetings with groups and individuals long after 1848.12 The archaeologist Lourandos found house foundations everywhere in the 1970s. Many are still visible today, but perhaps more importantly surveys in 2001 found the midden at Cape Otway to be the largest unbroken sequence of cooking ovens anywhere in the southern hemisphere. I was told this by Department of Aboriginal Affairs archaeologists and by that stage they hadn’t even looked on the Cape’s western shore. I took archaeologist Brendan Marshall to a beach where I’d seen artefacts, middens and rock wells and he stopped as soon as he set foot on the beach. I told him that the rock wells were further up the beach but he just stood looking at his feet and explained that he was already standing in a strew of artefacts.13 There were hundreds of people living on Cape Otway, in some seasons probably thousands. Squatters report that in the breeding season the bays were red with crayfish, the seas were aswarm with fish, the bush alive with game. Many, many people lived here and did so year round, but by 1848 they had ‘disappeared’. The official records don’t report on where they went or even that they were there, but the ground is proof of their large numbers. But imagine you are La Trobe. You are already harassed by avid squatters, insistent officials in London and Sydney, and
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both provide you with commands which they couch in the most urgent language. You can ask the squatters to stop any further land selections and leave the remaining clans to continue their lives on some of the most agreeable land in the world or you can turn your attention to the removal from those districts of a people who have no representation in London and Sydney, whose evidence is not acceptable in any court of law and whom you personally believe to be no more than wild animals. The golden liberal, the botanist, the artist, the collector of insects new to science, the musician and author allowed history to take its course and simply hid the evidence. It didn’t suit the needs of the colony and the needs of the colony were to establish a myth of Savage brutality and valiant Squatter. Those needs continue today. In 1998 I was employed to organise the 150th birthday celebrations for the Cape Otway Lightstation. Some members of the committee were intent on a full representation of the Light’s history but others accused me of wanting to make a land claim for the station, others refused to allow the Aboriginal flag to be flown, and most turned their back on the Aboriginal elders, Aunty Kath and Uncle Bill Edwards, who had come to represent the Gundidjmara people. I remember sitting with the two elders after seeing the Aboriginal flag raised at last and sharing a pot of tea. It should have been a moment of triumph for us but we sat in silence. People who had promised to respect the ceremony had hindered its performance; people who grovelled at the feet of jumped up politicians turned their backs on the Gundidjmara elders. I have done things in my life of which I am deservedly embarrassed but I have never felt shame like the shame I felt in the Head Light House Keeper’s kitchen that day. A simple ceremony of respect had been used as one more act of denigration. Our country has a complicated history and you can’t have the white without the yolk. Members of the Roadknight family approached me at the same celebration and argued with me that their great-grandfather had nothing to do with the massacres at Cape Otway. Public documents assert otherwise, and I tried to explain the situation as tactfully as I could but they were not to be placated. That day in 1998 was one of the longest and unhappiest
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of my life. It taught me things about my countrymen I’d rather not have known. Roadknight is intimately involved with the events at Cape Otway and probably other conflicts around Birregurra and Forrest but it doesn’t mean his descendants are responsible for those crimes, simply that their forefather had a complex history and a prejudiced morality. They should learn from the experience of Liza Dale-Hallett. Liza is the great-niece of Constable George Murray the instigator of a massacre where over seventy Walpiri were killed at Coniston in the Northern Territory in 1928. She says that ‘before any healing can take place the event has to be faced’.14 Dale-Hallett is now a curator at Museum Victoria. She doesn’t cringe from her family’s past; she has learnt from it. Jean Herbert, whose greatuncle was also involved in the incident says, ‘We want to let the spirits rest in peace…we want to reconcile but not forget’.15 One of my best friends is another Roadknight descendant and among the best and most constructive Australians I know. She expresses her desolation at the impact wrought by her relative but she bears no guilt because, unlike most Australians in this age, she recognises the sophistication of the Indigenous civilisation and supports attempts to redress the wrongs done by her family. We may be related to the frontier but it is not necessary to defend or deny the indefensible and undeniable. Let us draw from the past to make us a better people rather than a paranoid bunch of re-enacters. Eleanor Parkinson describes the fatherly side of Roadknight16 but he had more than one side to his character and the family can’t accept the brave, adventurous explorer and squatter without acknowledging the vigilante exterminator, just as my own family cannot deny, as some documents and correspondents assert, that we are connected to the Winter family of the Wannon River whose reputation as murderers and rapists is hard to surpass. The seed from which we grow comes to us after many generations grown in different plots and different seasons and it is juvenile to pretend that every apple on the family tree is rosy. There is probably no doubt Roadknight was a loving father but we can’t separate the temperament of a man with his slippers
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on from that when he is engaged in acting on his prejudices or self-aggrandisement. When we look at La Trobe’s delicate watercolours we have to remember the sophistry of which his mind was capable when under the pressure of salvaging his reputation. Manning Clark speculates on what it might have cost La Trobe to suppress his liberal instincts, but I don’t care a fig for liberal sensibility, I think it is more important to examine the price at which a man will suppress it for his convenience or profit. The next two massacres at Cape Otway may have resulted from the impression that the murder of Aborigines would be tolerated by the authorities or perhaps from the imperative arising from the placement of builders, keepers and families at the new lighthouse, but more probably for the most simple of all colonial reasons, graziers like Roadknight just wanted the land. Captain Addis, another surveyor, and Foster Fyans are reported to have massacred a clan of Gadubanoot on the Aire River in 1847 and local families believe there was one other massacre where all but one small boy were killed. This boy survived by clinging to the stirrup irons of one of the protagonists’ horses. The boy was taken to Melbourne and delivered to the Police Barracks at South Melbourne and from that point disappears without trace. He may have become one of Missionary George Langhorne’s students, whose school was next door to the barracks, but the historical sources I’ve examined reveal no clue.17 The letter documenting this event was given to me by a family of the Otways, and three other families have divulged secrets of their forefathers’ activities, but the majority seem panic-stricken by the prospect of having their history revealed. Panic leads to vitriol and hatred, vitriol and hatred lead to denial, and denial leads to a history resembling baby food: pleasant, no lumps, easily digestible and quickly eliminated. Intelligent men, good blokes, educated at Victoria’s best schools, will try to argue that the massive midden you are looking at does not represent a large, long-term occupation but an event exaggerated by erosion. There are hammers, knives, saws, needles, mortars and pestles scattered all about our feet, the family’s tractors
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must have ploughed up thousands more, and yet their delusion and faith in the national ignorance encourages them to attempt an argument at which a clever eight-year-old might purse his lips. The midden I’m referring to stretches for over two miles (3.2 kilometres) and most of it has been covered in an encroaching sand dune and we are there because a government authority has made the greatest possible mess of its protection under the rules of the Heritage Act. The midden has been used as a road for 150 years and in that state it was safe from destruction until someone at a desk in Melbourne took fright and decided all the artefacts had to be graded up into several long windrows and then…and then…Well, they actually didn’t have a plan for ‘and then’ and the material is still in ugly windrows, the midden destroyed, the farmers’ access hindered and all for nought, destruction resulting from awful ignorance and sketchy planning. In the same region a ‘pioneer’s great-grandson’ bemoans the fact that his family’s graves are under threat from a development on the cemetery site which overlooks a commanding vista of Bass Strait. He complains to the local press that his good, hard-working forefathers might have their imperial dreams disturbed while the world goes sentimental about the remains of ‘uncivilized’ blackfellows. I actually agree with him. The development in question is about as decadent as you could imagine. The site is historic and the graves should never be disturbed no matter how many war crimes some of the occupants are known to have committed. I reckon we could muster a team of blackfellas tomorrow to repair the fence of the pioneers’ cemetery…But there’s a price; the pioneers’ descendants have to respect the graves and township sites upon which their farms have been situated. They have to return the skulls and finger bones to the graves they took them from, they have to take back their possum-skin rugs to the children of the people from whom they were stolen. That’s what reconciliation is all about, working together, black hand and white hand to honour the graves of all who have died upon this soil. All who have ever died upon the soil. What better way to gain a perspective of the passage of time in this land? It would be humbling…if you could bring yourself to be humble.
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Academics like Brunton and Windschuttle have unwittingly provoked re-assessment of the very history they were trying to purge. Two letter writers enter the pages of Australian Book Review in February 2003 to reject Windschuttle’s theories, one citing massacre reports which Windschuttle must have deliberately ignored in his referencing of documents in which they are contained, and the other recalls a massacre conducted by members of her own family in the 1840s near Camperdown. Bruce Sims, in his review of Robert Lowe’s biography, reflects on those colonists who admit to inhuman crimes and wonders how these admissions are ignored by most historians. Sims says they must be taken seriously because ‘why would they make it up?’18 Fortunately some younger Australians are returning to these primary documents with a more discerning eye than their professors. Good luck to them and may their hides be thick because they will cop a flogging from many for their concern. As Phillip Adams pointed out in his Australian column on 18 October 2003 the bias of our media and the prejudice of many of our historians seems to absolve Australians from engaging with the issues. ‘What can you do?’ seems to be the response. Adams views this attitude of resigned indifference as cowardice. The truth is freely available to anyone who cares to read widely, either by selective scrutiny of the mainstream media or via the Web. We’re dealing with a public that doesn’t want to know. A public that chooses to ignore the truth…a public that proffers the blind eye and deaf ear, preferring to live in the amoral world of blissful, wilful ignorance…The public has to lift its game.
Much of Australian history likes to ignore the mingling of the early families’ genes with Aboriginal blood despite its irrefutable record in even the most sanitised rendering of the past. Some of those records include brazen reference to atrocities which the participants assume will cause no censure in the minds of any of their acquaintance. The letters are brown on the edges, the diaries have pages sticking together, spines cracking with dusty glue, but they exist, I’ve seen some, but hundreds of others languish in drawers where their pages have never been turned or have been 140
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deliberately closed and hidden. The stories to be revealed from those pages will enhance our knowledge of who we are. It will not diminish us; that occurred at the time our ancestors hid from their humanity, but today that knowledge will enhance us because if we find shame there is it too hard to pledge never to repeat such barbarity? We cannot undo acts performed before we were born but it is easy to promise never to kill or injure another man’s wife or child. And that is all it would take. If we just pledged never to harm women and children wars would be unwinnable and for those brutes who enjoy sending others into battle, the frisson of excitement would disappear. Pie in the sky, milksop mawkishness, cowardice? Why? Why must we deliberately suppress the best instincts of our species? It takes neither genius nor valour to ask these questions but it does take some effort and a belief in the honour of human endeavour to answer them. We seem to be running out of time for all but a few of our current generation of historians to take the questions seriously, but I have faith in the young; I am impressed by the degree of moral rigour they continue to display despite the poor examples they are set. I have hope that these people will search the records of their country to find first of all the essence of how they came to inherit the land, and then to ponder the biggest question of all, how we repair justice and honour, how we ensure they are the bedrock of the nation. David Marr believes John Howard and his acolytes may have done us a favour. Previous prime ministers talked of changing Australia for the better…told us some form of national improvement was in the wind. In an odd way, this notion led us to avoid looking Australia in the face…then we didn’t need to bother looking too closely at Australia as it really was… But Howard came with a different message…He wasn’t planning to take us anywhere. He left us no choice but to take a long, hard look at Australia as it really is’.19
Marr may be a little too optimistic, but perhaps we can rely on the next generation of Australians with more confidence than on 141
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those who have presided over our government’s policies in the last decade. Superintendent La Trobe was prepared to engage with that debate in his head but not in public. He wondered what had gone wrong with his administration. How could a watercolourist and botanist find himself so involved in barbarity? La Trobe never found an answer because by the time he’d begun asking himself the question he had decided to seek damage control, hide unpleasant evidence, distort the rest and hope that at the end of his tenure he would remain unscathed. He did. While privately finding some of the squatters brutish and unpalatable company he managed to weave between their grievances and their greed. His high-wire act enabled the new colony to avoid too intense censure from London while cementing justifications for the seizure of Indigenous lands. The British first had to convince themselves or, like the government in 2001, pretend to be convinced, that the people occupying the lands were inferior humans. In this, both La Trobe and Howard were aided by the press, the courts and the avidity of the population. In colonial Australia proselytisers raced around measuring heads, shooting a few specimens for that express purpose, only to resign themselves to the news that the brain pans were identical to, and in many cases larger than, the Standard British Brain Pan. And that would not do at all. So, Plan B, cultural and moral denigration. ‘Evidence’ of bestiality and cannibalism are tossed into the wind and, when the evidence is questioned by London, the colonials become impatient with finicky notions of truth and the war begins. Of course the Indigenous population mounts a resistance and of such strength that in all parts of the country squatters and colonial forces fear being defeated, but over time vastly superior numbers and weapons ensure that the colonists prevail. Cynical politics embeds the result. La Trobe contemplated the task of reigning in the squatters’ greed for land and their belligerence toward the Indigenous population but he knew there was only one easy path; acquiescence with the desires of the powerful. Manning Clark analysed the Lieutenant Governor’s notes and letters and speculated that
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La Trobe must have begun wondering if ‘forbearance was a virtue few savage nations either practised or comprehended’. Clark believes La Trobe’s liberal inclinations must have recoiled from this theory because he was aware that the greatest savagery and absence of forbearance lay in the hearts of his own countrymen.20 The evidence crossed his desk every day. I don’t think he spent as much time on introspection as Clark believed. If the formal policy of the Crown was to show ‘forbearance’ to the usurped Aborigines who was it then who began forging neck rings and ankle shackles in order to drag the Indigenes off their lands and into missions? Someone paid the blacksmith and that someone knew he would never be called to explain. And the blacksmith? Just doing what he was told? La Trobe was in the grip of despair, not within himself for he was not that kind of man, but in relation to the task before him. He knew that greed was inexorable, that the bourgeoisie of Port Phillip had grown fat on the occupied lands and would never tolerate suggestions they had improperly acquired them, and he knew his power and authority was insufficient to challenge the squatters’ interests. Colonists of any sovereign land have more in common than the separation of class and education would suggest. Anyone arriving in the colony must be prepared to engage in theft. Some can only see land to be taken, others only souls to be stolen, but the effect is the same: take the land and replace it with a god and crusts of bread. Publicly La Trobe believed in liberty but privately he viewed the rough republicans with disdain. Publicly he professed the rights of the Aborigines but privately he asked the staff to keep them out of range of his nostrils. Publicly he espoused the new liberties, but privately he felt no good idea ever arose except from the British governing class.21 He was a good man, a talented man, but within his heart was the old, old cultural prejudice which was to affect every decision he made in the colony and the decisions of all men like him, not all with his outlandish talents and refinements, but all immersed in the imperial imperatives of their birth.
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These men forged the steel which was to clasp the necks of the Aboriginal race. In Australia, imperialism reached its most refined form: occupation of the land was swift, elimination of the resistance certain, obliteration of the evidence meticulous. La Trobe stuffed the reports of the massacre into the bottom of his drawer and in 1854 left the country to return ‘home’ where he lived on a substantial government pension and the £16,000 from the sale of his many properties acquired in Port Phillip.
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Don’t Mention the War In 1836 one hundred and seventy-seven concerned citizens of Port Phillip petitioned for a resident magistrate. They cannily lobbied the administration alluding to the custom lost as a result of illicit trade. They complained of the hardships of colonial life and the convicts gone feral to become bushrangers. Aborigines were not mentioned as a threat because the squatters were still attempting to sell the confection that their usurpation of the land had been the result of amicable treaty. A year later, however, and the gloves are off after the murder of Charles Franks. Two white men were killed in Batman’s colony before Franks but they were labourers whom the squatters valued at tuppence a dozen, but the death of one of the squatter class is avenged by the murder of at least thirty-five. It’s probable that it was only one of many massacres in that first year but this is the only one for which there is written evidence, and that evidence exists only because someone made the mistake of allowing the colonial authorities to hear of it. It is the very deterioration of frontier relationships which triggers the squatters’ alarm. They know their vulnerability. Their power as they see it is the Crown and the gun, their weakness is not knowing the bush as well as their enemy. Cognisant of this disadvantage the white posse in the pursuit of Franks’ murderers dragooned four Aboriginal men, Benbow, Baitlange, Ballyan and Derrymock. Squatters relied on the tracking skills and bushcraft of the Indigenous population in their travels through their ‘stations’ but after Franks’ death a pattern emerges of using Aboriginals as aides to police work.
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William Lonsdale as Police Magistrate requests more mounted field assistance and the cursory response from the colonial authorities is to form a mounted police and to ‘use the Aboriginal natives’. Governor Bourke, as harassed as always by the demands to support the leaping of the squatting frogs, decides to take up the suggestion of CLJ De Villiers, a man he knew from his days administering native police in South Africa. The tactic to suppress unrest by pitting black against black had been used there with unerring success and had allowed many atrocities committed by settlers to be blamed on the savages. The speed with which such a scheme could be suggested and employed in Australia is made possible by the British familiarity with the benefits of raising native forces to work outside their own territory. It worked for them in Africa and was brutally effective in India where deliberately Christianised sepoy were used to quieten remote districts. These forces were often used in conjunction with mercenary armies. The colonial administration of India treated the insurgency of rebels trying to protect their lands as a criminal activity rather than battles within the imperial war. They coerced Reddis into a military force in exchange for protection of their right to small land holdings; the tried and true tactic of divide and rule.1 The African and Indian frontiers were very similar to the Australian condition and many Port Phillip squatters, colonial authorities, police and military cut their strategic teeth on the colonial tactics used with such success on the African veldt and the Indian plain.2 Clifton Crais in White Supremacy and Black Resistance points out the African colonists’ ‘attempt to cultivate “loyal” intermediaries…who could provide a buffer of collaboration between the colony and Xhosaland…[who] would yield a supply of hopefully docile, hired servants to the Colonists’.3 The interactions of coloniser and colonised are always debased by the manipulation of every action to the advantage of the colonist. The gambit is not mistaken as an attempt to uplift the heathen barbarian by any but the most gullible. The flowery language and noble rhetoric is code for colonial battle plans. The laudable words Lonsdale used to establish his police mask more deep-seated prejudices. Imperial experience has established 146
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a vocabulary and the skill to manipulate the consciences of both church and state. In forming a body of Aboriginal Blacks under European Superintendence it is wished to combine the desirable objects of making them useful to society, of gradually weaning them from their native habits and prejudices, of habituating them to civilised custom, and from thence if possible, to place them on higher grades of temporal and religious knowledge’. 4
But he also goes on to stress the importance of making the police feel superior to their fellows in order to separate them and thus better able to deliver punishment to clansmen. The Native Police Corps was established in 1837 but in the first year did no policing work other than the establishment of the barracks. Christiaan Ludolph Johannes De Villiers is appointed as the first commandant of the force and develops a good relationship with the Aboriginal recruits but has a dangerous argument with George Langhorne, a missionary charged with the education of young Aboriginals. In fact De Villiers’ haughty pride in being a ‘gentleman’ causes him to dash off two resignations when miffed by the failure of others to acknowledge his lofty station. Langhorne accuses De Villiers of firing on Aboriginal people indiscriminately in 18385 and it is strange that Marie Fels, who wrote a history of the Native Police, never mentions this and other incidents of De Villiers’ behaviour, anxious to paint his relationships with Aboriginal people as entirely positive when in fact his assumptions about the unworthiness of the Port Phillip Aborigines pervade his actions. Mind you the same can be said of Langhorne who declares the Woiwurrung language as being crude and limited despite his lame attempts to penetrate it. After De Villiers leaves the Corps in a huff for the second time he is replaced by Henry Dana who left England when his family’s fortunes plummeted despite good connections and early prosperity. Dana met La Trobe socially and this did his prospects no harm.6 Historians believe he was trained for the Indian service but there is doubt whether he ever served there. It seems likely that his family connections put him in contact with people already in India but 147
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what is not in doubt is that he didn’t finish formal military training. Instead he acquires the title of Captain somewhere between Port Phillip and Van Diemen’s Land after failing to find employment in Hobart.7 His good connections and La Trobe’s desperation allow Dana to be appointed Military Officer of the Native Police without application on 24 January 1842. Many find Dana pompous and abrasive. Edward Curr is amused by Dana’s vanity and scathing of Dana’s affected use of military terminology in the most everyday conversations. Pomposity and self-aggrandisement are not altogether unknown in police ranks, but Dana did establish a good relationship with his Indigenous officers even if in private he referred to them as savage children. The force which had foundered after De Villiers, re-establishes quickly under Dana because some Aboriginal men see prestige in the position as well as a way of survival for their families. The recruits are delighted to be armed and fed after parading in uniform, an easy task for men used to ceremonial ritual in their own culture, but they weren’t so effective in administering justice to their own clans, leading officials on long meandering journeys for miscreant relatives who were never found.8 They are much better, however, at tracking mainmate, men of unrelated clans, where they can use their position to settle old tribal scores and steal wives. In many clashes the Aboriginal members of the corps were unarmed and often on foot but on several occasions they did use their arms against ‘wild blacks’.9 More often than not, however, they are blamed officially for any deaths that occur on patrol. It is interesting to read Fels’ Good Men and True, the history of the Native Police, because this historian, who credits Greg Dening and Geoffrey Blainey for her understanding of the period, goes to great pains to discredit Aboriginal information on the numbers killed in clashes, arguing that Aboriginal numbering was crude and unreliable.10 Aboriginal numeration is only confusing for people who don’t speak the language. The confusion comes in the translation, not in the enumeration of deaths. All numbering systems are repetitive and necessarily sequential and while the numbering system of the Kulin might seem laborious to our computer age it was nevertheless effective and, in any case
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Aboriginal legend is persistent and consistent in indicating the numbers killed. In some of the battles not recorded in our history Aboriginal recollection has been handed down from generation to generation with detail so faithful that the numbers of dead and their names are still recounted today. Fels seems so concerned to paint the relations between black and white as harmonious that she hardly refers to the retribution massacres at all, despite the fact that the Franks’ incident is the precursor to using Aboriginals to support police actions. She analyses the relative firepower of the Aboriginal members of the Corps claiming that the Tower musket could fire only ten shots in four and a half minutes and was only any good when fired at point-blank range at rows of infantry. Fels claims this discounts Aboriginal deaths at the hands of police but ignores Aboriginal testimony and many European records which indicate that the murder of Aboriginal people was conducted at just such a range. The analysis of ballistics, however, is irrelevant if most of the shots fired are by mounted European squatters with the latest Henry Martini weaponry. Fels’ calculations also ignore the fact that many punitive expeditions are joined casually by surveyors, sailors, graziers, almost anyone with a grievance against the blacks or a simple blood lust. In 1846 Henry Dana and fourteen Native Police fire one hundred rounds of ball cartridge at two hundred Aboriginals in a ‘melee’.11 Dana reports several dead and many wounded. Several and many? I thought it was blackfellows who couldn’t count. Anyway, I think Dana’s firepower was much greater than Fels credits. She points out that the Native Police did have a quietening effect on the frontier but hardly questions the justice of that frontier or the very nature of the European presence, their method of land acquisition or the suppression of resistance. Dana wrote to the settlers of the remote districts inviting them to put down any clans guilty of resistance, but Fels and most other historians avoid condemning Dana for handing justice to the gangs of vengeful squatters and their convicts. Despite these flaws Fels’ work is an important contribution. She analyses the role of the Native Police seriously, despite the assumptions underlying her thesis providing an unhealthy spin.
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There is no doubt the Native Police were an effective tool of policing in many instances and equally ineffective under other circumstances, particularly outside their own language confederacies. What is undeniable, however, and Fels pays almost no attention to this, is that the Native Police were formed as a result of experience with their use in South Africa, India, and other British colonies. The use of this strategy to provide colonists with alibis during instances of extreme violence cannot be ignored. The polarised opinions adopted by contemporary historians mirror the wedge driven between Australians generally. What in one age could be called compassion is today ridiculed as soft-centred political correctness. Intellectuals have, in the past, benefited from the swing of the political pendulum from left to right and I’ve seen the rise and fall of cabals in Education, Environment and Aboriginal Affairs, but none of those instances, in my experience, led us so far from genuine intellectual debate as have the wedge politics of the current political mandarins. Mal Brough, Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, launched into his portfolio by declaring that the despair and poverty of many Aboriginal communities was a product of their culture. His cure for this debasement was to engage black Australians as hotel porters to meet and greet overseas visitors. Perhaps it is wrong to place too much importance on anything Brough says but he justified that policy by claiming it would provide ‘dignity’ for Aboriginal people and boost tourism. The Opposition acquiesced in silence, terrified by the huge inability of Aboriginal policy to win votes. The debate appears too heavily influenced by unequal access to the tools of dissemination. Even moderate advocates for anything but the extreme right-wing views of Brough and his associates suffer character assassination and denigration of their life’s work. I cannot remember a time when senior experts in their field could be as hastily despatched. A shocking example was the campaign to discredit the forty senior military personnel who criticised Australian involvement in the Iraq war. Even reasonable comment, for example Federal Police Commissioner Keelty’s remarks on the impact of the war on internal Australian security, precipitated a denigration of the officer’s knowledge of policing in general. The casual application of slander at this level, and after such mild provocation, erodes confidence in all public officials. We are 150
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led to believe that our career militarists, public servants, doctors, clergymen and police know nothing at all about war, democracy, health, religion or the law. It’s a dangerous assault because for a short time it leaves incumbent politicians as the only qualified voice in the debate, and they change their opinion not because of intellectual commitment but for shallow and temporary political advantage. The History Wars of the last decade have poisoned opinion and impoverished debate. Windschuttle’s insistence on reducing all scrutiny of the colonial frontier to the official reports of the colonial administration eliminates any possibility of analysing Aboriginal or even dissenting European perspectives. Fels’ otherwise valuable book suffers from this myopia. Disregarding any Indigenous opinion or contribution means that she often relies on white men of limited education and morality who in other circumstances wouldn’t be trusted to give an honest appraisal of the weather. Dana as Native Police Commandant and Fyans and Powlett and Tyers as Police Magistrates are potent examples of malicious dills out of their moral and intellectual depth in whose words our history places too much trust. Let’s examine the conflicts of winter 1843, the second year the Native Police Corps have been stationed in the Western District. Dana is ordered to investigate reports of stock theft and property damage. On return from this expedition he reports only ‘trifling’ numbers killed but the Native Police told Assistant Protector Thomas that they themselves killed seventeen. Fels argues that when Thomas reported the elevated level of conflict in the colony he was having his leg pulled by vain black policemen. Fels wants us to take Dana’s report as the only authentic document of the events, almost ignoring the evidence of Henry Dwyer who had a run just south of the Grampians. Dwyer provoked Dana’s involvement after claiming the theft of sheep by Aborigines and was subsequently invited to join the party of retribution. Fels goes to great pains to ignore or re-interpret the evidence of the police themselves and relies exclusively on the evidence presented by Dana. The Port Phillip Gazette accepts Dwyer’s claim of twenty blacks killed but Fels and La Trobe ignore this eyewitness evidence. 151
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La Trobe is in his period of denial: do not tell me bad news because I will have to report it but if you don’t tell me and don’t put it in writing I’ll be able to tell Sydney and London that few have been killed, and only then in self-defence. Exactly the position John Howard has taken with his military and public service. The diaries of squatters and records of officials often provide conflicting versions of the events. Politicians might cultivate a system where they deliberately quell undesirable evidence, but for historians diverse opinion must be food and drink and to have the area of their scholarship shaped by the current standard of debate will lead us into medieval ignorance. White evidence was often criminal. In East Gippsland the convict emancipee, Alexander, claimed that Aborigines had stolen his daughter, and with other squatters he conducts a massacre of two local tribes.12 Later, it is discovered that his daughter was slightly retarded and he had committed her to an institution. The girl was not mentioned in his will and her birth certificate is altered to indicate that her mother and father are unknown. Thus her ‘disappearance’. The family never visited or talked about the girl again. Alexander had a ‘blackboy’ whom he encouraged to marry outside tribal rules of genetics. The boy, probably a young man over twenty, was killed according to the penalty for the crime, and Alexander takes this opportunity to massacre another entire tribe. The writers of the Alexander family history wonder if the spearing of cattle, which had so enraged Alexander, might have been reprisal for the loss of their land. Australia’s bafflement reflects either extreme stupidity or avoidance of our true history. Stupidity cannot be cured but history can be taught. What would we prefer, idiocy or embarrassment? The public document of the frontier is as reflective of what really happened in colonial history as the official correspondence in the Prime Minister’s office during the Children Overboard Affair. The policy was not to pursue an investigation of what was happening in the field but to fabricate a defence of an ideological position. This method was often followed slavishly in Port Phillip. The Police Magistrates Fyans, Powlett and Tyers and Native Police Superintendent Dana routinely left out any mention of fatal attacks
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on Aboriginal clans. The frequent appointment of vengeful squatters as temporary constables to carry out attacks with a semi-official imprimatur prejudiced the whole judicial system of the state, but these appointments were rarely recorded in the police day books or magisterial reports. When under pressure of time and their own need for circumspection they would write general approvals for squatters to undertake independent action. In 1843 Dana wrote to squatters on the Wando and Glenelg rivers west of Portland giving them permission to lead pursuit parties of Native Police against the Aborigines committing ‘outrages’.13 The squatters had come under concerted attacks across the whole district west of Camperdown. The summer of 1842 had been exceptionally dry and may have contributed to Aboriginal desperation but there is evidence that attacks across the district were designed to stretch European resources and destabilise the whole settlement. Rolf Boldrewood, a grazier and writer in the district, describes this period in his Old Melbourne Memories as the Eumerella War. The words we invoke to describe what is happening on the frontier are inconsequential, but anyone looking at the reports must realise that after 1842 the Indigenous resistance is militarised, persistent, organised across clans and involving large numbers of warriors and inspires the colonists to use every imperial ploy in their well-rehearsed script. And that script involves some of the most brutal reprisals of the entire settlement of Southern Australia. Fels ignores, or attempts to neutralise, accounts of this period of the war and claims that to use words like ‘massacre’, ‘slaughter’ or ‘extermination’ is to ‘misuse language’; much the same argument as used by Blainey, Brunton and Windschuttle. She is more than happy to use words like ‘dispersals’ and ‘outrages’, despite the deliberate obfuscation of these euphemisms. She also emphasises Dana’s soldierly bearing, despite the fact that he was probably not a soldier at all and most contemporaries saw him as a pompous fool.14 Fels’ evidence for Dana’s cool bearing under attack from blacks relies on his report that the blacks were ‘throwing and rolling rocks and stones, rapidly and accurately’.15 Make an armed horseman quake in his boots wouldn’t it, the toss of the accurate yonny? This
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is the provocation, the insolence of the stone. She doesn’t comment on what Dana’s contemporaries saw: a man of limited intellect, preposterous vanity and veiled brutality. The same attitude is taken to argue that Sergeant Peter Bennett provided prejudicial testimony after he was sacked from the Native Police. Bennett claimed that Dana sacked him for not shooting enough blacks, euphemistically referred to as ‘cowardice in action’. Fels dismisses Bennett’s testimony but does not explain why. Here is a soldier saying he was fired for not fulfilling his quota and Fels says, nah, can’t be true. Bennett may have been seeking revenge but the history of his employment indicates he was an experienced soldier who had performed and behaved creditably. Why must his testimony be disregarded without further scrutiny of the circumstances of his claim? Fels seems to consider the theft of sheep a criminal act rather than the necessary task of acquiring food or resisting invasion. This resistance tactic very nearly drove the squatters off the land and it is hard to look at the Aboriginal response on the frontier without considering the possibility that it signified more than wanton acts of random criminal violence. Participants in the war were not always deceived by the evidence of resistance but they were bending over backwards ‘not to mention the war’ because officials and squatters were locked in a threelegged race to deceive the authorities of the true nature of events in Port Phillip. The squatters weren’t supposed to be selecting land so far west of Melbourne and both they and La Trobe were under express orders to ameliorate the conditions of the Aborigines. If you read the directives coming from London and Governor Bourke and then look at the actual nature of Port Phillip colonisation you can see that the Superintendent of Port Phillip was going to receive a quick and decisive demotion if his failure to deliver the will of the British parliament became known. The Native Police are established as a way of protecting the property of Europeans while at the same time distancing the white authority from frontier violence. Or at least making it seem there was a distance. The squatters were calling on the formation of the Native Police to combat bushrangers but since only two incidents of bushranging
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had been recorded this is a ridiculous smokescreen. Perhaps bushranger is just another euphemism for freedom fighter. Fels’ main thesis is that violence by the Native Police against Aborigines is over-rated, and to explain this view she says ‘There was violence, but any inference that the authorities were careless or uncaring is belied by the extent of the record of investigation’.16 She argues that the extensive official records are evidence of the lack of violence, but using the same reports and taking due note of their internal inconsistencies and ambiguities, without even considering conflicting reports from other Europeans, you could argue that the reports are numerous for the simple purpose of obfuscation. Many colonial reports to London regarding frontier conflicts are written as insurance lest any ‘rumour’ reach Sydney or London that Colonial Commissions are being ignored. Historical documents can be read in a number of ways, that is the stuff of history, but to rely only on certain documents and not others is not good history and worse than that it sours the whole discourse between the survivors of history, allowing no room for reconciliation between two points of view. Black evidence and claims made by the public are not better than official police evidence but they deserve credence. Some will be found wanting but much of what people observe in war is crystal clear in their mind, and you never forget when your parents or children are killed in front of you. Fels does make a valid point about styles of warfare. The British admired the Maori of New Zealand because the method of warfare was much like their own and evolved in similar circumstances and for similar purposes. The Maori were fighting a land war among themselves, fighting from armed fortresses and taking prisoners as slaves and the battle strategies were refined not just over their 2000-year occupation of the islands but from the time of imperial assaults in their home islands further north. Despite the respect the British may have had for familiar military strategies the Treaty of Waitangi may never have been signed between England and Maori if the French had not forced the British hand by claiming a large slab of the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. The Maori may have been more warlike but they were also lucky to have the French threatening to claim the
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islands and a British parliament wearying of the constant violence in their colonies. In contrast to the more imperialistic Maori, Aboriginal warfare developed as part of the implementation of domestic law. Armed struggle was never for the acquisition of land, and the stability of languages is evidence that the clan boundaries are as old as the creation stories. Imperialism didn’t exist although retributive strikes did. Aboriginal populations were held within the constraints of the ability of the land to sustain the people in its worst season. White farming works on the opposite premise and when a dry season occurs it is a state of emergency and farmers have to be rescued. Aboriginal populations were relatively low as a consequence of this conservatism, probably 1.5 million for the whole country. Warfare developed in accordance with this limitation and the death of one warrior was treated symbolically as defeat or the point from which the conflict was resolved through diplomacy. Strategies of war which countenanced large numbers of war dead could not be sustained. The English saw this as weakness or ‘cowardice under fire’, an irony in itself as Aborigines couldn’t ‘fire’ back, and much of the contempt felt for the Indigenous population stems from the failure of the British to understand the nature of Aboriginal occupation and its emphasis on living within the available resources, a failure which echoes today in salination and dwindling ground and surface water. That Indigenous law was designed to ensure fair distribution of resources and the development of a system of government to preserve the culture in perpetuity, a system known today as democracy, was a subtlety lost on governors who believed themselves superior to the savage but still liked to wear the feathers of dead birds in their hat. Aboriginal law was strong and supple but having lived in isolation for so long failed to anticipate the gun and imperialism. The very interesting thing about the development of Aboriginal society is that according to Maori legend they visited the east coast of Australia and dismissed the idea of landing when they found it too heavily populated. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Chinese visited too and the Macassans were still visiting in the twentieth century, but none of those three groups invaded the 156
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country. Were they deterred by armed resistance or did they respect the sovereignty of the inhabitants and prefer to trade instead? The analysis of that question impacts enormously on our nation’s attitude to its relationship with the land and for the potential of reconciliation with the Indigenous population. We also need to understand how colonial officials came so quickly, and with so little disquiet, to their decisions to invade sovereign lands. The Police Magistrates located in each Port Phillip district had as one of their primary tasks to ensure the protection of the Indigenous population from the worst effects of the invasion but in fact most of these men had cut their teeth in other colonial theatres of war and looked upon their positions in the new land in the same light. Foster Fyans earned his sobriquet ‘Flogger’ from his term as a gaoler at Moreton Bay and Norfolk Island, but his military tactics were honed on the suppression of resistance in India, Burma and Mauritius. In Port Phillip he was Crown Lands Commissioner and Police Magistrate with particular responsibility for Aboriginal protection, to which positions his compatriots from India and Moreton Bay knew he would bring ruthless efficiencies. The Wathaurong and other clans around Port Phillip Bay had recovered from their reliance on William Buckley’s flawed advice and took more direct action to protect their lands. This produced an abrupt spike in the colonial temperature but one for which Fyans’ whole career had prepared him. With the gathering momentum of the resistance came the calls of squatters for armed protection. Governor Bourke responded by allocating a Mounted Police regiment of twelve but most of these had been sent to Australia as prisoners after deserting during the war against American Independence and were of almost no assistance in the field. The situation was complicated by panic in the district after squatters became un-nerved by the hanging of seven white men for what became known as the Myall Creek massacre in 1838. One of the jurors in the trial refers to the Aborigines as ‘a set of monkeys’ whom he’d like to see exterminated. ‘I knew well they [squatters] were guilty of the murder, but I for one, would never see a white man suffer for shooting a black’.17 157
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After the hangings Australia’s press thundered against Governor George Gipps, referring to supporters of Aboriginals as vermin and urged pastoralists to ‘shoot them dead if you can’. Gipps was shocked and knew he could never confront the graziers in this way again. When given permission to use 15 per cent of all Crown land sales for the civilisation and improvement of Aborigines he uses it to pay for half the maintenance of the Border Police, an organisation not renowned for a civilising and improving influence, even among themselves. In Port Phillip a number of meetings were held by squatters to discuss the ‘alarming outrages committed upon them by the Aborigines’.18 Alexander Thomson, who was Secretary to the Board of the Buntingdale Aboriginal Mission, organised a forum in Geelong, and Hugh Murray, the gentlemen grazier, advertised a meeting for Colac in the Port Phillip Gazette. The Gazette was a perfect vehicle for Murray’s proposal, having already referred to Aborigines as ‘baboons’ in its editorial and calling for squatters to take up arms ‘even to the destruction of the black marauders’.19 The wording of the petitions to Gipps drawn up at these meetings is typically euphemistic but one of the petitioners, a Scottish doctor, David Wilsone, writes his true feelings to his brother: ‘They stole from us five fine ewes, and since then all our servants are armed and are desired to shoot anyone they see attempt it again…soon a regular affair will settle the business and clear out our part of the country of these regular cannibals’.20 In fact six of Thomson’s petitioners had already been involved in incidents where Aboriginal people were killed.21 Violence toward the Aboriginal Victorians is pervasive. In discussing Aboriginal deaths due to white violence, Richard Broome opts for lower figures than many historians, but even if we accept his figure of 1000 deaths and his estimation of the Koori population of 10,000, that means 10 per cent were killed.22 It would be reasonable to assume that at least twice as many were wounded and, say, another 20 per cent were shot at and escaped. That means 50 per cent of the population were fired upon. If you assume that women and children were targets less frequently, then every adult Aboriginal male in Victoria was shot at between the years 1836 and 1845. Now tell me there was no war in Australia.
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Some of the greatest protagonists were vicious in the extreme and the white community tut-tutted about the crudity of these individuals but never took a sufficiently dim view to prosecute them. The vigilantes were just outriders in the war, the frontier snipers common to any of the world’s crusades or jihads. They were allowed, probably encouraged, to do their best. Our friend Frederick Taylor, recently returned to Port Phillip after his disappearance to Van Diemen’s Land following the murder of Curracoine, decides to take on the Jarcoort and murders at least thirty-five at Murdering Gully on Mount Emu Creek, but George Robinson and La Trobe are so casual in their response that it takes almost ten weeks to investigate. Meanwhile Taylor, in the colony’s fine-tuned response, flees the district once again. Mission accomplished. He returns some time later and resumes his activities in Gippsland. The whole Port Phillip District is a battleground. In 1838 seven convicts are killed as the Faithfull brothers attempt to depasture sheep on the Broken River near Benalla. The uproar in the squatting community is deafening. Seven is a large number and seen as an unhealthy development in the war. Reprisals are instantaneous, secretive and profound. In 1843 Lachlan Macalister and Angus McMillan form the notorious private army called the Highland Brigade in Gippsland. Once again the British national allegiances have a powerful influence over the conduct of the land war. The Brigade is formed for no other reason than to engage the Ganai (East Gippsland) warriors in warfare and the close racial and family bonds coupled with shared military and colonial experiences facilitate the rapid establishment of a potent and well-trained armed militia. Macalister vows to revenge the spearing of his nephew, Donald, and has enthusiastic support from McMillan who, with his sons, has already been implicated in murderous attacks on the Gippsland tribes. The Highland Brigade is heralded as a valiant band in pursuit of justice for the spearing of Donald Macalister, despite the fact he contributed to his own death by firing unprovoked at a group of blacks near his uncle’s Boisdale property. The Highland Brigade’s first action is to pursue the Ganai and kill sixty people and throw the bodies of men, women and children
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into a waterhole at Gammon Creek, north-west of Stratford. A survivor, however, put the figure at 150. Despite these reports, Crown Commissioners GS Airey and FA Powlett from Western Port record that there have been no serious clashes for the period. La Trobe appoints the surveyor, CJ Tyers, to investigate the Gammon Creek incident after the story circulates in Melbourne, but Tyers takes seven months to reply claiming that the wildness of the blacks and the difficulty in understanding their language delayed his response. Eventually Commissioner Tyers reports that since ‘the unprovoked murder’ of Macalister the Aborigines have become scarce!23 If rumours of the incident are gossip in Melbourne you need the hide and belligerence of a walrus to write so obliquely of the incident on which you have been employed to report. The conspiracy of silence is deafening; tongues are pushed so firmly into cheeks that mouth ulcers must surely result. The gap between stated policy and unofficial action is an unbridgeable gulf; unbridgeable, of course, by the ironic humbug which will later parent such gems as ‘collateral damage’, ‘surgical strike’, ‘smart bomb’ and ‘pre-emptive strike’. As soon as the language is corrupted you know the heart died some time before. In the state soon to become Victoria the hearts are dead, the minds closed, the hands rapacious and the language fouled with callous disregard for the truth. Language has become a cynical weapon of war and that weapon still shapes a country’s intellectual response today. So cynical that when the prime minister calls on the nation to get over dissent and put past crimes behind us sections of the media and public greet it with chortling vindication of their prejudice. Governor Gipps’ response to the resistance of the Indigenous clans was to send Major Samuel Lettsom from Sydney with a detachment of police troopers to investigate the escalation of black aggression. And damage to white property. Earlier we looked at this incident in relation to the change in tactics of Indigenous resistance but it’s interesting to examine the specific incident upon which Lettsom was asked to report. Dr George Mackay’s Beechworth property was attacked in 1840 and he claimed a hut keeper had been killed and 3000 cattle, wheat crops and huts had been destroyed. It is important that the doctor’s
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brother who was present only reports the loss of three horses, a bullock and some chooks,24 but is surprise an adequate response to the inflammatory exaggeration of Dr Mackay? That our police and military are employed to avenge such inflated reports has lost its ability to shock us but should not stifle our call for justice. Rev Joseph Docker believed in justice and reported to Gipps that Mackay and his drunken shepherds were constantly attacking the Indigenous population and that the behaviour was endemic. ‘There exists unfortunately, among most of the settlers around me, a most inveterate and deadly hatred of the Aborigines’.25 Gipps and La Trobe pay lip service to the report but allow it to disappear. Gipps’ words called on Lettsom to respect justice and the rights of the Aborigines but the value of such judicious language had been so debased that Lettsom read the subtext. Not all men are blinded by cynicism and William Thomas, Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the Melbourne region, was one of those few men. Lettsom wanted the Protectors to act ‘as magistrates…to facilitate the taking of “hostages from each side”’.26 Thomas refused, saying that his instructions precluded him from doing anything which would bring harm upon those under his protection. Events, however, take matters out of Thomas’ control, if it could ever be said that an honest man controls a political situation. Four hundred Barrabool and Goulburn Aborigines have gathered in Melbourne. La Trobe believes the intent is hostile and sanctions Lettsom ‘to overawe the opposition’.27 Does that use of language sound familiar? One is shot immediately, 133 are locked up and all the camp dogs are shot on La Trobe’s orders. A masterful gesture of conciliation! Some of the prisoners manage to escape but not before one of them is shot dead. Gipps applauds Lettsom’s actions but urges La Trobe to use ‘the utmost circumspection’ in how the Protectors report the incident, for fear that criticism could be used by opponents of Indigenous oppression in London. ‘Their representations in England will be credited (I do not mean by the Government — but by Persons perhaps more powerful than the Government) whilst the reports of all persons filling official stations here, will be received with suspicion — or entirely disbelieved’.28 Gipps and La Trobe at the
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coal face of a district whose affairs are quickly spinning out of their control are anxious how that spin might be interpreted in London. After all, it is their careers and reputation at stake and they intend to return home to walk the streets of England with acclaim rather than calumny. Once the situation is irremediably out of their control they turn to subtle obfuscatory nuance. Having only read Gipps’ official pronouncements I’d thought him an honourable man unfortunate enough to be set upon by venal rabble, but on turning to his private correspondence I learnt with dismay that while publicly he mouths the official line of tolerance and justice, privately he manipulates the pragmatics of euphemism. Officially he writes to La Trobe accepting the Aboriginal Protector’s reports of aggressions against the blacks but in a private letter sent the same day urges La Trobe to be cautious about sending the Protectors’ reports which might cause trouble in London. An official letter is often followed by a private letter with a completely different command. Governor Bourke’s correspondence is similar and La Trobe is perhaps the most skilled exponent of all. These men are not humanitarian heroes; they are public servants concerned with their own reputations and fortunes. None made any but token efforts to understand the political, social or cultural lives of the civilisation their administration destroyed. Evidence of the riotous behaviour of the squatters arrives by report and rumour every day: in 1841 alone La Trobe receives reports that the Henty brothers’ employees kill seven Bunganditj with poisoned flour; the Wedge brothers kill fifteen, the Whyte brothers kill up to forty, the Winters five or more and Mounted Police forty or more on the Campaspe Plains.29 These incidents are going to be unacceptable to London’s liberal Christians, and reports either do not make it to the public record or disappear under a deluge of euphemism. Crown Prosecutor Croke can’t find a reason to prosecute most murderers of Aborigines and when the clamour becomes dangerous asks for additional information. The nod and wink climate of complicity ensures that the responses are delayed and omit earlier inconvenient reference to Aboriginal deaths. Squatters Aylward Knowles and Tulloh were accused of having killed five and wounded many more Aborigines but Croke’s intervention results 162
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in a much less violent report being prepared.30 The squatters had ridden at the gallop into the black camp, but Croke, in possession of the rehearsed version of the report, finds that the blacks are the aggressors. Croke quibbles in other cases about the legality of Protectors taking evidence under oath or that reports are not complete or not prepared in a way that he sees fit for prosecution. In the case of the Wedge brothers murdering five Djab wurrung, Croke refuses to lay charges and writes, ‘Taking possession of sheep amounting to 1290 is no trifling offence…my opinion is that the perpetrators of the outrage ought to be punished…’31 A war is fought on many fronts and Crown Prosecutor Croke and Judge Willis of the Supreme Court certainly distinguish themselves in their field of the campaign. Willis’ 1841 judgment on the men who were accused of murdering some Western Port sealers employs every prejudice of the colony. Painful as it is at all times to pronounce the sentence of the law upon a fellow creature, yet that pain is greatly increased when the delinquent has not the consoling hope of his crime being pardoned hereafter, by means of true repentance and the mercy and forgiveness of Almighty God. The light of Christianity, the only rational piety, if ever distinguishable in your minds, can but have glimmered for a moment, instead of continuing to illuminate by its calm splendour, your journey through a world of misery, and directing you to the Haven of Eternal rest. All men, even in an uncivilised state, are said to entertain however imperfectly and however clouded with vain imaginations, some expectation of a future state. May the latest spark, if it exists in your mind, kindle, by God’s blessing, that holy flame of piety and repentance, that may make you wake unto salvation before that period shall arrive when that world must close on you forever, for I can hold but no hope of pardon.32
Who was he talking to? The defendants didn’t speak English and the colonial officials knew so little about the men they had no idea what language they spoke and couldn’t find a translator. But it was no surprise to the men; they were used to being treated as if they didn’t exist and their descendants experience the same invisibility today. 163
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The Indian novelist Arundhati Roy made some interesting observations on justice and human rights on acceptance of her Sydney Peace Prize in November 2004. Her remarks were in relation to contemporary political imperialism but she could just as easily be talking about the Axis of Evil of Croke, Willis and La Trobe. Even among the well-intentioned, the expansive, magnificent concept of justice is gradually being substituted with the reduced, far more fragile discource of ‘human rights’…Almost unconsciously, we begin to think of justice for the rich and human rights for the poor. Justice for the corporate world, human rights for its victims. Justice for Americans, human rights for Afghans and Iraqis. Justice for Indian upper castes, human rights for Dalits and Adivasis (if that). Justice for white Australians, human rights for Aboriginals and immigrants (most times not even that). It is becoming more than clear that violating human rights is an inherent and necessary part of implementing a coercive and unjust political and economic structure on the world. Without the violation of human rights on an enormous scale, the neoliberal project would remain in the dreamy realm of policy. But increasingly Human Rights violations are being portrayed as the unfortunate, almost accidental fallout of an otherwise acceptable political and economic system…This is why in areas of heightened conflict…Human Rights Professionals are regarded with a degree of suspicion. Many resistance movements in poor countries which are fighting huge injustice and questioning the underlying principles of what constitutes ‘liberation’ and ‘development’, view Human Rights NGOs as modern day missionaries who’ve come to take the ugly edge off Imperialism. To defuse political anger and to maintain the status quo. 33
Roy could have been talking about La Trobe and Gipps’ ‘enlightened’ policies and the introduction of the Aboriginal Protectorate. She talks about the psychological mindset of the invader, their lust for the wealth of another sovereign nation and the apparatus of ‘justice’ which they employ to ensure its success. The only joy I can take from her address is that she was allowed to make it in a country where the government probably expected her to give them a pasting. The same could be said about Michael 164
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Moore’s scathing assessment of the Bush administration. He was allowed to say it and he’s still alive. In 2003 the Peace Prize was controversially awarded to Palestinian activist, Dr Hanan Ashrawi. The year before that the award was made to Mary Robinson of the United Nations, the year before that to Sir William Deane, before that Xanana Gusmao and before that Desmond Tutu. I don’t think the Conservatives have the numbers on the Sydney Peace Prize Committee! But the Peace Prize recipients were not contested, were allowed to be critical of the government and were not shot. The hallmark of a good democracy and our inherited political system. Why is it so hard for Australians to accept their own history when we accept, so graciously, that of everybody else? Why does a Canberra Museum exhibition giving an honest appraisal of frontier history have to be closed when we can allow Arundhati Roy licence to bag us senseless. Where is the sting, where is the loss, where is the cost in a realistic portrayal of our past? It’s as if to admit to war and theft also recognises illegitimacy so that, today, even intelligent people scurry from obvious facts and search instead for any straw of evidence to suggest that what happened to Indigenous Australians was their own fault. We have to debate our history with rigorous candour but decent debate does not seek to deny facts or attempt to invalidate contrary opinion; decent debate acknowledges all opinions but argues instead about what it means. In 1841 our country allowed Judge Willis to express outrageously un-Christian thought as if it were our Bill of Rights and today we allow Keith Windschuttle and Ron Brunton to get away with a ridiculous smoke screen. If we could harness an intellectual elite and Christian thought to the cart of common sense and decency, the Christian conscience of Willis, Windschuttle and Brunton would have been questioned. Instead we allow them to have the road to themselves as if we thought they made sense.
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The Language of War War historians love events like Gallipoli, Trafalgar, Culloden, West Bank, Milne Bay, Coral Sea, El Alamein and all the battles where one force pits itself directly against another force, preferably on the same field. War sports. There’s a preparation, an engagement, the thrust and parry, the decisive battle, winners and losers, a readable scoreline. Battles for independence are rarely like that; they are fought over decades, generations; leaders die as often from old age as wounds inflicted in the glory of battle. There is no entertainment value in wars like this. For this reason no book has documented the battles of the Silent War. One of the last field battles in that war took place at Coniston in 1928 but some say the battle still rages in prisons and civil strife. Redfern residents of The Block, the Indigenous quarter of Sydney, protested in 2003 when a boy was impaled on a steel fence after alleged pursuit by police, and on Palm Island, the ex-leper colony, residents attacked the police station in 2004 after alleged police brutality. The Redfern rebellion was called a riot by the press, the Palm Island rebellion a chaotic act of civil disobedience, but an historian might see it as a late, futile, spontaneous and badly organised fight to the death, an expression of violent exasperation after decades of oppression. A book might be written which examines this prolonged and Silent War but it will never be published by presses intent on profit. Who, in a country with such limited knowledge of their history, is going to read a book about a war when few can agree on when it started or even the names of the participating generals? Wars like this are neither good entertainment nor exciting history. As soon as you decide to begin with the clashes on the 166
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West Coast of Australia others will say that there were other incidents before that, and then some archaeologist discovers a series of skeletons on Flores which change the perception of human development and which must call in to question the longevity of the civilisation on this continent. The whole theory of one single southern migration to Australia 40,000 years ago looks improbable and a series of back and forth movements across continents seems more likely and, with that, a permanent occupation of Australia somewhere beyond 120,000 years probable. The story is too big for one neat parcel and no particular battle can be taken as the lightning rod of history. The war is fought over such a prolonged period and in such diverse theatres that historians worry about calling it a war at all, or whether it is of sufficient interest to study. On the other hand, the Maori wars are discrete battles in contained theatres and often on battle grounds similar to the European experience of war. The Maori are called war-like because they fought like the British. Maori history says that when they first arrived on the island they eliminated a race of people called the Maori-ori. Territorial war was part of Maori culture and even though perfect unanimity between Maori clans was never achieved in the fight against the British, the existing military patterns of the Maori and their single language allowed them to mount a quick response to the British assault. When the British claimed Australia, the country, unbeknown to them, was settled under the sovereignty of at least 350 nations or language groups. The British were generally accepted as visitors and trouble only began when they overstayed their Tanderrum or visiting rights. Even then the violence erupted within the boundaries of one language group and against the particular people who had transgressed Aboriginal law or visiting protocols. Consequently the forces of resistance could be counted in the tens, not hundreds, of warriors because that is how it had always been done. Random acts of violence as a tactic only came into practice after experience of European retribution where any number of randomly selected Aborigines could be murdered as punishment for the deeds of people unknown to them. Indigenous languages are a testament to the stability and conservatism of Aboriginal life. They mark boundaries which have 167
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been in place for over 60,000 years. Western Victorian languages make reference to the period of volcanic activity where an eruption caused a massive wave to sweep across the western plains. Today you can see the point at which lava cut off Lake Corangamite from the Curdie River, its ancient expression into the sea. Murray River people tell the story of the time when the Rainbow Snake shifted in his path and pointed his head away from the Glenelg River entrance to the point in South Australia where the Murray enters the sea today. That time was during dramatic climate changes, a time when Australian historians argue that Indigenous Australians were yet to cross the land bridge of the Indonesian archipelago. When Europeans asked Aborigines how long they had been living in the country the answer never varied: We have always been here. Most anthropologists patted the dark informants on the head and laughed. How amusing, what quaint beliefs these children of nature have! Research will show that Aboriginal people are more correct than their paternalistic Eurocentric interlocutors. The research that proves this fact empirically, for that is the way science has to be proven, will most likely be conducted by a foreign scientist. Australian chairs of History and Anthropology are often more conservative than unaligned colleagues from international universities who do not depend on support from people with the blinkered historical view of John Howard and the recent Ministers of Education, Julie Bishop, Brendan Nelson and Rod Kemp. There are many wonderful Australian researchers and research projects but they battle for scarce oxygen in a country where the energy of introspection is put into the Bradman Museum and how to duff a country of egalitarian inclination into making university unaffordable for the wage-earning underclass. The clues for Australians to investigate the knowledge of Aboriginal heritage are to be found everywhere. On Melville Island in 1989 I listened over three days to a story told by several elders, a story which seemed more and more incredible, more convoluted, more vague, until I realised on the third day that I was being told about the Tiwi Islanders living contemporaneously with a people who had massive feet. The story had become legend complete with the sound of those large feet striking the earth, but was it the story of a distant evolutionary path, of Islanders living as neighbours 168
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with another branch of the human family? That is my guess but it deserves a good examination because it has huge implications for our notion of history, and the answer to that puzzle will be found in the language itself. Kulin and Mara languages of central and western Victoria have an extraordinary number of references to volcanic activity and resultant rock types and we probably only know a small percentage of what was once there but the language is telling us of its age. Many of the ‘legends’ of Aboriginal people are quickly dismissed as simple little stories because they lack the depth or narrative technique of Greek and Roman myth. But profound detail is lost in the translation and the fact that Australians do not understand the mythological references as they do references to the unlikely activities of Zeus and Prometheus. The recording I have of the Tiwi Island story runs for over 90 minutes; its English translation lasts barely four. The subtlety, the intellectual reference, the passage of an enormous length of time is reduced to language suitable for a toddler of limited understanding. I was the toddler. My ignorance had allowed me to feel disappointed by what I saw as the fragmentary nature of Aboriginal music and song until I witnessed the unveiling of the story of the cosmos over several nights at Yirrkala. The music and dance were in small episodes, minute accretions of an opera stretching the entire width of human history. In no other land is the human experience expressed in such complete form and perhaps that is because no other culture has remained intact throughout the course of that development. What we have to treasure in the Indigenous languages is not just the survival of a people, who were probably the first on the planet to use language, but what that language tells us about the land on which we all live, the subtle knowledge of that land’s history and requirements. Tim Flannery warns us of pushing this continent beyond its ability to support us and the Indigenous languages contain that information too, and their point of reference, unlike Flannery’s, is the entire period of human occupation, a time when modern people lived alongside one, possibly several, groups of people contemporary scientists may not define as homo sapiens. This is an incredible country with an incredible history but if we can’t, as a people, engage for one brief moment with that history, we’ll never be able to look into the deeper dimensions without 169
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the ridiculous blinkers of a baker’s horse: let’s pretend Aborigines crossed the land bridge 40,000 years ago and no earlier, let’s pretend they had no conception of sovereignty, let’s pretend the things they say about themselves and their history are ridiculous, let’s pretend they were brutes, let’s pretend that they didn’t even exist! What better way to lay claim to a land. Chinese, Maccassan, Maori and perhaps other vessels visited the coast long before the British, and while battles occasionally broke out, Indigenous historical remembrance tells us that these were fights over broken laws not attempts to steal land. The Chinese, in particular, would have had the military capacity to take that land if that is what urged them to expend such huge resources to get here. Maori legend has it that the smoke from many fires on the coastal mountains of Queensland cautioned the Maori against landing, but for the Chinese and Maccassans what would have caused them to desist if imperialism had been their aim? Nothing. Instead it seems the Chinese and Maccassans came to trade. They were after dugong and bêche-de-mer, trochus and other goods. The Yolngu accepted bamboo, tamarind, glass, dingoes and some elements of watercraft design, but rejected the religions, farming techniques and even the farm animals. Were the Asians deterred from invasion by the military capabilities of the Yolngu? A disdain for the land itself? Or might it be that imperialism is not an inherent trait of all peoples all the time? Those questions need a depth of consideration my knowledge doesn’t allow, but what we do know is that people visited this continent over hundreds, probably thousands, of years and most of them chose to trade rather than invade. Aboriginal people returned with the Macassans to their land and returned on later trading voyages; some legends have it that Yolngu went as far as China and returned. The interaction was so highly thought of that festivals were held to celebrate the annual return of the fleets. These journeys continued until the Australian Government became nervous during World War II that the northern clans might prefer the Japanese to the Australians. After all we’ve done for them! It took a number of years for the Silent War to be taken up outside language areas and for confederacies to develop. When 170
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the battle plan of Aboriginal nations altered to meet the threat of increasing European numbers the resistance became identifiable by the British so that Governors and squatters alike began to refer to the conflict as war. Governor Bourke uses the word first when referring to the organised counter insurgency of the Western Plains of New South Wales, and in Victoria Gipps and La Trobe began using the word around 1839. In South Australia Governor Grey reports that overland parties are ‘using awe and terror’ to drive off blacks. He institutes a plan to accompany squatters on their march into new territory but this plan collapses almost immediately when police and squatters kill 58 Aborigines in one of the first interactions. The grand phrases of amelioration are not shared by the rampant squatters and police who are looking for more practical, lasting solutions to a more determined and organised resistance. Amazingly the Aborigines do not want to become British. Attacks on whites become random where previously only those individuals who had committed offences against Indigenous law had been targeted. The spearing of white men through the genitals had been a forthright statement on the nature of Indigenous outrage, but by 1840 a different mood is operating in Port Phillip and the battle tactics reflect the new knowledge. The Gundidjmara begin a series of offensives in 1841, stealing property, livestock and burning crops. The Geelong and Melbourne press call the district to arms and reports stream in of black outrages. On examination of the evidence, however, it is clear that the loss of horses often happens on the properties of convicted horse thieves; many of the missing sheep are discovered never to have strayed from the paddock but reported stolen by shepherds counting stock losses from the comfort of their beds rather than the fold. At least one crop claimed to have been burnt by ‘savages’ is burnt accidentally by the squatter himself and one by lightning strike, but don’t let that get in the way of a good story. If you don’t have a genuine call to attack a people holding land you desire then invent a reason; the press will usually support the lie. But who are these people leading the resistance? The enemy called them Cocknose, Doctor, Jupiter, Bumbletoe, Mercury, Billy, Jacky Jacky and other such denigrations. Cocknose had a big nose, Doctor was reputed to be capable of removing kidney fat and who 171
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knows what Bumbletoe was accused of, but as the English-speaking world still seems incapable of pronouncing Rome as Roma, or Mount Everest as Chogaloma, the British in 1840 thought it beyond them to learn that their enemy came from the Gundidjmara Nation and that the names of some of their principal warriors were Tycoohee, Tare rare rer, Yi er war min, Kaarwirr Kunawarn and Burguidenang. Some of those warriors die before any European knows them beyond the derisory name applied by frontier wits. The campaigns at this time read like something from the Vietnam War. Crops are burnt, huts raided, stock stolen, men murdered after carefully planned attacks and then the guerrillas melt away into areas impossible for Europeans to enter with military advantage. The horse and rifle are neutralised in rocky, broken terrain or close forest or swamp. Increasingly large numbers of black warriors incite the Europeans to fight in such terrain but after several unsuccessful excursions that invitation is rejected and the Europeans begin bleating about foul play and cowardice. They won’t fight clean! And as in Vietnam when the warriors can’t be killed or captured vengeance is wreaked against their family and when that fails anyone with a black skin. At the end of the Eumerella War and other theatres in the Western District the male populations of the Gundidjmara, Kirrae wurrong, Jarcoort, Gadubanoot, Wathaurong and Colijon are so reduced that continued resistance, except in isolated acts of frustration and despair, is impossible. The horse, rifle and, eventually, superior numbers win just as the resistance has crossed the clan borders and forced a European retreat from the furthest outposts. A significant and underrated aspect in this war, however, is the destruction of housing and food. Indigenous houses are destroyed as a matter of course and can’t be rebuilt because the guerrilla armies can no longer muster sufficient labour to spare for dry stone walling and besides they dare not stay in one place too long. Most of the houses still seen today are in the last fastnesses of the retreating army. Colonists express despair at the inability of the Indigenous population to combat diseases, but that is a convenient and palatable way of ascribing their demise rather than violence and
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land lust. Disease certainly had short-term impacts but followed destruction of housing and the elimination of staple foods by livestock. Exposure to hunger and cold are the mightiest soldiers on any battlefield and their strategic use has been a feature of war on the Eurasian continents for over a thousand years. These tactics reached the Australian frontier in their most refined form but their application is given no credence in Australian history. Recent discoveries of massive house foundations in Victoria and the reviving of the skill to sew possum-skin cloaks and rugs are the most crucial events in recent Australian history. The house and the cloak have been hidden from Australian children for two centuries. Damien Bell is removing some of our cataracts by showing us the huge houses at Tyrrendara, and Vikki Couzens and her sisters from the Gundidjmara are reviving the possum-skin cloak. Here, they are saying to all Australians, this is how our ancestors lived, the people you killed as if they were savage beasts. In the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games opening ceremony members of the Victorian Indigenous community wore possum-skin cloaks and sailed canoes down the Yarra for the first time in 160 years. It was only for the benefit of tourists but, who knows, maybe some children will ask their parents about the people in the strange clothes and the funny boats and wonder where they came from. As Indigenous crops and game are eliminated by European land clearance, clans make raids on potato fields and the habit of replacing the top of the plant is derided by the Europeans as a typical sign of treachery or horticultural ignorance. The truth is quite the opposite, however, as most of the potatoes would have re-grown from the tops as any compost gardener knows and the Indigenous method of leaving a portion of the yam tubers had always allowed crop regeneration. It was a ruse to hide the theft of the tuber but the Europeans had to manufacture a myth of Indigenous horticultural ignorance as one more way of denying ownership and utility. That grains were harvested and stored in stone silos and tubers cultivated with sophisticated soil conservation techniques is a fact secateured from the sapling of Australian knowledge.
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Just as war prevents clans from attending their crops it also makes it impossible to conduct cloak manufacture. It takes nearly twenty possum skins to make the traditional fur cloak and a period of uninterrupted time to cure, etch and sew the skins. Those periods of uninterrupted time had evaporated. The cloak was replaced by the blanket which unlike the possum skin would not repel water and conspired to increase the risk of new pulmonary diseases. The stone and turf house could not be replaced and the clans could only erect the summer houses of bark sheets and limbs. The smoke from cooking and heating fires would attract the attention of the enemies and so the armies were exposed by the absence of those things which had secured their health. Just as they had forced the enemy to retreat from properties on the edge of the frontier, just as they had learned to fight the Europeans within a confederacy of clans undertaking co-ordinated attacks, just as some visionary Europeans had begun plans to protect at least some Aboriginal estates, the rebel armies succumbed to the joint effects of their mounting war casualties, hunger, cold and low birth rates. Everybody reports on the low fertility of Aborigines at this time. Some mixed-race children are killed and, although the reasoning behind this is not perfectly clear, it seems obvious that the children of rape victims are least likely to survive; but perhaps there were strong clan feelings about importing such people into the conformity of skin groups. In any case the major cause of low fertility was venereal disease introduced by the Europeans. Judy Campbell in Invisible Invaders argues that venereal disease wasn’t introduced by Europeans, but her claims of pre-existing forms of the disease can’t explain why fecundity was demonstrably high and stable before prolonged European incursions and only plummets after 1837–1838. The population recovered from the plagues of smallpox but it was the ability of venereal disease to promote infertility in females which was responsible for low birth rates after 1840. For all their debilitating effects, however, smallpox, infertility, housing and nutrition are really only sideshows. The greatest killer was the determination of the invaders to take the land by force. There should be no disgrace in being defeated by a stronger army
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but Aboriginal people were shamed by their inability to protect their ancestors’ land. While the hurly burly of resistance was in full sway the warriors were strong in their hearts, but as soon as the fight was lost the devastation of their souls was often sufficient to kill them. They hadn’t just lost the war, they’d lost the place where their ancestors’ spirits resided. The ancestors would not find rest and neither would they. That desolation lives long in the hearts of those who survive and their children live with the chill of that desolation of spirit to this day. Later generations fear hopelessness more than death itself and the funerals for young Aboriginal people continue. It is not the fault of the Aboriginal community, but neither can we wait for anyone else to fix it because there seem precious few who care. But it will be fixed and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people will do the fixing. As Karen Atkinson, a member of the stolen generation, says, we are too bloody strong not to. If Australians thought Aboriginal people were going to die on the smoothed pillow they had prepared they are wrong because if that were the case we would never have produced Pat Dodson, Mick Dodson, Archie Roach, Kevin Gilbert, Gary Foley, Lowitja O’Donohue, Richard Frankland, both John Clarks, Doris Paton, Lyn Dent, Sandy Atkinson, Albert Mullet, Herb Patten, Ivan Couzens, Ken Laughton, Percy Mumbler, Ruby Hunter, Veronica Dobson, Jackie Huggins, Paul Briggs, Geraldine Briggs, Marcia Langton, Jamie Thomas and many, many more heroes. I could mention thousands, some not very popular, rebels rarely are, but you can’t defeat these people; in fact it’s wrong to think you can obliterate any people until you prevent them from whispering their cultural secrets into the ears of their children. The Stalinists tried it, Hitler tried it, Pol Pot tried it, various American presidents tried it on two continents apart from their own, Australia tried it. You will never succeed while children are born and their parents have the chance to tell them who they are. This is not bad news for Australia, I can’t think of anything more likely to make this nation great. So much has been lost, however, that at times it is difficult to believe that anything can be retrieved, but we are wrong to think that. In October 2004 I was scoring a game of football between
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the West Coast Eels and the Bairnsdale Krautoongooloong during the Victorian Aboriginal Football and Netball Carnival. At half time the players came across to the boundary for their oranges and Gatorade and I heard someone talking in language. I leaned out of the scoring box and saw two young Bairnsdale kids speaking in language, the Ganai language, and not only did I know what they were saying I knew who their teachers must have been. I sat back in my seat knowing the war wasn’t over and the peace was definitely turning in favour of the rebels. Those boys wore a burgundy and white jumper with a picture of a blue wren (Djeetjin) and an emu wren (Yeerung) on the front. It would have to be one of the most unlikely football symbols anywhere in the world. ‘Come on the wrens, eat ’em alive’, but it was a fabulous statement of defiance to wear your creation story on your chest. That night around midnight my wife and I went looking for something to eat and there were blackfellas all over the street. Blokes were grizzling about torn hammies, the girls were telling them that that was nothin’ compared to their knees, and those girls were right because there is nothing quite as destructive of knee articulation as netball, but where was the ‘Sixty Minutes’ team? It’s after midnight, the town is full of partying blackfellas and we didn’t see a drunk or a blue. Geelong in 2003 was just the same. I’ve never seen such bored policemen in my life. They had nothing to do. I don’t need to be told it’s not always like that. I’m not blind, but I also come from a conventional football culture in small-town Victoria and I know that on any given Saturday it’s rare for there not to be a blue on a Saturday night. Alcohol and football breed outrageously aggressive behaviour in white society. Ever caught a train out of Flinders Street after a Collingwood loss? What made me proud in Bairnsdale was that our finest young men and women could celebrate with good humour and grace and some of them could speak languages other than English. Victoria, Australia, 2004. Where is the television crew at times like that? Well, they didn’t respond to their invitation, I know that. Neither did the Age or the Herald Sun. And for the two businesses in the Bairnsdale main street which put up notices of the carnival surrounded by celebratory black, yellow and red balloons, thank
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you, and I hope the derision of your fellows on the Chamber of Commerce was bearable. The persistence and resilience of Indigenous life in Australia is paralleled by the durability and flexibility of the languages. Most Australians are unaware that there is more than one Aboriginal language, even fewer realise that some of those languages survive in Victoria, and I’m sure most would be surprised to know that languages thought to be lost have been revived to the point of being taught in schools and spoken in casual conversation at the footy. The languages are surviving and adapting. The Gundidjmara have introduced a word into their language for the ubiquitous mobile phone, to which modern blackfellas seem as addicted as the rest of the world. By combining the word for talk with the word to walk they have come up with yarna larka, literally talk and walk. Just as the languages incorporated words for the strange new beasts that arrived with the white man they are continuing to evolve in response to the people’s needs. The people are still here, the culture is still alive, the languages are returning. It’s not just survival, but evidence that the Resistance continues.
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The Language of Resistance Invasion requires the invader to justify his actions not to the invaded but to himself. To steal land is theft and theft is against every major religion and political system on earth. So, if you intend to steal you must provide yourself with an alibi, a reason why your actions are not against the credo of your religion. It is a ruse, a selfdeceit, because you know you intend to sin against your own moral code, but if you could cloak your actions in benevolence, say lifting the benighted into the light, or ridding the earth of a species God never intended to create, then you could steal Inca gold, Iraqi oil, Wathaurong land, you could bend the precepts of your religion to justify anything you desired. But then you have to live with the lie. As long as the thing you desire is concrete: gold, oil, pasture, spice, silk, opium, cocoa, whales, you can covet it unto yourself, but to steal the ephemeral is impossible while one brain remembers. You can prevent people from speaking their language by separating the children from their parents and whipping those children every time they utter a heathen word. Their parents die, the language is lost. Absolute elimination of language and culture, however, is very difficult to achieve. While two fertile people of opposite sex remain with memory of their culture there is a chance of recovery. They can infiltrate your own ranks, most frequently through the sexual predations of your frontier soldiers, and that allows the enemy to poison the minds of your children with the apostate culture. The Tasmanians survived because the colonists forgot that they had left bastards all over the Bass Strait islands. The last two or three Gadubanoot on Cape Otway fled to the sanctuary of their cousins in Colac and Warrnambool and survived. Even genocides
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as methodical as those attempted by Hitler and Pol Pot couldn’t eliminate the last brain holding the sacred memory. In November 2004 I sat on a granite tor at the foot of Gariwerd, west of Stawell Victoria, and watched corellas sweep from one side of the valley to the other in a single unbroken glide. The larger flocks were cacophonous, but the smaller flocks of two or three were almost silent but for the intimate muttered comments they shared. Gariwerd. It has power and much of that power is stored in the engulfing shape of Bunjil, the creator spirit of most Australian Indigenous peoples regardless of what name he bears in particular locations. At Gariwerd Bunjil can take the shape of a man, an eagle and a star and below the rock where I sat watching the corellas was a painting of Bunjil’s huge man shape. Oh, Anna had a pretty good go at eliminating the infidel by painting her name in red letters six inches high; some other jolly tourists had helped her. At the nearby Sister Rocks profanity and contempt jostle with 6-inch brushes of high gloss and aerosol cans to overpaint 40,000-year-old art, stories explaining how to understand the land, how to fall in love with it, how to protect it. But what do you need of such knowledge when you can spell Metallica and even get the font right? Rod 4 Susan 1996 is probably one of Australia’s foremost philosophers by now. But don’t be hard on Rod because my memory of the Sister Rocks tells me that they were recording football premierships for Collingwood and Stawell in the 1950s. Rod might have had no idea that he was in another man’s church. But Rod’s father did. And said nothing. The unassailable conviction of Rod’s father, grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers blinded them to the fecundity of the frontier, perhaps the transmission of their own genes. Their desire to clear the land was incomplete: they missed a few. Enough survived with memories intact to bring the culture into the twentyfirst century. A few miles away at Hall’s Gap the Djab wurrung and Jarwadjarli have built a cultural centre in the shape of the corella’s wings spread in that long quiet glide across the beloved land. The people paint on T-shirts and ceramic bowls today but the images and stories are reflections of the ancestors. No culture is immutable and Indigenous
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cultures are responding to the massive trauma of occupation. Try not to be distracted that the images are now rendered in glaze, acrylic, glass and film. Don’t be disconcerted by recognising that one of the Bram bram bult brothers in the culture video is a damn fine ruckman or that one of his aunties turns up on television every now and then. That’s how it is; genocide has failed again. The language has been preserved in memory too, and within the language are the stories that guided a civilisation through the universe thousands of years before Orion was a glint on his father’s sword. The story you can see told at Brambruk Cultural Centre is of the giant emu Tchingal being annoyed by Waar the mischievous crow. Tchingal chases Waar but each time he gets close to catching the crow Waar flies into a narrow gap in the mountains. Tchingal strikes but only succeeds in splitting the crack into a large crevice. Their animosity continues until Tchingal in his frustration turns one of the ancestor beings into a possum, Bunya. The Bram bram bult brothers come to avenge their cousin and chase Tchingal with their spears. Tchingal flees into the sky but not before being struck by several spears. Today the story of that epic battle hangs over us every night in the shape known as the Southern Cross. At the head of the Cross is Bunya, the timid possum, three of the other stars are the spears thrown by the Bram bram bult brothers. The large western star is the one that struck Tchingal’s chest, the smaller star next to it is the spear that passed through his neck, and the star at the bottom of the Cross is Druk, the mother of the Bram bram bult, and the two brothers are the pointers. Tchingal himself is the dark shape next to the Southern Cross while Waar is at a safe distance on the other side of the sky, the star known as Canopus. The language is alive and so too the universe. Where once tiny children were whipped by nuns for speaking the devil’s tongue, today it is nothing to be greeted in that language. Well we say nothing, but in fact it’s a very big something. I’ve seen big, tough men, in the prime of their life and power, reduced to weeping when they uttered words of their language in front of their fellows for the first time. It is a very big something. Language is the culture. Languages once thought dead are being revived from the memory of elders, lifted from the pages of arcane records, church 180
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pamphlets, squatter diaries, sign posts, property names and sound recordings. The languages are sophisticated and strong, some as strong as ever, others sadly depleted. The loss of subtlety and breadth can be seen as soon as you compare a list of the bird names which have been reclaimed with the numbers of birds with which the people had close association. If nouns have been lost at that rate then it’s inevitable that the more refined adjectives went with them. The existence of other acutely precise words is evidence of the subtle nuance missing in the more damaged languages. Today many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have had such limited access to schooling that they are intimidated by the less commonly used words of the English language. People who use the big words are greeted with enormous suspicion because Indigenous experience says that people who speak like governors or missionaries will steal everything you have including your children. Separation from education means separation from language and nothing is more likely to condemn a people to the lowest status in society; not lack of morals or intellect, but lack of opportunity. We must fight to restore the original languages and ease the suspicion Indigenous people have for the language of their oppression. That suspicion is a sad fact of colonisation because the Indigenous languages were, and are, refined responses to the universe. The languages were composed of words of enormous precision and beauty. They were capable of dexterous expression of the most complicated philosophical thought. To know the Indigenous story of the Southern Cross and Pleiades constellations is to set your roots in home soil: to look with a new eye at every raven brings intimate contact with your land, to watch emus more closely is a revelation, to see the might of an eagle is a massive reassurance, to see the night sky is not to wonder about Greek gods but to recognise the Seven Sisters of your soul and the Bram bram bult brothers of justice. The early European reaction to Australia was to mock the kangaroo and emu, to ridicule the black swan and platypus, to laugh at the wombat, to regret that the kangaroo was not a horse, that the cod was not a trout, the thylacine not a fox. But the weird 181
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fauna held some strange influence over the Australian psyche and soon the kangaroo and emu were emblazoned defiantly on the coat of arms, the black swan seen as emphatic difference. There was a timid association with Australianness but it didn’t stop the introduction of the rabbit so men could eat English food, or the fox so grown men could dress up and drink from the stirrup cup of the motherland. The ultimate refusal to embrace the fauna, however, was to refuse to eat it, preferring the sharp-hoofed cattle and sheep which compacted the soil, eliminated native herbage and eroded whole districts. In confusion about our homeland we swing on a pendulum of opposing forces. If a plague of kangaroos eat themselves to the point of starvation within the confines of Puckapunyal army camp any government would lose the election if it recommended the animals be killed and eaten. At the bicentennial mourning at Lake Condah gainsayers reported the community to the RSPCA and National Parks for killing and cooking a wallaby. Ambivalence and confusion creates a weird response to the land. At least we were reassured on that day to see Bunjil, the wedge-tailed eagle, fly over us at the very instant the Koori flag was raised. He had not forgotten us. The suburbs are crawling with possums but now they are protected and artists making traditional possum-skin cloaks (Wallert wallert) have to import the skins from New Zealand. In our confusion about who we are and what is precious we import skins rather than use what the land provides. Australia can’t make up its mind about sharks and snakes either. When the European bee stings it doesn’t rate a paragraph in any newspaper but one bite from a shark and vigilante fishermen take to the waves in a mood reminiscent of the party that hunted the killers of Franks. Australians are twenty times more likely to die from bee stings than the bite of sharks or snakes but when a snake is run over on the road the next motorist is likely to back over it to finish it off. When the furry and lovable wallaby or koala is hit, well-meaning people will expend sums of money and energy on the recovery of an animal with a 10 per cent chance of survival while people wait on hospital trolleys for want of sufficient beds, and trachoma still blinds people in northern Australia. 182
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My wife and I have run a wild life shelter for twenty years and in that time we have learnt how much animals suffer from the stress of human handling. We’ve reunited baby koalas with their mothers, released repaired owls, echidnas, bandicoots, swifts, parrots, kangaroos, wallabies, possums, gliders, pygmy possums, penguins, albatross; you name it, we’ve had it sleeping in our bathroom. Our back yard, however, is littered with graves because the success rate is so depressingly low. Good people desperately want to save the wallaby they’ve hit with their car but it’s almost impossible to repair the leg or hip bone of a jumping animal unless you restrict the animal so much that it becomes totally dependent on you and can never be released. Thousands of urban possums and snakes are dumped in the nearest bush reserve creating impossible population pressures and unthinkable hardships for the animals. We live in a manna gum forest and we see a lot of young male koalas suffering deep flesh wounds inflicted by the boss male koala during territorial and mating battles. Flies are attracted to the wound, lay eggs in the flesh and more often than not the animal dies an agonisingly slow death. While writing my novel, Ruby-eyed Coucal, I had a badly injured koala under my desk for two weeks. Its death was inexorable and horrible, an affliction to both the animal and myself. If you think the novel is salted with depression there’s a reason for that. We recovered a lot of these animals, however, and gradually rereleased them after hours of effort only to receive the same animal back a few days later with fresh wounds and a further attenuation of its death. The eucalypt leaf diet of the koala is so harsh that only the fittest animals can process it effectively. Injured and weakened animals spend agonising weeks dying of starvation. We are now very careful about subjecting an animal to a series of recoveries followed by new injuries and starvation. We cleaned oil-slicked penguins and shearwaters for weeks only to have most of them succumb to stress or die with digestive tracts destroyed by the chemicals. We’d be better to spend our time and money campaigning against the transport of oil by sea. Wildlife recovery may be dubious in some areas but there’s no denying the privilege. The process of successfully recovering a sick penguin is delightful because once they’re well you have to teach 183
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them to swim again or rather for the swimming process to trigger the oil production necessary for buoyancy. We have spent many happy hours teaching little drink waiters to swim in the tidal pools of Cape Otway. But we know from our records that a lot of them fail again soon after release. There’s more to wildlife recovery than the common community perception of clucky women and do-gooders repairing their conscience. Learning to wisely apply our concerns and energies is hard, but the acknowledgment of our wildlife and the damage we inflict on it is important for our national psyche. Luther Standing Bear of the American Lakota explained it like this: ‘The Old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too’.1 To allow respect of nature a place in our souls is crucial to our humanity. As we struggled with the self-imposed ‘playing God syndrome’ of the animal carer we determined to take a more realistic, but no less caring, attitude to the animals we encountered. Our new pragmatic view means we eat rather exotically; or is that Indigenously? A tiger snake that ran amok in our cricket kit during a Colac vs Apollo Bay match at the Colac school was struck by a Stuart Surridge in what Richie Benaud would call an agricultural swat to leg. When the other blokes weren’t looking I snuck the snake into my kit and ate him for tea that night. Not bad either, apart from the bit where the Surridge got him. Lot of power in those old Jumbo bats. I never made a lot of runs but I always ate well. It’s a good yarn, but I’ve never let on that I ate the snake because of the revulsion with which the admission would be greeted. For years I took people on bush tucker tours and most Australians were repulsed by anything I offered them from the rock pools or dug from the soil. They’ll eat a frozen chicken from god knows what charnel house but a fresh limpet or yam tuber has most people dry retching. In our ambivalence about what makes us Australian we import protein rather than use what the land provides. We are happy to transport cows and calves with broken legs poking between the bars of the trailer, but the low-fat, high-protein kangaroo is sacrosanct.
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The brouhaha erupting over what to do with kangaroo numbers at Puckapunyal army base has no virtue while we agree to submit other animals to pain. To love does not mean to pamper and pet, to love means to honour and celebrate, and in traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island life that included consumption as well as conservation. Kangaroos, koalas and emus were never threatened by the appetites of the Indigenous Australians but were decimated by the reckless land clearance of the new arrivals and the sprawl of modern suburbia. The migratory bison didn’t fit American concepts of agriculture so profligate destruction of the herds and the erection of fences almost eliminated a meat-producing animal so that it could be replaced by a different meat-producing animal. In Australia the soft-footed and discretely grazing kangaroo was replaced with herds of animals producing almost identical protein. Kangaroo has made it to the menu of flash restaurants but the concept of utilising animals adapted to the land’s soils and climate does not mean a government could safely authorise the culling of kangaroos in plague proportion. But then, when did common sense ever win an election? While Australia’s forefathers pursued policies to eliminate the Indigenous people from their lands the names of that land were retained. Lake Corangamite is a perfect example of this peculiar psychological inversion. So quick to kill and demean the original inhabitants, the early squatters hung up their gun to take up the chisel and carve the country’s name in a slab of red gum at their front gate, or to name a hill, a footy ground, a river, a town. Kardinia (rays of the early morning sun) used to appear every Saturday in the same sentence as Moccopan coffee, Ron Barassi and Keith Miller. Prahran (land partially surrounded by water) is now a trendy riverside shopping village, Geelong (tongue of land), Mooroolbark (red earth country), Moorabbin (short river) and Werribee (spine of stone) are names to be sped past in a Subaru bearing the star sign of the Seven Sisters.2 What is that compulsion to have the name but not the people? I wondered about it at Purrumbeet, I pondered it at Pomonal and the answer is somewhere at the heart of our feeling for the place.
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Does the retention of names like Pontiac, Cheyenne and Dakota in America and Saskatchewan, Toronto and Ottowa in Canada, spring from the same emotional and intellectual response as the Australian Ballarat (place to rest on the elbow), Colac (sandy beach) and Warragul (wild dog)? Woollongong, Triabunna, Warrnambool, Noarlunga, Kalgoorlie, Kakadu, Boorooloola, Kapunda, Tanunda, Wodonga, Narooma, Balgowlah, Coolangatta, Nambucca and Woolloongabba — it doesn’t matter where you go, the names are there. I think it’s the confusion of new love. You turn up, she’s new, she’s beautiful, but your parents don’t approve of the company she keeps. She is distant at first but she allows you to walk with her. You, a man rejected by the country of your birth, may dream of Kent and Glasgow in the first few months but in the moments before sleep you breathe your new love’s name. Oh, Nambour, Wycheproof, Echuca, Murwillumbah. You think of her, the warmth, the open gaze, the quiet restraint. Is that it? Is it love? Or is it the search for legitimacy or forgiveness? I took the land, I killed, or allowed to be killed, the people I know belonged to the land but…but I know her name so she is mine? It is probably as complicated and self deluding as all the surges of young reckless love but it doesn’t matter what was happening in the brain, the relationship was consummated, and like a lot of consummations it wasn’t without pain, neglect and violence. But here we are, sleeping in Murwillumbah, or on the banks of the Wallagaraugh, or in the shadow of Buninyong, and now we are responsible for her and the way we cherish her. But some do not cherish. Some relationships are mean and bitter struggles of veiled hatred, while others survive droughts of faith, tempests of emotion, trials of age and weariness. And therein lies succour and rest. Murwillumbah my beauty, my bride. There is nothing more to be asked than that we might rest so easily in another’s arms. Not far from Maroona on a giant granite tor I had that privilege of resting in the arms of my maturing bride while watching the great uninterrupted glide of corellas. Oh Maroona, my bride, can you feel the warmth of all the earth beneath your back?
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If you are born here you might admire another place but never love it like your own. Love is when you stand before your country and your jaw drops open and your soul creeps out of your mouth and walks about the country and when it returns it whispers in your ear, pardon me but I have just visited our mother. She is the plain below Nourlangie Rock, she is the serenity of Blanket Bay, the all-knowing stillness of the Wallagaraugh River, she is the birth mark stain of vermilion you see as you cross the continental centre of this country, our birthplace. When I pass Asian-Australians fishing on the south coast beaches I see that they are in awe of the fine octopus they have caught, their eyes ablaze with love, sometimes avarice, but I pray for that octopus to feed them well so that, when they wake at night from a dream of the bay where they caught her, they will pledge never to do anything to despoil that country, I pray that their soul aches for their children to swim in that pool and find their own octopus. An abused country fails to deliver clear pools and octopus of snow-white flesh. If we love, we must care for the beloved and teach others how to love her generously. But it is a two-way street this love thing. Should the bride have a buckled tooth you must embrace it, know it unreservedly; should the groom have a buckled nose, well that is what he is, you must look at that nose and say, it once was straight and fine but somewhere in the past it came to look like this, that is the history, I acknowledge it and do not pretend it is any different. Mature love; not without old wounds and ruptured joints, but substantial, nourishing and worth dying for. It is love which caused the ancestors to name her but was it love caused the usurper to maintain the name? Nowhere else has a city called Geelong or a river called Yarra. If you sleep and dream in those places the chances are that if you are separated from her the mere mention of her names will have the tears springing to your eyes or, if you’re the type of boy who mustn’t cry, sliding down the back of your throat. Love is not love until you admit it. Names are important to us all. When the State government of Victoria began discussing a dual-naming proposition for Mount
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Kosciusko the President of the Polish ex-servicemen’s association berated the suggestion with heartfelt passion. ‘Why are we going against tradition?’ he asked the media, alarmed that the mountain named by the Polish explorer, Count Strzelecki, would lose its association with his homeland, ignorant or careless of the fact that the mountain bore a much more powerful name given to it over 60,000 years ago by the Aboriginal people who saw it as the core of their world. In an Australia where we all knew our history that dreadful insult could never be made. Aboriginal people know how the Polish ex-servicemen feels, know all about pride and remembrance, and would be the first to acknowledge Strzelecki and Kosciuszsko, but what we ask in return is that the whole history of the mountain is acknowledged and celebrated by all Australians. The government’s proposal was not to eliminate the name of Kosciuszsko but to give it two names, a deepening of the history rather than the impoverishment the Poles feared. But there’s a lot more to celebrate in the nation than unique place names, Lucky Starr’s ‘I’ve Been Everywhere Man’, Vegemite, Bradman and Dame Nellie Melba. I’ve watched Aida and the Mahabharata and the scale of celebration is awesome but no cultural performance has ever come close, in my experience, to the Garma on the Bunggul ground at Yirrkala, Western Arnhem Land, in 2004. Consumers of western culture would be disconcerted by the seemingly fragmentary nature of the performance and the lack of conventional theatrical stages and devices, but the land is the set. Over the five days of performance the Bunggul sand itself became holy; the backdrop of slender eucalypts became difficult to separate from the dance itself, but it was the intellectual and physical scale of the performance which humbled us. These people, these survivors of premeditated elimination, were celebrating everything known about their world and were doing it in conjunction with their language neighbours from an area the size of Britain; but not only that, sharing a history contemporaneous with the rising and falling of seas, the collision of tectonic plates, the end and beginning of species.
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The scale of the dance encapsulates all this and the coming and going of foreign visitation to the shores but, just as importantly, the performance was a repair of tenuous clan relationships, negotiation of changes to the liturgy, even variations on the dance and music. It was difficult to grasp it all but over five days you begin to get a sneaking feeling of what it was like to live with megafauna and inland seas but, more profoundly, what it was like to live in a society of unified faith and responsibility. I saw babies and children and youths enthralled and involved in the intellectual and spiritual processes of their parents and extended family. Not going through the motions, not with sardonic reluctance, but fully there, in the moment, committed. I watched those young eyes engrossed by their parents’ intellectual aspirations. They wore their caps backwards and they had their hair shorn four inches above their ears in the shameful pudding bowl cut of my youth. In those days it revealed your poverty; today it badges your cool. I stared at these youths with the practised eye of parent and teacher but could not glimpse the curled lip or muttered contempt. Oh, some wore sunglasses with infuriating aplomb, but someone with the sacred yam twining on their chests cannot hide their reverence, the hanging jaw and transfixed posture of total absorption exposes it completely. And I saw their grandparents. Grandparents are usually old enough and mild enough, with the new humility of their disappearing powers, to fuss and glow at the achievements of their grandchildren. But the grandparents at the Garma performance are the directors and actors, they are on the stage with all their generations, and all transfixed by spiritual belief. I saw sunglassed and backward-capped youths leap to perform their uncles’ smallest request, finicky in their respect for the matrons of the family. I saw them crowd together like a massive football team at three-quarter time in a grand final and only three points down. They would prevail, the old people said, they would, they would, and this, listen to this, this is how they would do it. No child cried, no mischievous dog dared choose that moment to chase a bird, no girl in her very best dress dared to check how
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it was fitting on her hips, because the voices from the centre of the huddle were hushed, you had to strain forward to listen, press against your aunty to get close enough to those old voices: this was blood, this was life and death, and they were up for it, wanting to know what was required, what their responsibilities would be. There was music and dancing, ritual and art, choreography and theatricality of the highest order, but what I saw was a community determined to preserve the very best instinct of the human spirit. I admit I cried. Not wet, gushy tears; no fellow male would have noticed, been able to accuse, but my heart cried, not in pain, but in relief, in gratitude. I saw my country succeed. I saw a community grappling with the massive spiritual and social problems of our age, struggling to bridge all generations with a faith so profound that all could believe, to plan a way forward of such sophistication that any eventuality could be met and accommodated. Oh, I was proud of my countrymen, relieved that my country could still succeed in the business of including all in life’s richness, life’s rewards. Yolngu, I am in your debt. My country, your country, our Australia owes you a great deal for your courage, your relentless intelligence, your inspiration to convince us that in the threequarter-time huddle you can forget the fancy sports drinks, never cast your eyes at the crowd to see how they’re admiring you, imploring you, because you have no atom of your being to spare from attention to your coaches’ words. It didn’t matter that this ground was the sand of Gulkula, shiftier than Docklands; this was the Garma Festival, and the Yolngu community, despite all the strife they have endured, were on their Bunggul ground and united in a way I’d never seen a people united before. It is inspirational that a spiritual idea, that an intellectual concept, that art, that family, can be so fused with one heart, one blood. I saw a community united in grace and inclusiveness, care and love which in recent times I’d seen but rarely: sometimes after a bushfire, a road accident, a sudden tragic illness, but never across the community, across the generations.
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Australia, nothing is impossible it seems, the goodness of the human soul is never quite extinguished by the practical application of self-interest. Somewhere within us we are on the point of grace. Grace. There was a time towards the end of the fourth Bunggul that a particularly difficult and sensitive dance had to be performed and, almost without realising it a line of dancing women and girls moved in front of the uninitiated and obscured their view. Nothing was said there was never a hint of exclusion, but some aspects of culture belong wholly to the initiates. It was an act of grace but the internal business was followed by the most delicately raunchy dance I have ever seen. Women moved with deft and elegant gesture but power so explosive that if the audience had kept breathing as hard as they were we’d have all fainted from oxygen deprivation. Dance, art, music, laughter, sex, sorrow and whooping celebration, and all supported by a supple and thriving language. The Wathaurong language is not thriving. None who can speak it fluently. Until a few years ago there was no-one who could remember more than a few words. But it has not been swept away by the tide of history. Preschool children can sing basic rhymes, adults wear the words on their chest and walk down Moorabool Street with the pride that they alone of all the thousands who walk it know what Moorabool means. There’s a long way to go before the funeral songs we’ve recovered can be sung at an elder’s burial but there are some who hope that it might be their fate to have it sung above them. Sometimes the reclamation moves so slowly, so laboriously, that the spirit sags with the effort, but it does happen and it happens in surprising ways. Lying in bed one morning last summer I heard the pied currawong call at dawn, insistently, persistently. I heard it again the next morning and the morning after that and always as the first rays of the sun clipped the top of the trees, probably as those rays met the bird’s uplifted face, a bird waiting for just that moment. You never hear the pied currawong call like that at any other time. Birds of the one species sing slightly differently from one district to another and the pied currawong I hear each summer
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dawn is at Cape Otway, Gadubanoot country, and he or she sings out gean gean or nyean nyean. What is that bird singing about?, I asked myself, tutored well by Uncle Banjo Clark and Aunty Zelda Couzens. Why does it sing like that and why has it allowed me to hear? The Gadubanoot, as I’ve already mentioned, were victims of La Trobe’s lighthouse policy and Roadknight’s land grab but their cousins were the Colijon of Colac. The Colijon word for sun is near near or nyah nyah. Is that what the bird was singing; sun sun, and did the Colijon call him the sun or name the sun after him? Well, it is unlikely to be the latter and in any case the word for sun in most Victorian languages is also the word for eye and is usually mirr or mirri or, in the case of the Colijon near or nyah, close enough to the sound of mirr for it to be a local Colac variant. So the bird may be called after the sun it celebrates. Linguists go all twitchy when Indigenous people begin making leaps of faith like that and while you will not see that name in the Wathaurong or Colijon dictionary (yet) it is useful to contemplate the origins of our words and the most authentic way to recover language. You cannot separate Indigenous language from the natural world because it is rooted in landscape. The entire reference is to the earth, so while linguists would prefer it if communities stuck to written texts as the only resource, it is the right of the community and a method of integrity to search the plain as well as the page. Both black and white can benefit from the protection of Indigenous languages because the truth about the country is embedded in those languages and if we are to live, reproduce and die here it is a wise philosophical precaution to understand the soil from which we spring and into which we descend. But then we rise up into heaven you will say, but that concept is in the Indigenous spirituality too. You can’t get away from blackfellas; they’re everywhere. Only fascists burn libraries; only right-wing governments increase the cost of schooling to the point where it is out of reach of any but the rich. Do they fear the majority having unimpeded access to knowledge? Is that why the Victorian government pulped Historical Records of Victoria, volumes 2A and 2B — too much information about the colonial wars? A worker at the Government Printing Office told me this is one of the tasks he was asked to do.
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Was the book too honest for the Government’s sensitivities or did it simply fail to sell? Either way it is a bad sign for Australia. Why is so little effort put into supporting bilingual education in Aboriginal schools? Is there a conscious or unconscious insistence that this unique cultural trait be eliminated as a means of crushing the culture forever, eliminating the whisper of conscience? All Australians can be inspired and sustained by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island languages and history because they hold the secrets about the land we are yearning to love. What kind of mind would actively pursue their elimination? Take pride in these languages, look up from the page where you read for the first time the reason why the willy wagtail is called nyellpillup and be swamped with the reassurance that you’ve known about that bird all along, that, intuitively you understood a little about your own land by watching that bird since your eyes first learnt to focus. Listen as you are told by a member of the Colijon that a particular range of hills is named after the low bound of the bandicoot and realise that you’d been looking suspiciously at that range with it’s meaning just out of reach. And suddenly there it is, the understanding you were searching for, the expression of that surge of love and connection you felt every time you looked up at those hills as you enjoyed your evening beer. Understanding had been within your grasp all the time but withheld from you by your culture, by its insistence to hide you from your history. But the language of the land knew what you craved, the language of people who had 60,000 years to nail the meaning and feeling of that landscape. It’s not just a story of what it looks like, but what quickens its spirit. It is shocking to have knowledge of land so rich and immediate that you feel it in your groin, a full mind and body awareness of the land. And it’s in the language. We have to be patient and careful, respectful and loving in our pursuit of that knowledge. It is not like studying the geology of oil fields and gold seams, it is information of importance only to those who look up from their meal or beer glass and say, God, I love this place. Aunty Zelda Couzens is an extraordinary woman. She reminds me of the feistiness of Oodgeroo Noonuccal. They share an unshakeable integrity and a quiet but palpable sexuality and
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intellect. Your nerves tingle in their presence. Forget the fact that Oodgeroo is dead and Aunty Zelda is…getting on, but they were and are both women of enormous power. It is probably no accident that both were acute observers of their world and held some charm over their dominion. If you travelled through country with Aunty Zelda you would be visited by animals. The least often seen animals would come to the side of the road to watch her pass. I know because there are roads I travel frequently but only if she is in the car do the quail assemble at the side of the road, only for her will the bower bird appear, only on Aunt’s wrist will the king parrot rest. Anyway, Aunty Zelda is one of the people you turn to when it comes to culture. Time and again I asked her about this word or that, but while she was often able to help, sometimes she would claim to know almost nothing. One day I turned up at her door with a bag of spiny headed mat rush for her traditional basket weaving. (They say I supply grass to all the old aunties!) I had a Koori work experience student with me and I asked Aunt about words as she prepared the fibre but she claimed she didn’t know enough to help. So I turned the pages of words which at that time formed the basis of the Wathaurong dictionary and told the work experience student that the word for basket grass was putch gnoort. ‘No it’s not’, Aunt said, ‘it’s pronounced pooj, the other one is a rude word’. ‘I thought you didn’t know any language Aunt’, I replied. ‘I know it when I hear it wrong!’ It was an important moment because it gave us a way of pronouncing a word we’d only ever seen written. She put us right with baring gootch (native raspberry) too. I was saying it as if it sounded like the Bering in Bering Strait but she said it with the ‘r’ rolled on the end of the tongue, more like you would read bardring. It’s hard to get that rolled ‘r’ unless you practise it but a lot of Koori words depend on them being pronounced correctly. It was an important moment for the Wathaurong language because even though Aunty Zelda is a Gundidjmara woman she had heard words spoken by different clans and she was able to give us several vital clues. Even though she knew nothing!
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Native Born Nations are built with pens and brushes not just hammers and nails. They exhibit their character in what they say about themselves as much as what is said about them. But when Port Phillip gained its independence from New South Wales and became Victoria an independent colony spirit rose in the hearts of the native born and they prided themselves on being the sporting champions of the world: nowhere could you find a man of such strength and endurance, nowhere could you find men and women of such liberty. The achievements of the people are truly phenomenal. The energy, the labour, the inventiveness is miraculous. The will to build, clear and plough, to sow and shear, chop and burn was of heroic proportions. All but a few dozen of the giant trees in the precipitous Otway ranges of Victoria were chopped down, sawn and shipped between 1870 and the early 1930s. The magnitude of the enterprise is almost impossible to comprehend. The stories of individual squatters who tore the giant stumps out of the ground and then ploughed and sowed these steep lands makes your teeth ache with the effort, unimaginable to anyone who has not worked in the bush with five kilos of clay clinging to their boots and ten of forest rain dragging down their clothes. Some stood and watched as fire or flood eliminated all they had built. The bleakness in their hearts must have gnawed at their bones, but most of them split more logs, ploughed more acres, sowed more seed, milked more cows; their stoic labour perhaps never surpassed on the planet.
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And yet these tireless and valiant men were the same involved in the massacres and poisonings, and if not directly involved, benefited from the ‘liberated’ lands that fell to them as a result; and when their ploughs turned up the smashed skulls of children they would quietly drop them into a hollow stump or ghoulishly polish them and set them in a satin-lined trove as a keepsake of conquest. I have seen such glory boxes. If there were some who railed against this barbarity, this wholesale murder, the theft of these lands, then apart from Dawson and a couple of others, the remembrances of their humanity must be very hard to obtain. In the early, more brazen days, skulls were nailed to the doors of huts as a warning, or sat on fence posts to scare the living daylights out of all relations who might pass that way. But soon the time of amnesia arrived and those things were forgotten as if they’d never happened, only to be spoken of with people whose opinion you could trust entirely. Despite all that has happened since those times that early amnesia has left a void in the national soul. There are still people with the satin lined glory boxes, the black velvet bags full of children’s finger bones and more ostentatiously the greenstone axe of ‘the last tribesman of this area’, safe to speak of him now that he has gone and cannot lay claim to his land. Not that a claim would do him any good now that federal parliament insists that a man can only make a claim if he is living on his land, speaking his language and practising his culture: as if Captain Cook never arrived. This is a law which the courts are happy to uphold, the judges pursing their lips in refined contemplation of the inadequacy of the claim, sanctified by their meticulous application of justice. Swept away by the tide of history they say. Hard but fair. Very fair. Convenient amnesia became self-delusion so that in 1998 R J McCormick could write in his history of the western plains, Ready for the Plough, ‘A few Aborigines were already settled in the area’. 1 He writes this in his only lines about the history before white invasion as if the Wathaurong had stolen a march on the squatters by a few days. How could you believe this in 1998 unless your educational and political systems were wholly inefficient or corrupted by a deliberate fraud?
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The vast majority of historical references are like this, either never mentioning Aboriginal occupation or, like McCormick, dismissing them in an inaccurate paragraph. It continues today even from the most earnest and benign sources. I was shown a draft of the history of Apollo Bay and objected in the strongest terms to the brief and inaccurate paragraph on the Gadubanoot. I even submitted a short but accurate alternative. The offer was rejected. In 2004 I read a manuscript produced by a local Reconciliation committee which used the word natives when referring to the Kulin people. Almost any school text you like to pick up will parrot the ‘fact’ that Aboriginal people arrived as ‘migrants just like us’ across the Asian land bridges. This neat little combination of words seems to wash Lady Macbeth’s hands of all guilt. Very tidy, all parcelled up: ah good, we’ve solved that problem, they have no more right to the land than us. This theory of migration seeks to ignore all the conflicting archaeological evidence which suggests that Aboriginal people were already here before the last period when the land bridges were negotiable by small watercraft. Some scientists refused to believe that smoking caused lung cancer and today some don’t believe that carbon emissions are harming the world atmosphere or that Aborigines were here earlier than 40,000 years ago. There are gaps in the evidence, although they are quickly being closed, but in a text for students it’s crucial to allude to the probability. Education is meant to feed the enquiring mind, to provide sufficient information for considered opinions to develop; not to perpetuate a lazy truth lifted from an impoverished analysis manipulated to clear up the Aboriginal problem quickly and neatly so that the writer can get on with the really interesting stuff of the Rum Rebellion. Even Manning Clark could hardly wait to get beyond the obligatory paragraphs preceding 1788. Proponents of the view that Indigenous occupation of Australia began at least 60,000 years ago, and maybe as early as 120,000, are treated by conservative politicians and historians as if they argued against the Iraq war or that greenhouse gasses are produced by industrialisation. Antiquity of human occupation of Australia should not
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be repressed just because it necessitates a review of world history; quite the opposite. It is a debate a mature intellectual community must undertake. What better place to start than Nature Australia, Spring 2000, where Jim Allen reviews the modern archaeological dating systems. ‘Having modern humans in Australia before 45,000 years ago requires significant adjustments to world pre-history’.2 Allen gives reasons why some old dates for Australian occupation need to be scrutinised by the latest science but insists that it is the silliest notion on earth to pretend that Aborigines couldn’t have lived here earlier than 40,000 years ago simply because European history finds it difficult to contemplate. The recent discovery of million-year-old ‘hobbit’ skeletons on Flores should cause us to query accepted theories of global settlement, and there is no reason why we shouldn’t ask if these people were embarked on a migration north rather than south. The theory of Aboriginal arrival in Australia via the south-east Asian land bridge seems under siege from scientific discoveries of the last decade. Dr Tim Senden found the 380-million-year-old fossil of gogonasus in north-western Australia in 2005 and believes this shows that creatures might have first moved from sea to land in Australia.3 The skeleton of this creature shows incredible similarities to the articulation of the human skeleton. We have to wonder where humans first walked, not that it’s particularly crucial if it happened in Africa or Australia, but surely it obliges us to pay more credence to the possibility that Aboriginal insistence ‘that we have always been here’ might just be correct. While at university I often asked why so few studied Australian history, why it was never studied at all at most universities, and was told it was too boring, that the parliamentary period was too short to have allowed a Guy Fawkes rebellion or the murder of a few queens. Australian history is boring only because 200 years is studied and not the full 60,000. Of course it’s difficult to study the history of a culture without written language but it hasn’t stopped the world producing a million historical texts on the Aztecs and Incas.
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They are hot topics for television but the age of these civilisations varies from 2000 to 7000 years. Where is the energy to study civilisations of 60,000 to 120,000 years? The common link between the civilisations seductive to the western imagination is their fascination with gold, silver, jewels and slavery, that is, civilisations having most in common with the western and eastern empires of today. The engineering feats are called wonders of the world, the accumulation of gold and gemstones into ownership of the few is admired, slavery and oppression considered the natural ancillary of progress. Civilisations where the emphasis is on equality of opportunity and equal access to food do not concentrate the riches into tombs and palaces for the wealthy and so, in archaeological terms, leave almost no trace; tourists will never gawk at their statuary and gilt cupolas, will never wonder about a race where all were fed, all were involved in the celebration of the culture and enjoying their lives in equal measure. To claim that the smelting of gold is an indication of technological genius is nonsense. Gold has almost no technological use. Aboriginal Australians knew the metal but had almost no use for such a soft substance. Other cultures, however, have used it as an economic indicator: those who have gold and those who don’t. Possession of gold is an element of class differentiation. The civilisations which possessed gold often took it from earlier owners and those aggressions represent the accepted story of human destiny. There’s no need to soft focus the noble savage but a desperate imperative to understand the philosophy of a civilisation that eschewed gold, slavery, obscene wealth and territorial war. This is not a warm and cuddly notion, it is not even an argument for or against capitalism or communism, but a search for understanding of a crucial development in the civilisation of the human race. Space travel and golden cupolas may, conversely, prove to be the expressions of a civilisation which eliminates itself by overconsumption. There’s no need for all Australians to eat bush tucker and practise Indigenous ceremony, but a mature reflection of how a society divides resources and limits population growth seems to be warranted.
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While archaeology is a branch of engineering departments attitudes will never change; while politics faculties are besotted with the rule of kings and calumnies within castle walls, the roots of democracy will never be explored and the future development of civilisation will be crippled by our obsession with adversarial systems of politics and law, and their worship of contest and conquest. In all the learned debates about clashes between white and black everyone is limited to the review of written information but there are unmined sources still to be examined. People at Framlingham still speak of an occasion when a whole clan was driven off the headland and into the sea at Massacre Bay near Peterborough. Surfers still report human bones on the beach to bored authorities and yet if it was the foot of a Sydney to Hobart sailor the army and police would search the area for three months. The details of the Peterborough incident are still quite clear and consistent in Indigenous memory and yet there is no official record of the event. There are still documents to be exhumed and within them a keen student may find evidence to reveal such hidden crimes. An elder of the Yorta Yorta people told me of a ‘massacre’ that happened on the Murray River where ‘hundreds, thousands’ of Aborigines were killed and he claimed the field of bones discovered, when Lake Victoria emptied in the recent drought was from that incident. I have heard similar stories repeated in consistent detail and yet the available records are silent. Correspondents could be mistaken or their reports exaggerated or they might be right, but we’ll never know unless their claims are examined. Research of Australian history is treated with disdain by our universities and institutions. Of course there are some notable exceptions, but in general the study of our country’s past is considered low rent. In 2001 I began searching for a lost manuscript. Academics had been aware for decades that Assistant Aboriginal Protector William Thomas’ language lists were incomplete but noone knew where the second half had got to. The La Trobe library was astounded when I found it in a file under the name of one of Thomas’ contemporaries. The story of how and why half of Thomas’ manuscript had been usurped by a bloke called Crouch is worth a book of its own but why was it left to a mug researcher with no training to bring the two halves together?
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I had three long and detailed conversations with library staff and I begged them to correct the cataloguing error for the sake of future research. The new half of the manuscript added over a hundred new words to three supposedly lost languages, a very important document by any standards but still the library has not replied. If it was Bradman’s serviette or Dame Nellie’s bus ticket it would have been front page news on every Packer and Murdoch tabloid. I’ve been given a letter by one Western District family which records a massacre of Gadubanoot people in the Otway region but I can’t match the date or details with any documented event. A boy survived this massacre by hanging onto the stirrups of a police horse. He was captured and taken to the police barracks, but I can find no record of what happened to him next. In trying to examine the location where another local legend talks of piles of human bones I have been prevented from investigation by nervous landowners panicked by the government’s warning about whites losing their back yards to land claims. Howard deliberately generated this panic to pave the way for his demolition of the High Court’s judgment that the Wik people owned their land. But time may allow that search, as fear cannot be maintained after the death of farmers or the malicious ignorance of politicians. The field of research of these and other events is open to any who care to spend their time and intellect in the pursuit. Many leads will prove false, but others will tell us more about the Silent War, about who we are. Australian history isn’t boring, it’s just too hot to handle; it calls into question everything that Australians believe about themselves. Better to ignore it all together, pretend it didn’t happen, lest it destroy the idealised stories of ‘explorers and pioneers’. It’s natural to want to believe that we are a strong, industrious and generous people. The desire to want to be known as a good people is an important and positive characteristic, but the path to those credentials is more difficult. We are strong, we are industrious, we are generous but we are also very selective in the application of our finest qualities. We give with incredible generosity when a Tsunami hits our holiday coasts in Indonesia and Thailand but fall silent whenever earthquakes devastate Pakistan or former AFL
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footballer Michael Long, pleads for his country and countrymen and women. Instead of pretending that antipathy to Aboriginal Australians doesn’t exist, we should strive to explain the impulse, and understanding it is half way to repairing it. Luther Standing Bear of the American Lakota had pondered the invaders’ earnest antipathy and concluded: The white man does not understand the Indian for the reason that he does not understand America. He is too removed from its formative processes. The roots of the tree of his life have not grasped the rock and soil. The white man is still troubled with primitive fears; he still has in his consciousness the perils of this frontier continent, some of its fastnesses not yet having yielded to his questing footsteps and inquiring eyes…And he still hates the man who questioned his path across the continent.4
It’s interesting to look at Indigenous commentary because too often Indigenous intellectuals are considered either holy mystics or disreputable fools. Luther Standing Bear is never considered a genuine world figure because his name seems quaint when compared to Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin and Sigmund Freud. The weight of his words alone is not sufficient for him to have been taken seriously as a commentator on the American psyche. The same fate has befallen Pat Dodson, Gary Foley, Lowitja O’Donohue and Jack Davis despite their unique insights into what makes Australia tick. We ignore such people at our peril. The avoidance of the truth still haunts; it can’t go away until the nation braces itself, clears its throat and says, ‘yes, this is what happened, this is our history’, this is how four generations of our family have prospered on this wheat farm, estuary fishery, orchard, oyster farm, timber industry, mining claim or whatever created their wealth. Avoidance didn’t finish with La Trobe, didn’t even start with him, in fact under his relatively enlightened administration may even have been restrained; not prevented, but slowed down, and if death by a thousand cuts is preferred to outright murder then La Trobe’s influence probably transformed the single murderous blow into a series of more subtle, but equally deadly, excisions. 202
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The surgery of La Trobe remains effective because of the nation’s self-administered anaesthesia. In A Coastal Diary John Landy remarks that the Gadubanoot ‘died out so quickly’ that we know little about them.5 Landy was Governor of Victoria, a champion Olympic gold medallist, the man who stopped mid-race in the Olympics to help a fallen athlete to his feet. A Coastal Diary is a superb book, every Australian should read it, and yet this man of such incredible talents and sensitivity believes that the Aborigines died out. It is shocking to realise how this impoverished history has pervaded even the most sensitive Australian minds. French and German tourists have approached me, Australian history book in hand, and asked me, ‘Do you believe this, this died out, disappeared nonsense?’ Perfect strangers to the country know enough about world history to bring clear-eyed scepticism to such statements and yet our finest minds are blinded by the poisonous mists of their education, the myths spooned into the mouths of all Australian students. If John Landy believes the Aborigines died out, the task ahead of the nation’s education system is truly awful. These myths were established by men with no more refined motive than greed. The lies were a screen for the blatant violation of their country’s law. Anyone who did that today might spend five years in a jail without charges being laid. Such is the power and momentum of self interest, and the admiration with which most men view greed, that our national story reads like a nursery rhyme for spoilt children. The urgent needs of the native sons and their access to the land’s riches allowed the colony to flourish and its culture to become gross with the callow arrogance of youth. The great deeds of land clearance, ‘exploration’, the construction of cities progressing at miraculous pace, meant there was no time or inclination to reflect on the war or the law. The writers and painters whom you might have expected to ponder the source of all these riches, instead were swept along by the riotous energy of the native-born currency lads, painting portraits of the newly rich and their horses, dashing off rhyming stanzas to celebrate those horses and their fearless Australian-born riders. Too busy with the brighter more optimistic palette to see black. Too embedded with the invader to see through their own eyes. 203
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Artists’ impressions of Aboriginal life, when they appeared, were of two types: lampoon sketches for the popular press or romanticised paintings of idyllic savages suitable for the tastes of London. Literature was even worse. Henry Lawson was born on the Grenfell goldfields in 1867 and was one of those characters in whom, Manning Clark liked to say, the gales of life blew intemperately. Lawson was born in a poor man’s tent and later, when under his mother’s influence, he began to write of the Australian bush and its characters, cleaving to the larrikin spirit, the republican, the battler. The man who Clark believed became ‘the conscience of a nation’, published his first poem in the Bulletin in 1887, A Song of the Republic. Sons of the South, awake! arise! sons of the south, and do. Banish from under your bonny skies Those old-world errors and wrongs and lies Making a hell in Paradise That belongs to your sons and you.6
Boldly patriotic and fitting the colony’s republican feelings, but there was better to come. ‘Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock’ and ‘His Father’s Mate’ are classics of the age but it is ‘Faces in the Street’ where Lawson’s empathy with the downtrodden is most obvious: They lie the men who tell us in a loud decisive tone That want is here a stranger, and that misery’s unknown, For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet My window sill is level with the faces in the street — Drifting past, drifting past, To the beat of weary feet — While I sorrow for those owners of those faces in the street… The human river dwindles when ‘tis past the hour of eight, Its waves go flowing faster in the fear of being late, But slowly drag the moments, whilst beneath the dirt and heat, The city grinds the owners of the faces in the street — Grinding body, grinding soul
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Yielding scarce enough to eat — Oh, I sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.
One of the world’s most plangent socialist anthems and, true to Lawson’s generous heart, a plea for the emancipation of the oppressed, and yet in the pages of his work there is something missing. ‘Faces in the Street’ was written in the late 1880s and the war was well and truly over. It’s true there were still occasional massacres in the more remote parts, but in general terms the frontier was transforming into towns and streets, a new urbanity was arriving; but from that crude eruption of civility the Aboriginal Australians were banned. Even as early as 1842 Aborigines were forbidden the town’s streets after dusk. Lawson, the great heart and conscience of Australia, would have seen these fringe dwellers. He saw the Chinese mullock fossickers and his depictions of them are generally sympathetic if a little condescending, but where are the Aborigines? You will search and search through the powerful body of his work and find almost no reference to them, but wait, there is one, and here it is in perhaps the most famous Australian story of all, ‘The Drover’s Wife’. The poor woman alone in her house but for her young family and her dog, staying awake all night because there’s a snake under the house, the great terror of the bush, every Australian’s worst nightmare. The night is dark and she is almost out of candles and with little wood to keep the fire alight she creeps out to the woodheap: She seizes a stick, pulls it out, and — crash! the whole pile collapses. Yesterday she bargained with a stray blackfellow to bring her some wood, and while he was at work she went in search of a missing cow. She was absent an hour or so, and the native black made good use of his time. On her return she was so astonished to see a good heap of wood by the chimney, that she gave him an extra fig of tobacco, and praised him for not being lazy. He thanked her and left with head erect and chest well out. He was
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the last of his tribe and a King, but he built that wood-heap hollow.
So, the extra fig of tobacco is what, extra to the one or two she promised, the bargain she drove so hard, a whole heap of wood for some shreds of the coarsest tobacco? A fig of tobacco is about the size of a knob of goat shit, tastes about the same and costs not much more. Who, in 1887, was going to stack a mountain of wood for a couple of knobs of goat shit? And what’s the drama? A snake. Australia’s great paranoia with its wildlife. Many more Australians are killed by European bees and universal lightning than by sharks, snakes, redbacks, funnel-webs, stingrays and in fact any of our fauna. Our hatred of snakes, sharks and spiders is part of our inability to cope with the continent. Lawson empathised with the drover’s wife but not the real owner of the land. Did his heart quiver at all when he wrote ‘the last of his tribe’? Geoffrey Blainey’s didn’t. Blainey has spent most of his career trying to explain the Australian character and the defining moments of its development. He is one of Australia’s foremost thinkers and has studied Aboriginal history far more completely than most, but from a point of view of finding the reason why Europeans had to defeat them. The desire to prove the preconceived caused Blainey to play down the contribution of Aboriginal people to the nation’s development as well as the nature of the conflict they endured. Similarly he dismisses the Chinese as a troublesome force in our history. Blainey has been an outspoken critic of Asian immigration and his opinion affects his literary appreciation as well as his interpretation of what Australians are like or what he thinks they should be like. In an article in Overland in 2004 Chek Ling, an Australian resident for over 42 years, reviews Blainey’s attitudes to Lawson’s work and its treatment of Chinese. He argues that Blainey enjoyed ‘the waning of Henry Lawson’s star over the past forty years’, but has more in common with the author than he realises. Lawson ‘suffers from the present vogue for political correctness because he was sometimes hostile to the collective presence of the Chinese in Australia’.7 206
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‘My guess’, Chek Ling continues, is that Lawson’s loss of popularity has more to do with our concern these days to be identified with the ‘winners’. Lawson was a Loser. His life was punctuated by spells of drunkenness, prison…and the mental hospital. I just cannot imagine that readers attracted to Lawson would be put off because of his poems about the Chinese which were few and far between. Lawson was more a chronicler of the times than an opportunist Chinese-basher to advance his own standing. He was no populist Pauline Hanson or John Howard. Nor did he need to be.8
Chek Ling thinks Blainey’s position on Lawson says more about Blainey’s own objection to the Chinese presence in Australia and quotes the professor’s 1982 ABC television history, produced a couple of years before he launched headlong into his attack on Asian immigration. ‘In the gold era (1850s), Australians experienced what is now called a multicultural society. Their experience convinced them that such a society didn’t work; and at the time clearly it didn’t work’.9 In that era unionists sang anti-Chinese songs and the press and authorities mounted a demonisation of the ‘Chinese Devils’. White women’s virtue could never be guaranteed in their presence because of the obsequious guise of the sly Chinese. The same process of denigration and fear was applied to the Indigenous population. Lawson virtually ignored them but, as Chek Ling says, ignoring the presence of another race was not the most virulent form of racism being practised at the time. It is mild compared to murder and provocatively designed legislation and impromptu interpretations designed to inflict maximum damage on the ‘heathens’. But artists are supposed to see the world more clearly, more tolerantly than the normal man in the street. Where is God when his children use the word heathen so inexactly? Where are our artists when crimes of morality are committed and remain unreported? The artistic and political arms of infant white Australian culture are eerily similar and quite frightening when you see those crude original sentiments echoed 200 years later. Political correctness can be ugly in its extreme form. I have heard some enthusiasts greet the first Aboriginal people they’ve ever 207
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met with open arms and a gushing ‘Oh, you are such beautiful, wise people. I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you’. Sometimes the targets didn’t speak English but if they did they were off their tucker for a week. Conflating idiotic sentimentality with considered arguments about the value of Aboriginal heritage has been Howard’s cynical triumph, but the fact that some prattle sentimental muck doesn’t absolve Australia from the task of contemplating its history in a more considered fashion. Intelligent debate might cause oxygen deprivation for ideologues of either persuasion, but might also allow mature ideas to breathe. The frontier was a place confused by the grandeur of liberal theology coming out of London and the chaos of malice, greed and opportunistic racism at the coal face. The present is afflicted by all those things but with the added retardation of apathy and profound ignorance. La Trobe was at the coal face and often in the dark. His imperial flaw: the arrogant assumption of British superiority and righteousness, the right to dispossess people and a belief that it was God’s will that an Englishman should do it. The destruction of a non-material culture was considered an act of no consequence. The flaw which caused the blindness in La Trobe, that one aching wound in one of such great abilities, has remained in the country and resurfaces in the genes of Lawson, the country’s greatest writer. A heart of such great compassion, but a head of such blindness that it cannot see black; so unnerved by the colour that, like many Australians, he supported the Boers in their right to massacre Africans. Lawson’s blindness was common but much more virulent in many others. JF Archibald, the editor of the Bulletin, Lawson’s great patron and a key figure in the development of Australian arts and ideas, was fervent in his racism, his bold republicanism ridiculing the British but viciously deriding the Indigenous. In 1908 his magazine’s banner standard proclaimed ‘Australia for the White Man’ and the cartoons depicting Aboriginal people are gross. Racism, ignorance and prejudice flourish in the fertile soul of Australia’s search for independent identity. Gallipoli is yet to come, but rather than the Australian character trembling in anticipation
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of creation, for the molten metal to spill into the heroic mould, that metal has already cooled as a rod in Henry Lawson’s soul, cooled so quickly that he can write ‘the last of his tribe’, ‘stray blackfellow’ and never wonder at the chain of events which brought that circumstance about. It is 1887 but the Australian character is already cool slag in the die, well and truly cast. We’ll wait a long time for Judith Wright; we’ll wait even longer for Kevin Gilbert, Richard Frankland and Alexis Wright, and in the meantime there’ll be many Mary and Elizabeth Duracks, Xavier Herberts and Marlo Morgans. Xavier Herbert. You can’t knock the great friend of the Aborigines. Well, go back and read Poor Fellow My Country again. Sure, there are a lot of blackfellas in the novel, sure there’s a lot of sympathy, but who’s the hero of the novel? The great white hunter himself, Xavier Herbert, without whose help no blackfella would be capable of doing anything. Australians have read so many of these novels and histories with cataracts over their eyes, and that white veil obscures all but the faintest outline of reality. Eve Langley is considered by many to have written one of the most original Australian novels. The Pea Pickers, when considered in the literary climate of the era, is vibrant with its evocation of Australian mateship and the bush and heretical in its challenge of conventional sex roles. A radical and influential book in the history of Australian literature but like Lawson, Langley can’t see the colour black. Her novel is set in the market gardens of East Gippsland and celebrates the Australian worker not in soft focus Empire glory but as it was, full of Italians, Germans and battling Australians. Dramatically different from how the Bulletin saw the iconic worker of the wide brown land. In any literature such a shift in consciousness would be significant but Langley’s portrayal of the Australian character has another element of significance to our culture; she is colour blind. The pea, bean, maize, grape and fruit harvesters of that era were predominantly black. The Aboriginal history of southern Australia from Federation to the introduction of mechanical harvesters is set against the itinerant life of the crop picker. Today, talk among
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members of Aboriginal communities never proceeds far without mention of peas and beans, grapes and maize and the districts of Bruthen, Bairnsdale, Bega and Mildura. Despite this fact of history Langley’s novel is graced by one Aboriginal person who arrives and leaves the stage in the space of two lines. Her only other reference to the colour black is to an Afghan picker who speaks almost pure Aboriginal English, ‘Might be little bit wattle-tree and rub on tooth’.10 The heroine of the novel hates this man and condemns him with the line, ‘Pah, a black man’. And taunts him after his advances with the impossibility of his hopes, ‘But a black man after all’. As if he should never have dared consider they had anything in common. The picking industry is dominated by Aboriginal families but Langley never mentions them again, preferring to concentrate on the Italians with whom she shares almost no language but does share the knowledge of European culture, allowing them to converse through music and myth. Today’s Australians still remain immersed in the stories of Prometheus and Atlas but know nothing of the Bram bram bult or the Seven Sisters. A wonderful opportunity to uncover the secret civilisation of Australia is passed over in favour of continued reliance on the myths, music and legends of a continent separated from our land by an entire hemisphere. Patrick White, Australia’s second most famous author after Lawson, was generous toward Aboriginal people, but why shouldn’t he be? His family owned half of New South Wales and like Judith Wright’s family, had displaced Aboriginal people to get it. Patrick White. Another of our great republicans. White used Aboriginal people as colour and background, mysterious beings of menace and malevolence in Voss and A Fringe of Leaves. In the latter novel, as a splash of dramatic colour, White manages to include some mythic cannibalism and treachery, drawing the people as dirty, acquisitive, ridiculous grotesques. ‘The monkey-woman snatched. An almost suppressed murmuring arose as they examined the jewels they had been given, but their possessive lust was quickly appeased, or else their minds had flitted in search of further stimulus’.11 If we knew our history White would have known that the gold and jewels of the British held no charm for Aborigines, that they 210
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rejected almost all European goods except those things they already used in their culture: axes, tobacco and flour. Western literature is considered a free agent to set its stories against any texture, any colour, any metaphor, but perhaps a time will come when Australian authors will not snatch misinformed stereotypes off the shelf to act as background to what many see as their more civilised, more important, more cognitively sophisticated white selves. That time has not yet arrived. Peter Goldsworthy’s awardwinning novel of 2004, Three Dog Night, has a sophisticated middleclass academic opine on page 6 that all the Indigenous people around Adelaide died of smallpox. It’s a throw-away line to a lover’s question but if Goldsworthy had spelt the Grey in Earl Grey with an ‘a’ instead of an ‘e’ it would have provoked letters to Australian Book Review, earnest letters, bemoaning a fall in the standard of the Australian novel. Characters in novels are allowed to say what they will, but would any modern novelist dare to say that the Jews at Aushwitz died of lung cancer or that Pol Pot’s victims succumbed to an incredible series of workplace accidents? Goldsworthy’s novel does describe Aboriginal culture more sympathetically in other parts of the text but the fact remains that page 6 reinforces a perception of Australian history which has corrupted so much Australian thought. In another part of the novel Goldsworthy reveals certain rites of Aboriginal lore where incisions are made to the penis of some initiated men. Is this included with the acknowledgment of the community or for sensational novelistic colour? There are some things which should never be misrepresented, even in dialogue, without further qualification elsewhere in the text. As a novelist I shrink from the kind of awkward ‘correctness’ that might result from self-imposed editing but perhaps the solution is in better education of writers, a long draught of reality. Perhaps as leaders of the country’s intellectual life artists should be determined not to delude the audience, insult Indigenous communities or allow our nation to snuggle up in the comfort zone of Theme Park History. Tim Winton, one of the very best writers in Australia, has a benevolent black ghost in Cloudstreet who brings succour to the white people who now live on his land. ‘The war is over, have my 211
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land’, the ghost seems to be saying, a discordant tone in a novel, which up to that point, reminded me of the integrity and power of Ruth Park’s Poor Man’s Orange. I read the reviews of both the book and the play and found only one reference to the gratuitous ghost. This view of Australian history is so pervasive that almost noone in the whole intellectual army of the nation thought it worthy of comment. Australian ignorance makes us want the blessing of those so ruthlessly trampled. When the blessing is received by a character like Winton’s ghost of Uncle Tom the reader takes comfort and warmth from the fact that it’s all okay, the blacks didn’t really mind at all. Our blacks are our friends. Why do artists and politicians think it is acceptable to refer to our Aboriginal people when attempting to promote some new theory of racial correction? But our Aborigines better watch out if any ungrateful black bastard complains about their treatment in the nation’s literature. I made a few hundred new enemies at the Sydney Writers’ Festival one year by questioning David Malouf ’s rendering of Aboriginal history and characterisation in his novel, Remembering Babylon. The room went silent with embarrassment. The other two panellists were asked Dorothy Dixers but no-one had a question for me. Afterwards the chairperson couldn’t bear to shake the hand of such an uncultured, uneducated ingrate. I didn’t say Malouf couldn’t write, I said his history was flawed and I wondered how many Aboriginal people he drew on to put flesh on his characters. After reading his essay, ‘Made in England’, in Quarterly Essay 12, 2003, I’m perplexed that in the array of influences he attributes to our national character, Aboriginal Australia is not one of them. It also came as a shock that he considered the Kanaka, South Sea Island slaves blackbirded into the Queensland sugar industry ‘were indentured labourers’.12 These questions don’t call Malouf ’s entire body of work into question, nor does it reflect on Malouf who, from my experience, is one of the more humble and generous art practitioners in the country. The question was about Australia, not Malouf. The market for Australian literature shrinks as we make fervent promises to America not to monster their market with our minnow.
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We even agree to buy more of theirs and as a consequence our art and national esteem become slack and deferential. Our artists, philosophers and academics are whipped from the field of public discourse and retreat to the university quadrangle at a time when we need their opinion as never before. We need people to question the politicians and press when they refer to the Port Arthur massacre as the single greatest massacre in Australia’s history or to Australia as the only continent on earth where war has never been fought. We need people to challenge sports commentators when they declare Australia’s qualification for the 2006 World Cup as the greatest day in Australia’s history. Apart from overlooking a few little things like penicillin and heartlung transplants it underlines that Australians cannot imagine a history longer than two hundred years. Australians believe our historical furphies because we were taught them at our father’s knee and on our good mother’s lap. Our history and literature fed it to us in our baby pap. Not all contemporary artists avoid the hard questions. Alex Miller’s novel, Journey to the Stone Country, shows how Australians strike out one eye so they don’t have to confront the past. Kate Grenville’s novel, The Secret River, is similarly provocative and analyses the first European settlements with an eye to the human foibles of the settlers and the administration, but unfortunately the black characters are mere sketches, adjuncts to the real characters. Grenville is being celebrated as if, like Fred Hollows, she had removed our cataracts. We seem to need Grenville to absolve any further scrutiny of our soul, but in fact I find the novel terribly disappointing. Like Winton, White, Lawson and Goldsworthy she is a very good writer but the scenes in England read like Great Expectations and the Australian scenes as if she’s only ever seen pictures of black people and assumed the rest. Both Stone Country and Secret River are entertaining reading, but I wish more Australians would read novels by Indigenous authors: Plains of Promise and Carpentaria by Alexis Wright, Benang by Kim Scott, and The Kadaitcha Sung by Sam Watson. They ask the same questions as Miller and Grenville but more of them and from the deeply informed perspective of hard experience.
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In his most recent book, Kayang and Me, Kim Scott looks at the psychological underpinnings of some Australian authors and discusses the work of David Foster and Anson Cameron, both sensitive and innovative Australian storytellers, and finds that they offer ‘stereotypical interpretations of Aboriginality’ and a ‘fatalistic approach to the continued existence of indigenous culture’, ‘they seem to be hoping we can get over it’.13 Both Foster and Cameron are far too intelligent to leave the debate there but Scott has put his finger on their failure to disturb more than the surface dust of Australian culture. Let’s have a decent old cultural blue, let’s grab each other by the metaphorical collars, let’s get in a huff and be wounded, let’s debate our culture and our land instead of wasting every ‘ideas conference’ on the ability of Prince Charles to represent Australia. We should be raised in households where it is expected that we read Indigenous literature so that the knowledge becomes as habitual to Australians as entering our kids in Little Athletics and Learn to Swim courses, part of the preparation for life which every Australian must experience. Let’s supplement Alien Son and Cry the Beloved Country with the stories of our own blindness and cruelty so that we stop wringing our hands over the apartheids and holocausts of other lands and confront those that occur on our own sunny island. We should never forget Soweto, we should never forget Auschwitz, but we should never pretend we did not create them here at Portland, Cocanarup, Lake Wellington and a thousand districts across the nation. Many of those incidents have never been mentioned in print since being rendered in euphemism by a colonial police magistrate’s pen, the man whose primary responsibility was the division of stolen land among his mates. At country funerals and weddings I love to look at all the old-fashioned faces, the men with their hair silver and discreetly drawn across a tanned scalp, the hands bunched on their knees like artichokes, good honest workers’ hands; their women beside them with permed silver waves, neat and clean as a whistle, good people, loving people, devoted mothers and fathers and now in their advanced age delighting in buying books for their grandchildren, the books they were read themselves when they were young.
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These are the people who have kept the Country Fire Association going; the football club would have folded years ago without their patronage; if the kindergarten needs a new fence you won’t have to pass their door before getting an offer of assistance; his hammer and saw has seen many a poor person’s veranda saved, her stove has baked more passionfruit sponge cakes and more rabbit casseroles for people in need than for her own family. Your heart bursts with pride to number them among your friends. Their brothers died gamely in front of the Turks who were astonished by the bravery and humility of these men and will tell you so today. While our men were away saving England their modest wives kept the country running: worked the plough, built the aircraft, nurtured the children. These are magnificent people, my father’s mates, my mother’s childhood friends; their goodness knows almost no limits. Almost. For the great sadness is that I’ve sat in cars with these people and watched their lips purse at the sight of a black person, I’ve leant at a bar beside those massive and resourceful arms, capable of lifting a 10-foot post on their own or cradling a sick child; yes, I’ve stood there shoulder to shoulder with those men after the Saturday final siren has sounded and we’ve glowed with pride for our town. But I have dreaded the moment in the pub when the news comes on to interrupt the sport and some television channel owned by a trillionaire leads with a story of Aboriginal people burning the white picket fence that surrounds their government house, or of a wild black youth who has killed three people with his stolen car, or of a community who rebel in desperation after one of their sons is chased to his death by the police, and I’ve heard you say ‘round them up and shoot the lot’. Out of your mouth, where normally I hear no malice directed at any man, that is what I hear you say, repeating your ancestors’ call to arms, and I am not surprised, because I’ve heard it before from the lips of the eternal scone-cooking grandmother, her soft top lip dusted with the flour of charity, I’ve heard it muttered by team mates in football sheds, over the fence posts two good mates have laboured to erect in the blazing sun; yes, I’ve heard it often enough not to be surprised, but it hurts me because these people are my friends, they are a people separated from, if not greatness, then certainly goodness, by the
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merest gap in their soul’s generosity, and I want to believe that it isn’t malice but ignorance. This is what I want to believe, because I love these people, they have nurtured and encouraged me, but there is, within many, a bitterness and hardness that suppresses any whiff of generosity to Aborigines. Some, on learning of my ancestry, find it difficult to look me in the eye again. Their discomfort and suspicion precludes further friendship: no more fence posts, no more beers after the game, no more half-hearted attempts to catch redfin in the Murray; I’m in the blacks’ camp and the boss has nothing to say. Perhaps that hardness was required on the frontier to inure these stoics not just to the hardships of frontier life but also to the necessary atrocities of land acquisition. Perhaps it’s imperative that any civilisation retain the ability to scrap and slog, to release huge floods of adrenalin to protect those around them. But do we have to continue the myth of frontier life? Do we have to allow no hint of better knowledge to erode our prejudice? We Australians. It is fashionable to debate the Australian character with the assumption of its open-hearted simple mateship, but what might we become if our consciences allowed us to cook scones and mend the fences not just for the old and new Australians but for the original as well? To remember, every time we hear the lone bugler, that Aboriginal soldiers stood beside our troops in the trenches of hell in Europe, and found food in the bush when their Digger mates were starving at Kokoda. To imagine what it might have been like if a few more battles had gone the way of the Japanese in World War II and it was modern Australians from whom the land was taken: the engulfing shame, the desperation visited, the overwhelming degradation. What would be in the heart if we lived beneath the yoke of scorn, how bitter would our portion of mill end rice taste then, what shame would burn our cheek to be dressed and photographed in their cast off raiment? Would we be able to shift the gorge from our throat long enough to explain to our grandchildren how we lost our land, how so many of us descended into hopeless despondency, too knotted with grief for the loss of our past, the loss of everything we’d been brought up to honour, the shame of having lost all that was entrusted to us by our grandparents? Who has the strength to
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do that when the evidence of your present circumstance reminds you of the ineffectual defence of your mother’s and father’s land? Despair. People wonder why Aboriginal people become ill, disrespect the law, despair. I see it in the eyes of young black men when approached by a white stranger; they are waiting for the knife, the insult, the incredulity. White people’s ignorance of Aboriginal people is so pervasive, so profound, that it exhausts the Indigenous who are forced to argue every point: well, yes we did live here before you came, no, we didn’t eat our children, yes, my grandfather was murdered by your grandfather, yes, my father went to both world wars alongside yours, no he didn’t get a soldier settlers’ farm like yours, no, we didn’t invent the wheel…or the jail, or the rack, boiling oil, or instruments to pluck out fingernails, white collar crime; there were a lot of things we didn’t invent. It’s exhausting, terrifying, humiliating and eventually only the massively strong can survive the contempt, the derision, the ignorance, the syrupy sympathy. I met a young man at the football: nice fella, smart, polite…left school at 13 because the teachers wouldn’t believe his story of how long his people had been living on that shore, how they used to harvest the oysters, salmon, whales, and wouldn’t believe that they didn’t eat their children. That boy was sent to the Principal, made to stand in the corridor all day and then expelled. He told his story to at least three teachers and one Principal; four Australian university graduates and not one believed him. Yes, thanks for the question, he did refuse to sit down in class, refused to stop his explanation when asked, yes he did become belligerent when ordered to repeat his claims to the Principal and yes he did refuse to cry; but he was hurt, that great Australian, and only a few know how badly. Another young man was expelled from a Geelong school for exactly the same reason. He claimed Captain Cook didn’t discover Australia. Yes, he did refuse to sit down and yes he did continue to make his claim on history in an increasingly loud voice. No, he didn’t receive an apology. Some of his elders are concerned when the young poke their head up over the parapet, the survival rate being so low in a war where the armaments are so disproportionately
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allocated, but, my brother, you remain a hero in my heart. Would our country not have wasted you. When six out of six university graduates see historical conviction as insolence our country’s education system is in deep trouble. You don’t have to be a sook or cry baby to acknowledge another’s pain and your contribution to their humiliation. You actually need the same strength of arm and heart that cleared the farm, tore gold from the soil and leapt from the trench in the name of freedom. But I wonder if we have the ticker for it. It is insufficient to lay blame or excuse wrong. What happened in our country was probably inevitable once Europeans began to sail big ships. The Chinese, Eygyptians and the Polynesians had already mastered the navigation of open waters in large vessels, but did not embark on missions of conquest unless history hides the tale. It was the Europeans who favoured invasion of any new land they encountered. The inevitability of that invasion was delayed for several centuries by European antipathy to the west coast but had probably been delayed even earlier by the disinclination of the Chinese and Macassans to attempt imperial assaults. But once the riches of the east coast had been found, European invasion was only one more ship away. The French or Americans would have left little to chance if the British had not decided to dump their unwanted citizens here in 1788. An extraordinary example of the imperialism innate to Europeans was provided by the urbane Jewish novelist Abraham Yehoshua when he declared that what the Jewish people really needed was a land like Australia with discrete borders where Jews ‘could live among ourselves in our own territories, clear within our borders’.14 I’m sure Yehoshua is thinking theoretically but you can see how deeply the imperial impulse lurks in European hearts. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians had the luxury of imperial dreaming because at the time their oppression began every land on earth was occupied. To think that you can occupy what you deem to be empty space is a colonial assumption: there’s a land inhabited by people who do not live like Europeans therefore they are unworthy of it. Every invasion has been predicated
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on the unworthiness of the occupiers to retain the wealth of their inheritance. Yehoshua was dreamily speculating but every invasion began with an imperial dreamer poring over shapes in an atlas. If this land of discrete borders has any role in the development of modern states it is to attempt a model where all human beings are respected, where the precept of all people being born in God’s image is adopted as national policy not lame religious rhetoric, and where original cultures are valued for their indispensable knowledge of place. Australia is ideal for the application of this theory of human development because, as Yehoshua has noted, it is a land of discrete borders and furthermore the crimes of dispossession are within living memory, some continuing into the present day. Australia is perfectly placed to act as a neutral negotiating force, a country that uses its geographic isolation as a site where the international community can trace a considered way through the minefield of strife. A Hague of the south. A clearing house of peace. Instead of attempting to guarantee our security by joining the aggressions of other nations, we could provide them with a diplomatic safe haven, establish ourselves as everyone’s uncle rather than some people’s sheriff. This is a land where the protagonists of our troubles can look each other in the eye and attempt to heal the sorrow and insults before the magma of the frontier furnace cools into unalterable rock and we become doomed to eternal enmity as the world currently witnesses in the Bible lands, the old Yugoslavia and a dozen other places where imperial wrongs have not been acknowledged. No country is immune from the suicide bomber and jihad, if the inhabitants of those lands have not addressed the grievances of their land, if instead they have tried to tough it out, waiting for the oppressed to be overwhelmed by their loss or to simply disappear. You cannot out wait injustice while it lives in the memory of the dispossessed. Even if the resistance is weak and purely symbolic, the corrosive nature of guilt which inhabits the hearts of the oppressors can condemn them to a future where they repeat their prejudices and admire their inhumanity, raising flags and singing songs to celebrate their renovated history.
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Watch out, the white ants of self-deception are within the walls! We need to argue about our nationhood but arguing the toss of dispossession seems futile as its accomplishment is selfevident. How do we as a nation resolve to express our history? By scrubbing out whole unpalatable events, averting our face from the dispossessed, pretending they are unworthy of God’s love? Or do we aim to become a civilised society attempting to encompass the entire history of our existence? Oodgeroo Noonuccal was one of those great Australian women who could scorch your eyebrows for a slip in intellectual rigour, but later nudge your hip to encourage you to get her coffee and cake. I interviewed her on 3RRR a couple of times and the same woman who was terrified of the community broadcaster’s dark stairs would barrel you in the dim green light of the studio and lay her words down like slabs of molten metal, not crude and unformed so much as incendiary. I loved her; she could nudge my hip anytime. It was only natural that one of her best friends would be another of Australia’s most intelligent women, Judith Wright. Wright wrote of that friendship, The knife’s between us. I turn it round, The handle to your side. The weapon made from your country’s bones, I have no right to take it.
Judith Wright was a lover of uncommon strength and her greatest love was reserved for her country. Coming from generations of rich New England squatters never stopped her questioning her relationship with the ground of her birth. Like many of us, she learnt more about herself and that relationship from Oodgeroo than from anyone else. Australia hardly seems to have noticed that they’ve both gone. Neil Murray would have noticed. Like Wright he had a passionate embrace with the country of his birth and, in trying to understand it better, found that those who could best explain its nature were not allowed to walk down the main street of his district’s largest town and that their mothers and fathers had been shot just where he lived. 220
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Murray bit the bullet. Whereas most Australians become gunshy of such knowledge Murray exposed himself to its white heat. He travelled the length and breadth of the country with the Warrumpi Band but, unlike Judith Wright, Murray does not seem to twist on the blade of regret. As Peter Read points out, ‘Murray… musing on this sense of belonging, asserts his right to belong not only by acknowledging the chilling history of landscapes now empty of Aborigines…[but] his belonging derives from the accident of his birth and from his continuing responsibility to the environment’.15 Responsibility to the environment is a clunky, modern way of talking about love of land, but that is exactly what Murray means. In his song, ‘Native Born’, he writes, Australia, where have your caretakers gone? I am just one who has been battered By the damage within your shores, Australia, I would not sell you for a price… For I am your native born.
Murray is not alone; musicians like Shane Howard, Paul Kelly and Andy Baylor all explore the nature of the Australian soul, an exploration which seems to daunt so many academics and politicians paid to engage in that search. An old railway station is targeted for redevelopment in Camberwell and the protesters include an array of luminous thespians not seen since Dame Nellie’s funeral; a tree in inner Carlton is to be removed to make way for a car park and outrage gushes like water from a burst main, but an announcer on Victorian ABC morning radio blandly dismisses the axing of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the single caller who complains is not asked about the role of Aboriginal self-determining organisations but about the character of its chairman. It is not because all people despise all Aboriginal people but because we have been badly educated and are too comfortable with that impoverished knowledge. The only thing of real value we can leave our children apart from our love is the truth about their inheritance. We must tell them the history of both victor and vanquished because in time it is soon forgotten which was which, and the only thing children find 221
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significant are the deeds of their father and mother and what made them love each other. Have I been born of good people? Do my parents believe in goodness and kindness? Unconditionally?
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True Hunter Australian relationships to country are illuminated by literature. Ion Idriess was a great writer by any standards but his books bear the subtle signatures of racial superiority. He revels in the Australian landscape but is dominated by colonial values. His heroes are always searching to shoot the biggest buffalo, catch the biggest shark, find the biggest pearl. This sense of where the true value of the land is to be found has infected us all. Stan Kidman is revered for his foresight in buying up massive pastoral stations so he could move beasts on heroic drives the length and breadth of the country. Australian farmers are still imbued with his spirit: stock the land to the maximum and then cry calamity when the inevitable drought destroys the crops and pastures. Only very gradually are we coming to realise that the land cannot be pushed to the limit of its fair weather capacity. The best Australian farmers husband the land and are conscious of the wildlife as a barometer of their land’s health and take more pride in handing on the land in a healthy, unexhausted state than in its yields and income. Our government should reward these farmers for their stewardship and punish those who abuse the land, our land, in order to maximise their own personal wealth. Aboriginal Australians did not allow their population to expand to meet the best possible season, but like the indigenous animals tuned their population to the known cycle of the climate. This conservative approach was a disadvantage when facing the influx of the numerically superior Europeans but those Europeans are now beginning to understand the wisdom of conservative land use.
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Marcia Langton has written impressively about how Christian assumptions of land use led to catastrophic land degradation and blindness to Aboriginal land utilisation. Jack Pascoe summarises critics of the Christian approach to colonisation. European views were dominionistic in nature; wild lands were to be tamed and utilised in resource harvesting. The European perceptions of nature [are] consistent with the teachings of Christianity [which] openly encourages the taming of [nature] because man is the most advanced of God’s creations…and continuing to perceive areas of landscape as wilderness denies the ancient use of those lands by Aboriginal people and indigenous rights to the land itself.1
While denying Australian Aborigines any curatorial role in the country, the Europeans admired the warlike Maori of New Zealand because the attitude to war and possession was much like their own. But the Maori population burgeoned to the point where finite resources like the massive Moa were eliminated and intertribal war became inevitable as competition for scarce resources accelerated. The English looked on the forts and trenches of the Maori with knowing recognition but were appalled by what they deemed underused resources in Australia. The psychology of land use is fundamental to the understanding of any civilisation. Even more important is the nation’s relationship with the native fauna. That relationship, as many philosophers have said, defines the very nature of humanity. Our relationship with the kangaroo is as emblematic of us as the ’roo is of the national crest. That the kangaroo is mown down daily by road transport, tangled in farm fences and its habitat whittled away hardly impacts on the public consciousness but should someone suggest a cull of a ’roo population on an army base, the nation begins an episode of shallow breathing. The wholesale destruction of koala habitat barely rates a mention in the press but when koalas eat out a remnant forest on an Aboriginal reserve at Framlingham the Kirrae wurrong are accused of mismanagement and the issue features several times on national television with never a question about why there is only one remnant of this forest type in the area. 224
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Deer were introduced along with foxes and pheasants in colonial Australia because there is something altogether more gentlemanly about a ritualised British fox hunt than shooting kangaroos in an open plain. The thrill of killing a kangaroo is absent because all the iconic symbolism in the European sensibility is tied up in the rituals of fox hunting, princely falconers and gentlemanly fly fishers. To illustrate the lingering fetish with the Old World blood sports you need look no further than the logo of gentlemen’s country fashion label Rodd and Gunn, which bears the image of an English quail dog. The fishing retailer, the Compleat Fisherman, is as British as the spelling of its name and the logo of gentleman fly fisher decked out in plaid shooting cap and plus fours. Australian blackfish and garfish are probably superior eating but they don’t take a fly, and gentlemen use flies. The whole psychology of the Englishman is wound up in the romance and dignity of tie flying and deer stalking. So to be a gentleman in Australia you have to import the game so enmeshed in your psyche. Otherwise you’re just a native-born oaf slugging around the bush in jeans and Blundstones. Of course Australians have learnt to hunt other fish but it is done in an entirely European way. The English reel is revered, the rod must be fine and delicate, preferably expensive, while the humble hand line is disdained despite being more efficient in Australian waters. The single greatest distinguishing characteristic of the nonIndigenous hunter of any land is the emphasis on sport and leisure rather than hunting for the provision of food. Even more significant is the emphasis on size, quantity and type. The real Australian hunter is after the biggest barramundi he can get, or the biggest trout or salmon. To my taste the ocean salmon is one of the least palatable of Australian fishes but it fights like the blazes, can be caught in the surf and often in great numbers, using massive surf rods. The same fishermen on the same beach scorn the delectable dart. They’re slight little fishes, the fillets are fine but they fry up like garfish, one of the best eating sensations in the world. The gar doesn’t fight much either, he’s a little fish and gives up his life with little complaint. There’s almost no achievement in catching one, unless of course your aim was to provide your family with one of the finest meals the world can offer. 225
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Indigenous fishing parties rarely took fish in roe. It was subsistence fishing, a responsibility to provide food for the community. Of course modern refrigeration enables more fish to be caught for future meals but only true hunters seem to count their catch by the meal; most believe they are in some kind of competition to prove their manhood. When my family toured Australia in 1993 we provided ourselves with whiting, squid, crayfish, dart, bream, bluebone, mud crab, garfish, herring, abalone, mussels, razor clam, yabbies, bass, mackerel or zebrafish four or five nights a week. Travelling in a minute fold-up caravan, more akin to a deck chair than a home, it was our pleasure and need to provide the next meal for our table. We looked forward to ingesting the food of the country we were in, paying homage to the country and the ancestor fishers who had preceded us. We fished with Bunjulung, Murri, Yolngu, Jaru, Nyoonga and others, eating the food of the country, learning about places and people as we went. It was our pleasure but also our introduction to country and its tempo, rules and requirements. It taught us how to behave in the country of other people. So we were dismayed whenever we entered a new camping spot to be assailed by sport fishermen offering us a wad of poorly refrigerated flathead or whiting, fish they had wasted in their search for their real hunter selves. ‘I am the best hunter, I caught the most and the biggest.’ My son and I would look at each other and sigh with resignation because our delight was taken from us while we ate this surplus fish. Time and again we were overwhelmed by the stench from caravan park rubbish bins where buckets of unwanted fish were dumped by trophy fishermen, many of whom regale you with the huge joke that they don’t even eat fish, just like the thrill of catching them! Some of the more environmentally concerned fishing commentators try to impress Australians with the ‘kiss it and throw it back’ policy, but this method produces a lot of fish with torn lips and eyes and ripped gills and stomachs hanging out of their mouths. Do we have to look at every activity as a sport? There would be a lot more healthy fish around if we didn’t. One of these Championship fishers delighted in telling me how he and a cohort had caught 368 flathead in one afternoon. I 226
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think I was supposed to have said wow but instead I asked why. He had his philosophy all worked out, ‘Oh I threw them all back because I don’t even eat fish’. The perfect environmentalist. I’m sure the fish with its gills dragging on the sand would be in awe of this fabulous hunter. When we found all those piles of dart in New South Wales and Queensland we were told they were rubbish, didn’t fight enough, too easy to catch, steal your bait, insufficient challenge for the Trophy Fisherman. In fact they graced many a glass of white wine when my family did the big Australian lap in 1993. The sports fishermen claimed that unless you chucked them on the beach and wasted their fine protein, they’d jump straight back on the hook! What, like a gift from God, a precious offering from a continent sparing of her hard-won gifts? Australians haven’t learnt to love their country, still being obsessed with what they can extract from it, be it unseemly riches or inflated ego. We need to encourage the True Hunter and I meet quite a few of them but, sadly, they are a tiny minority of those who hunt. I have a friend who goes duck shooting for thirty minutes every duck season. He hunts on two separate Sundays for fifteen minutes when he shoots two or three ducks. He takes them home and salivates as he laves each of them with a loving preparation before roasting them one at a time in his wood oven. It is one of the joys of his life to provide this meal for his family. In between times the ducks get fat on his bottom pasture. Another friend makes a ritual of hunting Australian bass once or twice a season; the bringing home of the bass is like a religious festival in his house. One True Hunter used to catch three or four large blue yabbies from a little stream no more than ankle deep, but the location was special to her. The creek was overhung with paperbark and tree fern and it was a place for contemplation as well as hunting, indeed in the True Hunter the two are wedded. This great hunter would take them home and sit by her stove while they boiled to a cherry red in the pot, cracking a chilled bottle of Abbot’s Lager and drinking every damn drop whether she wanted it all or not. This was her pleasure, her ritual, her religion. Another old uncle who can no longer fish asks for an abalone or two every now and then. ‘For my health, you see, it reminds me 227
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of when I was young.’ An aunt requests a crayfish for her birthday each year and celebrates her age by savouring the firm sweet flesh she remembers from her youth, and she too likes a beer or wine, for her health you understand, and then she likes to dance, doesn’t matter what the music; she’s found she can dance to anything, and why not at her age. I was taught about garfish by an old Italian who I worked with as we laboured to level Victoria’s Tullamarine jetport. He also taught me about grappa, which is why we had to level some runways several times. But he revered food and most of all the garfish he caught off Altona beach. As he described the preparation and cooking his hands moved as if blessing the imaginary fish he was basting with his own special blend of herbs and spices. I fish these days with an eccentric who revels in the name Captain Rumbottle. He might go to sea in a plastic boat but he abhors rough treatment of fish, pollution of the water, waste of protein and failure to appreciate the beauty of Gabo Island and the magnificence of Howe Range. We fish for shark, flathead and gurnard and he has a recipe for each, but if he’s not going to eat it, back in to the sea it goes, and do any damage to the fish while the hook is coming out and you’re in big trouble. He shoots the odd bunny too, and likes to wait until the right one arrives, not too big, not too small, and always shot clean through the head. We sit on the verandah overlooking the river debating the use of garlic or olive oil with this fish or that, the length of time to hang a rabbit, the number of hours at the slow broil, the herbs to go with it, how to cut an onion. The Captain is a stickler for doing things just right, which all adds up to the game being revered and maximum value gained from its death. He’s not Aboriginal but sometimes it looks as though all those years on the remote river pig farm have infected him with…respect. He respects the country and that is very Aboriginal. I had the good fortune recently to fish for two days with another remote country bushman and he seems to have acquired the same disease. Two days of quiet, sporadic conversation: but every bird noticed and named, every stealthy approach by an animal observed, every minute alteration in the river’s behaviour analysed, the history of every abandoned cottage intimate, who
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died where and how, who was born on what bend and what has become of them. Slowly the pages of that country were turned and revealed, a graceful, poetic, compassionate recitation of country. Very Aboriginal in style and intent, the direction Germaine Greer believes is inevitable for Australia’s true birth into nationhood. All of us True Hunters. That man’s brother, a saw miller by trade, was the gentlest, most kindly man I have ever known. He was not Aboriginal either but he taught me so much about country, so much about decency and respect. That word again. He’d notice some rare bird or tiny creature and he’d sneak a look at you with child-like smile of delight on his lips. He was deeply, passionately in love with his country. Not for Alex the aluminium Hornet Trophy with 100-hp motor, no, Alex liked to lie on his guts beneath a paperbark and spin out line from a hand reel. ‘They can’t see ya like this, can’t hear ya either, they’re finicky, fish.’ He liked to use toredo as bait too; he called it cobra, blackfella way, the translucent worm which grows in submerged tree limbs and he taught me how to eat it the way he’d been taught, blackfella way. He was a True Hunter, Alex, and I miss him dearly. When he died blackfellas attended his funeral. And his Dad’s. And his Mum’s too. And sadly Alex’s brother, Kevin as well, for he died in May 2005 while I was finishing this book. We’ll never go fishing together again. That family learnt respect and earned it in turn. Aborigines came to their funerals because they recognised countrymen and women. Not too many Australians have enjoyed that greatest of all compliments? Australians need to love their country, love their countrymen and women and love the food our country gives. We should salivate at the thought of cooking our country’s fish and fowl, not slaughtering them in some kind of Game Show where most is best. If the colonists had followed the example of the Indigenous True Hunters they wouldn’t have drained the Sandringham swamps and today we’d still be eating Magpie geese and Cape Barren geese for our birthdays and Christmas. But in those days draining wetlands was the surest way to get a knighthood, shooting geese for dog food or just for the fun of slaughter was seen as good, manly sport.
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The Americans shot out the buffalo in a decade, destroying one of the world’s most massive migratory herds. While much of the slaughter was to clear the land for domesticated stock and to drive Indians off their land, part of the motivation was male posturing through sport; to bag a bison, trophy hunting. That temperament, that psychological imperative, separates you from the country, it allows you to live there but it never allows you to feel at home; you’re always so hell bent on changing the landscape, forcing it to do your bidding. It prevents Australians feeling love of country because we never approach it without a weapon. The Indigenous relationship with the land and the seas cannot be made more poignant than reference to the ‘tame’ dolphins at Monkey Mia in Western Australia and the killer whales at Eden. In both cases the commercial use made of the animals by white entrepreneurs was only possible because that human-to-mammal relationship had first been established by Indigenous people thousands of years before, rare examples of a mutually beneficial relationship between men and animals. Commercial imperatives mean, however, that the morality of the relationship has faded from view. The dolphins of Monkey Mia are stressed by overexposure to humans who don’t understand the privilege they’ve been given and the ancient relationship at Eden stopped the day a white man shot the lead killer whale for sport. Those whales never co-operated with humans in the hunt for whales from that day onwards and that brutal act also jeopardised the relationship of the Thawa people with their ancestor spirits. You might think this has nothing to do with history, that fish and fowl mean nothing in terms of nationhood, but our reaction to country has a mighty impact on our use of country: the introduction of animals and plants to salve nostalgia drastically affected the value of agriculture, the careless, indeed prideful removal of habitat eliminating resources which would be of great utility and inspiration to us in the future. Eating is a fundamental determinant of history. When the squatters arrived at the Colac lakes they found the land teeming with pigeons, ducks, emu, bustards etc, while the kangaroos were found hopping around in countless 230
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numbers. So numerous were the ducks, that if, after a two hours absence the shooter did not return with 12–15 fine black mallards, they thought the supplies must be falling off to an alarming extent.2
Today some of these same lakes are rendered completely sterile from dairy effluent. For decades waste milk products and sewage were pumped directly into the lakes. The fine little smelt the first Colac squatters stole from the fishing nets in 1836 have all but disappeared. What goes on in the mind of man when he sees a body of water like that and dumps his waste in it, shits in his water supply? The Colijon never did that, like all Aboriginal people they were meticulous in the disposal of their waste, they’d never even camp right on the river bank lest they foul it. So what has happened in the evolution of humankind that leads us to conclude that the city is the most intelligent way to conduct our lives, to systematically destroy the resources that drew us to establish a city on that very spot? Very few colonial reports ever refer to the beauty of the land other than the delight to their eyes of the waving grasslands. But there were some, and the man in the hat, for all his vanities and stupidities, was one of them. George Augustus Robinson was beguiled by the early fishing expeditions he witnessed. ‘At night the fishermen launch into the stream and the noiseless sport begins. From some points of view the brilliant fire lights, like floating meteors, have a “beautiful” appearance. The scene at times fairy like and enchanting, it called to mind the Portuguese boats of Teneriffe.’3 Interestingly, Robinson called it ‘sport’ but for the people it was ‘provision’, regardless of how attractive and relaxing the activity might have been. The canoes were propelled by long spatula poles which guided the feather-light craft swiftly upon lake and river. They were fitted with a clay pad in the bow upon which a small fire was lit to attract the fish and provide light for the fishermen and the dancing radiance that so beguiled Robinson. These craft were cheap and well fitted to the waterways of Australia but their style has never been replicated by Europeans, preferring instead the heavier and clumsier ‘boat’, and these days 231
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powered by outboard motors designed for power rather than manoeuvrability and noiselessness. But people can learn and the land does try to recover. The people of Colac have instituted a number of initiatives to aid in lake recovery. Some of these schemes are ridiculed by newspaper correspondents, who still believe that if you can’t destroy country you haven’t progressed; but most do support a more constructive pattern of land use even if for pragmatic and selfish purposes. While conservation and land care gain some toehold on the national consciousness, shooters crowd the columns of newspapers and airwaves with their views. They shoot, they vote, for them the gun is national identity, but it’s clear we can’t afford too many guns in such a neurotic and violent culture. If all gun owners were True Hunters we would live quite safely; a True Hunter bowling over the weekly rabbit and sharing a wallaby with the neighbours offers no threat, but history shows that some gun owners can’t stop shooting and eventually turn the guns on others. Even John Howard feared uncontrolled gun ownership and his plan to reduce the number of firearms in Australia remains the single most positive contribution of his government to Australian life, even if firearm assaults have not diminished as greatly as expected. We are what we eat but are psychologically changed by how we catch it. As Australia analyses its character we will begin asking questions about how we relate to the fauna of the country, how we conserve our water and our soil, why ‘80% of our agricultural revenues come from just 0.8% of agricultural land’.4 Why did we clear the rest of it? So rich men could get tax deductions? Why do we insult the land like this? Many Australians are frustrated by this continued search for identity but you’ll never get a satisfying answer until the correct questions are asked. We have to ask these questions of each other and listen to the answers. City listens to country, white to black, migrant to native born. It’s called democracy, it’s called loving your country, it’s called having the guts to do the hard yards of nationhood.
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Oh, and by the way, Jamie Thomas, grandson of warriors, discovered this year that Magpie Geese have returned to western Victoria. Never despair, you valiant young.
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Eighteen
Germaine to the Problem Germaine Greer’s, ‘Whitefella Jump Up’, in Quarterly Essay 11, 2003, is a typically iconoclastic and provocative call to account. She challenges Australia to come to terms with the country and its history and declares that we should all become Aboriginal. ‘Aboriginality is not simply a cluster of behaviours and characteristics that individuals could claim for themselves, it is more importantly a characteristic of the continent itself. Australia will be truly selfgoverning and independent only when it has recognised its inherent and ineradicable Aboriginality’.1 After reading it I wondered how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders would react to it. Michael Mansell is not a popular figure in Australia but I find it hard to disagree with most of his public statements. He undertakes an intellectual scrutiny of his country so out of favour that its proponents, not their arguments, are denigrated. He thought Greer’s article contemptuous rubbish but few other intellectuals, white or black commented. What did Humphrey McQueen think? Gary Foley? It would have been interesting to read their responses. Tony Birch thought it a ‘shallow appropriation of Indigenous culture and identity’2 but Richard Frankland featured Greer’s passion and rhetoric in his musical, The Charcoal Club, at the Spiegeltent, Melbourne, in 2004. Frankland is no intellectual slouch either and he adopted her challenge as a worthy contribution to the debate on national identity. Marcia Langton, one of the most fierce and incisive Australian intellectuals, appreciated the fact that Greer had raised questions which too many Australians find too challenging, but takes her to
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task for valorising the Aboriginal influence on Australian culture without mentioning the loss of cultural knowledge and language. Langton considers Australia should teach Indigenous languages in schools as a cultural conservation measure to counteract the Coalition’s destruction of bilingual education in remote Indigenous communities parading as practical reconciliation. Few Australians have ever broached the subject as publicly as Greer. She is outrageous, prickly and self-absorbed but, more often than not, incredibly generous. I am cautious, however, about accepting the argument in its entirety because I think it may offer the timid an easy way out of the difficult process of reconciliation and treaty. The fact that the essay so immediately appealed to the Australian Reconciliationists didn’t surprise me but I was unnerved by their complacency. One supportive caller spoke on radio about how proud she was when visiting Central Australia that ‘our white haired elder’ told her son that if he was born in Australia he was an Aborigine too! That’s literally true but many Australians, anxious to distance themselves from the past and yet make profound connection to the land, clutch at the argument to affirm their entitlement. They gasp with relief when they can find a ‘white haired elder’ to confirm their belonging. But the elder did not say the woman’s son had that connection. What he said was merely to repeat that, yes, you were born here. Greer herself wallows in gratitude when she is ‘adopted’ by Aborigines without understanding that such adoptions are often undertaken to contain restless and reckless spirits and prevent them from causing social ructions. PA Durack Clancy, a descendant of the Duracks, takes Greer to task for questioning her ancestors’ attitudes and bushcraft. She berates Greer without being aware that Patrick Durack was ‘adopted’ for the same reason as Greer; he was trouble in the community and an attempt had to be made to neutralise his destructive psychological force if the country and the people were not to be exposed to insult and injury. The Duracks see this burden of responsibility as passive black fealty. People born in this land can lay claim to intimate knowledge because we all nurture favourite places in our hearts, but it doesn’t
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mean we understand our land, merely that we have sensed her power and beauty. From that point to complete identification requires an enormous effort to incorporate unpopular, some would say un-Australian, knowledge; the real history of the land. To say this is my country doesn’t answer the question, how did it fall into my lap? How did I become so rich on the back of this land fertilised by the bodies of those whose knowledge of it spans the entire breadth of human development? The Identifier would have to hesitate before using the word ‘discover’ in the same sentence as Australia, they’d have to baulk at referring to the massacre at Port Arthur in 1996 as the most violent day in Tasmania’s history, they’d have to blanch at words like ‘terra nullius’ and ‘primitive barbarians’ when they saw them used in relation to their own country. They’d have to think before they said ‘our white haired elder’. Identification is not just a ticket to absolution but a call to responsibility, the responsibility to learn, to respect, to defend the history of the land and the integrity of its first civilisation. Given the shallow well of general Australian knowledge the Identifier would be required to exert energy in the pursuit of greater knowledge and the rejection of false propaganda. It would also help if he or she refrained from referring to ‘our’ Aborigines. I have never heard Greek and Italian migrants referred to in that way but wellmeaning academics say ‘our Aborigines’ all the time. It gives you a toothache thinking of the paternalism behind that presumption. I have stood close to Gough Whitlam as he expounded at length and shimmering eloquent detail on all manner of things. It’s one of the delights of being Australian to think that at least one of our prime ministers drew his political theory from vast knowledge; but even the great man himself has a horrible habit of resorting to ‘our Aborigines’ when he is trying to be most supportive. We need to refine our language not by invoking the thought police but by refurbishing our minds, clearing out the inaccurate clutter, the paternalistic tone and the shallow reference we accepted at school and now endure while listening to the news or some expert in the pub. Effort and sensitivity are required rather than censure and penalty. When watching SBS News, the best news service on Australian television, we have to ask why they choose
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to accompany a general news item about an Aboriginal community with the image of a man walking through the sand holding a little girl by one hand and a box of beer in the other. Why that image, why all the time? In some respects it is a charming domestic image: the man home from work and greeted by his daughter just before he relaxes with a well-earned beer. But the box of beer reinforces all the old stereotypes. I know that community, and just around the corner from the dusty track is one of the best screen-printing workshops in the country. Why have I never seen it on television? When SBS wants to provide images of Aboriginal communities it’s always pictures of roaming dogs, plastic bags caught in a wire fence, a man with a box of beer. Why not the hands of the men and women creating what I believe are the most breathtaking images on the planet? There are dogs, beer and rubbish in that community but they are not the images which define it. Look deeper SBS, question your own stereotypes. Cameramen are notorious for using the dramatic image, and why not, they’re so watchable, but you have to ask yourself why you choose this image and not another. Pictures of happy, gifted artists aren’t good television but just occasionally it would be nice to see television avoid the cliché. Australians love to leap to their own defence by repeating the furphies that Aboriginal people had no sense of ownership or that they built no structures or that they didn’t utilise the land properly. Inevitably they clinch their argument with the revelation that Aboriginal people did not invent the wheel, as if that invention has been the most beneficent breakthrough in human endeavour. But it may be a wheel that transports the smart bomb into a location from which it can obliterate the entire globe. Now that’s smart but it’s not a profound advance in civilisation; it’s called a mistake, a turn down a dead-end street. The incredible advances in science and engineering need to be analysed against the direction they take us before we applaud every new toy. The ruins of complacent civilisations of a glorious few thousand years are to be found covered in jungle vines, volcanic ash, oceans and plague. Whole systems of knowledge have been obliterated overnight by accident, someone’s hubris, or an enemy’s
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hatred. For any civilisation the wheel of fortune is still in spin, now is not the time to gloat; now, the present, is the time to reflect, to learn, to respect, to develop a real sense of humility and humanity. One walk across a bridge or a signature on a petition or sticking a cardboard hand in a public garden is a potent symbol but it does not represent the end of nation building, just the beginning. The journey to nationhood will not be completed by an SMS poll following ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’; it will be a tortuous journey and each of us will have to endure rebuffs, slights and profound disappointments. But we must set our feet upon it with good faith, energy and patience and not resort to the petulant dummy spit as soon as it becomes intellectually and emotionally difficult. Fatigue is no excuse, because at the end of the road is the belonging to place, the acceptance of the Australian earth when we die and rest for our souls thereafter. A lot of our energy and goodwill is being consumed in a furnace burning with denial of the land, a land we are still struggling to farm, to manage its fires and forests, seas and rivers. Australian ignorance of the land is screaming at us in every wildfire, in every denudation of topsoil, every farm destroyed by salination, every disappearance of a fish from the ocean, every summer with water restrictions. The repetition of historical crimes and dangerous technological mistakes fly about the land like restless spirits in the anguish of unbelonging, their nastiness and uncharitableness wreaking damage wherever their wicked wings beat, forever flitting across the night like an unwelcome mosquito because they refused the love of the land, refused to hear her call for charity and in so doing rejected their own mother, their country and so lost their peace. You cannot deny justice to any wronged people without it affecting your soul, even if you believe you can avoid that justice with no personal financial cost. Our politicians urge us to tough it out, to move on, forget the past. But ill will begets ill spirit. The hip pocket may bulge but if the spirit carries unresolved guilt the soul cannot rest and restless souls are malignant energies because they teach their children to doubt or hide…from themselves. Australia needs to become its own country healing its own wounds before we begin dictating to others how to treat their
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wilful politicians. The Republican debate in Australia is a sideshow. Most of those proposing the republic resort to jingoism, while those saying the monarchy gives us stability and an umbilical to our history have skipped an entire century of that history. It wasn’t England who dictated the progress of the Silent War, it was us. The Mother Country no longer needs us. A mother separated so long from her infant fails to recognise the bold and awkward child as her own. The child has developed crude language, nasty habits, a funny colour, an ungainly lankiness, an unintelligible accent. No, there is only one mother country to turn to in time of need and she is beneath our feet. If we wish to rest content in her soil we will need to become intimate with that ground. We will have to love her for what she has been, what she is and what she will become. In Greer’s contentious essay she quotes the Aboriginal intellectual, Pamela Croft: Always remember that what makes you all Australians is the fact that you live on this land, with our ancestral spirits and with our creation stories…what makes you Australian is in fact your interactions with us, the First Nation peoples of this land — in the past, now and in the future. It is what makes you different from your ancestors whose spirits lie in other lands. We are what help make you Australian. It is what gives you belonging on and to this land.3
Greer’s essay also quotes from the other side of the fence. Mungo MacCallum, the respected journalist and raconteur, in The Man Who Laughs says of course I knew Aborigines existed…Yet I have no conscious memory of ever seeing a black Australian, let alone actually meeting one. I was vaguely aware that they existed somewhere out there in the bush in squalid and primitive conditions and that they were to be pitied as a Stone Age race clearly unable to adapt to Australian civilization. Yet I remained uninterested…I didn’t give a stuff about the Australians whose lands had been stolen, whose children had been stolen by my ancestors and were still being stolen by my contemporaries. Okay so none of
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this was taught at school and not much of it was known even to contemporary historians at the time. But the sheer commonsense and logic should have made it obvious to all but the cretinous that something terrible had happened.4
And speaking of the cretinous, Greer takes a sharp pencil to Mary Durack’s story of her father, Kings in Grass Castles. Durack’s book is an enduring testament to the blindness of Australians, their failure to see or understand even a fragment of Indigenous culture or language despite their lives in Grass Castles being supported, protected and often saved by those same people. Patrick Durack fails to understand that his station hand, Burrakin, attaches himself to the white man not because of awe and admiration but because he has been made responsible by the clan for Durack’s safety. To analyse the generosity and selflessness of that attitude requires a study in itself to properly understand how motivation can be sustained under such ignorant reciprocal treatment. Burrakin is Durack’s superior in every way except vanity and monetary wealth, but the squatter reduces his tribal name to Pumpkin and his brothers to Melon Head and Kangaroo and others as Pintpot, Cherry, Nipper, Sultan and so on. Oh, how droll, how witty, how contemptuous. Greer points out that the purpose of such books as Durack’s ‘is to elevate the squattocracy…to hero status…rank opportunists [who] are credited with “courage” and “vision” rather than simple greed and land-hunger’.5 She also points out that the Duracks were dreadful bushmen, becoming frequently lost, building their first house below the flood line when the flood-wrack of previous events was plain as day further up the bank, and had so little appreciation of the country that they couldn’t anticipate drought when the signals were blinking at them like neon signs. The Duracks were ignorant, and wilfully ignorant, determined not to pay any credence to Aboriginal advice, an ignorance that led Patrick to propose the damming of the Ord River and which Australians raced to fulfil. A giant, beautifully engineered turbine for electricity production was designed but so ridiculously planned that there was never a population to use the power and the Ord’s massive catchment now supports a splash of market gardens
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which could have been supplied without damming the river at all. Australia was into the triumphalism of man against nature and because they could do it they did do it whether it was useful or not. I bet someone was elected on the strength of it. Greer argues that this inappropriate attitude to land use patterns might be changed if we scrapped the notion of Crown land along with the notion of an Australian monarch and instead hold the land in trust for all Australians and thus introduce a vested interest to ensure that leases of Crown lands are not a licence to scarify and denude, introduce weeds, overstock, overgraze and generally deplete a resource held in common. She doesn’t say so but this might also change attitudes to forests, water and fish. Her central claim is that Aboriginality is a characteristic of the continent itself. In the last decade I’ve been hearing the anguish in Australian voices as they strain for an identity and a belonging. It can only come with the land, but with the land you get 353 language groups and a massive reference to the nature of Australianness. It’s a reference from which you cannot tear one convenient and confirming page; you have to have the whole book, every Australian leaf of it.
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The Whispering Land There is nothing like being Australian. We take for granted that we’ll be able to fill the tank with petrol and go where we like. Few are so poor that they can’t enjoy the privilege of unfettered travel and a good meal at the end of the day. We are fortunate to have a parliamentary democracy, despite our wilful insult to its integrity. We are lucky to have such a climate, such bountiful produce, such a small population. If the mood takes us we can tow a tinpot caravan right around the country and pull up every night in a caravan park with a sea view and fish for whiting at sunset. We rarely worry about being mugged, bombed or hungry. Apart from one section of our population the mortality rate of our children is among the lowest in the world. Most of us believe we’ll see our children grow up to be happy and wealthy. If the country had to be colonised, and that was inevitable, you could do worse than the British. The institutions in this country work on the assumption that they are there to serve the people, even though that assumption is being sorely eroded. Apart from the inheritance of British colonial government, however, everything else we count as our fortune comes from the land itself, including a democratic and egalitarian inclination. We must never take these things for granted or stand by while they are withheld from any of our countrymen and women. Examples of how our silence damages our democracy are as frequent and as recent as yesterday. Robert Lowe, an Aboriginal elder from Warrnambool, tells a story which never fails to shock me. In telling a yarn about his 242
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boyhood he casually remarks that the Gundidjmara of Warrnambool were not allowed to enter the main precinct of the town.1 It was around the time of the Melbourne Olympics. We were cheering our Dawn Fraser and buying Holden cars and televisions but well into the 1960s shopkeepers were trying to exclude Aboriginal people from the town centre. Gough Whitlam was launching his ascent to power, dreaming of pouring sand into the hands of the Gurindji and bringing the troops home from Vietnam. In the same decade people would demonstrate against the apartheid rugby team, they would cheer Nelson Mandela, celebrate a man on the moon, but black people weren’t allowed to walk the streets of Warrnambool. Aboriginal people from New South Wales and Western Australia have shown me the tickets which were handed out by government to allow them to enter a hotel or drive a car. Blackfella in a car? Must be stolen. Blackfella in a pub? Must be drunk. This is recent Australian history; this is our heritage. But there is never time for despair because the majority of Australians do not believe in treating people unequally. Despairing leftists tell me not to be so gullible and point to the last three Federal elections, but elections don’t just test one belief or need, they record the sentiment of people across a range of concerns. One of those concerns is always self-interest, sometimes greed, but more often than not governments are elected after scaring the people to death or crippling their natural scepticism. Most people have others to support and few of us can remain unhurt by large falls in our income or sudden unemployment. A cunning politician will make this fear the central plank of his election strategy; few have risked the dangerous proposal of stiffening the country’s moral spine. While the left bemoans its fate and blames the electorate, academic Robert Manne urges people to defy the politicians and act on the urging of the better part of their soul. Manne is right; there is no time for either despair or blame. Former AFL footballer, Michael Long, hasn’t given up hope. He famously wrote a letter to John Howard expressing anger at the Prime Minister’s refusal to acknowledge the Stolen Generation, explaining that both his parents and grandparents had been affected. It didn’t move Howard at all because his knowledge of Australian history is so cruelly selective. 243
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Despite this, Long began a walk to Canberra in December 2004 in an attempt to plead the cause of justice. He wanted to draw the Prime Minister’s attention to Aboriginal issues including the damage caused to the families of the Stolen Generation. Within weeks the Howard-led Coalition made provision of fuel to one Aboriginal community contingent upon them washing their faces twice a day. What, to scrub the black away? Australia, were you asleep at the wheel or did you believe the Prime Minister when he described the policy as mutual obligation? That community is allowed to buy diesel at the normal remote country rate of $1.45 a litre and the Prime Minister gives them, what, a flannel? What the Prime Minister allowed was access to fuel, nothing more, nothing less than any Australian gets. Australia, where were you? Where were you when Howard scrapped ATSIC and replaced Indigenous representation with an unelected group from the business and legal worlds? Warren Mundine is one of the few national Aboriginal spokespeople to have accepted a position on the National Indigenous Council. Those to accept are responsible, successful people, but too few have held political positions within their own community. Mundine proposes that the Native Title legislation be abandoned in favour of cash payments to communities in order to kickstart Indigenous enterprises. There is merit in enabling direct involvement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands people in the economy, but as Mick Dodson said in the Age in December 2004, ‘perhaps Mr Mundine doesn’t understand what land means to Indigenous people’. The same could be said of all Australians. The Coalition government would love to scrap Native Title because it would eliminate one of the last identifying characteristics of Aboriginal people and allow the government to treat everybody equally. That is, to merge everybody into one culture: white culture. But why are we so keen to separate ourselves from such a distinctive and ancient culture? Spite? Homogenisation? A more politically tractable population? The Prime Minister takes a clinical approach to these issues. As if to say, we’ve spent millions on them, what are they whingeing 244
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about? Some of the Stolen Generation (although he’d never use the label) had better lives than if they’d stayed in camp with alcoholdependent parents. What’s the problem? Well, John, the problem is that most of the children involved were taken against the wishes of their parents, did not have better lives or education and the damage is still sending shock waves through the population. One woman I know cannot celebrate Mother’s Day or Christmas Day because it recalls the misery of a child locked in an institution throughout the period when children should love their mothers and look forward with hopeful anticipation to Christmas. There is not one family in the Wathaurong Aboriginal Community unaffected by that one issue, John. It is serious, it can be fixed, you don’t have to say sorry, you needn’t use the word stolen if you don’t like to, but we just want you to read a little history, and try someone other than Geoffrey Blainey. Blainey is a gentle and conscientious man but he is only one man with one opinion. There are others who hold a different point of view. Did you read the Deaths in Custody Recommendations? Of course you did, so you’ll have read the heart-breaking testimony of hundreds of mothers who had their children taken from them and who spent the rest of their lives looking for those children and meeting with cynical and obstructive interference from most churches and government departments for the effrontery to search for the children of their womb. John, I know you think that the problems besetting the Aboriginal and Torres Strait community are our own fault, that if we got a job, stopped drinking, stopped bludging, became just like other Australians, that we wouldn’t have anything to whinge about. John, just a few facts that haven’t been included in the ABC Cricket Book: the appalling level of ill-health in the Aboriginal community is not the fault of Indigeneity. Low standards of health are shared only by the poor in any country on earth. Changing the belief or skin colour of these people will not change anything; the only thing which can restore the living standards of Aboriginal people is equity in the land over which they were once sovereign. Not slabs of land, but equity in the life of the nation. 245
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You made people fear for their back yard in your campaign to thwart the Court’s decision to acknowledge the fact of that sovereignty, John, but I know you don’t believe that’s what the Wik decision meant. You’ve read the Court’s decision, you’ve read the Native Title legislation, you know private land could not be compromised by these decisions, but you knew the heart of your people well. You knew they wouldn’t mind if you told them that, gave them a reason to kick the black bastards in the behind. It seems other facts have eluded the entire Parliament too. Did you know that the greatest attendance per capita at Christian churches is by Aborigines? Did you know that the most abstemious Australians, those most likely to be teetotallers, apart from Muslims, are Aborigines? Did you know that Aborigines have the highest birth rate in Australia? Not only are the majority of blackfellas righteous and sober but there are going to be more of them too. Do you really think you’d lose an election if you explained these facts to the nation? Or are you happy for Australians to continue to believe what they believe? Do you share the opinion of our first two prime ministers on the relative value of the colours black and white? You know, John, I don’t think it would cost the country one dollar to acknowledge how the country began. There’d still be a Boxing Day Test, mates would still stand around their barbecues having a few coldies, the economy would still function, waves would still break at Bondi. The only difference would be that if a black Australian turned up in the back yard and grabbed a frosty can from the Esky the conversation wouldn’t fall deathly silent; we’d be able to tell each other yarns about our family, enjoy the jokes about Gillespie’s hair…oh, sorry John, he’s a blackfella too, well Lehman then, how he lost the race against Richardson to prove he was the slowest cricketer on earth…oh, but we can’t talk about that either because he thinks Sri Lankans are black c***s, yelled it on television. Is there nothing we can all talk about together? That’s all we’re on about, John, basic decency. We can work together and we’ll make a stronger not weaker country as a result, but first of all we need to know the same things about the past. We know there is much that frustrates you about Aboriginal affairs. It frustrates us too, but we want you to know our history and your
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part in it and relying on the education you received at school will not tell you how we experienced the last 230 years. Most Aboriginal people don’t want money from the government, would simply settle for acknowledgment of their history. Further justice would flow automatically and naturally from that knowledge and cost much less than a failed foreign currency trade in the Treasury. Oh, but you don’t want to talk about that either, I suppose. You pride yourself on being a reasonable man and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people see acknowledgement of demonstrable Indigenous history as a reasonable expectation. Others might argue about how many deaths make a massacre or how many battles make a war but they’re yelling into a kerosene tin, all boom and echo. We can all reap economic, moral and psychological benefit from just policies which recognise the entire history of the land. This is not what I was thinking on 9 October 2004. There were bleaker thoughts in my head, but then I turned to the land and it took me in its arms as it always does. Most Australians might find it acutely embarrassing to talk about falling into the land’s embrace but it is our one true and lasting solace. The Farex we eat as a child comes from that land, our mother’s milk springs from it and the last thing to enter our mouth will be the soil of our grave. It will be important for us to have earned that soil’s respect and love. Anyway, after the election fish still swam in the river. John Who? Alexander What? they mouthed dreamily. Azure kingfishers still flew like blue neon darts along the bank. The mussels had not fled to more egalitarian seas. On a sandbar baby stingrays were testing submerged flight in such studied, laborious strokes that I was awed by their innocent vulnerability to the sea eagles; creatures much more moved by the sight of unprotected flesh than by inherent beauty and naked hope. I climbed a ridge where the river makes a massive turn toward the lakes and found the need to lie on a patch of ground where the sun tossed a dappled light. I watched tree creepers and sittellas, honeyeaters and robins and was soon rocked to sleep in the swaying shadows of the massive ironbark arms. I woke staring into the branches, the sun several degrees lower in the sky and the feeling that someone had been whispering while I
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slept. Was it the gentle river breeze, the fantail’s wing, the fluttering prayer flags of the leaves or was it all of them? The land. I felt the spine of her pressing against mine and a mighty reassurance swept over me as it has done so many times before. You are home, you are welcome. If we do the right thing by the land justice and peace will flow to its people. The hard heads of politics laugh at such ingenuous faith, but how can they know it won’t work if it’s never been tried?
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Elbows on the Bar Many people think I’m a traitor. You’re not like the rest of them, they’ll say, you’re not really Aboriginal. What they say has cool logic. Clinical analysis of genes says I’m more Cornish than Koori. I hardly ever suffered racist remarks, and experienced no disadvantage as a result of my heritage. My sister and I would never have gone to university if it hadn’t been for Prime Minister, Bob Menzies, because our parents could never have afforded it and yet we both got that chance and the economic security and esteem it provided. So, no I’m not like a real Aborigine because if I’d been blacker my opportunities would have been much more curtailed. There would have been even less money in the house, the expectation of my teachers might have been less, my job opportunities crippled. The only impediment I faced was economic. My only real struggle was with the knowledge that a whole side of our history had been painted out. People can’t understand why you would identify with something so seemingly remote. It’s a common theme in pubs and kitchens when pale Kooris are discussed. Why do they do it? Are they on a lurk? These suspicions became rumours fuelled by ultra-right nationalists and discreetly fanned by Howard’s government. But we are not just the product of our parents’ house, there’s the influence of grandparents and great-grandparents and a whole history of jumbled heritage. Australians were never a pure race as Geoffrey Blainey, John Howard and co. like to think. The mix happened first on the frontier and at every national intersection since. The Anglos were mixed with the Celts and both were changed by Indigenous
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genes and the country on which they ate their bread, the ground where the grain for that bread was grown. Purity is not in race but in purpose. I just want to respect all the roads where my ancestors set their foot. What made my grandmother, mother and father the extraordinary people they were? Australians find it upsetting, a kind of betrayal when lightskinned people identify with their heritage. I can think of dozens of prominent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander politicians, activists, artists, writers, musicians, nurses, teachers and train drivers who have all suffered the charge of not being a real Aborigine. Why should they be denied what the Irish, Greek and Jewish diaspora celebrate at the drop of a baklava, Guinness or gefillte fish? Especially if you are in your own country and in touch with the land which breathes its soul into your nostrils every time you wake. It disappoints a lot of my friends and associates that I want to correct what I see as their ignorance of Australian history, past and present. I’ve been abused by hoteliers, bosses, cricket crowds and lost some friends because of it. Talking of cricket crowds, I must pay homage to the President of the Lorne Cricket Club. In 1997 he chastised his own supporters who’d thought it amusing to yell out the nigger word every time I faced a ball. He strode to the middle of the Lorne cricket oval, trembling with rage, and said, ‘Mate, can I go and punch those blokes in the head?’ ‘No, thanks for the offer, but I’d prefer to bat all day.’ And I did. Now, I bat like Eddie the Eagle skis, but it’s amazing what you can do when inspired. And mate, I didn’t see you after the game, but thanks, I’ve never forgotten it. I like to think of you as the best Australians can become. Fair. Truly accepting people for themselves, not what school they went to or the colour of their grandmother’s skin. But I’m afraid not everyone is as generous as the man from Lorne. I’ve made many friends through sport, many of them from the opposing sides. I’ve sat yarning well after the sun has set over Hayley’s reef at Apollo Bay and Montague Island at Bermagui discussing the finer points of fishing and cricket with blokes I’d hate to lose as friends. I don’t want those men to think of me as a nark or a man who hated his country and countrymen. I don’t,
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quite the opposite; love of my country and its people is so strong it hurts my chest. I just can’t stand by and watch decent people fail to understand just how great their country is and just how great we as a people might become. Doug Lang, Warren Riches, Dennis Dare, John Gorwell, Steve Morsehead, Brian Noseda, Waldo Garner, Dave Nelson, Blondie Parker, Barry Parker, Pussy Rippon, Sparra Harrison, Merv Brady, Guy Permezel, Tommy Lloyd, John Armstrong, Gerry Menke, Curl Shaw, Geoff McCarthy, Stuie Conn and hundreds more, it’d crush me if you thought I was a nark. After all this time, all those good yarns. It’d hurt very deeply not to be able to front up with the same ease and enjoy a few beers and bit of bullshit. There are a few other names I’d like to put there too, but my brothers, you are Aboriginal. Some of you know it and deny it, some don’t care and some simply don’t know because your mother made me promise not to tell. See the gulf that denial of our past has opened between us? If we did this properly it could become the national celebration of our greatness rather than the slinking, suspicious, pig-headed repudiation of 60,000 to 100,000 years of connection to this land. So many of us are members of the world’s oldest culture and deny it. Most of the rest are within a bee’s eyebrow of admitting the crushing weight of love pressing on their chest; the massive love for the land. The only impediment to accepting the full embrace of the country’s love is our inability to look over our shoulder, our failure to shape up to our lingering dread of exposure. If we can learn history we can embrace the past and for many it will be an embrace of family denied. Most Australians, however, view those who discover their Indigenous ancestry late in life like those who recover lost memories; people to be treated with circumspection if not scorn. Both recoveries have been used by impostors but are Australians just looking for an excuse to dismiss the discomfiting fact in the same way we’ve excused our treatment of refugees? If some of them are not genuine then we can dismiss the lot as charlatans! Too easy, my countrymen and women, unworthy of your finer inclinations. I would like to think that in Australia we could rest our elbow on the bar or sit at the table and crook our fingers through the handle of our tea cups and discuss these matters, but it is impossible
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Convincing Ground
because of the incredulity with which most Australians greet the knowledge of our shared history. In this book I’ve tried to set out the facts of a few definitive instances of that history, to show that reading the facts in a slightly different way can lead to a massive difference in meaning. During the 2005 Eureka celebrations I listened to most of ABC Radio National’s comprehensive and fascinating coverage of the celebrations at Ballarat: the role of women, the English– Irish conflict, rich versus poor, the democratic fervour, it was all fascinating. Aborigines? Nothing. Invisible. Nothing to do with democracy, identity, or history. Years ago I worked as Director of the Australian Studies Project of the Commonwealth Schools Commission and was awed by the bilingual publishing program at Yuendumu. They produced stunning educational tools on an old Fordigraph machine. I went back to Canberra and prepared a shortlist of the educational programs in Australia most deserving of Commonwealth assistance. Yuendumu was at the top of the list. I sat stunned during the meeting while the public servants re-shuffled the list to bring in an application by an elite Queensland school which wanted money to add two rowing shells to the eight they already possessed. Yuendumu did not receive funding and I wrote my letter of resignation as the meeting continued. This was a Labor government; I couldn’t believe how justice could be so perverted. Some probably think I’m an upstart smart arse and annoyed that I’ve been so critical of the Howard government, but why not, they’re the government of the past decade. I don’t think Howard is a bad man; I think he’s badly educated. While the Liberals have been running around changing the valves on Australia’s heart, Labor has agreed with the destruction of an elected body representative of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, they’ve been in parliament watching as industrial relations are re-cast to impoverish workers, they sat on their hands while women and children drowned on our border, they voted for educational reform which saw massive injustice done to public education, they did the same when public health was ruined. Barely a bleat from the ex-lawyers and party drones of the Parliamentary Labor Party, most of whom have never
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Elbows on the Bar
belonged to a union; never known what it was like to be oppressed by avaricious employers. In October 2006 they joined with the Liberal Party to condemn a Federal Court decision to grant Native Title to some areas of Perth to the Noongar people.1 Prime Minister Howard and Attorney-General Ruddock suggested the decision might prevent white people from visiting the beach and Labor agreed with their determination to appeal the judgment. Labor is pathetic and had the gall to criticise the leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Bob Brown, when he questioned the American President about the reasons for the second Iraq War. I criticise Howard because he’s in charge. Labor doesn’t deserve power, they no longer believe in anything. The Australian people have almost no choice but to vote for Howard. Would Labor have saved Timor? Would they have given $1 billion dollars to the Tsunami-affected nations? How would we know? They’ve discarded policy in favour of polling. The Opposition failed to mention the Tsunami which devastated Asia on Boxing Day 2004. Would Mick Young have stayed silent? Jim Cairns? Stop hiding behind Bob Brown you pallid lefties, try and find your pulse, because there is no sign of it visible to the people who would support your old ethic of fairness. It’s too easy to attack the conservatives in the United States or Australia for the current state of world behaviour. People have responsibility for the moral tone of their country and when the best educated people in the land are blinded by ignorance of their country’s history how can we blame politicians when they pander to our selfishness? We are fortunate to live in a democracy where it is within our power to tell our elected representatives what we want. So, why do we limit the application of pressure on our federal politicians to changing parliamentarians’ superannuation allowances or sacking ministers who take their lovers on overseas trips at public expense? What about a couple of polite questions when 353 desperate people drown within range of our surveillance? Why not ask, politely, why we can give $1 billion to the Tsunami tragedy, and deserving of every cent, and yet allow trachoma and kidney failure to remain at higher levels in Indigenous Australia than in Bangladesh?
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Convincing Ground
We have to ask those questions; it is our responsibility. Liberal, Labor? Hardly matters. I remember when Graham Richardson, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the last Keating government, had his photo on the front page of every daily newspaper two weeks out from an election. He had his arm around the shoulders of a senior Utopia woman after promising that the Labor government would deliver running water to her community. Labor won that election but Utopia still doesn’t have the promised water supply. What happened, Graham? Lose the memo? Or did you just do whatever it takes and then move on? A vision of Senator, Balanceof-Power, Harradine trying to dance with Arnhem Land Yolngu people was just as sickening. Dance one day and deny Aboriginal rights the next. And, no, Richard Alston, Aboriginal people didn’t invent the wheel, nor did they invent the rack, the gas chamber or tax evasion. Labor, Liberal or Calathumpian doesn’t matter at all. It’s what we believe that counts. I’ve learned to be agnostic but I’d quite happily settle for a country that operated exclusively by the Ten Commandments. You couldn’t go wrong truly believing that all of us were created in God’s image and loving our neighbours as ourselves. You couldn’t go wrong with belief that strong. So how is it that so many politicians can express such passion for the word of the Lord and enact the legislation denying almost all the pleas of the Commandments? When we hear a politician say ‘we don’t want that sort of person here’ we should prick up our ears, we must be alert when a whole race is being accused of immorality because history shows that our sons will soon be conscripted to kill those people. When you notice a religion being systematically maligned in the press be assured someone is about to ask you to withhold Christian justice from its believers. We need to be more vigilant than we have been in the past but really it doesn’t matter what federal politicians think. It’s us that really count, the people, those with a chance to share a pot of beer or a cup of tea, the chance to search for knowledge and share it and indulge the better side of our nature, the side that fervently believes in equality, that believes Australia’s fundamental commitment is
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to a fair go for everyone. Where is our thirst for uncompromised knowledge? Why do we encourage politicians to lie to us? Australians aren’t the problem. We prove time and time again that we have good hearts, that we can reach a hand to the needy. Our problem stems from our national myopia and that arises from the history that intelligent people still insist on teaching impressionable children. We’ve been quarantined by that history, separated from our soul and soil. A classic example of the complexity of our souls occurred while I was finishing this book and researching the next. I’d seen references to an obscure text on Mongolia and I searched everywhere for it. There was one copy at the State Library of Victoria but I couldn’t borrow it because I live so remotely. Instead the State Library searched private and university libraries, found a copy and sent it to the mobile library which visits Mallacoota. At last I could get to work on the new book. I opened the cover and found that the book had come from Melbourne University’s library and had been donated by Geoffrey Blainey. Throughout this book I’ve been critical of Blainey’s view of Australian history but who should provide this arcane text but the old bugger of history himself. While I was finishing this book a member of one of the early Gippsland pastoral families lent me a copy of Mark McKenna’s Looking for Blackfella Point. I took huge encouragement from McKenna’s book but also that I should be directed to it by such an unlikely source. Nothing is simple, nothing is purely black and white. We must investigate our past with rigour but not abuse others for the views they hold; instead we must strive to make our national education as comprehensive as possible. We want our youth to learn how to analyse difficult problems and arrive at sophisticated propositions. All of us, in our better moments, want nothing less. In my life I’ve only met a handful of people who consistently wished ill on others. I’ve been to the meetings of the Australian Literary Translators Association (ALITRA), the organisation which dispenses money for the translation of languages other than English, and been met
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Convincing Ground
with good-mannered bemusement when I requested ALITRA spend some of its funds on Aboriginal translations. They thought I was joking. There was only one Aboriginal language, no-one spoke it and in any case there wasn’t a literature! I was trying to argue the case to have some of the Walpiri and Arrente stories translated into English for the purposes of teaching them in the community schools and for the information of all Australians. (The Commonwealth Schools Commission had already knocked back this proposal in favour of rowing sculls for rich east coast schools.) The bemusement of the committee was genuine and ingrained. They explained that I must have misunderstood because the funds are for migrant languages, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, French. In fact the ALITRA charter does not make that distinction at all but people on the committee claimed I had misunderstood the intent of the charter. I knew exactly what the intent was and it arises from the blindness that has our country stumbling in a fog of displacement and denial. Some literary translators have striven in the last two years to relieve their ignorance of Indigenous languages. It is a good sign but nothing more than that if we continue to spend more money teaching Spanish than we do Indigenous languages. The Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages (FATSIL) approached the Languages Other than English (LOTE) committee with the same request. The LOTE board distributes $68 million to support the teaching of languages other than English in schools. How much of that is spent on Aboriginal languages? Not one dollar. You misunderstand they say slowly and patiently for the idiot blackfella, this money is for migrant languages. No it’s not; it is for languages other than English. In 2002 I was at the national linguists’ conference. Aboriginal participants were involved in sideshows of the conference while the linguists described the brilliance of their research. I wandered in to a session by mistake. I was lost again. I realised my mistake after a while and prepared to leave until I realised the linguists were discussing the copyright of their material and methods for including the research as properties in a will. Bequeathing Aboriginal languages to their children.
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Not all linguists work like that but there were plenty of greedy ears in this seminar and the attitude has resulted in major court cases, including disputation over the ownership of TGH Strehlow’s vault of artefacts and recordings. The linguists were surprised to hear that someone found this discussion immoral. Researchers need to protect their work from predatory publishers or unethical rivals but it is a dangerous precedent to divide other people’s cultural heritage as if it were a brick veneer in Balwyn. In 2004 I found myself in discussion with the inheritor of a document of 700 pages of Wathaurong language. The woman who collected it had said she would give it to the community after her death. The son wanted copyright. He wanted to sell the language back to the people from whom it had been taken twice. Ronald Biggs and Alan Bond would have been impressed. Not all news is as bleak or dangerous to the national soul. In an important breakthrough in 2005, Aretha Briggs, Doris Paton and Lyn Dent, sat down together and drew up a plan for the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority to introduce Indigenous Victorian languages into the Year 12 VCE curriculum. A massive effort, but why should it surprise? Aretha, Doris and Lyn are descended from a long line of wise warrior men and women. So, three good Australians get together to share their courage and vision to advance Australian education by a light year. The Power of Three. Why does it seem such a confusing and treacherous sea for the rest of us? The confusion about what defines a language other than English goes right to the heart of our national identity, right to the heart of the muddled way we represent ourselves here and overseas, why we sit respectfully while New Zealand rugby players, white and black, perform a Haka. Do you want something to perform at the MCG, SCG, Gabba and WACA? Well, it’d be slightly different in every state because it would depend on where the ground was and whose land it was on, but if we looked we’d find a warrior song for that particular soil. It wouldn’t have the same ferocious bellicosity of the Maori (that’s something else the country could learn), but it would say everything there was to know about the power of place and the great heroes who fought for it. It would even celebrate the famed Merri Creek mud from which the centre square of the MCG used
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Convincing Ground
to be constructed. Imagine the richness and flavour that would add to the traditional chicken lunch at the Boxing Day Test. I’m not being ironic, I’m seriously patriotic. I can see it now on Grand Final day: Leigh Matthews, Wayne Carey, Gavin Wanganeen, Phillip Matera, Daniel Motlop, Peter Burgoyne, and a few token white representatives lining up to sing the National Anthem and perform a Woiwurrung Warrior song. No nation anywhere else on the face of the earth could do it; people would switch on television sets in Berlin, Paris, London, Toronto and Los Angeles just to see this unique expression of national identity. You might have gone back to review that last paragraph and asked, Leigh Matthews, Wayne Carey? Well, yes, they mightn’t agree but their relatives would. We live in a seriously compromised country, but why have we let it become such a problem? We should relish the complexity, the depth, the length of the history, feel a tiny bit smug that we know things people from other countries don’t, things they find strange, exotic and compelling. Let’s bury the stone and steel hatchets and fall in love with our country, let’s share the guiltless embrace of true love while remembering that there is a huge difference between loving your country and simply loving your lifestyle. True love doesn’t rely on beaches, barbecues and sunshine. Nervous about true love? It does require selflessness and reckless courage, unstinting respect for each other, time and endurance…but it’s worth it; nations are built by it.
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Appendices
I. Wathaurong Language Sample This sample is to inform the reader of some references within the text but, as the Wathaurong people have already had their language stolen once before, any use of these words should be referred to the Wathaurong Community and Co-operative (03 5277 0044). A Wathaurong Dictionary, Pronunciation Guide and Language Learning CD-Rom is available at the Co-op’s discretion. Amerjig Angahook Bagurk Barrabool Barre warre Birregurra Bitjarra Bobup Boonea/Koonan Bullok Bunjil Connewarre Corio Dir Dorla Ge:ang port Gnung ok Gnurdang Guli Gulkurguli/Borom Jillong (Geelong)
white man iron bark woman oyster from hills to sea (Barwon River) place where female kangaroos rest fight baby eel lake wedge-tailed eagle (major spirit being of Wathaurong) swan sandy bay mussel shell used as cutting tool mullet bream magpie goose mother man boy tongue, or foot of land, a peninsula
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Appendices
Kaal Karwir Koim Kooderoo Korraiyn Kuarka Minne Mirre Modewarre Moorabool Myrniong (murnong) Ngarmbulmum Ngurre ngurre Nnunyargurk Nubiyt Parwung Pettyang Tarook Tarri wil Tjorriong To:lom Tulum Waa Wanyuki Waurn (Ponds) Wiiyn Wollert Wurdi yawing (i.e. You Yangs) Yabbi Yallock Yellpillup Yern Yukope Yolla
260
dog emu kangaroo abalone salt or sea fishing place oven sun musk duck mussel yam daisy, potato-like tuber koala bronze-wing pigeon girl water magpie father root vegetable plains turkey crayfish black duck fish crow (spirit being of Wathaurong) (war, waang in other Victorian languages) mountain duck place of many houses (Aboriginal stone houses) fire possum (Kirrae wurrong = bunya) large mountain yabby river willy wagtail moon king parrot (one of Bunjil’s messengers) mutton bird
Aboriginal languages of Victoria. Based on I Clark, Aboriginal Language Areas in Victoria, A Reconstruction 2005. A Report to the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages. .
Appendices
261
Appendices
II. Place names of the Geelong–Ballarat Region Place name
Wathaurong
Meaning
Anglesea Ballarat
kuarka dorla balla = elbow
Balliang
name of Wathaurong man living around 1840 barre = land, warre = sea
place to fish for mullet resting on elbow, but note similarity to the tree Cherry Ballart which is common in area insect bat
Anakie
Barwon
Barrabool Berringa Birregurra Bolac Boonah Bora Bungal Buninyong Cardinia Colac Connewarre
Corio Darriwill, Mount Derril Erip, Mount Geelong Gherang, Lake
262
nganaki yawa
small hill
river from the mountains to the sea (some suggest it is named after magpie, i.e parwung) — oyster — rainbow bee-eater bird — female kangaroo camp bulluk lake — tea tree — ceremonial ground bunjil creator spirit, the wedgetailed eagle bun = knee mountain, like the shape of knees drawn up Kardinia (e.g. early morning light or Kardinia Park) sunrise corac = sand sandy (Lake Connewarre) swans (warre = water, usually salt water. Swans always found on Lake Connewarre) corac = sand sandy bay Darriwill bush turkey, bustard — brown ochre Erip or Yirip iron bark tree Gherang black cockatoo jalang = tongue tongue of land or peninsula, e.g. Bellarine Peninsula (could also be tallang, i.e foot)
Appendices
Place name Gheringhap Gong Gong reservoir Gorong Irrewarra
Wathaurong — gang gang
goorung sometimes used to describe shoal fish or where we gather to catch them, hence all the houses Jan Juc — Jeeler gila Koringkoringgeebull koraiyn = salt, bulluk bulluk = lake Kruk-Kruk — Kuruc a ruc creek kurak or corac = sand Lal Lal — Lara lar = stone Larngi Kal Kal larngi = home of, karl = dog Mambourin —
Meaning black wattle blossom gang gang cockatoo cooking ovens houses by the water
milk to speak salty lake bull frog sandy sound of dashing waters stony plain dogs’ camp the name of a Wathaurong clan head plenty of coarse grass merrijig = very good, well done musk duck place of cold wind
Mawallock Merrijig Creek
— —
Modewarre Monmot Hill
— moon moon meet = cold wind (also property name near Birregurra) — ferns, shade, plenty of rocks and good place to fish murrk = head, lake in shape of head bulluk = lake murrun = march fly march fly — yam daisy (one of staple foods of the people) — kidney fat
Moolap Murgheboluc Murroon Myrniong Narmbool
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Appendices
Place name Painkalac creek
Wathaurong Meaning yaluk = creek, river unsure of meaning but seen as border between Wathaurong and Gadubanoot people Pirron Yallock — little water Timboon — freshwater mussel, particularly the use of shell as a tool Trawalla — much rain, wild water, flood Waurn Ponds waurn = houses place of many Aboriginal houses by the river Wallinduc — lava stone Wendouree — be off, fire on the reeds Werribee warre = water, red gums by the water beal = red gums Widderim, Mount Widderim wirrtheeang = skin of leaf Woady Yaloak River wurdi = large large creek Wollard, Lake wallert or wallard possums = possum Woodela — rock Woolloomanatta Villiminatta where the hills allow you a view of the ocean (You Yangs) Yarra — flowing Yarrowee River — waterholes You Yangs — big hills
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Appendices
III. Jillong Timeline 70,000 + years ago 1451 1504 1595 1688 1770 1778 1800
1802
1803
1816 & 1824
Evidence of people living on the Australian continent and of world’s earliest art. Dutch documents record journeys of Macassan trepangers to northern Australia. Visit of L’Espoir with Capt Jean Binot Paulmier de Gonnerville to Prince Regent River, WA. Dutch ships sight west coast of Australia as they sail to the East Indies (South East Asia) for trade. William Dampier (England) lands on west coast. Captain James Cook (England) lands on east coast. First Fleet arrives at Sydney Cove. Lt James Grant in the Lady Nelson sails through Bass Strait. • Around this time sealers and whalers are active in Bass Strait. • By the time the Henty brothers arrived at Portland in 1834 a small town of white sealers was well established at the port. Lt John Murray in the Lady Nelson sails into Port Phillip Bay and takes possession of land in the name of George III. • Matthew Flinders in the Investigator continues the survey of Port Phillip. Waa Waa (Crow Feather — Willem Bahnip’s grandfather) sees Flinders climbing You Yang range. Capt John Tuckey of the Calcutta is ‘harassed by natives’ so shoots and kills first Aboriginals in the land war. • First European settlement of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). • William Buckley escapes from Capt Collins’ temporary settlement at Sorrento. Buckley walks around Port Phillip Bay and some time later is invited to join the Mon:mart clan of the Wathaurong people after Kondiak:ruk (Swan Wing) declares he is her husband returned from the dead. Aboriginal people believed that the dead were reincarnated in a white form. They call Buckley Mooran:gurk (Ghost blood). Martial law declared in NSW. The military take up arms against the Aboriginal Resistance.
265
Appendices
1824
George Arthur appointed Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land 1824–1836. • Hume and Hovell walk from Sydney to Port Phillip Bay. • In Tasmania settlers are authorised to shoot Aborigines. • Martial law is declared in Bathurst after violent clashes between settlers and Aborigines. 1828–1833 Martial law declared in Tasmania. Tasmanian Solicitor General says ‘the Aborigines are the open enemies of the King and in a state of actual warfare against him’. In 1831 Tasmanian newspaper correspondents declare ‘we are at war with them’. J T Gellibrand says, ‘we are about to enter a war of extermination’. 1831 Sir Richard Bourke appointed Governor of NSW 1831–37. 1834 Henty’s Portland settlement under siege from the Gundidjmara attempting to retain their lands. 1833 London: Wilberforce Bill abolishes slavery. 1833–34 Convincing Ground: Portland Henty brothers and their sealers massacre large numbers of Gundidjmara in battle over whales, women and land. 1835 John Batman and members of Port Phillip Association arrive in Rebecca and set up camp at Indented Head. Batman climbs Mount Duneed and exclaims at the fine country like ‘a gentleman’s park’. • Buckley hears of the arrival of Batman and goes to meet him at Indented Head. • First massacres of Aboriginal people by Europeans near Bearbrass (Melbourne) and Geelong. Whalers massacre a large group of Gunditjamara near Portland. Violent clashes all around Port Phillip as Indigenes defend their territories. 1835–36 Thomas Mitchell ‘explores’ Australia Felix (Murray River– Western District): ‘A country for the immediate reception of civilised man…of this Eden it seemed that I was the only Adam’. 1836 William Lonsdale appointed Police Magistrate. • Squatters spreading quickly west and south of Melbourne. Killing and dispossession of Aboriginal people seems out of the control or interest of the authorities. Cowie, von Steiglitz, Sutherland, Thompson, and Manifold rush to take land near Geelong. Thompson calls his ‘property’ Kardinia and claims
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Appendices
1837
all the land on the south bank of the Barwon River to Barwon Heads. • Settler Franks killed near Werribee. White revenge party fires on 50–100 Aborigines killing a minimum of 12, most believe it’s more like 35. • Sealers abduct Aboriginal women, a practice repeated frequently wherever sealers plied their trade. • Fred Taylor, overseer on Capt Swanston’s sheep station, ‘mistakes’ Curracoin for another who had attacked Capt Flitt. Taylor ties Curracoin to a tree and Whitehead ‘panics’ and shoots him. Charges against the squatters dropped through ‘lack of evidence’. • The missionary, Tuckfield, complained that the Aborigines were troublesome and ate a great deal! Two more Wathaurong killed by shepherds on the Leigh River; another ‘drowns’ after being chained to a log. • The House of Commons Select Committee (Westminster/London) allows ‘that the right of civilised states to take possession of barbarous countries’ rests entirely on the full equivalent being given by the invaders. • Armytage and others squat at Winchelsea; Murray at Colac. Governor Bourke rides south and selects site for Geelong on the banks of the Barwon. Squatters are well established throughout the district. • Langhorne’s school and mission established near Melbourne for displaced Indigenous people. • Native Police established. • Foster Fyans appointed Police Magistrate at Geelong. Squatters complain to Fyans ‘of attacks of the most determined character’ by Indigenous people. Fyans orders Buckley to assemble Wathaurong people — 297 counted. Buckley unhappy working for white authorities. • Hesse and Gellibrand disappear while searching for more land: Wathaurong and Jarcoort people blamed. • A large party of dispossessed Wathaurong attacks Yuille’s station at Murghebolak. Resistance so fierce settlers sign a petition appealing to Governor Bourke for protection. Rickett’s station attacked.
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Appendices
1838
1839
268
Geelong surveyed and land ‘sales’ conducted. Fyans ‘selects’ land on Barwon River. Blacks drive off sheep from Werribee River pastures. Six men captured and sent to Sydney for trial. • Buntingdale Aboriginal mission established by Wesleyans at Birregurra. • Governor Gipps authorises public execution of whites convicted of killing blacks in NSW. White public outraged by Gipps’ actions and thereafter all murders and massacres in the war go unreported by settlers. • Ten blacks shot near Mount Macedon. Seven ‘settlers’ and convicts killed in the ‘Faithful massacre’. • Gipps refuses to allow ‘militia to go to war against the blacks’. • David Wilson orders Assistant Protector Sievwright to keep natives off his ‘sheep walk’ because they are becoming ‘impertinent’. • Thomas Learmonth’s hut-keeper, McMannis, killed. Whites blame several different people who all flee the district. • One of the above,Willi Melluk, flees to Leigh River and ‘drowns’. • Joseph Sheir, shepherd at Buninyong, said blacks drove his flocks away and threatened to kill him. Sheir captured a suspect and locked him in a hut but the man set fire to the hut and escaped in irons and ‘drowned’ in the river. • Myall Creek massacre: settlers shoot and burn 28 Aborigines. • 300 Bangerang drive off squatters trying to take their land near Wangaratta. Fyans rides through Western District to investigate the massacre of blacks, and reports on ‘fine country available for pasture’. • LaTrobe appointed Superintendent of the Port Phillip District 1839–51. • Protectorate system introduced and GA Robinson appointed Chief Protector of Aborigines. Assistant Protectors Thomas, Sievwright etc. appointed. • LaTrobe reports that, within 5 years of Batman’s arrival, most land in the Western District is ‘settled’ and Indigenous population much reduced.
Appendices
1840
1841
• 500 Aborigines camp near the Botanical Gardens to welcome Robinson. • Paramilitary Border Police established to suppress Indigenous resistance. Native Police re-established. • Murdering Gully and Mount Emu massacres. Anne Drysdale, of Borron-Goop, has 60 Wathaurong staying on her ‘property’ and says ‘they are causing no trouble’. Drysdale and Alexander Thomson (of Kardinia) sometimes supply food for Buntingdale. • Fyans tours stations of the Western District and settlers complain of ‘outrages’ by Aborigines. Gipps tries to prevent ‘settlement’ in outlying districts but is ignored. • Arthur Lloyd and Peter Manifold shoot 50 ‘natives’ at Colac. • Wathaurong banned from the streets of Geelong. • Protector Parker reports that Yammer Bok (Mr Malcolm) leads the starving remnants of Marpeang and Tollora clans to the Franklinford Protectorate on the Loddon River. • Nicholas Fenwick becomes Police Magistrate at Geelong. • Anne Drysdale’s other outstation Lib Lib (near Moolap), is robbed by clans. A punitive ‘posse’ pursues the clan but the result of pursuit, as has become the custom, is not reported. • Warmdella’s clan organise attacks which cause Europeans to rethink strategies. Crown Commissioner Addis finds 150 remaining Barrabool. • Wathaurong ‘settling down’ near Geelong. • Robinson reports most ‘blacks east of Hopkins River eliminated’. • Barrabool people decline to take up residence at Buntingdale. All clans find being lumped together with other groups very dispiriting. • Assistant Protector Sievwright takes out a police warrant to arrest Mom-Bourne of Bengali clan for murder. Mom-Bourne escaped in chains from the cutter transporting him to Melbourne. The rebel leader is never heard from again although probably remained as leader of resistance. 269
Appendices
1842
1844 1844–49
270
• Massacres of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Aboriginal people in the region and approximately 20 white shepherds and settlers killed. • Wathaurong, like Aborigines elsewhere in Australia, respond to poisonings, shootings, rapes, dispossession and starvation. • Aboriginal people resort to dispersing flocks which annoys the settlers more than the loss of their convict shepherds and, in response, settlers burn down Aboriginal villages. • Judge Willis admits that the frequent conflicts between the settlers and blacks make it clear the Aboriginal clans were ‘not a conquered people’ nor did they acquiesce to the supremacy of the settlers. • Asst Protector Sievwright’s farming experiment at Lake Keilambete. Dan Dan Nook, Bengali clansman, saves Samuel Mossman, a colonial artist, from drowning. • Dan Dan Nook’s father and two uncles flee from British justice after fighting to protect their lands. • Koort Kirrup is arrested for murder (Glenelg area). Kaawirr Kunawarn (Hissing Swan) is another active in the resistance. • Fyans rides in punitive parties against blacks. The whites charged with the massacre at Mutson Creek are released. Aboriginal evidence is not admitted in court. Henry Dana of Native Police shoots 10 at Lake Condah but fails to report this and other incidents. • Severe drought in southern Australia places stress on both settlers and Aborigines. • Foster Fyans arrests Gar rare rer (Jacky), Ty koo he (Doctor), and a boy for outrages. ‘Bob’ and ‘Jack’ hanged for murder of sealers near Westernport. • Hundreds of Ganai massacred at Bruthen Creek in one of the final battles in the Ganai’s brave but ultimately failed resistance. Melbourne Town Council complains of the number of blackfellows’ dogs in the town. Gipps attempts to pass Aborigines Evidence Bill to allow Aboriginal evidence in court, but WC Wentworth says ‘it would be quite as defensible to receive as evidence in a
Appendices
1845
1845–47 1846
1848 1849
1850
1851 1852
Court of Justice the gibberings of an ourang-outang’. The Bill is put and defeated on three occasions. Eumeralla War: massive fighting near the Crawford and Glenelg rivers. • Kaarwirr Kunawarn sentenced to 10 years transportation to Van Diemen’s Land for stealing meat. Dana strikes Yanem Goona with a cutlass. He recovers from wound 6 months later and is sentenced to 10 years transportation to Van Diemen’s Land. 13 white hunting parties near Yambuk. Robinson claims 90 per cent of all Aboriginal reprisals are in response to the rape of Aboriginal women. La Trobe sends out Border Police and Native Police under Smythe and Fyans who perpetrate massacres at Colac and Cape Otway (report hidden by La Trobe). Fyans and Dana describe Ty koo he (Doctor) as a dangerous man of bad character. Aire River Massacre, 30 killed? Phillip Chauncy reports Aborigines ‘inert’ and almost all resistance quelled. • Buntingdale Mission closed. Russell, of Golf Hill, estimates original population reduced by a quarter. • Gov Fitzroy proposes Aboriginal Reserves ‘beyond the settled districts’. ‘Landholders’ complain of Aboriginal Protectorates and stations taking up ‘good land’ and attracting Aboriginal people ‘near our properties’. • Lake Tyers mission established. Lake Boga 1853, Ebenezer 1854, Yelta 1855, Ramanayak 1862. • George Walton of Fiery Creek (near Ararat), discovers large turf sculpture of a large beast which some speculate may be the beast Wathaurong call Bahnip (Bunyip). Gold discovered in Victoria. Thousands flock to diggings and more land is taken from Wathaurong. William Thomas (previously Protector) appointed as Guardian of all surviving Aborigines. Addis appointed Commissioner of Lands in the Geelong district. He suggests a reserve should be set aside as a Living Place for Aborigines near Point Lonsdale — never implemented.
271
Appendices
1858–59 1860 1861 1862 1865 1867
1869 1870 1871 1885 1886
1925 1928 1938 1940–51 1951 1962 1965 1966 1967
272
Select Committee opposes reserves for Aborigines. Finds population of Indigenes declined by 50 per cent in last decade. Board of Protection for Aborigines established. 1-acre (0.4 hectare) block declared as ‘the Duneed Reserve’ for Aborigines in Ghazepore Road, Waurn Ponds where 6 surviving adults live. ‘Queen’ Eliza, wife of ‘King’ Jerry dies and is buried at Portarlington. Framlingham gazetted as a reserve. Lake Condah Mission established. • John Garrat and Charles Read become guardians of surviving Geelong clanspeople as well as those of Colac, Winchelsea, and Waurn Ponds (Duneed). Mission Act. Aborigines of fair complexion forced off reserves. Some reserves broken up and land sold. Dan Dan Nook dies of tuberculosis in the Geelong Invalid Asylum. Lake Condah residents strike for better treatment. Willem Bahnip succumbs to tuberculosis after living totally alone for 15 years after the last of his contemporaries died. Parliament passes a Bill ‘defining’ Aborigines. The Victorian Board is empowered to apprentice Aboriginal children when they reached the age of thirteen. Children require permission to visit their families. Australian Aborigines Progressive Association formed. Coniston Massacre: settlers and police shoot at least 31. Aborigines Progressive Association declares Australia Day (26 January) a national day of mourning. Aboriginal people forced to move from Condah, Tyers, Corranderk, Cummeragunja and other ‘reserves’. Assimilation Policy formed: ‘All Aborigines expected to attain the same manner of living as other Australians’. Aboriginal people allowed to vote for the first time. Assimilation Policy restated as Integration Policy. Gurindjis go on strike at Wave Hill and move to Dagaruda (Wattie Creek). Gurindjis demand the return of land. • Referendum allows government to make laws in regard to Aboriginal people and to count Aboriginal people in the national population census.
Appendices
1972
1974 1975 1976 1980 1981 1991 1992 1993 1994 1996
1997
1998
Aboriginal Tent Embassy established outside Parliament House, Canberra, calling for land rights and compensation. Federal government agrees that Aborigines can hold leases and form pastoral companies. Gough Whitlam pours Gurindji sand into the hand of Vincent Lingiari thus returning the land to traditional owners. Federal Racial Discrimination Act passed. Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) allows Aborigines to own traditional land and make claims for Crown lands. Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative formed. Pitjantjara given freehold title to their land. Yorta Yorta continuing fight for land along with other Victorian Aboriginal communities. Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. High Court Mabo judgment which rejects the concept of Terra Nullius. Native Title Act introduced by High Court. Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Report handed down. High Court rules in favour of Wik people’s right to receive Native Title Rights. • National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families (report published). Reconciliation Conference in Melbourne where Prime Minister John Howard refuses to apologise for disruption to Aboriginal lives caused by Australian government policies. • One-Fire Reconciliation Group formed in Geelong. John Howard’s Coalition Government proposes a 10-Point Plan to thwart High Court’s Wik decision thus allowing pastoralists to obtain freehold title on leases being claimed by Aboriginal people. • Government re-elected; Pauline Hanson loses her seat. • Jeff Kennett (Victorian State Liberal Premier) passes legislation to thwart Yorta Yorta land claim over Barmah Forest. Elders occupy Dharnya Cultural Centre in protest. • Some members of Cape Otway Lighthouse 150th Celebration Committee object to plans to fly the Aboriginal flag at celebrations.
273
Appendices
1999 2000 2001
2002
2004
2005 2006
Prime Minister John Howard orders destruction of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. 450,000 walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of Reconciliation; 500,000 cross Flinders Street Bridge in Melbourne. Yorta Yorta lose court case for land rights claim. • Geelong Council agrees to archaeological examination of all developments within 500 metres of the ocean, bays or waterways in order to protect Aboriginal sites. Yothu Yindi band member denied service in NT hotel. • Yorta Yorta’s final appeal defeated in Australia’s High Court which maintains that claim has been ‘washed away by the tide of history’. Coalition Government re-elected. ATSIC formally abolished, with Labor Party support, as representative of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Unelected group appointed by Howard to advise government on Aboriginal policy. Most senior Aborigines refuse selection. • Michael Long walks to Canberra to urge Howard to talk to the senior representatives of the Indigenous community. Many Wathaurong people accompany Michael on his Long Walk. • Redfern community clashes with police over treatment of its residents. Palm Island community clashes with police over abuses and deaths in custody. Prime Minister insists members of a WA Aboriginal Community have to wash their face twice a day if they want fuel for their vehicles. Michael Long walks again in plea for government to address concerns of Indigenous Australians. The press are tired and give the walk little coverage. • Fires near Heywood uncover the foundations of huge stone houses. Did this evidence cause a bell to ring in the Australian mind?
Language sample and timeline prepared by Bruce Pascoe, Wathaurong Language Officer. The major references used in compiling these appendices were: Bringing Them Home: A Guide to the Findings of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997; R Brought-Smythe, The Aborigines of South East Australia; evidence from the Wathaurong community, and private correspondence. 274
Notes
1 Franks is Dead 1. John Batman and the Aborigines, Alistair Campbell, Kibble Books, p. 59 (Cotterell, like Batman, engaged by Governor Arthur to hunt Aborigines in Tasmania). 2. M Cannon (ed.), Historical Records of Victoria, vol. 2A, p. 49. 3. Ibid., p. 43–4 4. Ibid., p. 44. 5. TF Bride (ed.), Letters from Victorian Pioneers, 2nd edition, 1969, p. 88 note 2; P James (ed.), Werribee: The First 100 Years, p. 12. 6. AGL Shaw, A History of the Port Phillip District, Miegunyah Press, 1996, p. 134. 7. Quoted in Alistair Campbell, John Batman and the Aborigines, p. 171. 8. Ibid. 9. AGL Shaw, A History of the Port Phillip District, p. 113. 10. Quoted in R Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, vol. 1, p. 136. 11. Ibid., p. 132. 12. I Hebbe, Further History of Colac, (additional ms notes). 13. Gellibrand’s Diary: Port Phillip Papers 1835–1843 CY 1046 ML C171. 14. D Barwick, Mapping the Past, p. 24. 15. A Campbell, John Batman and the Aborigines, p. 101. 16. Ibid., p. 105. 17. The Settlement of John Batman in Port Phillip from his own Journal, p. 19. 18. F Forbes, Letter, 26 July 1835; also in JM Bennett (ed.) Some Papers of Sir Francis Forbes, Parlt of NSW, 1998. 19. Quoted in Campbell, John Batman and the Aborigines, p. 171. 20. The Settlement of John Batman in Port Phillip, p. 21. 21. D Barwick, Rebellion at Coranderk, p. 16. 22. Ibid. 23. J Batman, Voyage of Expedition from Van Diemen’s Land to Port Phillip, 1835, SLV. 24. Quoted in A Campbell, John Batman and the Aborigines, p. 32. 25. Gellibrand’s Tasmanian newspaper correspondence, 1831. 275
275
Notes
26. Quoted in A Campbell, John Batman and the Aborigines, p. 62. 27. CMH Clark, A History of Australia, vol. III, p. 117.
2â•… History, How it Starts 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
M Cannon (ed.), Historical Records of Victoria, vol. 2A, pp. 56, 7. Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia, vol. 2, p. 734. ID Clark, Scars in the Landscape, p. 107. Griffith, The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales, Dublin, 1845, p. 152–3. J Critchett, A Distant Field of Murder, p. 60. L Arkley, The Hated Protector, pp. 238, 178. GA Robinson, Journal, vol. 2, p. 222. R Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, p. 64. Quoted in L Arkley, The Hated Protector, p. 236. Ibid., p. 235. D Barwick, Rebellion at Coranderk, p. 16. JH Wedge, Journal, p. 10. Westminster Select Committee on Aborigines 1837 (copy, Senate Office, Parliament House, Victoria).
3â•… The Lakes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
TF Bride (ed.), Letters from Victorian Pioneers, p. 4. EB Gregory, Winchelsea: a history of a shire, p. 7. I Hebbe, The History of the Colac District, p. 223. TF Bride (ed.), Letters from Victorian pioneers, p. 284. Warrnambool Standard, 2 January 2006.
4â•… Lady Macbeth’s Clean Hands 1. J Campbell, Invisible Invaders, pp. 47, 36. 2. Robinson to La Trobe, 7 October 1842, quoted in J Critchett, A Distant Field of Murder, p. 131. 3. A Markus, From the Barrel of a Gun, p. 53. 4. Ibid., p. 43. 5. Whitlam Papers website, quoting P Hasluck, Black Australians, p. 165. 6. Quoted in A Markus, From the Barrel of a Gun, p. 42. 7. Ibid., p. 44. 8. Under a Regent Moon, Willing and Kenneally, CALM 2003, www. naturebase.net.
5â•… The Lie of the Land 1. L Arkley, The Hated Protector, p. 167. 2. Ibid., p. 109. 3. TF Bride (ed.), Letters From Victorian Pioneers, p. 222 (Hall to La Trobe). 276
Notes
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Quoted in L Arkley, The Hated Protector, pp. 278–80. ID Clark, Scars in the Landscape, p. 38. C Crais, White Supremacy and Black Resistance, p. 129. The Australian, 20–21 November 2004, Inquirer, p. 31. MH Fels, Good Men and True, p. 193. TF Bride, Letters from Victorian Pioneers, p. 3. Ibid., p. 217.
6â•… The Psychology of the Frontier 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
Journal of Niel Black, La Trobe MS Collection MS 11519. J Critchett, A Distant Field of Murder, p. 67. TF Bride (ed.), Letters from Victorian Pioneers, p. 137. McGarvie Family History 1844–1944, p. 164. I Hebbe, A Further History of Colac (additional ms notes) p. 20 of loose sheets. Ibid., p. 24. I Hebbe, The History of the Colac District, p. 15. Ibid., p. 16. L Arkley, The Hated Protector, p. 82. JC Hamilton, Pioneering Days, p. vii. Quoted in ibid., p. 32. Quoted in A Markus, From the Barrel of a Gun, p. 66. Ibid., p. 67. Ibid., p. 65, 67.
7â•… Brave Explorers 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
M Clark, A History of Australia, vol. 3, p. 88. M Clark, A History of Australia, vol. 2, p. 122. Ibid., p. 145. T Pescott, The Otways, p. 16. Blake (ed.) Letters of CJ La Trobe, p. 18. ‘Gellibrand’s Memorandum of a Trip to Port Phillip’, in TF Bride (ed.), Letters from Victorian Pioneers, p. 279–303.
9â•… The Raised Sword 1. ID Clark (ed.) Journals of George Augustus Robinson, vol. 5, p. 303 (also TF Bride, ed. Lives of Victorian Pioneers, p. 75). 2. M Cannon, Who Killed the Koories?, p. 30–1.
10â•… The Great Australian Forge 1. Age, 27 January 2003, and Good Weekend, 13 November 2004, p. 109. 2. J Critchett, A Distant Field of Murder, p. 122, note 35. 277
Notes
3. Ibid. 4. Age, 12 March 2005, p. 1. 5. K Townrow, An Archaeological Survey of Sealing and Whaling Sites in Victoria, p. 8. 6. J Critchett, Untold Stories. 7. NJB Plomley, Weep in Silence, p. 624. 8. ID Clark (ed.), The Journal of George Augustus Robinson, vol. 2, p. 337. 9. Quoted in J Critchett, A Distant Field of Murder, p. 60. 10. L Arkley, The Hated Protector, p. 317. 11. Ibid., p. 65 12. Ibid., p. 151. 13. Journals of George Augustus Robinson March to May 1841. 14. Quoted in L Arkley, The Hated Protector, pp. 271–2. 15. Ibid., p. 286. 16. A Baxter, ‘Memories of the Past by a Lady in Australia’ quoted in J Critchett, Untold Stories, pp. 30–1. 17. Quoted in J Critchett, A Distant Field of Murder, p. 139. 18. Ann Drysdale, unpublished diary, copy Wathaurong Co-op. 19. Quoted in ABC Radio National, Island Footprints, 17 October 2004. 20. Ibid. 21. G Tavan, The Long, Slow Death of White Australia, p. 818. 22. M Davey, Corangamite Diary, p. 168 (unpublished ms based on Howitt, Todd et al.).
11â•… The Great Australian Face 1. J Critchett, A Distant Field of Murder, p. 85. 2. Quarterly Essay, Issue 11, 2003, p. 62.
12â•… Golden Boy 1. CMH Clark, A History of Australia, vol. III, p. 118. 2. Thomas Papers, Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages. 3. Age, 13 March 2003, p. 15 (from unpublished Flinders University thesis). 4. ID Clark, Aboriginal Languages and Clans, p. 186. 5. M Cannon, Who Killed the Koories?, p. 147. 6. The History of Warrnambool 1847–1886, facsimile edition, Chronicle Printing Co., Warrnambool, 1887, p. 194. 7. Letters and records of interviews from Cape Otway 1983–2004, B Pascoe, personal collection. 8. Quoted in I Hebbe, A History of Colac, pp. 220–1. 9. M Cannon, Who Killed the Koories?, p. 148. 10. E Parkinson, Diary of an Expedition to Cape Otway in 1863.
278
Notes
11. Ibid., pp. vii, 23. 12. Private correspondence and field notes, 1984–2004, B Pascoe. 13. Archaeological survey of Cape Otway Lighthouse car park and surrounds 2001. 14. Age 22 September 2003, p. 5. 15. Ibid. 16. Parkinson, Diary of an Expedition. 17. Personal correspondence and interview. 18. Australian Book Review, p. 16. 19. Australian, 16 October 2004, Inquirer, p. 22. 20. CMH Clark, The History of Australia, vol. III, p. 123. 21. Ibid., vol. IV, p. 30.
13â•… Don’t Mention the War 1. B Stein, A History of India, Blackwell, 1998, p. 225. 2. AGL Shaw, A History of Port Phillip, p. 57; CMH Clark, A History of Australia, vol. III, p. 87. 3. C Crais, White Supremacy and Black Resistance in Pre-industrial South Africa 1770–1865, p. 117. 4. Quoted in MH Fels, Good Men and True, pp. 16–17. 5. Victorian Public Records, S4 38/113a. 6. LJ Blake (ed.), Letters of Charles Joseph La Trobe, Govt of Victoria, 1975, p. 4. 7. MH Fels, Good Men and True, p. 47. 8. Thomas Papers, Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages. 9. L Arkley, The Hated Protector, pp. 354, 373. 10. MH Fels, Good Men and True, p. 118. 11. M Cannon, Who Killed the Koories?, p. 222. 12. N O’Connor and K Jones, A Journey Through Time, pp. 16–17. 13. MH Fels Good Men and True, p. 142. 14. M Cannon, Who Killed the Koories?, p. 110; Thomas Papers. 15. MH Fels, Good Men and True, p. 145. 16. Ibid., p. 156. 17. L Arkley, The Hated Protector, p. 10. 18. Ibid., p. 47. 19. Ibid., pp. 31–2. 20. D Wilsone to G Wilsone, Ms 9825 F 267/2a, La Trobe Library. 21. L Arkley, The Hated Protector, pp. 48–9. 22. R Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, p. 80. 23. M Cannon, Who Killed the Koories?, p. 172. 24. L Arkley, The Hated Protector, p. 85. 25. Ibid., p.148. 26. Ibid., p. 34. 27. Ibid., p. 88. 28. Ibid., pp. 92–3.
279
Notes
29. I Clark, Scars in the Landscape, p. 33; Cannon, Who Killed the Koories?, p. 51. 30. L Arkley, The Hated Protector, p. 99. 31. Ibid., pp. 98–9. 32. Quoted in ibid., p. 249. 33. 2004 City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture, www.abc.net.au/rn/bigidea/ stories.
15â•… The Language of Resistance 1. P Matthiessen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Viking, 1983. 2. I Clark and T Heydon, Aboriginal Placenames of Victoria, Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages, 2002.
16â•… Native Born 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
RJ McCormick, Ready for the Plough, Star Printing, 1998, p. 2. Nature Australia, Spring 2000, p. 69. Age, 24 October 2006. P Matthiessen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Viking, 1983, p. 191. J Landy, A Coastal Diary, Macmillan, 1993, p. 109. M Clark, In Search of Henry Lawson, p. 27. ‘White Ghosts and Chinese Middlemen Devils’, Overland 175, 2004, p. 37. Ibid. Ibid. E Langley, The Pea Pickers, Angus & Robertson (Arkon), 2002, p. 83. P White, A Fringe of Leaves, Cape, 1976, p. 244. Quarterly Essay 12, 2003, p. 42. K Scott and H Brown, Kayang and Me, p. 195. P Read, History Council of New South Wales, 2004 Annual History Lecture. Australian Book Review, October 2004, p. 32.
17â•… True Hunter 1. J Pascoe, Conservation Implications of Human Perceptions. 2. I Hebbe, The History of Colac and District, p. 7. 3. Annual and Occasional Papers of George Augustus Robinson, vol. 4, Heritage Matters, p. 62. 4. J Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. 280
Notes
18â•… Germaine to the Problem 1. 2. 3. 4.
Quarterly Essay, 11, 2003, p. 72. Quarterly Essay, 12, p. 84. Quarterly Essay, 11, 2003, p. 19. M MacCallum, Mungo: The Man Who Laughs, Duffy and Snellgrove, 2002. 5. Quarterly Essay, 11, 2003, p. 32.
19â•… The Whispering Land 1. R Lowe, The Mish, pp. 43–4.
20â•… Elbows on the Bar 1. Australian, 23–24 October 2006, p. 2.
281
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290
Index
abalone, 227–8
ABC, 89, 207, 252 Aboriginal flag, 136, 182 Aboriginal languages, see languages and language groups Aboriginal law, 131, 152, 156, 170 Aboriginality, 116–21, 235, 249–50; Greer’s claim, 241; Hasluck’s attempts to redefine, 47–8 Aborigines Protection Society, 97 Adams, Phillip, 87, 140 Addis, Captain, 138 ‘adoption’ by Aborigines, 235 Age, 66–8, 89, 131–3, 176, 244 agriculture, 82, 103, 125–6, 173, 223–4 Aire River massacre, 138, 201 Akers, William, 70 alcohol, 176, 243, 246; Colijon word for, 73 Alexander (convict emancipee), 152 ALITRA, 255–6 Allan, Henry, 71, 129–30 Allen, Jim, 198 ALP, see Australian Labor Party Alston, Richard, 128 America, see United States animals, see fauna anthropology, 16; university chairs, 168 anti-slavery movement, 17–18, 26, 97, 122 Apollo Bay, 96, 197 aquaculture techniques, 42, 125–6 archaeology, 156, 198–200; Cape Otway, 135, 138–9; Glenelg Shire’s protection plan for Indigenous sites, 94; Gundidjmara eel farming site, 125–6; see also housing and construction Archibald, JF, 208 Armytage, George, 6, 7, 9 Arnhem Land, see Western Arnhem Land Arrente stories, 256
Arthur, George, 17, 25, 96–7; Batman and, 18, 27, 29; dismissal of Gellibrand as Attorney-General, 69–70 arts and craft, 49–50, 127–8, 179–80; basket weaving, 22, 194; European, 203–14, 218–19, 220–1; Geelong Art Gallery Buckley exhibition, 22; Garma festival, Yirrkala, 128, 169, 188–91; possum-skin cloaks, 173, 174, 182; see also stories Atkinson, Karen, 175 Australian accent, 118 Australian Book Review, 140 Australian character and identity, 88–121, 195–222 Australian flag, 111 Australian Labor Party, 150, 252–3; Richardson, Graham, 254; Whitlam, Gough, 236, 243 Australian Literary Translators Association, 255–6 Australian Studies Project, 252 Bairnsdale, 176–7 Baitlange, 6, 145 Ballarat, 186; Eureka Stockade, 110–11, 252; see also Wathaurong people Ballyan, 6, 145 Barrabool, 116, 161–2; ‘hired’ by Rev Naylor, 51, 71; with Smythe’s and Roadknight’s posses, 130–1, 133 Barton, Edmund, 112 Barwick, Diane, 38 basalt stone fences, Western District, 41 bass, 227 Bass Strait and Bass Strait islands, 20, 61, 97, 99, 178; Cape Otway lighthouse, 129–38 Batman, Henry, 6, 20, 21 291
Index Batman, John, 8, 26–9, 62, 125; Arthur and, 18, 27, 29; Indented Head camp, 14, 20, 22, 23; titles and deeds, 13–17, 25 Baxter, Annie, 107–9 Beechworth, 160–1 belief systems, 53, 63, 98; reappearance of spirits of dead, 22; see also ceremonies; Christianity Bell, Damien, 42, 173 Bellarine district, see Geelong Benalla, 159 Benang, 213 Benbow, 6, 145 Bennett, Sergeant Peter, 154 bilingual education, 193, 235 bilingual publishing program, Yuendumu, 252 Billi-billari, 12 bird names, 176, 180, 181; pied currawong, 191–2; willy wagtail, 193 birds, 181–5, 194; black swan, 181–2; blue wren, 176; crows, 7, 180; duck shooting, 227; extinct, 89; geese, 229, 233; Moa, 224; in stories, 111, 176, 179, 180, 181 Birregurra, 32, 63, 105, 130, 137 birth rates (fertility), 45, 117–18, 174, 246 Bishop, Julie, 168 bison, 185, 230 Black, Niel, 62–3 Black Australians, 47 blackfish, 225 Blainey, Geoffrey, 148, 153, 245, 249, 255; attitudes to Chinese, 206–7 Blair, James, 34–5, 36 Blanket Bay, 130 blankets, 174; infected with smallpox, 45 boats, see canoes Bolden, Sandford, 84–5, 104 Boldrewood, Rolf, 153 Bond, Alan, 80, 90–1 Border Police, 158 Borron Goop, 109 Bourke, Sir Richard, 17, 25, 26, 93, 154, 162; advice received from Chief Justice Forbes, 18; first use of word ‘war’, 171; police, 146, 157 Bowen, Lieutenant, 37 Bradman, Don, 80, 90–1 Bradshaw, Joseph, 49 Bram bram bult brothers, 111, 180 Brambruk Cultural Centre, 180 Briggs, Aretha, 257
292
broadcasting, 176, 236–7, 246, 252; Blainey’s 1982 ABC television history, 207 Brockman, GJ, 46–7, 48 Broome, Richard, 158 Brough, Mal, 150 Broughton, Bishop William, 38 Brown (Western District), murder of, 65–6 Brown, Bob, 253 Brunton, Ron, 153, 165 Buckley, William, 33, 72; Gellibrand and Hess search parties, 57, 70–1; Wathaurong people and, 14–15, 20–4, 129, 157 buffalo (bison), 185, 230 buildings, see housing and construction Builth, Heather, 125–6 Bulletin, 204, 208 Bunganditj, 162 Bunjil, 179, 182 Buntingdale Aboriginal Mission, 32, 105, 130, 158 Bunurong people, 5, 25, 37 Burrakin, 240 bush tucker, 184; see also food sources bushrangers, 154–5 Butlin, Noel, 116 Cameron, Anson, 214 Campaspe Plains, 162 Campbell, Alistair, 16 Campbell, Judy, 44–5, 174 Camperdown, 42, 140, 153 cannibalism, 21, 34–6, 51–5, 210 Cannon, Michael, 84 canoes, 128, 173, 231–2; stolen by Europeans, 37 Cape Barren geese, 229 Cape Otway and Otway ranges, 1–3, 129–39, 184, 192; Gellibrand and Hesse, 71; giant trees, 195; survivors, 131, 132, 135, 178; Aire River, 138, 201; see also Gadubanoot Carnarvon, 47, 48 Carpentaria, 213 cattle, 25, 182, 184; Alexander’s, 152; Mackay’s, 160–1; poisoned bullock carcasses, 7; Roadknight’s, 134 ceremonies; death and mourning, 21, 35–6, 52–3, 54; initiation, 23, 191, 211; Tanderrum, 14, 15, 167; tooth evulsion, 16 Champion, 5
Index The Charcoal Club, 115, 234 children, 109, 117–18, 178; infanticide, 35, 124, 174; stolen, 41, 152 Children Overboard affair, 107–8 Chinese, 110, 119; in Lawson’s writings, 205, 206–7; visits to Australia, 156, 170 Christianity, 224; church attendance, 246; mortuary cannibalism in, 35; see also clergy; missionaries civil governance, see social organisation civilisation and civilisations, 91–2, 237–8; Hasluck’s views, 47–8; La Trobe’s private views, 123; reasons for collapse, 86; university courses on, 198–200; without violence, 87 Clark, Uncle Banjo, 192 Clark, Ian, 53–4, 131 Clark, Manning, 89, 116, 197, 204; speculations on La Trobe, 138, 142–3 clergy, 38, 105; Docker, Rev Joseph, 161; Gribble, Rev J, 47–9; Naylor, Rev, 40, 51, 70–1; see also missionaries cloaks, 173, 174, 182 Cloudstreet, 211–12 Clyde Company, 28 Coalition government, see Howard Coalition government A Coastal Diary, 203 Colac, 40–3, 64, 65, 178, 184; environmental condition of lakes, 230–1, 232; Hurst’s belief about numbers shot, 34; meaning of name, 186; meeting organised by Murray, 158; missionaries, 133; Naylor’s expedition to, 40, 51, 56; see also Colijon Colijon, 34, 40–1, 231; language, 73, 192, 193; Murdering Gully massacre, 32; Naylor’s expedition, 51, 71; population, 116, 172 Collapse, 86 Collins, Captain, 18–19 The Colony of Victoria, 35 Commonwealth Schools Commission, 252, 256 Coniston, 137 Conrad, Peter, 55 Conroy, James, 130, 131 conservation, 223–33 contagious disease, see disease contemporary culture, 47–8, 177 convicts, 31, 61, 83, 145, 159; see also Buckley, William Convincing Ground, 20, 93–4 copyright, 256–7
coracles, 128 corellas, 179 Cornwall Chronicle, 8 Corondeet, 99–101 Cotter, Dr Barry, 6 court cases, 98, 162–3; Franks’ and Flinders’ murders, 7; against Lake Keilambete Jarcoort, 103–4; Muston’s Creek massacre, 54; Myall Creek massacre, 157–8; Whitehead’s trial for murder of Curacoine (Gilgoran), 31; Wik judgment, 107, 114–15, 201 Couzens, Aunty Zelda, 192, 193–4 Crais, Clifton, 55, 146 crayfish, 228 cricket and cricketers, 80, 89–90, 184, 246, 250 Critchett, Jan, 96, 116 Croke, Crown Prosecutor, 162–3, 164 Cronulla, 90 Crown land, 241 crows, 7, 180 cultivation, 103, 125–6, 173 Curacoine, 31 curfews, 205 Curr, Edward, 46, 148 currawongs, 191–2 Dale-Hallett, Liza, 137 Dana, Henry, 147–8, 149, 151, 152–4 dance, 128, 169, 188–91, 254 dart, 225, 227 Daugwurrung (Goulburn River) people, 7, 131, 161–2 Davis, Jack, 202 Dawson, Isabella, 33, 106–7 Dawson, James (Camperdown), 42 Dawson, James (Port Fairy), 32–4, 127 De Villiers, Christiaan Ludolph Johannes, 146, 147 Deakin, Alfred, 112 decision making, 113 deeds and titles, 13–17, 25 democracy, 113, 164–5, 242–3; see also politicians Dening, Greg, 148 Dent, Lyn, 257 Derrymock, 6, 145 Devil River clan, 11–13 Diamond, Jared, 86, 128 disease, 44–6, 97, 172–3; pulmonary, 43, 45, 174; small pox, 44–5, 211; venereal, 45, 174 Djab wurrong, 110, 116, 163, 179
293
Index Djadja wurrong, 110 Djagurd wurrong, 32, 110 Docker, Rev Joseph, 161 Dodson, Mick, 244 Dodson, Pat, 202 domestic servants, 117 driving, 243 ‘The Drover’s Wife’, 205–6 Drysdale, Anne, 105, 109 duck shooting, 227 Durack, Mary, 240 Durack, Patrick, 235, 240–1 Durack Clancy, PA, 235 Dutigalla deed, 13–17, 25 dwellings, see housing and construction Dwyer, Henry, 151 eagles, 179, 182 East Gippsland, 152, 159, 176–7, 209–10 Eden, 230 education, 180, 181, 217–18; Aboriginal language teaching, 235, 256, 257; bilingual, 193, 235; Yuendumu publishing program, 252; school texts, 197; university, 168, 198–200, 217–18, 249 Edwards, Uncle Bill, 136 Edwards, Aunty Kath, 136 eel farming, 125–6 emu wrens, 176 emus, 181–2, 185; Tchingal, 111, 180 enfeoff, 15 environment, 223–33 Eumerella War, 28, 63, 64, 83, 153, 172 Eureka Stockade, 110–11, 252 ‘explorers’, 69–72, 123, 129–30 ‘Faces in the Street’, 204–5 Faithfull brothers, 159 farming/agriculture, 82, 103, 125–6, 173, 223–4 fauna, 55, 181–5, 194, 206, 223–33; Cape Otway, 135; fur seals, 95–6; in stories, 111, 180; wheel technology and, 128; see also birds; cattle; sheep Fawkner, John Pascoe, 8, 127 Federation, 112 Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages (FATSIL), 256 Fels, Marie, 56, 147, 148–50, 151, 153–5 females, see women fertility and births, 45, 117–18, 174, 246 fish, 225–9; sharks, 182 fish traps, 42, 75–6, 125–6
294
flags, 111, 136, 182 Flannery, Tim, 82, 169 Flinders (Hindes), 5–7 Flinders Island, 97, 99 Flitt, Captain, 31 flora, 55; Framlingham remnant forest, 224; names, 194; Otway ranges trees, 195; yams, 103, 125, 173, 184, 189 flour, 6, 105; poisoned, 162 Foley, Gary, 202 food sources, 25, 82, 184–5; cultivation, 103, 125–6, 173; Drysdale’s refusal to supply, 105; Maori, 224; see also fauna; flora football and footballers, 79, 89, 119, 175–6, 179; ‘Kardinia’, 109–10; Long, Michael, 243–4 Forbes, Sir Francis, 18 Foster, David, 214 Framlingham, 200, 224 Francis, Job, 33 Frankland, Richard, 115, 234 Franks, Charles, murder of, 5–10, 26, 30, 145; Wedge’s proposal for perpetrators, 20 Freestun, Edward, 31 French, 155–6 A Fringe of Leaves, 210–11 From the Barrel of a Gun, 46–7 fur seals, 95–6 Fyans, Captain Foster (‘Flogger’), 64–5, 151, 152–3, 157; Aire River massacre, 138; appointment as Police Magistrate in Geelong, 10; investigation of Henty brothers incident, 93; letters to La Trobe, 106; report on infanticide, 35; Sievwright and, 102, 103 Gadubanoot, 129–39, 172, 197; Landy’s remarks, 203; survivors from Cape Otway massacres, 131, 132, 135, 178; Aire River, 138, 201 Gallipoli, 88, 94 Gammon Creek, 160 Ganai, 159–60; language, 176 Gardner, Peter, 56 garfish, 225, 228 Gariwerd, 179 Garma festival, Yirrkala, 128, 169, 188–91 Garrard, Sergeant Hatsell, 64–5 Geelong and Bellarine district, 102, 158, 171–2, 176, 217; Batman’s Indented Head camp, 14, 20, 22, 23; Jarcoort, 52–3, 83, 102–4, 159, 172;
Index McCormick’s history, 196–7; meaning of name, 185; see also Cape Otway and Otway ranges; Fyans, Captain Foster; Wathaurong people Geelong (Bellarine) deed, 15, 17, 25 Geelong Football Ground (‘Kardinia’), 109–10 geese, 229, 233 Gellibrand, Joseph Tice, 9, 14, 18, 27–9, 62, 69–72; drafting of Batman’s title, 15; Franks’ murder, 6, 8; reference to ‘native huts’, 41–2; search parties for, 40, 51, 57, 70–1 Gellibrand River, 129 genetics, 50, 116–21, 249–50; Hasluck’s attempts to redefine Aboriginality, 47–8; tribal rules, 152 geographic names, see place names Geraldton, 48 Gibson (Lake Bringalbert), 65 Gilgoran, 31 Gillespie, Jason, 246 Gipps, George, 36, 85, 104, 158, 160–2, 164; first use of word ‘war’, 171 Gippsland, 152, 159–60, 176–7, 209–10, 255 Glenelg River, 153, 168 Glenelg Shire Council, 93–4 Glenormiston, 63 Glover, John, 29 gogonasus fossil, 198 gold, 199 Goldsworthy, Peter, 211 Good Men and True (Fels), 56, 147, 148–50, 151, 153–5 Goulburn River District, 84 Goulburn River people, 7, 131, 161–2 Greer, Germaine, 49, 118–19, 229, 234–41 Grenville, Kate, 213 Grey, Sir George, 171 Gribble, Rev J, 47–9 Griffith, Charles, 33 Gulf Hill station, 28 gun control, 232 Gundidjmara people, 92–6, 171–2, 194l Baxter’s recollections of raids against, 109; Cape Otway Lightstation 150th birthday celebrations, 136; eel farming, 125–6; Eumerella War, 28, 63, 64, 83, 153, 172; Henty brothers and, 19–20, 93, 95–6; language, 177; near Port Fairy, 33–4, 106; possumskin cloak revival, 173; Robinson’s description and sketch of houses, 101;
Warrnambool, 243 Gunn, Andreas, 49 Guns, Germs and Steel, 128 Guy (Point Gellibrand), 6 Haka, 257 Hall, CB, 53, 58–9 Hall’s Gap, 179 Halton, Jane, 108 Hamilton, JC, 65 Hanson, Pauline, 35 Harradine, Brian, 254 Hasluck, Sir Paul, 47–8 hats, 96 Hawden, Joseph, 131–3 Hayes (shepherd), murder of, 103–4 health, 182, 244, 253; surgery, 124, 171; see also disease Hebbe, Isaac, 71, 135 Heidelberg, 84 height, 116, 118 Henty brothers, 19–20, 93, 95–6, 162 Henty Reef, 96 Herbert, Jean, 137 Herbert, Xavier, 209 heroes, 89–91, 96, 171–2, 175; see also sport and sportspeople Hesse, George Brooks Legrew, 40, 51, 57, 69–72 Hewitt, Lleyton, 90 High Court Wik judgment, 107, 114–15, 201 Highland Brigade, 159–60 Hindes (Flinders), 5–7 Historical Records of Victoria, 192–3 History chairs, 168 Hobart, 9, 18–19, 21 Hollins, George, 6 horse thieves, 171 hotels, entry into, 243 House of Commons, 17; Select Committee on Aborigines, 38 housing and construction, 33, 41–3, 63, 125–6, 172–3, 174; Cape Otway, 135; pioneer cemetery development, 139; Convincing Ground development, 93–4; Durack family, 240; Lake Corangamite, 74–7; Robinson’s description and sketch, 101 Howard, John, 208, 243–7, 252, 253; gun ownership reduction plan, 232; historical view, 89, 122, 168, 243, 249; Iraq War, 80; Marr on, 91, 141; as prepubescent, 88–9; refusal to denounce
295
Index racism, 90–1; similarities with La Trobe, 142, 152; Wik judgment, 114–15, 201 Howard Coalition government, 94, 107, 196, 252–3; Alston, Richard, 128; bilingual education, 235; Brough, Mal, 150; face washing decision, 244; Ministers of Education, 168; Native Title, 244 Howitt, William, 16 human occupation, 196–8, 217–18; linguistic record, 114, 167–9; see also archaeology hunters, 223–33 Hurst, Benjamin, 34 identity, 88–121, 195–222, 249–58; see also Aboriginality Idriess, Ion, 223 immigration, see migration imperialism, 123–44, 146–7, 154–6, 164, 218–19 Indented Head, Batman’s camp at, 14, 20, 22, 23 India, 10, 32, 147–8; Roy, Arundhati, 164; use of native forces to suppress rebel insurgency, 146 Indigenous ancestry, see Aboriginality Indigenous authors, 213–14 Indigenous languages, see languages and language groups Indigenous law, 131, 152, 156, 170 Indigenous occupation, see human occupation Indus Valley, 87 infanticide, 35, 124, 174 infectious disease, see disease initiation, 23, 191, 211 inter-tribal warfare, 51, 56, 155–6, 224 Invisible Invaders, 44–5, 174 Iraq, 25, 80, 113, 150, 253 Jackie Jackie, 84–5 Jarcoort people, 52–3, 83, 102–4, 159, 172 Jarwadjarli, 179 Jewish people, 218–19 Jillong timeline, 265–74 Joe the Marine, 6 John Batman and the Aborigines, 16 Journal of Australasia, 29 Journey to the Stone Country, 213 The Kadaitcha Song, 213 Kalgoorlie, 46–7
296
Kanakas, 112, 212 Kangaroo Island, 61–2 kangaroos, 181–2, 184–5, 224, 225; wheel technology and, 128 Kardinia, 109–10 Karn, 32 Kayan and Me, 214 Keating, Paul, 61; government, 254 Keilambete, 103–4 Kemp, Rod, 168 Kidman, Stan, 49, 223 Kilgour, James, 106 Kimberley, 49 King Island, 20, 129 Kings in Grass Castles, 240 Kirrae wurrong, 33–4, 96, 116, 127, 172, 224; Muston’s Creek massacre, 53–4 Knowles, Aylward, 162–3 Knox, Malcolm, 89 koalas, 182, 183, 185, 224 Koori flag, 136, 182 ‘koraiyn’, 73 Kulin people, ix, 11–17, 25, 83–5, 127, 197; Bowen’s whaling brig’s contact with, 37; languages, 169; numbering system, 148–9; Robinson and, 98–101; Tanderrum, 14, 15, 167; Westgarth’s reports of infanticide and cannibalism, 35; white wraiths in belief system, 22; see also Wathaurong people Kuller kullup, 11–13 La Trobe, Charles, 122–44, 162, 202–3, 208; firearms possessed by ‘natives and half-castes’, 84–5; Fyans and, 65, 106; Gammon Creek investigation, 160; Gellibrand’s reports to, 72; Gipps and, 36, 85, 161–2, 164; first use of word ‘war’, 171; investigation into Hurst’s claims, 34–5, 36; Murdering Gully investigation, 159; Native Police, 147, 148, 151–2, 154; reports from settlers on state of Aboriginal clans, 53, 57–9, 62–4, 106; reports on cannibalism to, 35, 53; Robinson’s report on Western Districts deaths to, 46; Sievwright and, 34, 101, 103–4 La Trobe library, 200–1 Labor Party, see Australian Labor Party Lake Bringalbert, 65 Lake Condah, 33, 182 Lake Corangamite, 73–7, 168 Lake Keilambete, 103–4 Lake Victoria, 200
Index Lakota, 184, 202 land claims, 196, 201 see also Native Title land use, 82, 103, 125–6, 223–4 Ord River, 240–1 Landy, John, 80, 203 Langhorne, George, 138, 147 Langley, Eve, 209–10 Langton, Marcia, 224, 234–5 languages and language groups, 167–9, 178–94, 255–8; Australian accent, 118; bilingual publishing program, Yuendumu, 252; Colijon, 73, 192, 193; Europeans understanding and recording, 98–9, 105, 127, 147, 200–1; Ganai, 176; Gundidjmara, 177; map of Victorian areas, 261; numbering system, 148–9; as record of human occupation, 114, 167–9; teaching in schools, 235, 256, 257; Woiwurrung, 147; see also names; stories; Wathaurong language Languages Other than English (LOTE) committee, 256 Lawson, Henry, 204–7, 208–9 legends, see stories Lehman, Darren, 89–90, 246 Leonard, Michael, 6 Lettsom, Major Samuel, 85, 160–1 Lib Lib, 109 Liberal Party, 47–8, 249, 253; see also Howard, John light-skinned Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, 249–50 lighthouse, Cape Otway, 129–38 Ling, Chek, 206–7 linguistics, see languages literary translators, 255–6 literature, 89, 203–14, 220–1, 223 Lloyd, Arthur, 40, 64 Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate, 84, 105 Long, Michael, 243–4 Lonsdale, Captain William, 6–7, 31, 70, 101–2, 146–7 Looking for Blackfella Point, 255 Lorne Cricket Club, 250 LOTE, 256 Lourandos, 116, 135 Lovett, Denise, 94 Lowe, Robert, 140, 242–3 Macalister, David, murder of, 159–60 Macalister, Lachlan, 159 Macassans, 44, 156, 170 McCormack, R J, 196–7
McCrae, Georgina, 106–7 MacDonald (whaler), 93 McGarvie family history, 63–4 Mackay, Dr George, 160–1 McKenna, Mark, 255 MacKillop, George, 5, 9–10, 32 McLeod, JN, 40–1 McMillan, Angus, 159 ‘Made in England’, 212 magistrates, see Police Magistrates Magpie geese, 229, 233 Malcom (Point Gellibrand), 6 males, see men Malouf, David, 212 The Man Who Laughs, 239–40 Manifold, Peter, 64 Manifold, Thomas, 63–4 Manne, Robert, 243 Mansell, Michael, 234 Maori, 155–6, 167, 170, 224; Haka, 257; influence on NZ accent, 118 Mara languages, 169 Markus, Andrew, 46–7 Marr, David, 91, 141 Marshall, Alan, 89 Marshall, Brendan, 135 Marybyrnong River, 16–17 Massacre Bay, 200 mateship, 118–19 Mayans, 86 media, see broadcasting; press Meenee Meenee, 130 Melbourne Age, 66, 89, 131–3, 176, 244 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, 173 Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), 257–8 Melbourne Daily News, 53 Melville Island, 168–9 men, 45, 117, 172; mateship, 118–19; shot at between 1836 and 1845, 158 Menzies, Bob, 249; government, 47–8 midden, Cape Otway, 135, 138–9 migration, 119, 167, 197–8, 209–10, 228, 256; see also Chinese; human occupation Miller, Alex, 213 missionaries, 123–4, 131, 133, 181; Buntingdale, 32, 105, 130, 158; Hurst, Benjamin, 34; Langhorne, George, 138, 147; see also Robinson, George Augustus Mitchell, Thomas, 33, 83, 105 mixed race children, 117–18, 174, 178 Moa, 224 mobile phones, 177
297
Index Monkey Mia, 230 Moorabin, 185 Moorabool, 191, 260 Moorabool River, 35, 109 Moore, Michael, 164–5 Mooroolbark, 185 Moreton Bay, 157 Morgan, John, 21, 23 Morrison, Crosby, 89 mortuary cannibalism, 21, 35–6, 52–3 Mount Borradaile, 50 Mt Cotterell, 5–6 Mount Eccles (Eeles) district, 46; Eumerella War, 28, 63, 64, 83, 153, 172 Mount Emu, 32, 159 Mount Kosciusko, 187–8 Mount Rouse, 53, 54, 103 mourning ceremonies, 52–3, 54 Mueller, Ferdinand von, 55 Mundine, Warren, 244 Munro, Henry, 84 Murdering Gully, 32, 159 ‘Murrangoork’, 22 Murray, Constable George, 137 Murray, Hugh, 40, 51, 57–8, 62, 158 Murray, Neil, 220–1 Murray River people, 23, 168, 200 Museum Victoria, 17, 137 music, 128, 169, 188–91, 221 Muslims, 91 Muston’s Creek massacre, 53–4 Myall Creek massacre, 157–8 Myrnong (yam daisy), 103, 125, 173, 184, 189 names, 171–2, 240; fauna, 180; flora, 194; given to Buckley, 22; see also bird names; place names national character and identity, 88–121, 195–222 national emblem, 111 National Indigenous Council, 244 ‘Native Born’, 221 Native Police Corp, 56, 145–55 Native Title, 42, 244, 246, 253; Wik judgment, 107, 114–15, 201 Naylor, Rev, 40, 51, 70–1 Nelson, Brendan, 168 New Right, 92 New South Wales, 119, 230, 243; see also Sydney New Zealand, 182; accent, 118; rugby players, 257; see also Maori
298
newspapers, see press Noongar people, 253 Noonuccal, Oodgeroo, 193–4, 220 Norfolk Island, 157 Northern Territory; Tiwi Islanders, 168–9; Walpiri people, 137, 256; Yolgnu people, 170, 190, 254; see also Western Arnhem Land novelists, 89, 209–14, 218–19, 223 numbering systems, 148–9 nyellpillup, 193 occupation, see human occupation O’Donohue, Lowitja, 202 Old Melbourne Memories, 153 Oliver (Western District), 65 Ord River, 240–1 Osbrey (Muston’s Creek massacre), 53 Otways, see Cape Otway and Otway ranges outrigged canoes, 128 ovens, 125, 135 Pacific Islanders (Kanakas), 112, 212 paintings, 49–50, 127–8, 179 pale Kooris, 249–50 Palm Island, 166 Park, Ruth, 212 Parker, Assistant Aboriginal Protector Edward Stone, 84, 85, 116, 130 Parkinson, Eleanor, 134 Parsons (Gellibrand search party), 70–1 Paton, Doris, 257 The Pea Pickers, 209–10 Peace Prize, 164, 165 penguins, 183–4 Pentland Hills, 130 personal names, see names Perth, 253 Pescott, Trevor, 71 Peterborough, 200 petroglyphs, 127 Phillip Island, 99 phones, mobile, 177 pied currawong, 191–2 Pilleau, Arthur, 36 Pioneering Days, 65–6 Pirron Yallock, 74 Pirron Yallock Creek, 64 Pitcairn, David, 6 place names, 73, 185–8, 193, 262–4; Drysdale’s properties, 109–10 Plains of Promise, 213 plants, see flora
Index ploughing, 103 poets and poetry, 204–5, 220–1 Point Gellibrand, 5–6, 9 Point Henry, 63–4 poison, 7, 162 police, 84–5, 157, 158, 160, 162; in 2000s, 166, 176; Aboriginals as aides to, 56, 145–55; Lake Keilambete, 103 Police Magistrates, 54, 145, 151, 157; Blair, James, 34–5, 36; Lonsdale, Captain William, 6–7, 31, 70, 101–2, 146–7; Thomson, John, 103–4; see also Fyans, Captain Foster Polish ex-servicemen’s association, 188 political correctness, 92, 150, 207–8 politicians, 47–8, 150, 243, 252–5; prime ministers, 61, 112, 236, 249; Wilberforce, William, 17–18; see also Howard, John Pollock, Captain, 57 Poor Fellow My Country, 209 Poor Man’s Orange, 212 population, 116–17, 156; Cape Otway, 135; killed by white violence, 34, 46, 148–9, 158, 162–3; Maori, 224; smallpox exposure and, 44–5; Western District, 116, 172 population control, 82 Port Fairy, 32–4, 106 Port Phillip Association, 8–10, 13–17, 24–5, 63; see also Batman, John; Gellibrand, Joseph Tice Port Phillip Gazette, 151, 158 Port Phillip Patriot, 65 Portland, 92–6, 153; Blair, Magistrate James, 34–5, 36; Henty brothers, 19–20, 93, 95–6, 162 possum-skin cloaks, 173, 174, 182 possums, 180, 182, 183 potatoes, 72, 105, 173 Powlett, FA, 151, 152–3, 160 Prahran, 185 press, 46, 53, 127, 166, 171, 176; Age, 66–8, 89, 131–3, 176, 244; antiChinese campaign, 207; anti-Hurst campaign, 34; Bulletin, 204, 208; Franks’ murder report, 8; after Myall Creek massacre hangings, 158; Port Phillip Gazette, 151, 158; Port Phillip Patriot declaration of 1841, 65; reports on heritage area disturbances, 93–4; Robinson and, 98, 99; SIEV X, 107; Western Australia, 48
prime ministers, 61, 112, 236, 249; see also Howard, John promiscuity, 102, 108, 124, 130 publishing program, Yuendumu, 252 Puchapunyal army camp, 182, 185 pulmonary disease, 43, 45, 174 Puuroyuup, 32 Pwebingannai, 54 Rainbow Snake, 168 rape, 117, 131, 174 Read, Peter, 221 Ready for the Plough, 196–7 Rebellion at Coranderk, 38 Reconciliationists, 197, 235 Redfern, 166 religion, see belief systems; Christianity Remembering Babylon, 212 Republican debate, 239 resistance, 28, 83–5, 153, 157–65, 171–2, 175; equation with criminality, 10; Eumerella War, 28, 63, 64, 83, 153, 172; Portland, 19–20, 93; see also survival and survivors reticence and reserve, 118–19 Richardson, Graham, 254 rite of passage ceremony (Tanderrum), 14, 15, 167 Roadknight, William, 130–1, 134, 136–8 Robertson, William, 14–15 Robinson, George Augustus, 30, 70, 96–101, 104–5, 159; on Blair, 34; estimate of black deaths in battle in Western Victoria, 46; fishing expeditions witnessed by, 231; on Henty brothers, 19; language and communication ability, 98–9, 127; Pilleau’s talk with, 36; Sievwright and, 52, 102, 104; sketches, 101, 125 Rodd and Gunn, 225 Roy, Arundhati, 164 Ruddock, Philip, 253 rugby, 257 Rumbottle, Captain, 228 Russell, George, 14–15 Sams, George, 6 Sandringham swamps, 229 SBS News, 236–7 Scars in the Landscape, 53–4, 131 school texts, 197 schooling, see education Schools Commission, 252, 256
299
Index Scots, 26, 32, 84, 158; Highland Brigade, 159–60 Scott, Kim, 213–14 sculpture, 127 sealers, see whalers and sealers seals, 95–6 The Secret River, 213 segregation, 243 Select Committee on Aborigines (1837), 38 self-interest, 61–8 Sellars, Bill, 94 Senden, Dr Tim, 198 Seven Sisters, 185 sharks, 182 sheep, 9, 25, 83; affects of grazing, 125, 182; Croke’s views on theft, 163; Fels’ views on theft, 154 sheep owners and shepherds, 83, 131, 171; Dwyer, Henry, 151; Faithfull brothers, 159; Flinders (Hindes), 5–7; Lloyd, Arthur, 64; Mackay, Dr George, 161; Manifold brothers, 63–4; Munro, Henry, 84; Murray, Hugh, 57–8; Taylor, Frederick, 32; Thomson, John, 103–4; Wedge brothers, 163; Wilsone, Dr David, 158; see also Franks, Charles SIEV X, 107–8 Sievwright, Charles, 34, 52–4, 101–5; population census of 1839, 116 Sievwright, Christina, 101–3 Sievwright, Fanny, 106–7 Simpson, James, 15–16 Sims, Bruce, 140 Sister Rocks, 179 skin system, 113 skulls, 196 slavery, 17–18, 26, 97, 117, 199; Gribble’s allegations, 47–9; La Trobe’s views, 122 smallpox, 44–5, 211 Smith, George, 5–6, 7, 9–10, 32, 53 smoke houses, 125 Smythe, George D, 130–3, 134 snakes, 182, 183, 184; in Lawson’s ‘The Drover’s Wife’, 205–6; Rainbow Snake, 168 Social Darwinism, 67–8 social organisation, 81–2, 91–2, 113; Indigenous law, 131, 152, 156, 170; see also civilisation and civilisations A Song of the Republic, 204 songs, 128, 169, 191, 207, 221; at sports meetings, 257–8 Sorrento, 14, 18–19
300
South Africa, 55, 146, 208; cricketers, 90 South Australia, 98, 153, 168, 171, 211; Kangaroo Island, 61–2 South Sea Islanders (Kanakas), 112, 212 Southern Cross, 110–11, 180 sport and sportspeople, 80, 89–90, 203, 246, 250; Colac vs Apollo Bay school cricket match, 184; fishers, 225–9; Melbourne Commonwealth Games, 173; use of warrior songs, 257–8; see also football and footballers Sri Lankan cricketers, 246 Standing Bear, Luther, 184, 202 stars, 111, 180, 185 State Library of Victoria, 255; La Trobe library, 200–1 Stawell, 179 Stewart (Point Gellibrand), 6 Stieglitz, Robert William von, 7, 83 Stolen Generation, 243–4, 245 stone technology, 127; see also housing and construction Stony Rises, 73–7, 83 stories, 111, 168–9, 179–80, 181; about numbers killed in battles, 148–9, 200; English translations, 169, 255–6; about Kuller kullup, 12; literature, 89, 203–14, 219–20, 220–1, 223; about trips to China, 170 storytelling, 127 Stratford, 160 Strehlow, TGH, 257 strychnine, 7 Strzelecki, Count, 188 Subaru, 185 ‘sun’, Colijon word for, 192 surgery, 124, 171 Surridge, Stuart, 184 survival and survivors, 175, 178–94; Gadubanoot, 131, 132, 135, 178, 203; Aire River, 138, 201; Ganai, 160; Jarcoort, 103–4; Murdering Gully massacre, 32; Muston’s Creek massacre, 54; Wathaurong, 84–5; see also Buckley, William Swanston, Captain, 70 Swanston, Charles, 10 Sydney, 166; Aborigines in Port Phillip District from, 8, 16, 29 Sydney Olympics, 120 Sydney Peace Prize, 164, 165 Sydney Writers’ Festival, 212 Syme, David, 67 syphilis, 45
Index Tanderrum, 14, 15, 167 Tasmania, see Van Diemen’s Land Tatz, Colin, 35 Taylor, Frederick, 30–2, 103, 159 Taylor, Rebe, 61–2 Tchingal, 111, 180 technology, 127–8, 199; fish traps and aquaculture, 42, 75–6, 125–6; mobile phones, 177 television, 176, 224, 236–7, 246 Blainey’s 1982 ABC history, 207 Thawa people, 230 Thomas, Jamie, 233 Thomas, William, 105, 151, 161; Aboriginal surgery demonstrated to, 124; Kuller kullup and, 12–13; language lists, 127, 200–1 Thomson, Alexander, 6, 158 Thomson, John, 103–4 Three Dog Night, 211 tiger snakes, 184 timeline, 265–74 titles and deeds, 13–17, 25 Tiwi Islanders, 168–9 Todd, William (Andrew), 14, 20, 22, 23, 125 Tom, 85 Tommy, 129 tooth evulsion ceremony, 16 toredo, 229 trade, 170 treaty, 114; Batman’s titles and deeds, 13–17, 25 Treaty of Waitangi, 155–6 trees, 195, 224 trials, see court cases Truganini, 99 Tuckey, Lieutenant John, 19 Tuckfield, Rev, 105 Tulloh (squatter), 34, 162–3 Tyers, CJ, 151, 152–3, 160 Tyrrendara, 173 Unearthed, 61–2 United States (America), 21, 86, 91, 166; bison, 185, 230; emancipation of slaves, 122; Iraq War, 25, 253; Lakota, 184, 202; place names, 186; smallpox deaths, 45 university, 168, 198–200, 217–18, 249 Utopia, 254 Van Diemen’s Land, 8–9, 10, 31, 148; Batman, John, 26–7; Gellibrand,
Joseph Tice, 69–70; Henty brothers, 19; Hobart, 9, 18–19, 21; last Tasmanian theory, 61–2; Robinson, George Augustus, 70, 96–7; see also Arthur, George venereal disease, 45, 174 Victoria River, WA, 49 Victorian Aboriginal Football and Netball Carnival, 176 Victorian Archaeological Survey, 126 Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority, 257 Victorian Express (Geraldton), 48 Victorian Government Printing Office, 192 Vietnam War, 172 villages, see housing and construction violence, role and functions of, 78–87 visiting rights (Tanderrum), 14, 15, 167 volcanic activity, 168, 169 von Mueller, Ferdinand, 55 von Stieglitz, Robert William, 7, 83 Voss, 210 Waar, 180 Waitangi Treaty, 155–6 walking tracks, Cape Otway, 130 wallabies, 182, 183 Wallert wallert (possum-skin cloaks), 173, 174, 182 Walpiri, 137, 256 Wando River, 153 Wangegamon, 32 Wannon River, 137 ‘war’, use of word in colonial discourse, 27–8, 171 warfare, inter-tribal, 51, 56, 155–6, 224 Warmdella, 83–4 Warne, Shane, 80 Warragul, 186 Warrnambool, 178, 242–3 Warrumpi Band, 221 water craft, see canoes Wathaurong language, 191, 194, 257, 259–64; collected by Rev Francis Tuckfield, 105; Drysdale’s property names, 109–10 Wathaurong people, 19, 72, 110, 245; Buckley and, 14–15, 20–4, 129, 157; cannibalism, 21, 34–6; Curacoine (Gilgoran), 31; Drysdale’s relations with, 105, 109; Gulf Hill station raid, 28; infanticide, 35; male population, reduction in, 172; in McCormick’s
301
Index history, 196; murder of Franks and Flinders, 5–8, 20; Tanderrum (rite of passage ceremony), 14, 15; Warmdella, 83–4 Watson, Sam, 213 We of the Never Never, 49 Wedge brothers, 162, 163; Charles, 6; Edward, 6; John, 15–16, 20–1, 38 wedge-tailed eagle, 182 Werribee, 84, 185 Wesleyan missions and missionaries, 34; Buntingdale, 32, 105, 130, 158 West Australian, 48 Western Arnhem Land, 50, 254; Garma festival, Yirrkala, 128, 169, 188–91 Western Australia, 46–9, 230, 243; Durack family, 235, 240–1; Noongar people, 253 Western District, 26, 62–6, 69–72, 233; Aboriginal population estimates, 116, 172; Baxter’s diary records, 108–9; Dawson family, 32–4, 106–7, 127; Lake Corangamite, 73–7, 168; languages, 168, 169; Native Police Corps stationed in, 151–2, 153; Robinson’s estimates of black deaths in battle, 46; see also Colac; Geelong and Bellarine district; Gundidjmara people; housing and construction; Kirrae wurrong; Portland Western Plains, NSW, 171 Western Port, 160, 163 Westgarth, William, 35, 46 wetlands, draining of, 229 whalers and sealers, 19, 38, 44; Bowen, Lieutenant, 37; Kangaroo Island, 61; Portland, 93, 95–6; Western Port, 163 whales, 93, 230 wheel technology, 128 White, Patrick, 210–11 White Supremacy and Black Resistance (Crais), 55, 146
302
‘Whitefella Jump Up’, 234–41 Whitehead, John, 31 Whitlam, Gough, 236, 243 Who Killed the Koories?, 84 Whyte brothers, 162 Wik judgment, 107, 114–15, 201 Wilberforce, William, 17–18 wildlife, see fauna; flora Willis, Judge, 163–4, 165 willy wagtail, 193 Wilsone, Dr David, 83, 158 Windberry, 85 Windberry, William, 6 Windschuttle, Keith, 140, 151, 153, 165 Winter family, 137, 162 Winton, Tim, 211–12 Woiwurrung people, 5, 7, 14, 25; language, 147 women, 19, 38, 108, 130; births and fertility, 45, 117–18, 174, 246; in decision making, 113; European, 105, 117; reports written by, 106–9, 134; Kangaroo Island, 61–2; rape, 117, 131; yam cultivation, 125 Wood, John, 6 World Wars, 88, 170, 216–17 wrens, 176 Wright, Alexis, 213 Wright, Judith, 210, 220 Wyndham, NSW, 119 Yammerbock, 83–4 yams, 103, 125, 173, 184, 189 yarna larka, 177 Yarra River, 17, 32, 173 Yehoshua, Abraham, 218–19 Yerrunillam balug, 11–13 Yirrkala, 128, 169, 188–91 Yolgnu people, 170, 190, 254 Yorta Yorta people, 200 Yuendumu, 252
