The Aborigines of Australia

by R.N. Richard Sadleir

“Preparations are being made by Mr. P. F. Macdonald, of Yaamby, for the equipment of a private party to accompany him to the scene of the recent massacre, to assist in succouring the men left on the station, and preserve the property from injury. A subscription, headed by Mr. P. F. Macdonald, £100, which already amounts to £236, has been opened to defray its expenses, and will be found at the Banks.

“Later intelligence.—News was received on Thursday evening that Lieutenant Cave, with eleven troopers, arrived at the scene of the late tragedy two days after its occurrence. Lieutenant Cave was on patrol with the troopers at Living’s station, on the Dawson, when he heard of the murders. He hastened off in the middle of the night, taking with him fresh horses. Mr. Living and the settlers in the vicinity formed a separate party, and started at once to render assistance. No further particulars have as yet transpired.”

In a work published in 1871—“Colonial Adventures; by a University man,”—we have a chapter devoted to the Aborigines of Queensland, in which the writer gives the general opinion as to the destruction of the black race, “That God never intended them to live long on the land in which he had placed them, therefore away with them until there be none remaining, and we will go in and possess the land.” The writer draws a distinction not creditable between the tame blacks and wild ones:⁠—“The former picked up all the worst characteristics of the white man, and lost some of their own. They learned to drink, smoke, and become lazy, living on the white man’s scraps. They do not hesitate to commit murders and robberies—doing as they are done by. In short, instead of improving their condition, we have made them more wretched and base than ever, not over complimentary to Christianity or civilization. In new districts taken up by the whites, almost invariably by way of retaliation, either from the whites destroying their camps or possibly firing on them, the black meditates revenge, and spears or kills the first defenceless shepherd or traveller. Then the Europeans turn out to disperse them—to shoot them down—men, women, and children. The native police, being blacks trained to arms, delight in shooting their fellow-men. For every white man murdered, six blacks are made to bite the dust.”

The writer gives a description of a shipwrecked sailor who lived with the blacks twenty years, and experienced continual kindness, and of their kindness to his fellow-seamen who escaped from the wreck, but died of fever. These very men having boarded a cutter near the coast, and one of them having stolen a tomahawk, leaped overboard with his prize, the rest following. The crew fired upon them while swimming, and killed two of them.

The writer, in describing the massacre of the natives by the black police, says:⁠—“I have seen two large pits, covered with branches and brush, secured by a few stones; the pits filled with dead bodies of blacks, of all ages and both sexes.” Again, he says, “Whilst travelling along the road, for more than a quarter of a mile the air was tainted with the putrefaction of corpses, which lay all along the ridges, just as they had fallen. This was in retaliation for the murder of five shepherds. Each detachment of four or five troopers is officered by a European, domiciled in barracks or camps. They sometimes show some compunction in shooting women, but they are usually encouraged in this work, as the women are often the abettors and agents in most of the murders, and as the blacks must be exterminated, the more shot the better.”

The celebrated tourist, Mr. Trollope, in his work on “Queensland; a Flying Visit,” devotes some pages to this people. He describes them as sapient as monkeys and great mimics of white dandies. He then refers to the opposition Cook, Dampier, and Phillip met with on their landing, as if they had no right to defend their country. What is a virtue with all other people is a crime in them. Comfortably accommodated in a squatter’s residence, he says there were more settlers killed by the blacks than blacks killed, and thus balances the account.

Some murders have been brought before the public in Queensland which called for immediate Government interference. Camps of aboriginals have been attacked, the wretched beings fired upon, and on escaping to the water, were then deliberately shot. On one occasion, one of their number eluded the aboriginal police; at length they saw a bundle of grass floating, into which they fired and shot the unfortunate being, who held the grass in his mouth to conceal his head, but the stratagem failed. In another instance, where the aboriginal police attacked the camp, one of the women was seized and violated, and her brains dashed out.

In 1880, the Sydney Mail wrote:⁠—“The doom of the Queensland savage is not merely to perish before the advance, but to actually receive his death-blow at the hands of the British colonist. In another page, we reprint an article from our senior morning contemporary, which puts this fact beyond dispute. A competent and impartial special reporter declares the condition of things as it is, and his melancholy narrative must re-awaken regret for the fate of the race which enjoyed an uninvaded possession of this continent for centuries, and is now rapidly melting away in the presence of civilization. Stripped of all exaggeration, the story of what is happening in the remote districts of the neighbouring Colony has a horrible sound to Southerners who have no environment of savagery, and to whom peace and plenty have become monotonous and undervalued privileges. Yet the far north of Queensland is not being stained more terribly with aboriginal blood than has been our fair New South Wales. The black was improved off the face of the lands we occupy, as pitilessly as he is now being dismissed from his haunts on the banks of the tropical rivers. We cannot thank God that the pioneer settlers here were more merciful than those who are appropriating the cedar forests and auriferous deposits in Northern Queensland. From first to last the line of contact between the two races has been a red one. From first to last the strong Caucasian has trodden the naked nomad like mire into his own sod.

“It is easy to voice regret and condemnation in general terms; but could this extermination have been altogether avoided? We think not. What should have been done with the aboriginal? Did his possession of the territory for centuries give him a right to possess it for ever? Did mere possession confer a title so absolute that British colonization must be ranked as a national crime? Surely no rational man can defend such a view as that. The blackfellow’s title to the country was destroyed by his savagery. Nature gives everybody a chance of some kind, and the blackfellow had his chance. He had given to him a magnificent continent, rich in manifold resources; but he was lord only over snakes and kangaroos—a king of brutes, but little more than a brute among brutes. Back of the brute there was, no doubt, the germ of manhood; but a creature with only an undeveloped germ of manhood cannot live among men. The blackfellow shrank from men, preferring to dwell with marsupials. He did not understand, he did not like man—using the word in its large sense. He fought against him as a wild brute would fight—treacherously, savagely. In the far north, to this day, he is not averse to eating the colonist. He has had two chances: Nature, as before remarked, has given him a splendid country, and he has been brought into contact with a highly civilized race; but he has proved unworthy of both. His blood is therefore upon his own head.

“In saying this we do not, it need hardly be insisted, endorse all that has been meted out to the black by his white conqueror. The Briton was a savage once, and he is not an angel now. Beneath his civilization, there are the passions which may be developed into savagery; and there have been too many white savages in Australia. The line of contact between the two races is the line where Government, representing in this matter the conscience as well as the physical force of the whole community, should be strong, but where it has too frequently been weak. The Queensland Government should be strong in the administration of justice, tempered abundantly with mercy, along the line where white and black are struggling for supremacy, and not merely able to grapple with questions of tariffs and mail contracts in Brisbane. It is a disgrace to a civilized people to be represented by many of the ‘boys’ who are employed to hasten the extinction of their countrymen in the far north. The braining of children, the violation of women, the slaughter of the wounded and the aged, the callous disregard of all tender considerations which, when observed, shed lustre on the strong—these are reproaches which it is humiliating to have recorded in any part of the British Empire. They make an Englishman’s blood boil with shame and indignation. War, whether of the open sort or of that unrecognized kind which ‘disperses’ blackfellows, is apt to demoralize those who are engaged in it, and what has been transpiring for years in the ‘unsettled’ districts of Australia has had that effect in too many cases. The business of ‘dispersing’ blackfellows has had the result of ‘dispersing’ the conscience of whitefellows. Troopers may have received the letter of their orders from Brisbane; but the spirit of their atrocious deeds has been inspired by the passion-blinded pioneers, to whom the taking of an aboriginal life is rather meritorious. But we repeat that where, as in the far north, the conscience of individuals is weak, the conscience of the Colony should be all-potent. Blood-shedding would not cease, for the savagery of the blacks will inevitably bring about their extinction; but the stain would not be the indelible one of guilt.”