‘Possession: Batman’s Treaty and the Matter of History’ by Bain Attwood

2009, 323 p & notes

We will never really know how much of the [Port Phillip] Association’s narrative was true because of the paucity of contemporary sources.  Indeed, all we have are the few accounts created by these colonisers.  In respect of the famous treaty-making, we cannot even be sure it took place.  Arguably, it might simply be an imaginary event that never happened.  In the end, it probably doesn’t matter very much whether it occurred or not. (I assume that some parts of the treaty-making did take place.) What is more important historically are the stories that have been told about it. (p. 47)

As you might gather from this quote, this book is not just about Batman’s treaty.  In fact, looking at the book lying on my desk here with  “Possession” in large silver letters on the spine, I’m not really sure that the book is about possession at all.  The treaty itself could be a construction, and whatever ‘truth’ there is about it has been overlaid by boosterism, intentional forgetting and spin.

The treaty document itself was drawn up in Van Diemen’s Land before Batman arrived in Port Phillip; the ’signatures’ have a suspicious similarity, and Batman did not, as he claimed, walk the boundaries of the land ‘traded’.  The motivations for the treaty and its subsequent quashing by the NSW goverment,  as Attwood explores, are best explained in terms of the time in which it was put forward – 1835- in the wake of the Black Wars in Tasmania, under the influence of the humanitarian lobbyists in London, and in light of the re-invention through the courts, 50 years after the fact, of a spurious ‘authorized’ history of British sovereignty in New South Wales during the 1830s and 40s.

The creation and rejection of the treaty takes up only the first 100 pages of the book.  It then meanders into an exploration of the artistic depiction of the treaty over time and the change in emphasis on Batman’s treaty to Batman’s purported (and spurious) sailing up the river and declaration “This will be the place for a village!”.  I found the artwork fascinating.  Some time ago I had pooh-poohed the grand, commemorative American artwork tradition but here it is, alive and well in Melbourne- see here and here- it’s just not displayed in our art galleries any more.

The book moves into a discussion of history-writing in Victoria, with a string of antiquarian historians burnishing the Batman legend and feeding the Victorian (in both senses of the word) obsession with memorials and commemorations.  There was the Batman memorial over his putative grave; a memorial stone embedded in the footpath, Batman Park, Batman Avenue.  Then gradually the cracks in the image started appearing with questions over Batman’s parentage and sobriety and the championing of Fawkner’s settler history as an alternative story, pushed along by the tourism industry and latter-day Melbourne boosters and P.R. agents.  Gradually the memorials were shifted to quieter, less prominent locations, parks were renamed, and explanatory plaques were attached to statues qualifying some of the more gushing tributes to Batman and his activities. Just to add another layer to this already contorted history, it was Aboriginal people in Victoria who maintained the memory of Batman as the white man who dealt fairly with them, at a time when white history had consigned his treaty to the status of a curiosity.  The turn to politics becomes more weighty when Attwood takes on Henry Reynolds’ book The Law of the Land , which Attwood argues was a juridical history, intended to present sovereignty as a legal problem for 20th century political  purposes and one that, oddly, disregarded the Batman treaty entirely in the original edition of Reynolds’ book.

This is a richly illustrated book with coloured reproductions of the grand celebratory paintings, photographs of top-hatted men at yet another Batman memorial unveiling, reproductions of the string of illustrated histories that were published over the years and recent colour photographs of the now-discredited old memorials  and their newly-minted replacements.  It’s a book that takes us far beyond the treaty.

‘The Law of the Land’ by Henry Reynolds

2003, 248p.

This book was originally published in 1987, and has spawned two further editions- one in 1992, then this one in 2003.   Much has happened with native title in the last 20 years and one might think that perhaps a book dealing with land and the law should be scrapped completely with a whole rewrite.  However, it seems that this rarely occurs: instead extra chapters and new prefaces are tacked onto the body of the book, which  remains fundamentally unchanged.  I’m not sure if this is the publisher’s decision or the author’s,  or whether the research output rankings  for academics affect the decision to update vs rewrite- a combination of all three, I suspect.   And, I think, in this case, Reynolds knows that the argument he made in this book in 1987 was actually vindicated by the Mabo case, and lay at the heart of the Wik legislation that followed it.  The fact that he made this argument before Mabo would be obscured if he rewrote a whole new book.

His argument goes back to the very first consideration of British settlement, and the question of whether the land was inhabited or not.  In effect, he debunks the concept of ‘terra nullius’ that is part of our common understanding of 19th century land law.  Sir Jospeh Banks saw small groups of  aborigines on his journey of British ‘discovery’ , but  reasoned that the inland was uninhabited because if people living inland supported themselves by cultivation then surely the coastal natives would have learned it from them. (p. 38).  Certainly the early settlers quickly realized that the land was settled, and the more attentive observers noted that particular families had attachment to particular land, with a carefully regulated system of seeking and granting permission to enter and traverse the territory.

Reynolds focusses on the intellectual and political milieu that swirled around the Colonial Office between about  1820-50, when land policy in Australia was being laid down both for the government-backed settlements in New South Wales and Tasmania, and for the private entrepreneurial schemes in South Australia, Western Australia (Australind) and New Zealand.  Buoyed by their success with the abolition (at least on paper) of slavery, the Clapham Sect ‘angels’ turned their attention to Aboriginal concerns right across the empire, particularly through Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Glenelg and under-secretary James Stephen in London.   Reynolds provides the back-story of the lobbying of different Evangelically-influenced interest groups, and the preparedness of the Colonial Office to intervene and delay in arrangements, often  sparking conflict and frustration with the entrepreneurs who were impatient to get over into the colonies and start selling land.

Reynolds argues that the Colonial Office understood from very early on that the Aborigines had prior possession of the land, and that it had to be formally purchased from them with Aboriginal reservations set aside, as a matter of justice- not benevolence .  The Colonial Office was insistent that land could only be purchased by the Crown, not private individuals.  The pastoral leases granted from the 1830s onwards did not prevent aborigines moving into the leased territory to hunt and fish as they always had done- hence the importance of Judge Willis’ judgment in the Bolden case.

All of this, of course, was from the Colonial Office perspective ten thousand miles  and about five months journey away.  Over here, there was always a way to get round undertakings that looked sound on paper but which could be usurped by the power of the gun, distance, half-heartedness and political pressure.

Even at the time, Australia was out of step with the rest of the empire in relation to land rights for the original possessors.  As Reynolds writes on p. 194

We are the legatees of a past that was, to a considerable extent, chosen by our forebears- not the past in general but a particular past, not the law in general but a self-serving version of the law, deeply tainted by the racisms of colonial society and corrupted in its way as the legal systems in the slave colonies of the West Indies…The treatment of Aboriginal land was anomalous, it was out of step with British and United States policy in North America and with policy adopted in New Zealand after 1840.  It was also out of harmony with the major tradition of international law as enunciated in American and New Zealand courts and in the legal opinion of Burge, Pemberton and Follett.  When the Imperial officials turned their attention ot the question of native title in Australia, they had every reason to believe that they were merely bringing the country into line with principles and practices accepted elsewhere.  The  colonists, for their part, based their expectations on what had already happened in Australia up to that time.  For a crucial period of forty years Aboriginal land rights had been ignored.  That was the colonial reality; that was the way things were done at the Antipodes.

Rather more insidious was the “forgetting” over the following century about the details and intent of the original land legislation, and the substitution  of the ‘terra nullius’ approach.  It was only when the Judges of the Mabo case returned to this early legislation to trace Australian land law back to its source, that the attitude of the Colonial Office was rediscovered and publicized. The Wik case, too, returned to the original intent of the pastoral lease as a particular type of lease designed for a particular purpose.

In the final chapters of the book, Reynolds examines the Mabo and Wik cases carefully and gives a clear explanation of their significance- I must admit that my understanding of Wik has been muddied by my own politics and I found this section very enlightening and useful.  But Reynolds himself is not just historian here: he speaks of his friendship and contact with Eddie Mabo and does not disguise his own politics and leanings.

The book is very clearly written, with rather short sentences. At times I felt that it was almost too simplistic, although once I found myself in some rather more tangled territory, I was grateful that it was so simply expressed- the ideas themselves were difficult enough without having to negotiate dense and complex language.  I found his frequent use of rhetorical questions rather  wearing, although often the question he posed was exactly the one that I had in my own mind at the time.

References

Henry Reynolds The Law of the Land, Camberwell Victoria, Penguin, 2003.

“Reading Mr Robinson” by Anna Johnston and Mitchell Rolls (eds.)

“Reading Mr Robinson: Companion Essays to Friendly Mission”, Anna Johnston and Mitchell Rolls (eds.)

2008, 188p. + notes.

N. J. B. Plomley’s Friendly Mission was published in 1966, with a reprint in 1971.  It’s a big book, close on 1000 pages and it has been out of print for over thirty years.  It has been recently re-released, and this companion book of essays has been published to accompany the new edition.

Friendly Mission is a transcription of the journals of the Aboriginal Protector George Augustus Robinson, with a lengthy introduction by Plomley.  Plomley’s work made the Van Diemen’s Land journals of George Augustus Robinson available and accessible- because  Robinson’s handwriting was truly wretched- for the first time to a wider audience.  This book of essays celebrates Plomley’s work and they testify to the importance of Friendly Mission as a contested and influential text that over 40 years ago encapsulated many of the debates still pertinent today about Aboriginal and Australian settler history.

There are three themes that run through the essays.  The first is consideration of Friendly Mission in is own right, as a text.   It is obviously a book that has deeply impressed the people who have read it, or chosen not to do so.  Lyndall Ryan speaks in her essay of  purchasing the book in its blue covers from the top shelf in a bookshop and reading it transfixed on public transport on the way home, and the encouragement she received from Manning Clark and Rhys Jones to explore it further.  A counterpoint to this enthusiasm is the response of three Palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal ) contributors who write short reflections on their response to the book.  Some choose not to read it at all: others feel negated and angered by the perceived inevitability of ‘extinction’ and the self-aggrandisement and nonchalance of Robinson in the face of such tragedy.

N.J. B. or Norman James Brian Plomley- although known as Brian-  was a scientist and curator who wrote widely on a variety of natural history, medical, dentistry and museum studies issues.  His long introduction to Robinson’s diaries reflects the historiography of his times: he did not even consider the use of oral histories with living Tasmanian Aborigines- if, indeed he even considered them that at all- and his views on hybridity and purity of bloodline reflect attitudes towards aboriginality and identity that are not accepted today.  Rebe Taylor’s essay points out that there are oral history sources available, through the Westlake Papers collected by the geologist  Ernest Westlake (1855-1922) which among other things included interviews with the descendents of  the Bass Strait sealers and their Aboriginal women from 1908-10.   Plomley himself edited a collection of these interviews in 1991.

A second strand of these essays deals with the diarist George Augustus Robinson himself, the Great Conciliator with the Van Diemen’s Land tribes, and then Chief Protector in the Port Phillip Protectorate during the 1840s.   Alan Lester’s essay ‘George Augustus Robinson and Imperial Networks’ highlights Robinson’s religious and humanitarian motivation, and places him within the context of evangelical approaches being implemented by British and American missionaries across the Cape Colony, the West Indies, and American and Canadian frontiers.  Elizabeth Elbourne’s contribution ‘Between Van Diemen’s Land the the Cape Colony’ compares these two colonies, particularly in relation to the coercion of women and children, and links these to the small, but influential anti-Slavery lobby in the Colonial Office and the Aborigines Protection Society which itself was distancing itself from Robinson’s approach by the early 1840s.

Henry Reynolds in ‘George Augustus Robinson in Van Diemen’s Land: Race, Status and Religion’ embraces Robinson as a conscientious missionary, outraged by the injustices he witnessed.  The name-giving ceremonies, Reynolds claims, were an attempt to replace the derogatory names conferred by hostile settlers with more others with more dignity.  Robinson’s Christian belief in the brotherhood and equality of all men contrasted with the polygenetic views that were coming into currency whereby different branches of humanity were distinguished and ranked – with the British ascendant of course.  This is not to say that Robinson was unaffected by the early Victorian emphasis on status and respectability: his career was an perpetual struggle to maintain and boost his own standing both in the colonies and with the Colonial Office, and the seating arrangements in the church services he organized reflected an acute consciousness of gradations of status.

Cassandra Pybus’ essay ‘A Self Made Man’ is less complimentary, portraying Robinson as a vain-glorious, manipulative man who carefully massaged his own image.  She introduces as a counter-point Gilbert Robertson, the capital-strapped chief constable at Richmond in Tasmania, who claimed to have been the originator of the concept of a “Protector” and who put himself forward as an applicant.  As she says, it is an unedifying spectacle to see

these two colonial misfits scapping over the paltry financial benefit and dubious social advantage to be got in taking credit for the almost complete destruction of a whole people (p. 109)

The final theme involves the use of the Robinson diaries through Plomley’s publication by other historians over time.  Ian McFarlane in ‘N J B Plomley’s Contribution to North-West Tasmanian Regional History’  places Robinson’s account of the Cape Grim massacre against Curr’s rather self-serving account found in the Van Diemen’s Land Company papers, and finds that Robinson’s estimate of 40 deaths (rather than Curr’s admission to 3) is likely to be correct.   Patrick Brantlinger’s paper ‘King Billy’s Bones: Colonial Knowledge Production in Nineteenth-Century Tasmania’  compares Robinson’s account with James Bonwick’s history The Last of the Tasmanians written in 1870 and  overlaid by later-Victorian ideas of racial superiority, craniotomy and scientific measurement.  John Connor in ‘Recording the Human Face of War: Robinson and Frontier Conflict’ uses Robinson’s observations on warrior behaviour and weaponry to conceptualise Aboriginal resistance as ‘war’.   Rebe Taylor’s paper ‘Reliable Mr Robinson and the Controversial Dr Jones’ examines the archaeologist Rhys Jones’ development of the regression theory that Aborigines lost the ability to fish and light fires- a suggestion repeated more recently by Jared Diamond and Keith Windschuttle- a shadowy, rejected commentator whose influence (and notoriety) pervades the book.

I’m wary of celebratory and clear-cut history with simple “goodies” and “baddies”.  I’m glad that the Robinson diaries are ambiguous and contradictory, and that he himself is a flawed man who, even at the time, did not fit comfortably into his society. And I’m pleased too, that the discussion continues about what we as historians and Australians do with such a tragic, conflicted story.  Plomley’s Friendly Mission and the diaries it makes available are an ur-text that is mined again and again by authors- Richard Flanagan in Wanting, Robert Drewe in The Savage Crow, Mudrooroo in Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World, Matthew Kneale in English Passengers; Nicholas Shakespeare In Tasmania; Cassandra Pybus in Community  of Thieves, among others.  It’s like a scab that we need to keep picking; an itch that we need to scratch; a wound that has not yet healed.

Mr Robinson reports

I’ve been reading the Port Phillip journals of George Augustus Robinson.  Note that these are the Port Phillip ones, not those that he wrote in Van Diemen’s Land which were edited by N.J.B.  Plomley.  Actually,  Plomley’s work has had a bit of renaissance lately, with the republishing of his Friendly Mission and the release of Reading Robinson,  a set of essays by various authors which extends Robinson’s work into a broader imperial context.   I have this book of essays on hold, and shall report anon.

Robinson himself seems to be undergoing a reconsideration.  Until recently, his main biography has been Black Robinson by Vivienne Rae-Ellis, a vehement portrayal that depicts him as an incompetent and dishonourable liar and cheat.   Rae-Ellis’ book had a troubled publication history and  received much critical comment on its publication (Pybus, 2003).   Keith Windschuttle in his Fabrication of Aboriginal History interprets this as an attack on Rae-Ellis for her negative depiction of Robinson, who has been treated more benignly by Henry Reynolds, Lyndall Ryan and other historians that he himself attacked for their depiction of Aboriginal history.  Perhaps it’s a matter of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” because Windschuttle certainly did not extend the same level of scrutiny to Rae-Ellis as he did to Reynolds and Ryan.

Robinson’s Tasmanian journals have received most of the attention, but the ones I’ve been reading are his Port Phillip journals, written after he had spent several years on the blighted Flinders Island with his dwindling band of natives.   He took with him to Port Phillip  several Aborigines from Flinders Island, including Truganini, Wooredy, and Matilda/Mathinna  (from Richard Flanagan’s Wanting).   He arrived in Melbourne in February 1839, prior to La Trobe.  His instructions were vague.  Glenelg at the Colonial Office in London sent a copy of the report of the 1837  parliamentary  Select Committee  to Gipps, with recommendations to protect, educate, provide religious education for and ‘civilize’ the aborigines.   Glenelg told Gipps to fill in the details, but Gipps was loathe to do so.  He argued that Robinson had been appointed Chief Protector on the strength of his “acquired experience superior to that which is possessed by any other individual in the Colony”, and he was left largely to define the role himself.  It seems that La Trobe was keen for Robinson to move around the District: he sent him on his trips to the Western District and was reluctant to appoint Robinson as a town magistrate lest it “seem to form the idea that his Duties lie in Melbourne instead of in the Bush” (Gipps to La Trobe 11 Feb 1843).  But his role did, indeed, involve both administration in Melbourne- in fact, he was appointed an office in Willis’  “old” Supreme Court building once the “new” courthouse was opened- and field work both supervising the Assistant Protectors and recording the language, names and habits of Aborigines throughout the District both as a form of ethnographic study and census.

This dual focus of  acting both as administrator and protector is reflected in his journals.  Inga Clendinnen tells us in her memoir Tiger’s Eye that she  drew on Robinson’s diary of his Western District  journey between 20 March and 15 August 1841 as her first step back into the academic waters after a long period of illness.  Her essay ‘Reading Mr Robinson’ focusses on Robinson’s  journey, but the George Augustus Robinson we see in the saddle, riding from tribe to tribe and outstation to outstation is not the same fussy, petty man that we see around the streets of Melbourne.  His role was not just to observe and count: he was also a minor bureaucrat puffed up with self-importance but ultimately impotent and compromised when the pointy end of the law intersected with the humanitarian aspects of his task.

Clendinnen admits “I have become very fond of Mr Robinson”.  I’m not quite as fulsome.  The ‘town’ Mr Robinson is rather wearing; in management-speak he is unable  ‘upwardly manage’ his relationship with his superiors (if indeed, he even perceives them as such), and he undermines and backstabs the assistant protectors under his supervision- although admittedly some of them were a rum lot too.  His attitude towards the Aborigines he brought over with him from Flinders Island is puzzling: he distances himself emotionally from the execution of  “Bob” and “Jack” for murder in January 1842, fulminating about process but oblivious to the tragedy; he goes into organiser-mode for the return of the women to Flinders Island without expressing any regret. The death of Peter Brune, who did not return to Flinders Island but remained with him as his native right-hand man, is brusque and matter-of-fact.

He doesn’t really seem to “get” Aboriginal communication, despite his compiling of long lists of words.  The whole idea of bringing the Van Diemen’s land natives over to smooth his path with the mainlain Aborigines highlights his lack of awareness of the distinctiveness of the Tasmanian tribes.   His interaction is often completely utilitarian on his own terms: he is dismissive of the context of communication wanting only the content:

When the natives appear I brake through all Aboriginal ceremony [sic] (which to observe would be a waste of time) and go forth and meet them  (10 May 1841)

There are several occasions of riding into a location incognito, and pumping people for information about “Robinson”- a curious way of gaining feedback, if that’s what he was doing.

Although, having said all this, there are times when the humanitarian breaks through, and I think that this side of him is what Clendinnen is responding to.  He is genuinely filled with admiration when he sees the construction of eel-traps, and acknowledges the ingenuity, strength and dedication of the men who created them, quite irrespective of race.  He is sceptical of the numbers of deaths reported by the settlers; he decries the preference for emancipated convicts as workers who, unlike new emigrants were not frightened of the natives.  He hears, and understands, the aboriginal claims on the land:

I should remark that, when Tung.bor.roong spoke of Borembeep and other localities of his own nativity he always added ‘that’s my country belonging to me!! That’s my country belonging to me!!” This language language is [plain] but not the less forcible on that account.  Some people have observed, in reference to the natives occupying their country, what could they do with it?  The answer is plain- they could live upon it and enjoy the pleasures of the chase as do the rich of our own nation (17 July 1841)

He is dismissive of the stories of cannibalism relayed to him by the settlers- “Fudge!”. And when he comes across a settler who freely admits murdering five natives,  he is chilled and repulsed by the man.  He is determined not to partake of the lonely man’s desperate hospitality:

Francis pressed me to sleep in his hut and it was evident the bed had been prepared, clean sheets and pillow case.  He entreated and said he would play me a tune on the fiddle and I was to make myself at home, &c.  I however had made up my mind to sleep in the van and got away.  I could not sleep in the place; I was disgusted and my heart sickened when I thought of the awful sacrifice of life done by this individual.  He acknowledged to five, the natives say seven.  (30 July 1841)

On leaving the man as quickly as he can, he passes a skull planted nearby- shades of Kurtz.  Robinson knows the message it is sending- and no doubt the local tribes do too

I cannot conceive why this skull was permitted to remain exposed in such a situation; it is doubtless best known to Francis. (30 July 1841)

With my almost endless ability to be diverted from actually writing my thesis (as distinct from wool-gathering about it), I’m looking forward to reading the new Robinson essays.  I’ve also borrowed a book of Sievwright, the assistant protector who was the cause of much scandal and criticism from all sides.  More on him anon too.

References:

Ian D. Clark  The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, Volume Two: 1 October 1840-31 August 1841 Melbourne, Heritage Matters, 1998.

Ian D. Clark (Ed) The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, Volume Three: 1 September 1841- 31 December 1843Melbourne, Heritage Matters, 1998

Inga Clendinnen Tigers Eye 2001 (includes the essay ‘Reading Mr Robinson’)

Anna Johnston and Mitchell Rolls (eds). Reading Robinson 2008

N.J.B. Plomley Friendly Mission 1966

Cassandra Pybus ‘Robinson and Robertson’   in R. Manne (ed) Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Black Inc, 2203

Vivienne Rae-Ellis Black Robinson: Protector of Aborigines 1988

A.G. L. Shaw  A History of the Port Phillip District: Victoria before Separation 1996

A.G.L. Shaw Gipps-La Trobe Correspondence

Keith Windshuttle  The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, 2002

The naming of things

If you watch almost any documentary on Aboriginal Australia, it is usually prefaced by a warning that the program will depict the names and images of people who have passed away.  The sensitivity about naming people who have died was also highlighted in Chloe Hooper’s book The Tall Man, which traces the events that followed the death of Cameron Doomadgee on Palm Island.  His name is no longer used in media and court reports: instead he is now referred to as Mulrunji, at his family’s request. This sensitivity is completely at odds with a Western view, where we yearn to have our name live on, even though we may have died.

I’ve been particularly aware of the naming of people while reading George Augustus Robinson’s Journal as he travelled around the Western District of Victoria in the early 1840s.  The volume I am reading is part of a series edited by Ian D. Clark,  a true labour of love when you consider Robinson’s handwriting seen here.   I have commenced at Volume 2, as this covers the time that Judge Willis was in Victoria and so I have missed the specific details of  Robinson’s commission in the Port Phillip District but he, at least, interpreted it as among other things, a linguistic and ethnographic investigative task.  As he wrote on 10 May 1841:

My Aboriginal attendants, assured of my anxiety for information respecting themselves and the names of localities and animals, vegetables, insects, were at times extremely annoying in making this communication.

But he not only collects names of localities and animals, but also investigates and confers names on the natives he encounters as well.

It’s interesting to look at the names that he records.  On 11 October 1840 he records the original and conferred names of the Goulburn blacks under arrest at the time.

1. Yar.mer.der.rook  – Long Bill
2. You.ur.but.kalk, otherwise Pon.der.min – Lankey
3. Yabbe – Billy Hamilton
4. Kor.ram.mer.bil – Fuckumall
5. Kan.nin.il.lum – the same appellation
6. Pin.gin.quor, otherwise My. tit – the same
7. Log.er.ma.koom  Jackey Jackey
8. Nan. der.mil – John
9. Kor.me.wor.rer.min -Charley
10. Wor.gon.mil, otherwise Gine Gine – Mr Clarke
11. Cow.in.gow.lit, otherwise Un.mo.war.in – William (I’ll skip a few here)
12. Pee.beep – Mr Maclane
13. Tare.rin.galk – Mr Langhorne
14. Moor.in.bal -  Tom
15. Tarm.bid.er.me  – Billy
16. Won.gon.bul – Mr Clarke
17. Cor.muth.er.gi – Mr White
18. Bor.in.al.lok- No name conferred by settlers
19. Mare.mil – Fuckemall
20. Nili.gurn -  Mr. Murray

These were the names conferred by other settlers, prior to Robinson’s contact with the natives.  In April 1841 Robinson travelled down to Port Fairy where he came across

the wildest natives I have seen, that is, as their entire absence of all and everything connected with white people: they had not a word of English nor any of the manners or customs or the usual salutation of shaking hands.  …they had not any names from the English; all were pure, original  (28 April 1841)

He describes the process by which he gave them names:

I then took down their names &c. …I had some difficulty in inventing names for them.  They were not satisfied unless they had one; they wanted to be served all alike. (26 April 1841)

He then lists some of the names he bestowed:

1. Tal.line.malk,    Mr Robinson
2. Tin.gin.ne.arm.yo,  Bonenepart
3. Tarn.be.cum.mer.rong,  Mungo Park
4. Til.gid.de.an.u,  Franklin
5. Un.gone.ne.ner,  Truggernonner
6. Cor.rer.pe.wil.lap,  Jupiter
7. Murm.rum.gid.de.yoor.nung,  Neptune
8. Mee.pal,  Woorradedy  (28 April 1841)

In his book Aboriginal Victorians, Richard Broome discusses the significance of the name-giving ceremony.   Citing Jan Penney, he notes that “names possessed power and indicated relationships, which in turn carried obligatory rights and duties”.  He notes:

Before long new names were bestowed on the Aborigines.  This pleased Europeans, who were unable to master Aboriginal names and their tricky pronunciations, with soft ‘ng’ sounds and all syllables emphasized.  The bestowal of names also suited Aboriginal people for it established an attachment and avoided the use of traditional names that were hedged with protocols and strictures. (Broome, Aboriginal Victorians p. 57)

It’s interesting to note the names that were conferred by white settlers.  One of the most striking, and disturbing things about the list of names bestowed on the Goulburn River Blacks- widely feared for their ferocity- was the prevalence of the name “Fuckemall”.  Robinson decried it:

The names given to the natives by the stockeeepers [sic] and others is a proof of the depraved state of the community of those parts.  This boy mentioned a woman named ‘cunt’ and ‘arsehole”, and another ‘white cunt’.  Faithful [a settler]  said Mr Docker asked a black woman her name before him and she replied ‘white cunt’. I asked same woman and she gave me same answer. Her husband told me the same.  I gave her a fresh name.  (15 Feb 1841)

The names that Robinson himself conferred are interesting.  Perhaps as a response to young, well formed men, he seems to have often named a young man “Mr Robinson”, and on several occasions he named ‘Mungo Park‘ (the explorer of the African continent) and Napoleon.  Here we have Franklin (Benjamin? Sir John?), Jupiter and Neptune.  He also confers aboriginal names himself, even though they already have aboriginal names.  The aboriginal names are those of Van Diemens Land aborigines he knew- or is he just lacking imagination?-  Wooreddy (as in the fascinating fictional account of early VDL clashes Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World) and Truggernonner, (Truganini) considered to be the last Aboriginal “full-blood” and who was brought over by Robinson himself from Flinders Island.

It’s interesting to note that several are given the names of white settlers, but in Robinson’’s notation are given the designation “Mr”.  This does not always seem to be the case.  Broome tells the story of Charley, the aboriginal boy who wanted to become a gentleman, and managed to equip himself with all the accessories, including top hat and cane :

Charley realized that Europeans had two names and that gentlemen had formal ones, so he renamed himself Charles Never. (The other youths wanted two names as well, and with the help of the Edgars, became James White, Jacky Warren, Thomas Gurrenbook, and Kitty, Harry and Tommy Bungaleenee.) (Broome, p. 51)

As Broome points out, the conferring of a name did not necessarily have to denote ownership, but could be an act of affiliation that worked to Aboriginal advantage as well, either by a claim on the settler or as a way of deflecting white intrusion into private beliefs. It’s striking that prominent people in the Koorie community today often share surnames with 1840s settlers as well-  there are several prominent Koorie ‘Firebrace’ s for example,  probably named by Major William Firebrace, a prominent Port Phillip personality.  Likewise Pettits and Atkinsons – common Koorie surnames.  I had always assumed that this suggested that white men had consorted with Aboriginal women: it had not occurred to me that perhaps there was Aboriginal agency in adopting these names.

The naming went both ways.  Aboriginal people also named white people- for example, Robinson rather proudly announces that:

They conferred on me a new name namely Ar.rum.ar.rum.nare.nit, which in their language is great or big chief  (12 August 1841)

Robinson also reports on Glendinnon, a white man much respected by the natives he deals with.   Robinson arrived at Mt Emu

where the far famed among the Aborigines, Jaggy Jaggy, resides.  He is a white man and a lowland Scotchman named Glendinnon and whom the Aborigines have designated as Jaggy jaggy min min. (5 August 1841)

After Robinson’s description of many callous, brutal white settlers, Glendinnon stands out for his calm demeanour and humanity.  I don’t know what Jaggy jaggy min min meant, but I’m sure that it denoted more dignity, for both the namer and the named,  than ‘Fuckemall’.

References:

Richard Broome Aboriginal Victorians, 2005

Ian D. Clark The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, Volume Two: 1 October 1840-31 August 1841.

The boys go to Port Phillip

As part of examining Judge Willis’ interaction with Port Phillip society, I’ve read folder after folder of official correspondence, column after column of newspapers, memoirs  and several diaries.  But one thing that I have barely dipped into is personal correspondence.  So it was armed with a few names that I headed into the State Library yesterday- off to read the correspondence of the Burchett brothers who arrived from 1839 onwards to their family ‘back home’, and a thesis based on the correspondence of  Alexander F. Mollison who visited Melbourne in its earliest days, then settled in the Port Phillip district from about 1837.

The survival of any cache of correspondence is  a mixture of luck, diligence, intent and circumstance.  There are those rare individuals who keep copies of all correspondence both sent and received, but it’s more likely that an archive of correspondence is likely to be largely one-sided, usually consisting of  letters received, with the letters sent reflected only obliquely.  The preservation of letters within a family depends largely on the importance placed on them by the recipient, and the custodians to whom they pass when the recipient dies.  Then there is another  step between private ownership and their availability to a wider public through a museum (where they can linger undiscovered and uncatalogued for years) or publication.

Moreover, the practice of mail correspondence between New South Wales and the metropole,  particularly during the 1840s, reflected the realities of a 4-6 month time lag with a swag of letters arriving in one dispatch, or likewise, no mail appearing at all.  No doubt the receipt of letters would trigger off a frenzy of response, with the minutae of day-to-day life telescoped into a potted narrative that would reassure loved ones who were totally unfamiliar with the sights, smells and local personalities on the other side of the world.  On both sides, the pictured recipients would be kept in a mental time-warp that kept them as they were when last seen, with shared acquaintances and memories given more prominence than perhaps they merited. I tend to think of this correspondence as similar to the word-processed  Christmas updates we all started to include in our Christmas cards a few years ago,  up until they fell out of favour for being homogenized, impersonalized and too cheery and cheesy.  (Mind you, I enjoy receiving them and still do send them- cheesy and impersonalized though they may be).

So, with these constraints in mind, how likely is it that any of this correspondence would mention Judge Willis?  I guess that it depends on how personally involved the writer was with the agitation to either remove or support him, which in turn might reflect the political engagement and interests of the intended recipient of the letter.  How much of any politics would filter through, say, into the Christmas Update we might send today?  I suspect that 2001 Christmas Updates reflected the shock of September 11;  we may have written to overseas correspondents about a change in government.  But, unless personally involved, it’s not likely that day-to-day politics is likely to find its way into correspondence intended for an overseas readership, even in our connected, globalized world, and probably even less so from 1843 New South Wales.

The Burchett Brothers

And so to the Burchett letters.  The copy of the letters I saw had been typewritten and photographed.  Now, there’s nothing quite like the pleasure of the looped, cursive script, the browning ink and the texture of the paper of the original.  But I’ve been there, and done that, and there’s also nothing quite like the regularity and ease of a typewritten transcript!!  They were catalogued under “Burchett family”, and the collection includes letters written by Charles Gowland Burchett (1817-1856), Henry Burchett (1820-1872), Frederick Burchett (1824-1861) and Alfred Burchett (1831-1888).   The boys arrived out here over a period of time, with the 22 year old Charles and 19 year old Henry arriving first in 1839, followed by their younger brother Frederick, aged 16, the following year.   I’m not sure when Alfred arrived.   There were obviously other children still left at home- Henry’s letters in particular are full of high-spirited and affection  in-jokes with his younger siblings.   All the same, it must have been hard to have your three eldest boys heading off across the globe at such young ages.

Charles, in particular, seems to have been of a slightly more political bent than his brothers.  In his letter to his father on 12 June 1841 he writes about a meeting to petition the Home Government for separation from New SouthWales, and mentions the Resident Judge obliquely in reference to Sydney’s neglect of Port Phillip- a comment by then obsolete given that Judge Willis had by that time arrived in Melbourne.

Even in Sydney they know little of us.  Fancy the wilful blindness of a tardy determination to allow us the services of a Supreme Judge three times in two years.

This was to be his only mention of Judge Willis.  He goes on:

The principal evidence of the moral advance of this place may be enumerated as follows- a Society lately formed ont he plan of the “Highland Agricultural Society” for the promotion of Agriculture, Horticulture and Breeding, William Mackenzie Esq, the son of a Scottish Baronet is the Chairman.  Two or three hundred chapels; the church, however, on account of its ambitious pretensions, is at a standstill for want of funds, a considerable part of the edifice completed evidently exhibits the intention of the Trustees to make it a handsome structure- it is of stone.  And last, but not least, the Mechanics Institution.  Among the lectures at this last has been one “On the Influence of the Press in disseminating knowledge” by George Arden, the Editor of the Port Phillip Gazette.  This said G. A. (the Boy Editor, as he is called) I have known since my arrival here; he gave a splended speech at the meeting.

The boys established a run called ‘The Gums’  near Mt Rouse in the Western District.  In a letter dated 1 Oct  1841,  Frederick was not pleased by the news that Charles Sievewright was to establish the Western District  Aboriginal Protectorate nearby:

There is a rumour that a Black protector is coming to take up his station at Mt Rouse, with his tail of 4 or 500 blacks, if he does we shall have to keep a sharp lookout, as the gentleman of his suits have been playing up a hurricane (colonial phrase) down below, and they are not very remarkable for their honesty

Five days later his brother Henry added:

How little do the good people at home, who are instigators of benevolent systems of civilization understand the character of these barbarous cannibals.

The financial depression of the early 1840s hit the Burchett boys badly, and Frederick returned home, followed by Charles who arrived back in England  on the Glenbervie on November 24 1843.  They obviously did not stay: Frederick returned to Van Diemens Land in March 1844 and the others must have returned at some stage too.  Charles died in 1856 at their property St Germain’s (near Echuca); Henry died in 1872 at “Albert Road, Regent Park” (not sure where); Frederick died in 1861 in Melbourne, and Alfred in 1888 at St Kilda.

Alexander Mollison

And so on to the second batch of letters from Alexander Mollison, this time as part of a thesis written by Marie Hyde who transcribed and annotated the letters as part of a Bachelor of Letters degree in 1988.  Alexander Fullerton Mollison (1805-55) has a higher profile that the Burchett brothers with a shared entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography with his brother William Thomas.

Alexander arrived in Sydney in 1834 at the older age of 29, and did not ever marry.  After an exploratory trip to Port Phillip in 1836, he overlanded down from his property at Uriani (near present day Canberra) with his flock of 5000 sheep, 634 cattle, 28 bullocks and 22 horses, to establish Colliban Station, near Malmsbury.  He was joined by his brothers Patrick, who was based in Sydney, another brother Crawford, and William aged 22, who arrived in 1838 who joined Alexander at Colliban.   A fifth brother, James, aspired to be an artist and several of Alexander’s letters warn him specifically not to come to the colonies, as there were few prospects for artists here.   Two sisters were left at home: Jane, to whom many of the letters are addressed and for whom Alexander obviously had a great affection, and Elizabeth.  Again, I find myself thinking about the parents left back in England with their daughters, with the ‘boys’ of the family so far away.

The early letters reflect Alexander’s interest in the  zoological and botanical sciences- and I assume that sister Jane shared this interest too.  Although he didn’t send her actual specimens- as Judge Willis was wont to do with patrons he wanted particularly to impress- he did write long descriptions of rainbows he noticed at sea and his first sighting of a platypus.  Zoe Laidlaw, in her book Colonial Connections 1815-45:  Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government, highlights the importance of scientific networks, and the overlap between amateur colonial naturalists and visiting scientific professionals.  It also evokes for me the burgeoning interest in science more generally reflected in another book I’m reading at the moment- Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.  It seems that Alexander was very much a man of his times.

As Hyde points out, the shipboard voyage

had positive benefits as an interlude between the old world and the new in helping to establish that network of connections with the well off and influential that would serve him well in years to come.(p. 5)

He travelled with the Rusden family, little realizing that the 12 year old son George would later become Clerk of the Executive Council and a member of the National Board of Education.   He became friends with Charles Nicholson, who was later become Sir Charles Nicholson,  statesman, landowner and businessman.

In an odd conjunction, he wrote to his father that Henry Burchett (of the letters above) had arrived at the station to learn sheep farming before striking out on his own.  The Burchett letters also resonate when the Aboriginal Protector Parker took up land on the Loddon to establish a Protectorate.  Unlike the Burchetts, Parker willingly gave up land for the Aboriginal station, and assisted Parker in running it.

Alexander obviously spent some time in Melbourne where he mixed with the other ‘respectable’ pastoralists.  On 26 December 1839, he wrote to his sister Jane about the Melbourne Club:

I do not remember having told you about the Club House in Melbourne. The Inns were found to be so dirty and disordered that several respectable settlers and townsmen formed a club about 18 months ago.  William and I are members.  There are now eighty permanent members.  The house affords twelve bedrooms, a dining room, drawing room, library and smoking room or dvan.  The bedrooms are rather small but exceedingly comfortable and well-kept.  Each member is allowed to occupy a bedroom one week and then must make way for another if required…The yearly subscription is five pounds and the charges are the same as at the inns.

His respectability gave him access to the political sphere.  Soon after La Trobes arrival in Melbourne,  Alexander and his brother Crawford called on him.  To his father, Alexander wrote:

Mr La Trobe arrived at Melbourne some weeks ago.  He told me that he had been introduced to you.  I called once at his offices with Crawford but came away as soon as our business was finished, as Mr La Trobe seemed to be very much occupied.  He is so far in public favor here and seems to be candid, sincere and unostentatious.

He also met with Governor Gipps when he visited Melbourne, and was one of the five men deputized to make a welcoming address to him.  In October 1841 Alexander wrote to his father:

We have had great doings this past week in honour of Governor Sir George Gipps’ first visit to this district, but I have not time to relate them.  I may however say that I was one of a deputation to draw up and present an address and also the president of a public dinner of one hundred and fifty people.  Sir George is frank, clever, and a ready and pleasing speaker.  I was introduced to him during my late short visit to Sydney.

When his friend Charles Nicholson put himself up for election as the Port Phillip member for the first District Council, Mollison seconded his nomination.   Nicholson was elected the representative for Port Phillip on the part-elected Legislative Council in 1843, served as Speaker in 1846 and twice more before the granting of responsible government.  Mollison was one of the inaugural members of the Melbourne branch of the Australian Immigration Society in 1840 (Garryowen p. 492); he addressed a meeting against the resumption of transportation (Garryowen p. 524); he presided over a Squatters Meeting in June 1844 and a committee member of the Separation Association (Garryowen p 907).  He was made a Justice of the Peace.

It’s not surprising, then, that Mollison does mention Judge Willis’ suspension, albeit briefly, with the terse comment that “he certainly deserved it”.  Mollison does not seem to have been particularly heavily involved in the movement against him, however, declining to sign the anti-Willis petitions.  Both Alexander and his brother William did , however, sign a letter in support of Lonsdale who was under attack by Judge Willis, and another letter on 14th June 1843 directly before Judge Willis’ amoval complaining about aspersions raised in the court in relation to the magistracy generally.

The sheer distance between the colonies and the family at home was reinforced for me by the report of Patrick’s illness in Sydney.  Charles Nicholson notified Alexander that Patrick was gravely ill, and within days Alexander was writing a second letter to say that he had died.  In his will, Patrick left his colonial assets to his sister Jane and Alexander, although they did not cover his debts.  Jane had obviously advanced money to Patrick, and Alexander later made an investment of Jane’s money in land on the portion bounded by Highett, Lennox and Erin Streets, Richmond.   Davidoff and Hall’s book Family Fortunes notes that the daughters of a family often made their inheritance available to their brothers for investment, in return for a roof over their head and keep.

Although he suffered financially during the Depression, he did not go under, which is a testimony to his good management and frugality.  By 1845 he was writing “I now begin to feel that my home is here.”  He did return to London in 1850, where he stayed for 8 1/2 years.  A photograph held by the State Library of Victoria taken in London during this time, describes him as

Seated, wearing three-piece suit with fringed black and white paisley patterned tie (probably a scarf). He has a full brown and gingerish beard speckled with grey, and wears a light coloured top hat with a very high crown.

He returned briefly to Victoria, then went again to England where he lived for another 13 years.  After the death of his beloved sister Jane, he and his remaining sister Elizabeth returned to Victoria in 1873.  They settled together, unmarried brother and sister, until he died after years of ill-health in 1885.

References:

Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850

Edmund Finn (Garryowen) The Chronicles of Early Melbourne

Richard Holmes The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

Marie Hyde Letters from Port Phillip:  the letters of Alexander Mollison 1833-1859 (thesis)

Zoe Laidlaw Colonial Connections 1815-1845: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government

A. G. L. Shaw A History of the Port Phillip District

No Good Damper

While reading through the newspapers of 1840s Port Phillip, my attention has been arrested several times by the location called  “No-Good-Damper”.  The location seemed to attract malfeasants and scoundrels of all types: people were often being held up and robbed on the road, and the Plenty Valley bushrangers were sighted there.  So where is No-Good-Damper?  Why was it called that?

The No-Good-Damper hotel was located, apparently, near the present Springvale six-way junction where Dandenong and Centre roads converge.  For those who are topographically inclined, the longitude is approximately 145.16 and latitude 37.95.

The present-day Vale Hotel claims it as its forerunner.  The original licence for the No Good Damper hotel was granted to Christian Ludolph Johannes De Villiers on April 20 1841, and it seems to have changed hands several times- to William Scott who also had the licence for the Squatters Rest in April 1842 (they may have been the same hotel), and then to a Robert McGhee in May 1844 who may or may not have been the same person as Robert McKee who held the licence in April 1845.

It was a rather dangerous place to hang around.  The Port Phillip Herald of April 4, 1843  reports that Mr Bond of No-Good-Damper was the victim of an attempted robbery:

On Monday night week as Mr Bond of No-Good-Damper was returning home from Melbourne, and only a short distance from his house, he was suddenly commanded “to stand” by an armed man, who after demanding his money, and not waiting to see if the same would be delivered to him, struck Mr Bond a violent blow with a bludgeon, which, however, did not bring him to the ground, but being armed with a leaded riding whip, he quickly knocked down the ruffian, and before he could dismount a pistol was fired at him, the ball carrying away the brim of his hat, and shaving off a portion of the hair of his head.  Mr Bond made up to him with the intention of closing with him, but the villain took to his heels, and notwithstanding that he was pursued for a short distance he succeeded in getting clear off.

A year earlier, in April 1842, there had been another more daring raid by the Plenty Valley bushrangers, who were to later be sentenced to death by hanging by Judge Willis. On April 29th 1842 the Port Phillip Herald reported

In our last we reported some daring attacks, which have been recently made upon the stations of a number of settlers in the vicinity of Melbourne, since which we have learned the particulars of another outrage committed, it is presumed by the same banditti, upon Captain Gwatkin of the ‘Scout’ at present in our harbour, and Mr F. Pittman.  On Wednesday evening as these gentlemen were proceeding in a gig to the station of the Messrs. Langhorne at Dandenong, they were stopped at about seven o’clock, a mile and a half on this side No Good Damper, or about twelve miles from Melbourne, by four men heavily armed both with guns and pistols, three of the gang being well mounted and the other on foot.  They immediately ordered Messrs. Gwatkin and Pittman to get out of the gig and strip off their clothes, which of course they were compelled to do, as during the time the guns were held cocked at their heads, and threats of instant death pronounced should they disobey orders.  The clothes were minutely rifled, and from those of Captain Gwatkin were taken 21 pounds in Launceston notes, of which 3 were fives and the remainder ones, 33 pounds of the Melbourne Banks, of which five were fives, also four sovereigns and a half, a quantity of silver, and a few coppers, amounting in all to 63 pound 1s. 8d.  They returned 5s to Mr Pittman “to pay for his bed at No Good Damper”, but upon being remonstrated with by Captain Gwatkin, who said that having got such a handsome booty they might have the generosity to return a sovereign to pay his expenses until his return to town, they very cooly informed him that he could go to sea and make more, and to think himself safe they did not blow his brains out; they had at first demanded and learned his name.  The horse was next taken out of the gig; the harness, with the exception of the bridle was taken off; and Mr Pittman ordered to assist the ruffian on foot to mount thereon, when the whole party rode off at a brisk pace. Messrs. Gwatkin and Pittman proceeded on to No Good Damper, from which they immediately despatched a messenger to town with the intelligence; and on coming into town yesterday morning they called at Mr Le Mann’s near the place where they were robbed, and were informed that about 8 o’clock the previous evening, four men paid him a visit, “bailed up” two men who were in his hut, forced a woman to make them some tea, helped themselves to two saddles, one for the horse they had taken out of the gig, and the other for one of the horses on which they had previously only a saddle cloth, gave a boy 1s. 7d. for holding their horses, and decamped.

How  did this salubrious location get the name No-Good-Damper?  Let’s be charitable and go with the explanation given to the editor of the Argus on 9 September 1924:

Sir: In the interesting article “The Gippsland Mystery” on Saturday by Ernest McCaughan it is stated that a party of five whites and ten blacks were sent out under the leadership of De Villiers, an ex police officer who kept the extraordinary named No Good Damper Inn.  Apropos of this, a story was related to me by the late Robert Rowley, then of Rye (a very old colonist who had known Buckley, the wild white man). The story, which may be of interest, is that about the year 1840 lime was being burnt about Sorrento and Rye.  A layer of sheoak logs was laid on the ground, then a layer of limestone.  Another layer of logs, then again stone, and so on, until there was a considerable stack.  Fire was next applied.  By this rough and ready, though wasteful system, lime used in the building of early Melbourne was then burned.  The lime was then “slacked”, afterwards sieved through a fine sieve, and forwarded to Melbourne by ketch.  One of these old windjammers had the misfortune to go aground near the site of Frankston.  The lime was taken off  undamaged, stacked, and carefully covered a little way from the shore. A number of blacks were in the vicinity.

They had some little experience of the white fellow’s flour.  When they found the lime, sieved and done up in small bags under a tarpaulin, they were sure they had got the genuine article in plenty.  So they mustered in force, took away all they possibly could and fearing pursuit did not stop running until they put about 12 miles between them and the stack of lime.  The blacks then mixed their flour with water upon their ‘possum rugs and put the dough in the ashes to bake, the result being spoiled rugs and bad damper.  In the words of Mr Rowley, “they called that place Dandenong” which means “no good damper”.

Yours &c J. L. Brown, Sandringham Sept 8.

And now for the slightly less cheery version, courtesy of Edmund Finn (Garryowen) p. 963.

There is a place near Dandenong called “No good Damper”, and the origin of this name is very laughable.  The proprietor of a small store there had occasion to be sometimes away from home, and the Aborigines, who had a great weakness for flour and mutton, stole a quantity of some flour, but the storekeeper said he would be even with the blacks.  So he got a couple of bags of lime from Melbourne, and made them do duty for the flour at his next absence. “Blacky” called again, but instead of flour purloined a bag of lime, and left in great glee. On arriving at their quambying ground they commenced baking operations, when on mixing water with the supposed flour, they were horrified to find it fizz, and fancing the white man’s “debble debble” was about to bewitch them, they ran away yelling “No good damper, no good damper.”  So thus the phrase took, and so the storeman’s place is named to this day.  The flour was never troubled after.  Arsenic, is said to have been often mixed with flour for the special use of the blacks at more than one of the stations in the then wild interior.

Ah, yes, a laughable little story indeed.

And George Dunnerdale, who wrote ‘The Book of the Bush’ in  1893  wrote:

It was near Caulfield on the Melbourne side of  “No Good Damper swamp”.  Some blackfellows had been poisoned there by a settler who wanted to get rid of them.  He gave them damper with arsenic in it, and when dying they said “No good damper”.  (p. 276)

Would it have been possible at the time to pass off a deliberate poisoning as a “laughable” little anecdote, or even then would it have to have been disguised in some way?  Certainly, several of the settlers who came before Judge Willis made no secret that they had shot aborigines who had “trespassed” on their land, or in retribution for stock deaths. And even now, you could be sitting in the comfort of your twentieth-century car passing “Murdering Gully” near Camperdown or   Massacre Hill near Port Campbell.

For what-ever reason, though, “No Good Damper” seems to have slipped away as a place-name, even though it was used quite freely in the early 1840s.  I wonder what would be the response if we tried to revive it?

Some figures

The other day I was reading through the Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Council for the 1840s (as one does) , and looking at the Statistical Returns for 1834-43, which were printed in June 1844.

There I found a table of the official figures of whites killed by Aborigines, and conversely, Aborigines killed by whites for the district of Port Phillip.  These are, of course, the ridgy-didge “official” figures- the sort that Keith Windschuttle in his Fabrication of Aboriginal History upheld-  with all that entails.

WHITES KILLED BY ABORIGINES PORT PHILLIP.

1836	2
1838	12	10 + 1 +1
1839	3
1840	11
1841	6 + 2	The two were murdered by the Van Diemen’s Land blacks
1842	4
1843	1
1844	1

Total: 40

NATIVES KILLED BY WHITES.

1836	1
1838	16
1839	8
1840	67	30 by the Whyte Brothers- rests on Aboriginal evidence. 10 in Grampians by Messrs Wedge, depends partly on Aboriginal evidence
1841	10	Based on statements by Aborigines
1842	6	4 at Smith and Osbrey’s station – great investigation and 3 persons tried and acquitted
1843	3	In one event at Mr Rickett’s
1844	2

TOTAL 113

I’m surprised that the figures are so low on the white side.  Given the heightened anxiety and dread expressed by settlers on the frontier, I’m surprised that there are not more white deaths.  However, many attacks involved property loss- particularly the hacking and killing of sheep- and given that stock (rather than the ownership of land) formed the basis of wealth in this pastoral squatting society, these attacks were property crimes that struck at the heart of the settlers’ financial viability.   The low figures on the aboriginal side are more to be expected. The figures for black deaths had to be corroborated by white evidence.  There was little to be gained in reporting an aboriginal death.  If  an aboriginal was  “said to be” killed, on aboriginal evidence only, then it was not counted.  You’ll note the qualification of  “based on statements by Aborigines” in the third column.

The statistics for whites killed show that overwhelmingly these deaths occured among hutkeepers, shepherds and servants.  These men were isolated, often far from the homestead (such as it was),  far from surveillance and likewise far from assistance.  They were also often assigned servants or ex-convicts.  Only four of the 40 were designated as “Mr —”, and only one was categorized as a settler.

The large spike in both white and native deaths in 1838 was because of the six-hour pitched battle that took place on Faithful’s station near Benalla, in retaliation for the massacre of 10-14 of Faithful’s workers (the official figure shows 10; Faithful claims 14).  I quoted Faithful’s description of the retaliatory battle  in my post on Letters from Victorian Pioneers.

I find it interesting that the Whyte brothers are named so openly here, and in the Letters from Victorian Pioneers.    The aboriginal deaths in 1840 around Whyte’s station in Coleraine came to be known as the Fighting Hills Massacre.  The Whyte brothers reported the attack themselves.  No charges were ever laid.

The trial of the men charged with the aboriginal deaths at Smith and Osbrey’s station occurred right at the point when Judge Willis was dismissed as Resident Judge.  The murders had occurred in February 1842 and a 50 pound reward was offered, later increased to 100 pounds with a free pardon and a free passage to England if the informant was a transported convict.  Nothing was heard, until a transported ‘bush carpenter’ employed at the station reported a number of men for the murder in May 1843.  Three men- Hill, Beswicke and Betts were committed to trial and it was, in fact, this case that Judge Willis was hearing when the court was interrupted by the serving of the Executive Order for Willis’ amoval.  Justice Jeffcott, who was Judge Willis’ replacement, took over the trial and the men were acquitted.  Gipps privately wrote to La Trobe that if he had been on the jury, he would have committed at least two of the three men, but Jeffcott was “not dissatisfied with the verdict”.

References:

Richard Broome Aboriginal Australians pp.40-48

A. G. L. Shaw The History of the Port Phillip District p.  114,130,138

Paul R Mullaly Crime in the Port Phillip District p.290-297

Museum Victoria: Encounters  http://museumvictoria.com.au/encounters/journeys/Robinson/Fighting_Hills.htm

Bride Letters from Victorian Pioneers

Votes and Proceedings of the NSW Legislative Council

Letters from Victorian Pioneers (or “It wasn’t me Guv’nor, it was him”)

When Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe sailed home  for England on 6 May 1854, he carried with him a series of letters which he hoped to use when writing a history of the Port Phillip district in his retirement.  He had officially approached a number of the early pastoral pioneers and asked them a number of questions, and as you might expect, they answered his survey letter fairly promptly.  I’m not sure what the official letter said-  one of his respondents referred to a section that asked  “If preceded, accompanied or immediately followed, by whom and when, and the general state of the district around and in advance of me at that period.”  He obviously also specifically asked about encounters they had had with aborigines in their area, and their opinion of the future facing the aboriginal tribes.

He had big plans for these letters.  He intended his book to start with Captain Cook’s discovery of the Gippsland coast, then move to the early futile attempts at settlement.  It would then go on to record the effective colonization of the region by pastoralists, ending with the discovery of gold in 1851.  Part II would deal with the geology, botanty and zoology of the land; the aborigines and the human aspects of the spread of settlement.  He would then pass on to separation and the consequences of gold discovery, where he would rebut the criticisms that had been levelled against him for his administration of the gold fields.  He would then finish with ‘My Australian Home, a walk around my garden’.  (Gross, p. 131)

It was not to be.  He was increasingly afflicted with blindness, and realizing that he would never write this book, he returned the letters to Victoria in 1872 , where they were preserved in the public library.  Times had moved on: people were ‘moving forward’ then too, and not all that interested in the preceding generation. It was not until 1898 that the 58  letters were published by the Trustees of the Library under the name ‘Letters from Victorian Pioneers’.

Because they were responding to an official request with guiding questions, there is a sameness about the responses of his correspondents.  But there’s also quite a bit of similarity in their experiences as well, which is what I expected.  In fact, my impetus for reading this book was the suggestion in Robert Redfield’s book that people living in a small community often held a common biography.  Even though Redfield specifically states that his approach does not hold for frontier communities (which of course Port Phillip was), I was interested to see if the early pastoral settlers of Port Phillip could be said to have a common life story.

And yes, they could.  All his respondents were male, and many of them were young when they settled in Port Phillip- usually in their early to mid 20s.  Many of them came over from Van Diemens Land  from where they had initially emigrated (none admits to convict origins).  Many of them had brothers with them.  And they held in common sheep and cattle- hundreds and hundreds of them, trotting along, being slaughtered by marauding natives (and oh, what a heartbreaking, pointless, expensive loss of life that must have been), moving from run to run.  Some time ago I read Roger McDonald’s book  The Ballad of Desmond Kale, and was frustrated by the sheep-sheep-sheep  emphasis of it, but sheep-fever is amply demonstrated here too.  It’s not as exotic and alluring as gold, but the sheep-rush  obviously drove the early settlers of Port Phillip.

They all mention the 1840s depression- although one canny Scotsman seems to have escaped it because he had savings still in Van Diemens Land.  There are names of landholders that spring up again and again- obviously big stockholders held land in several districts.  Many of them moved from station to station.

Some of them were quite observant about the changes wrought on the land after settlement.  Several mentioned that it was very dry when the area was first opened up, and that the rainfall had  improved in the last few years of the 1840s, drawing later settlers to land that had seemed uninviting when the first settlers passed it initially.  One or two mentioned changes in the grasslands, and some were quite nostalgic for the beauty of the unsettled areas.

Most fascinating of all was the range of responses to the question about aborigines.   Most of them knew of “other people” who had gone on shooting reprisals- as perhaps might be expected when the Lieutenant-Governor asked you such a question.  Several of them mentioned the Whyte brothers by name as being particularly responsible for aboriginal deaths, one respondent attributing 51 deaths to them compared with the official count of 30 aboriginal deaths.  A couple of respondents mentioned that they had shot aborigines in reprisal-  just one or two, mind you, and always because the aborigines started it first.   Another settler was named as responsible for several deaths, but he protested (too much?) his innocence. George Faithful of Wangaratta, however, reported quite openly his actions after suffering several attacks from surrounding natives:

At last, it so happened that I was the means of putting an end to this warfare.  Riding with two of my stockmen one day quietly along the banks of the river, we passed between the anabranch of the river itself by a narrow neck of land, and, after proceeding half a mile, we were all at once met by some hundreds of painted warriors with the most dreadful yells I had ever heard.  Had they sprung from the regions below we could have hardly been more taken by surprise.  Our horses bounded and neighed with fear- old brutes, which in other respects required an immense deal of persuasion in the way of spurs to make them go along.  Our first impulse was to retreat, but we found the narrow way blocked up by natives two and three deep, and we were at once saluted with a shower of spears.  My horse bounded and fell into an immense hole.  A spear just then passed over the pummel of my saddle.  This was the signal for a general onset.  The natives rushed on us like furies, with shouts and savage yells; it was no time for delay.  I ordered my men to take deliberate aim, and to fire only with certainty of destruction to the individual aimed at.  Unfortunately, the first shot from one of my men’s carbines did not take effect; in a moment we were surrounded on all sides by the savages boldly coming up to us.  It was my time now to endeavour to repel them.  I fired my double-barrel right and left, and two of the most forward fell; this stopped the impetuosity of their career.  I had time to reload, and the war thus continued from about ten o’clock in the morning until four in the afternoon.  We were slow to fire, and I trust and believe that many of the bravest of the savage warriors bit the dust.  (p. 220)

Several of the respondents noted that they had taken young aboriginal girls and boys to live with them, but that once they reached adulthood, their tribes came and took them away.   One settler commented that  he gave a baby back to its mother after he had taken it because the servant wasn’t prepared to look after it, and  seemed rather put out that she refused to give it to him a second time.  Several reported infanticide, especially where there was a white father and a black mother.  There were several allegations of cannibalism, although interestingly one settler reported that the aborigines thought that the whites were cannibals!

Where aboriginal deaths had occured, several claimed, it was because the blacks had become over-familiar.   White men didn’t take lubras, they claimed- the black men offered their wives to them freely.

Even amongst those who were most positive about the aborigines working for them on their stations, or their quickness and willingness to forgive, there was overall a deep sense that influenza, smallpox, VD or alcohol would decimate their numbers.  They all reported that there weren’t as many aborigines on their stations as there had been years earlier- strange that.

References

‘Letters from Victorian Pioneers: being a series of papers on the early occupation of the colony, the aborigines etc addressed by Victorian pioneers to His Excellency Charles Joseph La Trobe Esq. Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Victoria’. Edited with an introduction and notes by C. E. Sayers from the original edition edited for the Trustees of the Public Library by Thomas Francis Bride L.L.D during his period of office as Librarian of the Public Library of Victoria. (Phew!), 1969.

Alan Gross ‘Charles Joseph La Trobe, Superintendent of the Port Phillip District 1839-1851 Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria 1851-1854′. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1956.

1851 Black Thursday

The Royal Historical Society of Victoria is having its centenary this year.  One of the aims of the founders of the society was to capture the stories of the early colonists of Port Phillip before they died.  I was flipping through some of the earliest volumes of its journal, and it is impressive to see papers given by people at their meetings who had been here (albeit as children) right from the start of Victoria’s settlement- just think of it: they would have seen and met these people of Port Phillip that I’ve read so much about.

At the 25th June and 3rd September meetings of the society in 1923,  a paper was read called “Reminiscences from 1841 of William Kyle- a pioneer. Communicated to and transcribed by Chas Daley”.    I hadn’t heard of William Kyle and I know nothing more about the paper than just this.  William Kyle was born in Greenock, Scotland in 1832 and came out to Port Phillip as a child with his father.  The paper extended over two editions of the Victorian Historical Magazine and traced through his arrival, life in the country and in Melbourne pre-gold rush with some fascinating descriptions of Aboriginal life on the edges of what are now the inner-city suburbs of Melbourne, then right through to the latter years of the century (I’ll admit that I didn’t read the whole thing).

I was drawn to this description of Black Thursday of 1851, and perhaps to get yourself in the mood you should visit the State Library of Victoria page and have a good look at William Strutt’s painting-  and listen to the soundscape.

And here’s how William Kyle remembered Black Thursday of 1851:

The floods of 1849, which were the result of a general rainfall throughout the colony, caused an excessively dense growth of vegetation, and much grass.  Little clearing had been done in the forests, and ring-barking trees was not yet in vogue, so that, after a very hot summer, the outbreaks of fire which swept throughout the land under the stimulus of a fierce hot wind caused the conflagration known as Black Thursday.  The fire spread with amazing rapidity.  Three-quarters of the colony was in a blaze.  The flames were so intense that trees two or three hundred yards away from the advancing wall of flame were shrivelled before the flames reached them.  In the unsettled districts there was little loss, but thousands of sheep and cattle succumbed.  The native game was almost annihilated.  The fire was so near Melbourne that the sky seemed to be a mass of floating fragments of bark and leaves ablaze with the intense heat.  Many people thought the Day of Judgment had surely come.  We could hardly breathe the stifling air.  The floating embers even set on fire some of the ships in the bay.

After the conflagration had exhausted itself the scene was one of intense desolation.  Nothing was visible but charred stumps and blackened smoking trees, bereft of all foliage.  No sound of bird, insect or animal was to be heard.  It was years before game was plentiful, and it was never so again near the settled districts after Black Thursday.  Fortunately, although there were the most wonderful escapes from death, there were not many human lives lost, owing to the sparseness of the population.

Sounds very, very familiar.

Reference:

‘Reminiscences from 1841 of William Kyle, a pioneer’ Victorian Historical Magazine, Vol X, Dec 1925 No 4.